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Fierce winds and pounding waves will strike numerous communities in Newfoundland.
The warnings cover the island's south coast, most of its west coast and the Burin, Avalon and
Bonavista peninsulas, and compound travel problems that have already cancelled Marine Atlantic's ferry crossings to
Nova Scotia.
Winds will gust up to 120 km/h in parts of the Avalon and Burin peninsulas.
Meteorologist Devon Telford said water levels will be particularly high on the east side of the
Burin Peninsula, and in other areas as well.
One
Calgary restaurateur is standing behind the federal
Competition Bureau's move to investigate Canada's largest credit card companies.
The bureau says Visa and Mastercard is engaging in unfair and anti-competitive practices it fears are hurting small businesses and consumers.
Marco Abdi, owner of La Brezza Ristorante at 990 First Ave. N.E., said every time he swipes a credit card, it seems the fees increase. He believes it's getting in the way of him growing his business.
Rafael Poch - Pravda
Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced in 1986 to 18 years in prison for “treason” and “spying.” His crime was to disclose the secret of Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Released in 2004, he is still banned from contacting the press and cannot move freely. At the Berlin gathering, the name of
Julian Assange, and another popularizer of disclosing secrets was very present, the Irish
Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize 1976, calling the enforced absence of Vanunu “shameful.”
Corrigan-Maguire and five other Nobel laureates, including the German Günter Grass, called for Vanunu to be allowed to go to Berlin, without obtaining even an answer. In his absence, some pacifist
Israeli Vanunu partners were informed at once and participated in the event, including the journalist, Gideon Spiro, founder of the support committee for Vanunu.
.......
Do they accuse you of anti-Semitism in Israel?
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It is the atomic bomb of propaganda. For example, if someone from Spain condemns the Israeli system of Apartheid, the answer is that you continue in the Spanish tradition that once expelled the Jews. If you are really an anti-Semite, then nevermind, but if you are a humanist, an advocate of human rights and peace, they force you to explain, to defend yourself, you put on the defensive.
It is an effective weapon, especially in Germany, which gives submarines capable of carrying nuclear missiles to Israel, a madness that contributes to the next holocaust, a shame to the previous one, an utter stupidity for Israel. But that weapon is losing power, because both the generation that was a victim as well as those who promoted the slaughter of Jews in Europe, is disappearing. In twenty years, this resource will disappear. German policy does not support Israel, but its militarism.
It’s madness: they are contributing to the next nuclear holocaust, arming with the technology of mass destruction the region most stirred up in the world. And the things about the submarines was started by Joschka Fischer, of the pacifist political Green Party … We must prevent Iran from the bomb, but if we just focus on Iran and allow Israel to have them, then any other Arab country will want to have them. We favor a nuclear-free Middle East because it is a matter of survival for all, including Israelis.
U.S. communications regulators adopted Internet traffic rules on Tuesday that prevent providers from blocking lawful content but still let them ration access to their networks.
At issue is whether regulators need to guarantee that all stakeholders continue to have reasonable access to the Internet, a principle often called "net neutrality," or whether the Internet is best left to flourish unregulated.
The
FCC's ability to regulate the Internet has been in doubt since an appeals court in April said the agency lacked the authority to stop cable company Comcast Corp from blocking bandwidth-hogging applications.
Senior FCC officials have said they will invoke new legal arguments not employed in the
Comcast case.
One factor reducing or delaying executions is difficulty obtaining
sodium thiopental, one of the drugs used in
lethal injection executions, the Washington-based group said.
Executions were postponed or canceled in five states due to a shortage of the drug, it said. Arizona imported some from Britain, where executions have been abolished, but Britain is now restricting the drug's exportation.
Deutsche Bank admitted criminal wrongdoing and agreed to pay more than US$550 million in connection with its participation in tax shelters that enabled the rich to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in American taxes, U.S. authorities announced Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors and the Justice Department's tax division announced the deal, saying a non-prosecution agreement requires the bank to continue co-operating and to submit to the appointment of an independent expert who will review its compliance measures and ensure it does not help people dodge taxes in the future.
Authorities said the $533,633,153 payment by the bank will include that amount of taxes and interest that the Internal Revenue Service was unable to collect from taxpayers from 1996 to 2002 because of the misconduct. It also includes a civil penalty of more than $149 million.
A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One. Reporter Kirk Johnson takes a wrong turn.
In essence, he confuses proximate and efficient causes (i.e. what bees ultimately succumb to vs. what makes hives susceptible to collapse) and from that logical error, a whole series of cascading failures ensue. Read Katherine Eban’s crack piece of reporting for Fortune that dissects the problematic nature of the Times article; the underlying study; its lead author, Jerry Bromenshenk; and the role in the whole debate of the pesticide company Bayer CropScience.
The study itself makes no conclusive claims about the causes of colony collapse disorder. Eban quotes from the paper that the research does not “clearly define” that the virus/fungus combination is “a marker, a cause, or a consequence of CCD.” A scientist interviewed by Eban very helpfully offers the metaphor of HIV to describe what’s going on with bees. HIV doesn’t kill you — it’s the opportunistic infections and diseases that follow HIV’s dismantling of a sufferer’s immune system that do. In the case of bees, the virus/fungus combo are most likely the follow-on infections that kill off an already weakened hive. The Times left out key pieces of the real story of the fight over research into what’s killing the bees.
As
I wrote last January, many scientists believe that a novel class of pesticides called neonicotinoids — which are insect neurotoxins — has played a major role in CCD worldwide. An Italian entomologist at the University of Padua, Vincenzo Girolami, has research currently undergoing peer review showing that bees can be exposed to lethal levels of these pesticides through the use of seeding machines that sow neonicotinoid-coated seeds. These devices throw up a toxic cloud of pesticide as they work: bees fly through the cloud and either die or take the pesticide back to the hive. Once inside, even at low doses, it can cause disorientation or, as Girolami calls it, “intoxication” of whole hives.
The maker of this pesticide is Bayer CropScience. What does a corporation do when it discovers it may have developed and marketed a dangerous and potentially devastating product? Here in America, you confuse, you obfuscate, and you buy off scientists.
And as Eban skillfully details, that’s exactly what Bayer has been doing for the last decade or so.
last year Italy banned neonicotinoid-coated corn seeds and,
according to this report, after the first non-neonicotinoid sowing, nary a hive was lost, although neonicotinoid spraying is still allowed in some areas — and still linked with bee deaths. France has also banned coated seeds — though there, as in Germany, the pesticide lobby has fended off total bans for now. As for the U.S., Bayer successfully convinced a judge to throw out crucial evidence in the beekeeper lawsuit and has, to date, prevented the EPA from releasing the data the agency used to approve neonicotinoids in the first place.
The leaders of four nations Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) met in the second week of December 2010 in the capital of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat to sign two agreements called Inter Governmental Agreement (IGA) and Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement (GPFA) to foster the prospects of TAPI pipeline. The agreements will boost the prospects of the pipeline as they lay down the terms of gas supply and inter-governmental cooperation. The 1680 km pipeline estimated to cost $7.6 billion, will supply India and Pakistan about 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas and to Afghanistan 700 million cubic feet gas per year from Turkmenistan’s southern Yoloten-Osman and Dowletabad gas fields. The successful completion of pipeline, projected at the year 2014, will undoubtedly meet significant energy requirements of the three countries of the region. The pipeline will pass from southern gas fields of Turkmenistan and reach by crossing Afghanistan Pakistan’s national gas network at Multan, and then cross to India and reach the Fazilka point in the Indian state of Punjab. Though it will be premature to pronounce the certainty of pipeline deal at present because there are other crucial agreements such as Gas Supply Purchase Agreement (GSPA), Gas Transportation Agreement and Host Country Agreement are yet to be signed. However, despite the differences of perceptions among the parties the deal has moved forward substantially.
( Surely NK will resist efforts to get them to prove that they are defenceless and MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction - is not a plausible concern. After all...it isn't as if we believe the forces assailing them are not armed to the teeth with every imagineable weapon under the Sun...and some that aren't to most of us )
Yahoo! Politics
News - UK
- Goodbye To 2010, And Dreams For 2011
- 4 hours ago
As the holiday season continues, here are a couple of videos just for fun. Good ol’ JibJab has composed a great synopsis of 2010 in this funny (and too true) video: Oh, my – how funny was that? I lo...
- The 12 Days–Irish Style + Open Thread
- 14 hours ago
Many have had fun with what it would be like if the 12 Days of Christmas actually played themselves out in real time. But this one really cracked me up. This is about how it would go in my ...
- Joe Biden Old Blighty Cold Bitten
- 22 hours ago
As Joe Biden labels Assange a “hi-tech terrorist,” Old Blighty’s Assange problem continues to manufacture details, such as how Assange the Australian national released the Climategate emails of 2009 (...
- A Miracle Of Music
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I just saw the most incredible story about a man named Derek Amato. Back in 2006, he hit his head on the bottom of a swimming pool. The result of that brain injury was the gift of music. That knock...
- Daggers
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My Yahoo!
- Green New Year's Resolutions: Volunteer More
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It’s almost midnight — do you know where your resolutions are? If not, worry not: We’ve got a few suggestions lined up for you this week. While in years past, we provided you with specific eco - act...
- Green Fashion Monday: Ugly Christmas Sweater Tees
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On Fashion Monday , we highlight a hip, green fashion item. Got a stylish eco-friendly product to recommend? Tell us about it and look for it in an upcoming blog post. Wondering what to w...
- A Musical Caterpillar?
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Next time you're walking in nature and you hear a whistling sound coming from the leaves, don't be overly flattered. Chances are it's a walnut sphinx caterpillar , which has been found to be able to m...
- Green New Year's Resolutions: Commit to Activism
- 1 day ago
It’s almost midnight — do you know where your resolutions are? If not, worry not: We’ve got a few suggestions lined up for you this week. While in years past, we provided you with specific eco - acts ...
- Daily Roundup: December 17, 2010
- 3 days ago
- Paper: Current situation with Gulf seafood safety is “intolerable”
- 5 hours ago
Settle seafood question now , The Advertiser (Lafayette, LA), December 21, 2010: The current situation, in which the federal government assures us that Gulf seafood is safe while critics make sound ...
- Acres of 1″ thick black mats cover beach at Dauphin Island (PHOTOS)
- 22 hours ago
Will Alabama Beaches Never Be The Same? , John Wathen via BP Oil Slick , December 15, 2010: Thick black mats of material covered parts of the beach as much as an inch think with a rubbery substance ...
- BP/Feds did not look for oil in water more than 10 feet deep… due to “restriction”
- 1 day ago
Government report: Not much subsea oil, but tar mats from oil spill still near beaches , Press-Register, December 17, 2010: Members of the Shoreline Assessment and Treatment teams comprised of BP an...
- Scientists find “lots of oil and dead animals on the sea floor at a spot very close to where the government said it barely found any oil”
- 1 day ago
U.S. finds little BP oil on seafloor; some don’t buy it , AP, December 17, 2010: Some scientists were cautious and even skeptical about this latest report. Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Flori...
- “I have nowhere left to turn”: BP refuses claim of “gravely ill” cleanup worker — “Can never recover money for medical bills and other expenses”
- 1 day ago
- US shift may mean end of bilateral approach
- 0 minutes ago
"It is clear that the international community is nearing a crossroads at which a decision must be made on whether this current approach should be continued. The alternative is for the international co...
- Lebanon: Finding Consensus without the Factions
- 0 minutes ago
"As for the factions of "exiles", although in some ways I sympathize with them and respect the intensity of their feelings, the firestorm of name-calling and misrepresentation they created over our de...
- What we'll learn from the next round of Wikileaks
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"Spoke to several senior officers in IDF Intelligence. They can't understand why we are neglecting the Syria-Israel negotiating track in favor of an obviously failed Israeli-Palestinian process. Explo...
- Last Call for a Peaceful Settlement
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"The natural conclusion to all of this is that the Americans can never be the impartial and honest broker the Palestinians had hoped for. While this is a disheartening conclusion, there is an even mor...
- WikiLeaks, ICRC and Kashmir
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- Zimbabwe and the Steep Road to Vindication
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Western corporate media assaults on Zimbabwe have often centered on the alleged corruption and recklessly “anti-white” nature of the country's land reform program. But a recent British academic study,...
- Cuban Parliamentarians Discuss Economic Guidelines and Fiscal Policy
- 4 days ago
HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 17 (acn) With the presence of Cuban President Raul Castro, the members of the National Assembly (Parliament) discussed on Thursday the Draft Guidelines for the Economic and Social Po...
- U.S. Prepares For New Decade Of War In Asia
- 4 days ago
Using the staged September 11, 2001 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan, Washington is about to enter the eleventh year of its longest war in history. After Indochina, this war unequivocally de...
- Raul Castro Meets with President of Nauru
- 1 week ago
HAVANA, Dec 13 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro met on Saturday with his counterpart from Nauru, Marcus Stephen, who is on an official visit to the Caribbean island.
- Afghanistan: Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration
- 1 week ago
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