Reuters – by RICHARD BALMFORTH AND THOMAS GROVE

Russia declared Ukraine on the brink of civil war on Tuesday as Kiev said an “anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Moscow separatists was under way, with troops and armored personnel carriers seen near a flashpoint eastern town.

Twenty-four hours after an Ukrainian ultimatum expired for the rebels to lay down their arms, witnesses however saw no signs yet that Kiev forces were about to storm state buildings in the Russian-speaking east that armed militants have occupied.   Continue reading “Russia says Ukraine close to civil war as Kiev begins offensive”

Gregg Lemler, vice president of transmission operations for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., listens to questions at a news conference in San Francisco, Thursday, April 10, 2014. PG&E offered a $250,000 reward on Thursday for information leading to an arrest and conviction in an attack nearly a year ago on phone lines and the power grid in Silicon Valley. Photo: Jeff Chiu, AP / APSF Gate – by GARANCE BURKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric Co. offered a $250,000 reward Thursday for information leading to an arrest and conviction in a startling attack mounted nearly a year ago on telephone lines and the power grid in Silicon Valley.

The nighttime, coordinated attack on April 16, just a day after the Boston Marathon bombings, involved snipping AT&T fiber-optic lines to knock out phone and 911 service in the area and firing shots into a PG&E substation.   Continue reading “PG&E offers $250K reward in California grid attack”

Ready Nutrition – by Tess Pennington

Honey, that delectable condiment for breads and fruits, could be one sweet solution to the serious, ever-growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, according to researchers who presented their findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Medical professionals sometimes use honey successfully as a topical dressing, but it could play a larger role in fighting infections, the researchers predicted. Their study was part of the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.   Continue reading “Honey is a new approach to fighting antibiotic resistance”

File photo of a police car. (Photo by GERARD JULIEN/AFP/Getty Images)CBS Cleveland – by Benjamin Fearnow

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio (CBS CLEVELAND) – A spring break vacation turned into a nightmare for a Columbus family visiting the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force when four police officers in three cruisers drew guns and forced a grandmother and a mother to the ground as two young children screamed in fear from what authorities thought was a “stolen” vehicle.

Alice Hill, 65, her daughter-in-law Wendy Hill, 31, and Hill’s two children, Aaron, 8, and Brooke, 5, were pulling out of the museum parking lot after Aaron and Alice had counted the number of out-of-state cars on the way to their family minivan, WKRC-TV reports.   Continue reading “Vacationing Family Pulled Over, Handcuffed At Gunpoint By Air Force Base Security”

StoryLeak – by Mikael Thalen

The Department of Homeland Security is partnering with a Washington state school district to recruit future employees through a new high school curriculum.

An employment application posted by Evergreen Public Schools this weekend requests a certified “Homeland Security Instructor” to steer young students into a career with the agency.   Continue reading “Wash. State High School Sets Up ‘Homeland Security Class’”

The Daily Caller – by Robby Soave

Police officers in Alexandria, Virginia, frequently take pictures of the license plates of random vehicles all over the city — meaning that people’s addresses, work locations and daily routines are well known to the authorities who collect such information and store it for stretches of time.

The disturbing discovery was made by Katie Watson, an investigative reporter with Watchdog.org’s Virginia bureau. Watson submitted a public records request with the Alexandria Police Department for all information the police had about her. Watson already knew that the police used automatic license plate recognition software to collect information. What she didn’t know was how pervasive the surveillance was.   Continue reading “Virginia cops constantly photograph random people’s license plates”

NJ.com – by Tom Haydon/The Star-Ledger

NEW BRUNSWICK — On a hot July day in 2011, Sgt. Samuel Woody, a 12-year veteran of the Plainfield Police Department assigned to the patrol division, arrested a 27-year-old city woman on charges of theft and burglary.

After she was booked at police headquarters, she was released on a summons to appear in court.   Continue reading “Former Plainfield officer sentenced for six years for sex assault, official misconduct”

Canada Free Press – by Judi McLeod

It seems that the woman who denied war vets access to their Memorial is the same one who will get to deny them their health care.

But don’t worry the mainstream media reminds us Sylvia has a smiling face.

Health and Human Services director Kathleen Sebelius replacement Sylvia Mathews Burwell, handpicked by Barack Obama on March 4, 2013 as new director of the Office Management and Budget, is coming to the HHS portfolio under a stench.   Continue reading “Obama taps woman who denied access to war vets from memorial for ObamaCare”

Washington’s Blog

Beyond Partisan Politics: What Benghazi Is Really About

Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who broke the stories of the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam and the Iraq prison torture scandals, which rightfully disgraced the Nixon and Bush administrations’ war-fighting tactics – reported last week:   Continue reading “Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter Sy Hersh: Benghazi Is a HUGE Scandal … But Not For the Reason You Think”

I Will Not Comply New YorkAmmoLand

Albany, NY –-(Ammoland.com)- Governor Cuomo awoke this morning to a massive problem, one million plus new felons, all armed with scary, high capacity, assault weapons!

An estimated million plus, formerly law abiding, gun owners have refused to comply with Cuomo and down state Democrat’s naive belief that the NY Safe Act, passed in a so called emergency session of the New York legislature, could force free people to register their hard earned property.   Continue reading “Good Morning to New York’s 1 Million New Illegal Gun Owners”

Ingameoffice has installed a green wall system into the TYJ Office Building in Shenzhen, C...GizMag – by Stu Robarts

The benefits to health and well being of having plants and greenery around an office are well documented. This project by Ingameoffice is more than just a few pot plants, though. Its TYJ Office Building refurbishment uses a vertical planting system in which plants can be moved around.   Continue reading “Modular planting system adds versatility to the living wall”

Science Daily

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re over 24 years of age you’ve already reached your peak in terms of your cognitive motor performance, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.

SFU’s Joe Thompson, a psychology doctoral student, associate professor Mark Blair, Thompson’s thesis supervisor, and Andrew Henrey, a statistics and actuarial science doctoral student, deliver the news in a just-published PLOS ONE Journal paper.   Continue reading “We’re over the hill at 24, study says”

Science Daily

A house window that doubles as a solar panel could be on the horizon, thanks to recent quantum-dot work by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers in collaboration with scientists from University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB), Italy. Their project demonstrates that superior light-emitting properties of quantum dots can be applied in solar energy by helping more efficiently harvest sunlight.   Continue reading “House windows that double as solar panels? Shiny quantum dots brighten future of solar cells”

Nevada farmer Wayne Hage (CURTIS HOWELL KRT/Newscom)The Foundry – by Hans von Spakovsky, June 11, 2013

A startling decision on government wrongdoing by a federal court in U.S. v. Estate of E. Wayne Hage gives credence to those who say that the federal government is engaging in a “war on the West” that is hurting rural communities. It is a stark reminder of how powerful our federal government is today and how it can ruin the lives and businesses of American citizens.   Continue reading “Flashback: Government’s Shocking Interference in Rancher’s Life”

CenturyLink – by John Rogers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The disgraced former city manager who became the face of a multimillion dollar corruption scandal in the small Los Angeles suburb of Bell was sentenced in federal court Monday to 33 months in prison for income tax evasion.

Robert Rizzo, 60, pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy and filing a false federal income tax return.   Continue reading “Disgraced former city manager gets prison”

Washington Post – by Marc Fisher

The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers’ debts to the government that are more than 10 years old.

The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to the Social Security agency. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century.   Continue reading “Social Security stops trying to collect on old debts by seizing tax refunds”

AOL – by MARGIE MASON

PERTH, Australia (AP) — The search area for the missing Malaysian jet has proved too deep for a robotic submarine which was hauled back to the surface of the Indian Ocean less than half way through its first seabed hunt for wreckage and the all-important black boxes, authorities said on Tuesday.

Search crews sent the Bluefin 21 deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to begin scouring the seabed for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 after failing for six days to detect any signals believed to be from its black boxes.   Continue reading “Malaysia jet search area too deep for submarine”

NASA’s putting plants inside special ‘pillows’ to grow veggies in spaceVentura Beat – by Eric Blattberg

NASA and SpaceX are blasting a bunch of lettuce into orbit.

As part of the SpaceX-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station, SpaceX’s Dragon craft is carrying a plant growth chamber called Veggie. U.S. astronauts aboard the ISS will conduct NASA’s Veg-01 experiment, which will assess the feasibility and safety of growing vegetables in space.   Continue reading “NASA’s putting plants inside special ‘pillows’ to grow veggies in space”