The Raw Story

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Friday, 10 October 2014

Ebola false alarm: Plane quarantined in Las Vegas airport amidst Ebola panic

© Twitter/@INTJerk A plane was briefly quarantined at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport Friday after a report that a passenger on the plane was showing symptoms similar to Ebola.The Delta Airlines Flight left New York's JFK International Airport Friday morning, bound for Las Vegas. Six ambulances surrounded the plane at Terminal 1, according to Las Vegas station KSNV.Shortly after landing, the plane was quarantined at the gate "after reports...

Satellite data shows hot spot of methane in US Southwest

© AP Photo/NASA, JPL-Caltech, University of MichiganThis undated handout image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Michigan, shows The Four Corners area, in red, left, is the major US hot spot for methane emissions in this map showing how much emissions varied from average background concentrations from 2003-2009 (dark colors are lower than average; lighter colors are higher. Satellite data spotted a surprising hot spot of the potent heat-trapping...

Germany looks after itself - Russia's Gazprom buys Europe's biggest gas storage facility

Russia will acquire Europe's largest underground gas storage facility this autumn from Germany's BASF, continuing the development of its Nord Stream operations. In return, the Germans will get access to large gas reserves in Western Siberia. © Reuters/Christian CharisiusA technician walks between pipes at the gas dehydration of the WINGAS gas storage facility near the northern German town of Rehden January 7, 2009. Gazprom and the Wintersall subsidiary...

British telecom providers give police mobile call records at click of a mouse

© ThinkstockPrivacy International, a transparency watchdog, said ‘providing communications data on automatic pilot is as good as giving police direct access’. Three of the UK's four big mobile phone networks have made customers' call records available at the click of a mouse to police forces through automated systems, a investigation has revealed.EE, Vodafone and Three operate automated systems that hand over customer data "like a cash machine",...

The sophisticated water technologies of the ancient Nabataeans

The Nabataeans were an ancient Semitic people dating back to 586 BC, who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant. The desert climate created agricultural difficulties for the Nabataeans, but they rose to the challenge, creating a sophisticated water collection system, which allowed them to build an impressive trade empire in the heart of Arabia.The first records of the Nabataeans show that they lived in Edomite territory, although there...

Incredible images of most powerful storm of the year, Super Typhoon Vongfong

Imagery from satellite (and astronauts) illustrates what a powerful storm Super Typhoon Vongfong became this week. © NASAHigh resolution imagery of Vongfong’s eye on Wednesday. Vongfong is churning north in the western Pacific on Thursday, with winds of 150 mph and a massive, well-defined eye. The super typhoon is not only powerful but large, with gale-force winds covering around 340,000 square miles - about 70,000 square miles larger than the state...

'Big early-season snow' coming to Colorado right now

If it was January, meteorologist Joel Gratz would be calling for a powder day Friday in Colorado. It's still only October (although Silverton ski patrol is already skiing powder), but significant snow will fall over most of the state's mountains from Thursday midday through Friday.Snow lovers can expect over 10 inches for elevations above 11,000 feet, and then after a dry Saturday, a colder storm will bring another 5-7 inches on Sunday. The precipitation...

Virginia Christian boarding school staff assaults teen for 'talking to a girl'

© Rawstory.com Video obtained by CBS 6 shows four Christian boarding school workers chasing down and beating the trouble youths they were supposed to be helping.In the video, which was taken in April, three life coaches and a program director at Abundant Life Academy in Caroline County, Virginia can be seen beating a 14-year-old in their charge. He attempted to run away, but the four employees chased him down and began assaulting him again.According...

RT launches nationwide broadcasting in Argentina

© RTThe "Russia-Argentina" video conference between Vladimir Putin and Cristina Kirchner (Screenshot from RT video) RT Spanish started broadcasting in Argentina on Thursday, which makes it the first foreign TV channel on national television in the Latin America country. It will be available for over 80% of the country's 42 mln population.A joint initiative of the two countries was made possible by the presidents of Russia and Argentina, Vladimir...

That's why childhood psychological abuse should be as taboo as sexual or physical abuse: Large new study reveals how harmful psychological abuse in childhood can be

Children who are neglected and emotionally abused experience similar, if not worse, psychological problems than those who are sexually or physically abused.Despite this, childhood victims of psychological mistreatment rarely receive treatment and their suffering frequently goes unidentified.Those are the conclusions of a new study of 5,616 youths who had faced different types of childhood abuse (Spinazzola et al., 2014).The study is published in...

Large finback whale washes up on beach in Long Island, New York

© CBS 2A dead fin whale was found washed up on shore at Smith Point County Park on Oct. 9, 2014. A large whale washed up dead Thursday morning at Smith Point County Park in Shirley, Long Island.They say it is a male finback whale, about 58 feet long."It's just amazing to see things like this," a resident said.It's not something you see often, a nearly 60-foot whale on the beach."I guess it was his time in life. It's big. It's wild. It's probably...

Mechanism that repairs brain after stroke discovered

© Lund UniversityA stroke is caused by a blood clot blocking a blood vessel in the brain, which leads to an interruption of blood flow and therefore a shortage of oxygen. Many nerve cells die, resulting in motor, sensory and cognitive problems. A previously unknown mechanism through which the brain produces new nerve cells after a stroke has been discovered at Lund University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings have been published...

Floods in Nicaragua after over 14 inches of rain in 24 hours in some areas

© SINAPREDHeavy rain in Nicaragua. A slow moving low pressure system moving from the Caribbean dumped record amounts of heavy rain on north and south-western Nicaragua on 9 October 2014, causing floods and landslides in the departments of Rivas, Granada, Chinandega and Rio San Juan.As many as 6,000 people (800 families) have been affected. More than 500 people had to be evacuated and are now being houses in temporary accommodation. SINAPRED (Sistema...

Genoa, Italy and Nimes, France Swamped By Flash Flooding; One Dead

Flash floods in Genoa, Italy, Heavy rainfall sent floodwaters rushing through parts of northern Italy and southern France Thursday into Friday, swamping buildings, trapping vehicles and killing at least one.Flooding swamped city streets in the northern Italian coastal city of Genoa (population about 600,000) Thursday night. Numerous vehicles were trapped by water up to windshields, then floated, and piled into and on top of each other once the floodwaters...

Height of hypocrisy: Fracking company partners with breast cancer pinkwashing organization

Happy Breast Cancer Industry Month! Bring On the Highly Questionable Profit-Driven Alliances!In what's being touted as the most egregious example ever of the pinkwashing of cancer in the name of profit, Susan G. Komen, America's largest and sketchiest breast cancer organization, has partnered with Baker Hughes, one of the world's largest oilfield companies, to introduce a thousand hand-painted pink drill bits "for the cure," thus facilitating...

Financial Times whitewashes fraudulent activity of Sergei Pugachev to demonize Putin

Sergei Pugachev, one of the greatest fraudsters ever. How could the FT not have known this? ...The FT published a truly astounding, nay, embarrassing, article yesterday co-authored by Catherine Belton and Neil Buckley about bankrupted former oligarch Sergei Pugachev's legal battle with Russian prosecutors over the financial implosion of his business empire in 2012.It betrays a stunning ignorance of the facts of the case, facts which are common...

Anti-Putin propaganda: The role of demons and psychological pressure

© Alexei Druzhinin, RIA Novosti The demonization of Vladimir Putin fits in with the ideas voiced by US President Barack Obama, who has announced a new strategy of containing Russia, Cold War 2.0. This has set in motion Soviet-era mechanisms: instead of provoking "nationwide resentment" and "revolutions," the strategy has only strengthened public support for the president in Russia.Acting in the spirit of the 20th century Cold War, foreign media...

Corporate media ignores facts showing costs of war deplete resources for infrastructure, science and education

© Vladimir PirogovAmerican servicemen prepare to board a military aircraft bound for Afghanistan in Manas airport in Kyrgyzstan in 2011. Tuesday, this week, marked 13 years since the start of the Afghan War, when on October 7, 2001 the US and its NATO allies launched Operation Enduring Freedom against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.The war has already become America's longest-running campaign in history. When combined with the...

Researchers discover remains of Alexander the Great's father

© THEODORE ANTIKASUnequal greaves and the Scynthian gorytus A team of Greek researchers has confirmed that bones found in a two-chambered royal tomb at Vergina, a town some 100 miles away from Amphipolis's mysterious burial mound, indeed belong to the Macedonian King Philip II, Alexander the Great's father.The anthropological investigation examined 350 bones and fragments found in two larnakes, or caskets, of the tomb. It uncovered pathologies,...

Spanish students eject bussed-in Ukraine nationalists protestors - 'Fascists, get out!'

© Reuters/Yorgos Karahalis Students at the Complutense University of Madrid kicked out several radical Ukrainians who stormed into a lecture, trying to provoke a fight. Posters reading, 'Ukraine besieged by fascism will not happen,' appeared in campus halls after the incident.The university faculty of political sciences and sociology is currently hosting an exhibition titled, which features photographs from Odessa, and the Donetsk and Lugansk regions....

Biden admits ISIS is a creation of U.S. foreign policy used to destabilize Middle East

Speaking to students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy Forum Thursday, US Vice President Joseph Biden committed what the US media characterizes as a "gaffe." In other words, he told an embarrassing truth about US government policy, one that is usually obfuscated in the remarks of government officials and the commentaries of media pundits.Asked about US policy in Syria, Biden touched on the dirty secret of the current US-led war against the Islamic State...

Closest link to our universal mitochondrial ancestor found

HE DIED later than Socrates and Aristotle, but a man who fished along the coast of southern Africa is the closest genetic match for our common female ancestor yet found.If you trace back the DNA in the maternally inherited mitochondria within our cells, all humans have a theoretical common ancestor. This woman, known as "mitochondrial Eve", lived between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago in southern Africa. She was not the first human, but every other female lineage eventually had no female offspring, failing to pass on their mitochondrial DNA. As...

Mysterious giant megaliths discovered in remote Russia puzzle scientists

Mysterious stones on Mountain Shoriya (Kemerov region, Russia) have puzzled both scientists and ordinary men. The wall of rectangular stones piled up on top of each other is already being called the "Russian Stonehenge". According to one of the stories, they were found back in ancient times.Though it aroused the interest of researchers in 1991, it was not explored then due to lack of financing. The research was just resumed in autumn 2013. The...
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