The Raw Story

A non-profit news blog, focused on providing independent journalism.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Who is celebrating the NYPD work slowdown the most? Black New Yorkers - 'This is a taste of what it's like to be white.'

For the second consecutive week, New York City police have virtually ceased writing tickets and arresting people for many nonviolent crimes, on the order of a 90 percent drop from a year earlier. After perceived slights by Mayor Bill de Blasio, civil protests against police brutality, and the murder of two officers by a deranged gunman, the New York Police Department is fighting back by not doing its job. Or rather, police appear to be using their...

US steps up airport, federal building security after Paris attacks

© Reuters / Kevork Djansezian The Department of Homeland Security secretary has announced increased vigilance regarding national security, as well as stepped-up random searches of travelers and carry-on luggage in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris.In the announcement made on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the Federal Protective Services - which provides security for US government buildings - will be expanding its...

Asteroid 2004 BL86 to sweep close on January 26

It'll be closer than any known asteroid this large until 2027. At its closest, telescopes and binoculars will show it moving rapidly in front of the stars. © NASA/JPL-CaltechNASA caption: This graphic depicts the passage of asteroid 2004 BL86, which will come no closer than about three times the distance from Earth to the moon on Jan. 26, 2015. Due to its orbit around the sun, the asteroid is currently only visible by astronomers with large telescopes...

Alabama: Browns Ferry nuke plants leaks tritium into the environment

© APBrowns Ferry nuclear plant A leak of radioactive water from a tank at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant released tritium into the environment this week, but a TVA spokesman said Saturday the leak was quickly contained and presented no public risk.The Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the plant near Athens, Ala., said a drain line leaked between 100 and 200 gallons of water containing tritium levels above acceptable EPA drinking water...

Johns Hopkins researchers attribute cancer to 'bad luck'

© GreenMedInfo"Sorry for your luck." Much ado in the lamestream media about the new study from Johns Hopkins. In that study Johns Hopkins says cancer is a matter of luck, bad luck that is - in other words, unlucky gene mutations. Bad luck and the tired old saw about cancer being largely due to genetics? Where do I even begin to start with such terrible disinformation?Has mankind somehow gotten more and more unlucky? And if it is "unlucky gene mutations"...

From neighborhood cops to robocops: The changing face of American police

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." ― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means © Studiocanal/AllstarThe 'Robocop vision’ was presented to companies by the director of the Home Office’s Centre for Applied Science and Technology. If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk...

Police defend use of pepper spray and tear gas at Ohio State football celebration

© John Kuntz / Northeast Ohio Media GroupOhio State Buckeye fans cheer as the clock expires and OSU wins the NCAA's College Football Playoff National Championship game in Dallas January 12, 2015. The party at Eddie George's Grill 27 in Columbus soon hits the streets as fans took over High Street and the police used tear gas and pepper spray to break up the crowd. A Columbus police spokeswoman defended officers' use of pepper spray and tear gas against...

Senator Rand Paul: Kicking the Palestinians is a freebie

People who are still sure that Rand Paul offers a meaningful alternative to Hillary as far as excessively zealous support for the Empire is concerned may need to install the latest version of the software.This week, Senator Paul introduced legislation to cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinians unless the Palestinian application to join the International Criminal Court is withdrawn.Senator, I knew Ron Paul. You are no Ron Paul.Whatever one thinks of...

Levi Quackenboss: There is no 'Anti-Vaccination Movement'

It's been 5 years since the mainstream media began writing about the "dangerous and misinformed anti-vaccination movement." Who are the kooks in this crazy unhinged movement? Surely they are hanging out in labor and delivery rooms, throwing mercury on expectant mothers, making threats against anyone who vaccinates their newborn for a sexually transmitted disease. Certainly they are sneaking into Boy Scout meetings by posing as den mothers and brainwashing...

170-million-year old 'fish lizard' fossil found in Scotland's Isle of Skye

© Todd MarshallAn artist's rendering of the new ichthyosaur species discovered in Scotland. A prehistoric marine-reptile fossil found in Scotland's Isle of Skye represents a new species that lived about 170 million years ago, a new study finds.The specimen was a member of a group of extinct marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs. Researchers say the creature helps to fill in a gap in the fossil record during the Middle Jurassic period, which lasted...

Do viruses lurking in our genes make us smarter? Not really

© Mehmet Pinarci "Our Viral Inheritance May Make Us Smarter" cries the headline of a news story reporting on a new research study from Lund University in Sweden. "Junk DNA' from million-year-old viruses actually plays vital role in human intelligence: study" claims another, about the same study. The headlines are provocative indeed, suggesting viral gene fragments that are embedded in our genome are linked to intelligence.But is that what the study...

Turkish president accuses 'the West' of being behind Charlie Hebdo attacks and deliberately 'blaming Muslims'

© Getty imagesBlame game: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested French security forces were behind the Paris attacks as they 'track' former prisoners and the culprits in the Charlie Hebdo shootings had served time. The President of Turkey has suggested French security forces are to blame for the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last week, since the culprits had recently served prison sentences.Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the West of...

Flooding in Mozambique and Malawi claims at least 40 lives

© UnknownFlooded roads in Mozambique (file photo) Flooding has claimed at least 40 lives in Mozambique and neighboring Malawi, where a state of emergency has been declared over almost a third of the country.A group of 25 school children was swept away by torrents in Mozambique on Monday, and 18 others have been reported missing in the country, whose large eastern swathes have been swamped.In the town of Mocuba in central Zambezia Province, where...

Cops nonchalantly hose celebrating Ohio State fans with pepper spray for no reason

[embedded content]Ohio State football fans on Monday celebrated the university's championship game win by going berserk in the streets of Columbus. The local police, in turn, responded by indiscriminately blasting the crowd with pepper spray and tear gas, as this video from show.Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXq...

World Bank report: Low oil prices create 'window of opportunity' for China and India

© David McNew/Getty Images/AFP Oil importing countries like China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa will be the big winners as oil prices continue to weaken in 2015, the World Bank says in a report.Battered oil prices "creates a window of opportunity for oil importing countries, such as China and India; we expect India's growth to rise to 7 percent by 2016. What is critical is for nations to use this window to usher in fiscal and...

One of the Milky Way's arms might encircle the entire galaxy

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. HurtArtist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from far Galactic North. Given that our Solar System sits inside the Milky Way Galaxy, getting a clear picture of what it looks like as a whole can be quite tricky. In fact, it was not until 1852 that astronomer Stephen Alexander first postulated that the galaxy was spiral in shape. And since that time, numerous discoveries have come along that have altered how we picture...

6th earthquake in 2 days rattles Connecticut

Another minor earthquake has rattled eastern Connecticut.Boston College's Weston Observatory says the 2.1 magnitude earthquake at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday was in Plainfield. It was in the same area as five small earthquakes over five hours Monday morning.The strongest of those was 3.1 magnitude and could be felt in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.Last Thursday, an earthquake with a magnitude of 2.0 to 2.2 was felt in Plainfield. Homeowners reported...

Mysterious smoke that filled DC train station leaves one person dead and over 80 hospitalized

© ANDREW LITWIN VIA TWITTER/EPASmoke fills a yellow line car near the L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station. One person is dead and dozens more are injured after smoke poured into one of Washington, D.C.'s busiest metro stations Monday, creating what authorities described as a "mass casualty" incident.The heavy smoke began billowing out of L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station around 3 p.m. after a disabled train became trapped inside an underground tunnel, DC Fire...

Rouhani: Iran will weather oil price slide, some Gulf states will suffer

© Reuters / Adrees LatifIran's President Hassan Rouhani. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that Iran can cope with the economic turmoil of falling oil prices, adding that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be harder hit.Rouhani said that while oil now only accounts for one-third of Tehran's budget, some of the Gulf states are up to 95 percent reliant on it."If Iran suffers from the drop in oil prices, know that other oil-producing countries...

NASA: Satellite to get the dirt on soil moisture

© eospso.nasa.govSMAP: Soil Moisture Active-Passive A new NASA satellite that will peer into the topmost layer of Earth's soils to measure the hidden waters that influence our weather and climate is in final preparations for a Jan. 29 dawn launch from California.The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will take the pulse of a key measure of our water planet: how freshwater cycles over Earth's land surfaces in the form of soil moisture. The...
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)