Year: 2015

RT

Scrutinized trashcans and handrails of New York’s subway infrastructure reveal that the system houses potential threats to health, such as yet-unstudied microorganisms, accompanied by more common bacteria leading to meningitis or food poisoning.

The majority of the microbes inhabiting the New York City subway system are harmless, but in several parts of the city samples of disease-causing bacteria can be found, estimated at 12 percent. These include drug-resistant species, or even DNA fragments of anthrax and Bubonic plague, both, however, at very low levels and likely not alive.   Continue reading “PathoMap: NY subway shelters bubonic plague, anthrax, 600+ unknown organisms”

RT

Global debt has soared by $57 trillion since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007, with the debt to GDP ratio jumping to above 500 percent in Japan. This raises questions about financial stability and poses a threat of another crisis.

“After the 2008 financial crisis and the longest and deepest global recession since World War II, it was widely expected that the world’s economies would deleverage. It has not happened. Instead, debt continues to grow in nearly all countries, in both absolute terms and relative to GDP. This creates fresh risks in some countries and limits growth prospects in many,” according to new research carried out by consultants McKinsey in 47 countries.   Continue reading “World record debt of $199trn could drag economies into another crisis – study”

Mail.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Porter Alexander spent more than 20 years wondering if his daughter’s killer would ever be caught. He’s spent the last four years hoping he’ll live to see the man brought to justice.

Alexander, 74, planned to urge a judge Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court to set a trial date for Lonnie Franklin Jr., who is charged with 10 counts of murder in what have been dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” serial killings that spanned two decades.   Continue reading “Families of serial killing victims to urge trial to start”

Mail.com

Thousands of travelers to the Caribbean and nearby regions are coming home with an unwanted souvenir: a mosquito-borne virus that recently settled there.

The virus, called chikungunya (chih-kihn-GOON’-yuh), causes severe, often disabling joint pain, and few U.S. doctors are prepared to recognize its signs. At one New York City hospital, a woman arrived in such agony she had to be admitted just to control her pain. “Thinks she has chicken virus??” the mystified staff wrote on the medical chart after interviewing the patient.   Continue reading “Caribbean blues: Mosquito virus is sickening more travelers”

Free Beacon – by Aaron MacLean

By February 20th, 2010, the Battle of Marjah had been underway for a week. In order to seize the Afghan district—an IED-infested, Taliban-dominated collection of villages and crisscrossing canals and tree lines that were a defending fighter’s dream—the U.S. military had divided its force into thirds. A task force of more than a thousand U.S. Marines, accompanied by Afghan soldiers, assaulted the northern portion of Marjah. Ditto for the central portion of the district.

And the southern third? It had been attacked by a single U.S. Army Special Forces team consisting of nine men, accompanied by a handful of Marine engineers tasked with clearing bombs from the roads and a few hundred Afghan troops that were more of a babysitting case than true partners. Such a light American footprint on at least part of the battlefield would “put an Afghan face” on the operation, as the lingo went at the time.   Continue reading “Afghanistan War Hero Stripped of Silver Star”

Jon Rappoport

Patrick Howley (twitter) at The Daily Caller reports that William Thompson, CDC whistleblower, has been given immunity from prosecution, by the federal government, to testify before Congress about vaccine fraud at the CDC.

Cautionary note: so far, The Daily Caller is the sole source on this story.   Continue reading “CDC vaccine whistleblower given immunity to testify”

Courthouse News – by Ryan Kocian

AUSTIN, Texas (CN) – Austin police put a bag over a woman’s head, strapped her to a chair and used “choke hold pressure points” to draw her blood for a DUI test, the woman claims in court.

Caroline Callaway sued Austin, Travis County, Austin police officers, county sheriff’s officers, Pro-touch Nurses and one of its employees, alleging unlawful search and seizure, excessive force, assault and battery, negligence and medical malpractice.   Continue reading “Woman Sues Police for Brutal Blood Draw”

Survivopedia – by THERESA CROUSE

If you ask a woman to empty her purse or a man to empty his pockets, you’re going to find a few quirky things unique to the individual but you’ll also likely find some common items that most people carry around with them.

What may surprise you is exactly how many survival uses those common items have. If you’ve ever watched McGyver, you know that these items can be used to make just about anything with a little ingenuity.   Continue reading “Pocket Survival Items And Their Unbelievable Uses”

Washington Post – by Peter Holley

Got a kid who’s raising hell? Afraid the police will be called if you break out the belt? A suburban Atlanta barbershop may have a solution for you.

Three days a week, parents can take their misbehaving kids to A-1 Kutz in Snellville and ask for the “Benjamin Button Special,” which Russell Fredrick and his team of barbers are offering — free of charge — to parents who want to try a novel form of discipline.

The cut involves shaving hair off the child’s crown until he begins to resemble a balding senior citizen, inviting that unique brand of adolescent humiliation that can only come from teasing classmates and unwanted attention.   Continue reading “This barber will publicly shame your misbehaving kid with an old man’s haircut”

National Review – by Ryan Lovelace

As multi-billion-dollar international conglomerates intent on smuggling drugs, people, and other contraband across America’s southern border, drug cartels are always looking for the newest and best technology to help move their product. And the smugglers have come a long way from the days when border tunnels and small private planes were state-of-the-art. Their latest innovation: drones.

Drones by definition do not need an on-board pilot. This means that drones can be far smaller than manned aircraft — and that in the case of a crash, there is no one on board to be killed, or captured and interrogated.   Continue reading “DEA Agents Worry Drones Being Used to Surveil Law Enforcement”

Newser – by Rob Quinn

Just because your heart’s not beating shouldn’t mean your vote doesn’t count, according to lawmakers in Indiana. The House Elections Committee in the state is considering changing a law that nullifies absentee ballots cast by voters who die before Election Day, reports the AP. Rep. Matt Pierce told the committee he was moved by the situation of former US Rep. Frank McCloskey, who made a point of casting an absentee ballot while battling cancer but died days before Election Day in 2003. McCloskey knew the value of a vote: After a recount following the 1984 election, the Democrat was declared the winner by just four votes.   Continue reading “Indiana Bill Would Allow Dead People to Vote”

BPS Research Digest – by Alex Fradera

The US Supreme Court has recently made a number of rulings that suggest it sees corporations as having similar rights and responsibilities to individual human beings, such as that they have the right to free speech, and can be exempt from laws that contradict their owner’s religious beliefs. Can a new neuroimaging study help us determine whether the Court’s approach is justified?

Forty participants viewed written vignettes while their brains were scanned, each describing a pro-social, anti-social or neutral action committed either by a person or a corporation. An example of an anti-social vignette was a freelance gardener or a gardening company deciding to charge an invalid falsely, for work they didn’t carry out.   Continue reading “Our brains respond to corporations as if they are people”

Think Patriot

The complexity of a game can be calculated using the number of ‘dimensions’ and the alternatives in each.

Tic-Tac-Toe has 3 dimensions : the grid, ‘X’ or ‘O’, and where to move next. That game is simple enough that even beginners soon learn that the game is won, lost or tied from the first move.

Checkers has a bigger board, adds another dimension in types of moves, another in King vs ordinary checker, and another in having many more pieces on the board. Still simple enough to teach young children, but adult intelligent human minds nevertheless find it very hard to grasp the higher levels of play.   Continue reading “High-Dimensioned Games”