Author: Sunfire

RT News

Portugal exited its international bailout program on Saturday, regaining its economic sovereignty, which it lost after the European debt crisis. However, the country’s GDP is four percent lower than in 2010, a year before it asked for financial help.

The country will become the second eurozone country to leave the bailout after Ireland. Portugal underwent three years of painful austerity, in order to receive a 78-billion euro loan (106 billion US dollars), to help a nation that was on the verge of bankruptcy.   Continue reading “Portugal leaves bailout program with 214bn euro debt, 4% lower GDP”

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Nearly one quarter of the US honeybee population died over the winter, according to an annual survey. Beekeepers report the losses remain higher than they consider sustainable, and the death rate could soon affect the country’s food supply.

“More than three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants rely on pollinators, such as bees, to reproduce, meaning pollinators help produce one out of every three bites of food Americans eat,” the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement about the survey. Bees’ pollinating role adds $15 billion to the value of U.S. crops, including apples, almonds, watermelons and beans, according to government reports.   Continue reading “US honeybee population suffers ‘unsustainable’ death rate over the winter”

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The US Department of Energy will no longer collect a small electricity fee from the bills of nuclear energy customers which was originally intended to fund the construction and operation of a nuclear waste dump that was never built.

The charge, which will no longer be collected past Friday, was first instituted in 1983 with the aim of constructing a facility capable of disposing of what is now almost 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel. The waste is spread throughout nuclear reactors across the US.   Continue reading “Govt halts fee for non-existent nuke waste site after 30 years and $43 bn collected”

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BANGKOK (AP) — A plane carrying senior Lao government officials crashed Saturday in a forested area of the Southeast Asian country, killing the defense minister and at least four other people, officials said.

About 20 people were believed to be on board the air force plane that left Vientiane, Laos’ capital, early Saturday morning to bring the group to an official ceremony in the northeastern province of Xiangkhoung, about 470 kilometers (290 miles) away, said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee.   Continue reading “Lao defense chief, 4 others killed in plane crash”

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — A man was charged with setting one of nearly a dozen fires that have destroyed homes and raced through nearly 20,000 acres of northern and eastern San Diego County brush land, but most of the blazes seemed to be dying down.

Thousands of firefighters and fleets of water-dropping military and civilian helicopters planned fresh battles Saturday, including three fires at the Camp Pendleton Marine base. Investigators continued to seek the causes of the conflagrations that burned at least eight homes and an 18-unit condominium complex, emptied neighborhoods and spread fields of flame, smoke and ash that dirtied the air in neighboring Orange County and as far north as Los Angeles County.   Continue reading “Arson suspect charged, most blazes dying down”

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — In the wake of a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma last month, a Utah lawmaker says he believes a firing squad is a more humane form of execution. And he plans to bring back that option for criminals sentenced to death in his state.

Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from the northern Utah city of Clearfield, plans to introduce his proposal during Utah’s next legislative session in January. Lawmakers in Wyoming and Missouri floated similar ideas this year, but both efforts stalled. Ray, however, may succeed. Utah already has a tradition of execution by firing squad, with five police officers using .30-caliber Winchester rifles to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, the last execution by rifle to be held in the state.   Continue reading “Utah lawmaker: Bring back firing squad executions”

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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors’ agreement to pay a $35 million federal fine for concealing defects in small-car ignition switches and to give the government greater oversight of its safety procedures closes one chapter of the automaker’s recall saga. But it’s far from over.

Besides agreeing to pay the penalty — the largest ever assessed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — GM admitted that it broke the law by failing to quickly tell the government about the problems. The automaker agreed to report safety problems a lot faster — it only started recalling 2.6 million small cars this February, more than a decade after engineers first found a flaw in the switches.   Continue reading “Government fine hardly the end of GM recall saga”

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Hope Keown was reading the newspaper in her kitchen when she noticed a face she hadn’t seen in years. Staring up from the page was her estranged stepfather’s mug shot, next to a story about how he starved himself to death in a Kentucky prison.

The story triggered tears, confusion and a torrent of memories about James Kenneth Embry, the man she knew as “Kenny” and “Spider Red.” She recalled the good times, such as when a sober Embry helped with homework and folded laundry. But there were also the drugs, alcohol and disappearances that lasted for days or weeks until he finally drifted away for good.    Continue reading “Tears for relatives after fatal hunger strike”

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Activists pushing for greater disclosure on genetically modified foods in Oregon said they are working on a petition campaign to require labeling on such products, while one small community has plans to ban GMO food altogether.

Oregon Right to Know, a grassroots campaign to label foods using genetic modified organisms (GMOs), said it was actively collecting signatures to get its measure on the November ballot in Oregon. Meanwhile, the citizens of one county in the state will vote next week whether to ban modified products from their stores altogether.    Continue reading “GMO ‘right to know’ battle heats up in Oregon”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of years ago, a teenage girl toppled into a deep hole in a Mexican cave and died. Now, her skeleton and her DNA are bolstering the long-held theory that humans arrived in the Americas by way of a land bridge from Asia, scientists say.

The girl’s nearly complete skeleton was discovered by chance in 2007 by expert divers who were mapping water-filled caves north of the city of Tulum, in the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. One day, they came across a huge chamber deep underground.   Continue reading “Ancient skeleton shedding light on first Americans”

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Florida jurors on Thursday rejected the insanity plea of a former military linguist and longtime Army officer’s wife, convicting the 53-year-old of first-degree murder for shooting and killing her 13-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter more than three years ago while her husband was deployed.

Julie Schenecker, dressed in a gray suit with a button-down pink shirt, wiped her nose and eyes, then the bailiffs handcuffed her as the verdict was read after just more than an hour of deliberations. She started to cry. She was sentenced soon after to two life terms, fingerprinted and led away to prison.   Continue reading “Florida mom guilty of killing her teenage children”

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A draft law submitted to the Russian parliament seeks to impose punishment up to criminal prosecution to producers of genetically-modified organisms harmful to health or the environment.

The draft legislation submitted on Wednesday amends Russia’s law regulating GMOs and some other laws and provides for disciplinary action against individuals and firms, which produce or distribute harmful biotech products and government officials who fail to properly control them.    Continue reading “GMO producers should be punished as terrorists, Russian MPs say”

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STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — A senior Norwegian diplomat says his country’s former ambassador to the United States was given a verbal lashing by Barack Obama’s chief of staff when the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

Morten Wetland said Thursday the ambassador, Wegger Stroemmen, was approached by Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago’s mayor, who accused Norway of “fawning” to the newly elected U.S. leader. Wetland, the Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations at the time, told The Associated Press he did not witness the dressing down but said there was an air of embarrassment in Washington that Obama had been given the award so early in his presidency.   Continue reading “Norway diplomat: Obama aide irked by peace prize”

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BOSTON (AP) — Prosecutors say former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, who already faces a murder charge in a man’s shooting death last year, has been indicted on new murder charges in an unrelated 2012 double slaying in Boston.

The victims in that killing, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, were shot to death as they sat in a car in Boston’s South End on July 16, 2012. Police have said they were shot by someone who drove up alongside in an SUV and opened fire.   Continue reading “Aaron Hernandez indicted in Boston double slaying”

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A video showing an aide to Turkey’s prime minister kicking a protester held on the ground by special forces police sparked outrage Thursday, tarnishing the Turkish leader’s image ahead of his expected run for president.

Turkish newspapers also published photographs showing the adviser kicking the protester and identified him as Yusuf Yerkel, a deputy chief of staff at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office and adviser to the prime minister.   Continue reading “Turkey outraged as PM’s aide kicks protester”

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NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City minister who was the subject of an Associated Press investigation about misspent 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina charity funds has agreed to repay $1.2 million that he took from his congregation to buy an 18th-century farmhouse on seven acres in rural New Jersey.

The Rev. Carl Keyes and his wife, the Rev. Donna Keyes, who jointly led the Glad Tidings Tabernacle in Manhattan, signed a legal judgment Wednesday settling a probe by the New York attorney general into a series of questionable church financial transactions.   Continue reading “NYC minister to repay $1.2M after AP probe”

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A young boy who survived an 11-story fall from a Minneapolis high-rise has been dubbed “the miracle baby” and was recovering in a hospital Wednesday.

Fifteen-month-old Musa Dayib suffered a broken spine and ribs as well as a concussion and a punctured lung. Musa’s relatives believe he slipped through the railing of his family’s apartment balcony Sunday evening.   Continue reading “Boy survives 11-story fall from Minnesota building”

RT News

The second US patient to be diagnosed with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) waited four hours before he was seen by doctors in Florida as 20 health care workers await test results for the deadly virus.

After sitting in the crowded waiting room of the Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando for four hours before being seen by a physician, it took another 8 hours for medical personnel to determine the patient had traveled from Saudi Arabia, one of the countries experiencing an outbreak of the disease, which is estimated to kill about one-third of infected people.   Continue reading “Patient with deadly MERS virus waited hours in Florida ER”

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Children as young as seven toil away in sweltering heat, harvesting pesticide-laden tobacco and facing high-volume nicotine exposure in the US south to satisfy the demand of global cigarette manufacturers, a report by the Human Rights Watch reveals.

The 138-page report, ‘Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in US Tobacco Farming’, gives a startling look of the often perilous conditions in which minors toil away in the United States’ tobacco heartland.   Continue reading “US child tobacco farms: 60hrs a week in heat, nicotine exposure”

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Florida police are investigating an incident in which nearly two-dozen officers fired a torrent of bullets at two unarmed men, killing both of them, injuring other officers, and risking the lives of neighboring residents.

The incident began late last year, when Adrian Montesano reportedly robbed a Walgreens store at gunpoint and, in the aftermath, shot Miami Dade Police Officer Saul Rodriguez. Montesano took off in Rodriguez’s police vehicle after the shooting, dropped it off at his grandmother’s house, and fled again in a blue Volvo.   Continue reading “Miami cops fired hundreds of rounds, killing unarmed suspects and injuring two officers in crossfire”