The Raw Story

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

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Light beam seen during Michigan power plant explosion

Images of light beam over Escanaba Power Plant, Michigan on February 2nd 2015 Many Escanaba residents awoke Monday to find themselves without power after an explosion at a nearby utility plant substationAround 1:30 a.m. Feb. 2, an explosion at an Escanaba Power Plant substation caused widespread power outages across the city, according to the Escanaba City Electric Department.With the failure of the substation's main transformer, officials noted...

Noranda plant in St. James Parish seeks permit to emit mercury

Noranda Alumina officials say they believe their nearly 55-year-old refinery in St. James Parish has been releasing mercury into the air without a permit, possibly since operations began in 1959. The Tennessee-based owners of the once-bankrupt Kaiser Aluminum complex on the Mississippi River are asking state regulators for permission to release up to 250 pounds of mercury per year. That would make the plant one of the largest mercury polluters of Louisiana's air while Noranda officials figure out what is causing the air releases, state and federal...

Ukraine's currency in free-fall after central bank stops propping it up

© Reuters / Gleb GaranichBanknotes of Ukrainian hryvna The hryvnia lost 34 percent against the US dollar after the head of the central bank signaled it can no longer support the currency with regular interventions and will allow greater fluctuations. The hyrvnia hit a historic low of 24.5 per 1 USD."Get used to market volatility," National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Valery Gontareva told reporters in Kiev on Thursday.Happening to Ukrainian #Hryvnia...

Crazy underwater video shows a camouflaged octopus 'decloak' before your eyes

© Jonathan Gordon/YoutubeA screen capture at the moment of truth reveals the hidden cephalopod Diver Jonathan Gordon caught the stunning moment an octopus appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "I had literally no idea he was there until I was about a metre away," he writes about the moment this video was taken. Gordon writes that he was snorkeling in the Caribbean and dove to inspect the shell the octopus was apparently under, when the little guy decided...

Ukraine to become 51st State!

After the installation of the members of the US-controlled Puppet Government, the logical next step occurred today. The Ukrainian administration has put in its request for admission as the 51st state of the Union. The background to this action is that various US citizens, who were about to be settled into the Ukrainian government, refused to take up Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine allows its people only one citizenship: Ukrainians who go around...

More sanity from Hollande: Europe faces total war if West arms Ukraine

"We have two choices. We can adopt the logic that the participants ought to be armed. Since Russia is arming the separatists, we will do the same for Ukrainians so that they can defend themselves. But can you draw the line between defensive and offensive weaponry?" - asked Hollande. "The other option is to try and find a compromise and convince both sides to cease fire. Diplomacy, negotiations, but they ought not continue endlessly...Because we...

U.S. pressing Cuba to open embassy by April

© Reuters/StringerA man stands near the national flags of the U.S. and Cuba (R) on the balcony of a hotel being used by the first U.S. congressional delegation to Cuba since the change of policy announced by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 17, in Havana, January 19, 2015. The United States is pressing Cuba to allow the opening of its embassy in Havana by April, U.S. officials told Reuters, despite the Communist island's demand that it first...

Ukrainian Parliament authorizes law allowing army deserters to be shot

© RIA Novosti / Evgeny KotenkoUkraine's Verkhovna Rada meeting. Ukraine's parliament has passed a law which authorizes commanding officers to use physical force against army defectors. It comes as the latest military draft has seen a lack of enthusiasm on the part of potential soldiers.Ukraine's parliament voted on Thursday with 260 MPs in favor - only 226 votes were needed to pass the law. The new article 22(1) added to the charter regulating...

FBI director warns against ISIL threat in...Mississippi?

© Rick Guy/The Clarion-LedgerFederal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey speaks as representatives of state law enforcement agencies look on during a press conference Tuesday at the MIssissippi FBI headquarters in Jackson As Americans stood horrified at the news of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, one of the top law enforcement officers in the country talked about how Mississippians can fight...

80s AIDs crisis survivors share their stories; entire neighborhoods died and lesbians cared for the sick

© twitterReal LGBTI people who lived during the 1980s AIDs Crisis share what happened to them. As the UK celebrates LGBT History Month, users of Reddit revealed what it was like to be living in what felt like a constant state of tragedy. Real LGBTI people remember the confusion, the lack of information, the lack of support from the government because of the suffering from the virus known only at the time as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency).'I'm...

Just how dangerous is terrorism, really?

The terror threat is greatly exaggerated. After all, the type of counter-terror experts who frequently appear on the mainstream news are motivated to hype the terror threat, because it drums up business for them.The same is true for government employees. As former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes put it last week:If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the...

The liberal lie: Refusing to accept Obama's responsibility for Ukraine

© CNNSteven F. Cohen Liberals won't acknowledge that they've "been had" by Barack Obama when they believed his liberal rhetoric; they won't acknowledge it, even after Obama has proven by his actions that he is actually extremely conservative (a total agent of Wall Street; and, thus, inequality has been rising under his rule); Obama is conservative despite his liberal rhetoric, which is designed to deceive them; and he has - which is the worst thing...

IS not the only one who burns victims to death

The latest ISIS atrocity - releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive - prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable - and deliberately achieved - in all sorts of other ways:"Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan", NYU School of Law and Stanford...
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)