A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report. Read the full story
The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has – at least numerically – exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill.
The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.
A senior Treasury official told CBS News that the department has some “extraordinary accounting tools” it can use to give the government breathing room in the range of $150-billion when the Debt exceeds the Debt Ceiling. Read the full story
People are bombarded with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information a day.
They claim that the strain of processing so much data means we are becoming disconnected from other people and developing shorter attention spans. Read the full story
SANTIAGO: A judge has ruled that the former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated nearly 30 years ago and the murder covered up by people linked to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Frei, who preceded Salvador Allende as Chile’s president and later became a leading critic of the military dictatorship, died in 1982. An autopsy report blamed septic shock after stomach hernia surgery, but a new autopsy made public this year by University of Chile pathologists identified two chemicals in his body that attack the digestive system. One of them is used in mustard gas and the other is found in rat poison. Read the full story
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. – All canned Slim Fast drinks are being voluntarily recalled by the company over fears of bacterial contamination that could cause diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. The recall affects all 10 million products currently on the market.
The products could possibly be contaminated with the microorganism Bacillus cereus. Unilever says the probability of serious health problems is remote, and the Food and Drug Administration says there have been no deaths or injuries associated with the recall.
An unknown number of people have gotten sick about six to 15 hours after consuming the diet drink, but have recovered within about 24 hours. Read the full story
WASHINGTON — A third of the most popular children’s toys in the United States this year contain harmful chemicals including lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury, a US consumer group said Wednesday.
The Ecology Center, which published its findings on the website HealthyStuff.org, tested nearly 700 toys ahead of the Christmas shopping season and found that 32 percent contained one or more toxic chemical. Read the full story
Rwanda has been declared free of landmines – the first country to achieve this status.
The announcement was made at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World in Colombia.
Hundreds of people have been killed and horrifically injured by landmines in Rwanda.
Landmines were laid between 1990 and 1994 in Rwanda and over the past three years more than over 9,000 have been destroyed by Rwandan soldiers. Read the full story
One of the most interesting things I found out about in this 60 Minutes story is that Wal-Mart is the largest gold retailer in the United States. Here at Disinfo, we distributed Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and here’s another troubling consequence to add to this idea, that low price doesn’t come without costs that you, the consumer, may not be aware of. Costs that can make you think twice about exactly what you are buying.
For the first time in history, the Federal Reserve Bank may be facing an audit. On Thursday, the House Finance Committee passed a bill (HR 1207) that authorizes the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s secretive deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions.
HR 1207, sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), currently has 313 co-sponsors in the House from both sides of the aisle, which is a veto-proof majority. A companion bill in the Senate (S 604) has 30 co-sponsors.
State regulators shutter Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida. Closure will cost the FDIC $23.6 million.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — State regulators shuttered Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida in Fort Myers, Fla., Friday night, bringing the 2009 national tally to 124.
Customers of Commerce Bank of Southwest Florida bank are protected, however. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which has insured bank deposits since the Great Depression, currently covers customer accounts up to $250,000. Read the full story
If a person extends his or her arm and index finger completely, the beginning of Earth is represented by the end of the nose and the present is the fingertip. Passing a file over the fingernail once would erase all of human history.
Meteor shower tonight? Yep, peak viewing times for the Orionid meteor shower begins tonight (er… tomorrow) at 1 am.
Are you ready for some meteors? Tuesday night party! Well, that’s how the song might go if Hank Williams Jr. was singing the pre-game to tonight’s Orionid meteor shower.
But as far as we can tell, Williams isn’t adding this to his Monday Night Football schedule and we couldn’t find the pre-game party anyway.
But that doesn’t mean the show’s not going to go on. Anything but. Tonight and tomorrow morning are the peak viewing times of the Orionid meteor shower. Read the full story
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) refers to a group of inherited diseases causing retinal degeneration. The cell-rich retina lines the back inside wall of the eye. It is responsible for capturing images from the visual field. People with RP experience a gradual decline in their vision because photoreceptor cells (rods and cones) die. Forms of RP and related diseases include Usher syndrome, Leber’s congenital amaurosis, rod-cone disease, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, and Refsum disease, among others. Read the full story
Did you know that Hawaii was ruled by a monarchy before the United States acquired the territory? Did you know a group composed mainly of American businessmen was behind the overthrow of this monarchy, and key in helping America acquire Hawaii?
Winds of profound change swept over Hawai`i in the 1890s, turbulent times that altered the islands’ future forever
Hawai`i entered the decade of the 1890s as a kingdom and emerged from it as a Territory of the United States, with a provisional government and a republic in between. It was a time of monarchs and “mission boys,” of royalists, republicans and revolutionaries.
The storm that had been gathering broke on Jan. 17, 1893, when the Hawaiian monarchy ended in a day of bloodless revolution. Armed insurrection by a relatively small group of men, most of them American by birth or heritage, succeeded in wresting control of the Islands with the backing of American troops sent ashore from a warship in Honolulu Harbor. To this “superior force of the United States of America,” Queen Lili`uokalani yielded her throne, under protest, in order to avoid bloodshed, trusting that the United States government would right the wrong that had been done to her and the Hawaiian people.
Sugar and a coerced constitution played roles in the drama — intertwined themes of economics and politics.
Sugar was by far the principal support of the Islands, and profits and prosperity hinged on favorable treaties with the United States, Hawaiian sugar’s chief market, creating powerful economic ties. As the Islands’ sugar industry grew, large numbers of contract laborers were imported first from China, then from Japan and other countries, to work on the plantations — the beginning of Hawai`i’s present multicultural population. Plantation ownership and control of the business community were in the hands of men of American or European blood.
If you think the American mainstream media (MSM) isn’t being controlled by the American Government, think again. Operation Mockingbird is a CIA operation to control the mainstream media in America in order to control the American population and lead them down certain paths. The scary part: Operation Mockingbird is not new, its been in effect for decades.
Here are links to more information regarding Operation Mockingbird: Read the full story
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