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Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Another huge asteroid to fly by Earth at 37,000 kph on Friday

© Reuters / NASA / ESA / Handout via Reuters A 1,000 meter-wide asteroid is heading towards Earth this week - and its course will reach its closest point to our planet on Friday, according to NASA.Traveling at a speed exceeding 37,000 kph, the 2014-YB35 asteroid is set to approach Earth from a distance of 4,473,807 km - some 11.7 times further away than the moon - according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.But should the asteroid's orbit be closer,...

Maya 'melting pot' discovered in Guatemala

© Takeshi Inomata/University of ArizonaThis is a round structure uncovered at Ceibal, from about 500 B.C. Archaeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed new information about the Maya civilization's transition from a mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary way of life.Led by University of Arizona archaeologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, the team's excavations of the ancient Maya lowlands site of Ceibal suggest that as the...

Saudi Arabia starts bombing Yemen Shiite Houthi rebels

© Reuters / Fahad Shadeed Saudi Arabian forces, joined by nine other countries, have launched a military operation in Yemen against Shiite Houthi rebels, the Saudi ambassador to the US said. The offensive, which started with airstrikes, will also involve "other military assets."According to Ambassador Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, the military operation in Yemen started at 7 p.m. EST (11 p.m. GMT). The US is not participating in the operation, the envoy...

Sick Connecticut Republican calls sex assaults with witnesses a 'great party'

Connecticut Republican state representative said during discussion of a bill regarding campus sexual assault on Tuesday that if there are witnesses to a reported sexual assault then it must have been a "really great party."According to Hartford's WFSB, Republican state Rep. Mike Bocchino now says that the remarks are being taken out of context.He was responding to a Democratic-sponsored bill that would require both parties to consent to sex by...

Colorado Republican says brutal attack on pregnant woman was God's revenge for abortion laws

© State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt Colorado Republican lawmaker blamed abortion laws for a brutal attack last week on a pregnant woman in his state.State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R-Colorado Springs), a demon-obsessed former Navy chaplain elected last year to the state House of Representatives, discussed the case Wednesday on his program, reported Right Wing Watch . Michelle Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant, was lured to the home of a Longmont...

7-year-old forced by two other first graders to perform sex act on them

© Shutterstock The Children's Services department in Lucas County, Ohio has launched an investigation after a 7-year-old first grade student said that two of her classmates forced her to perform sex acts on them at a charter school.Rise and Shine Academy CEO Dr. Pat McKinstry told WTOL that the school first learned of the incident when a student reported that something "nasty" was happening in one of the bathrooms.According to the mother of the...

Passenger bus falls into giant sinkhole in Brazil; swept away by floodwater

© NBC Dramatic video of a Brazilian passenger bus being swallowed by a sinkhole and spit out into a nearby river is going viral across the web.The incident happened in the state of Para in northern Brazil during recent flooding. Luckily, all the passengers of the bus escaped before the vehicle was swept away, according to the BBC.The bus became stuck on the road near the cities of Itaituba and Ruropolis, leading all the passengers to evacuate. The...

Fear Inc.: FBI tweaks figures on mass shootings to show phony increase

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) misinterpreted statistics on gun shooting in the country, which could be President Barack Obama's attempt to gain support for stricter gun control regulations, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) told Sputnik on Wednesday.Obama's gun-control proposals presuppose boosting background check procedures, the prohibition of military-style assault weapons, additional training for law...

Monsanto demands WHO retract study linking Roundup to cancer

© www.overseasagro.comMonsanto, the global toxinator Agrochemical giant Monsanto produces one of the most widely used herbicides, known as Roundup. But a report issued last Friday by the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found that the product's chief ingredient, glyphosate, was "probably carcinogenic to humans.""We question the quality of the assessment," Phillip Miller, Monsanto vice president of global regulatory affairs,...

Nestle continues stealing world's water during drought

© Damian Dovarganes/APThe Arrowhead Mountain Water Company bottling plant, owned by Swiss conglomerate Nestle, on the Morongo Indian Reservation near Cabazon, Calif. The city of Sacramento is in the fourth year of a record drought - yet the Nestlé Corporation continues to bottle city water to sell back to the public at a big profit, local activists charge.The Nestlé Water Bottling Plant in Sacramento is the target of a major press conference on...

Ukraine oligarchs battle for favor with the West: Kolomoisky steps out of shadow, goes on offensive against Porochenko

The head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, ordered his battalion Dnepr-1 to take the building of Ukrainian oil company Ukrnafta on Sunday, March 22. Kolomoisky goes on the offensive before the election in the United States. After his masters take the White House, Poroshenko will be destroyed.Two days earlier, on March 20, the Ukrainian oligarch captured the building of the state-run company...

Enough already! NATO to train 30,000 troops in south Europe in autumn 2015

© Universal History Archive/Getty ImagesParade of the SS Guard, the Nazi elite, at a party rally in Nuremberg, Germany, in the late 1930s. In October and November NATO will train around 30,000 troops in Spain, Italy and Portugal.WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will conduct training of some 30,000 military personnel in Spain, Italy and Portugal this fall, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Gen. Jean-Paul...

Western attempts to portray Crimea's conditions as 'dire': another epic propaganda fail

© Sputnik/ Evgeny Biyatov The West is painting a gloomy picture of Crimeans' life under Russia's "occupation," but this picture is totally divorced from reality: Crimea is faring well, especially compared to neighboring Ukraine, Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer claims.Life in Russian Crimea today is exceedingly normal. While a war rages on next door in Ukraine, the people of Crimea enjoy peace, stability, and a sense...

The horrors of life in Palestine: Israeli military raids on sleeping children (videos)

© Ismael Mohamad / United Press International Here are two videos, released by B'Tselem, to remind us of what an occupation is like as lived experience rather than as an abstract concept. They document masked, armed soldiers breaking into the homes of Palestinians in Hebron in the middle of the night to force children awake, and then photograph and interrogate them. The soldiers go door to door, from one apartment to the the next, as casually as...

France cracks down on cash transactions and withdrawals in light of Charlie Hebdo attacks

© dpa French Finance Minister Michel Sapin announced last Wednesday that France will be enacting strict limits on the use of cash in the wake of January's Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, citing the fact that those responsible used cash to purchase equipment. According to , starting in September, France's new cash policies will ban payments of over 1,000 euros in cash for French citizens and expenditures of over 10,000 euros for foreign visitors.The...

Half of all Americans are broke

© Flickr With the unstable economic situation in the US, many Americans have learned to live on a budget. But what happens when one faces a substantial cost outside their budget?According to Chief International Economist at Deutsche Bank, Torsten Sløk, nearly half of American households don't save any of their money, leaving themselves with harsh economic consequences should the economy turn and they lose their jobs.Over a million people lost their...

Underground seas go untapped while California's water war rages on

© Zero Hedge In California's epic drought, wars over water rights continue, while innovative alternatives for increasing the available water supply go untapped.Wars over California's limited water supply have been going on for at least a century. Water wars have been the subject of some vintage movies, including the 1958 hit The Big Country starring Gregory Peck, Clint Eastwood's 1985 Pale Rider, 1995's Waterworld with Kevin Costner, and the 2005...

Department of Justice wants banks to call the police on anyone who withdraws more than $5,000

© Flickr/ Myfuture.com The Justice Department has been advocating for bank tellers across the US to call police on their customers who withdraw $5,000 or more in cash."A senior official from the Justice Department spoke to a group of bankers about the need for them to rat out their customers to the police," said investor and financial blogger Simon Black. Banks are already required to file a "Suspicious Activity Report" (SAR) should they suspect...

Canada the Good? How to stay under the radar when Bill C-51 becomes law

Bill C-51 is an omnibus anti-terrorism bill that grants CSIS new information sharing powers and converts CSIS from a covert intelligence gathering organization to a covert enforcement agency.Ms. Soapbox is here to offer four simple suggestions to keep you out of trouble when Stephen Harper's majority government finally passes this monstrous piece of legislation.Get off the grid: Communicate by pencil and paper. Buy a manual typewriter. Stop posting...

Who's Accountable for Ferguson's Crimes? No One, It Seems

© AP Photo/John Minchillo The Nationhere.In the wake of the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly had some advice for black America: "Don't abandon your children. Don't get pregnant at 14. Don't allow your neighborhoods to deteriorate into free-fire zones. That's what the African-American community should have on their T-shirts." (That's either a very big garment or very small lettering.)Whenever black kids get shot,...

NATO 'humanitarian' bombing of Serbia facilitated a dramatic increase in cancer rates

© AP Photo/ Jerome Delay The growing cancer rates in Serbia are part of the untold legacy of the Yugoslav wars.The use of depleted uranium munitions by NATO in Kosovo and adjoining areas facilitated a dramatic jump in cancer incidence in central parts of Serbia. A pertinent report released in 2014 also revealed a notable increase in the number of patients with malignant tumors, according to Slobodan Cekaric, the head of the Serbian Society Against...

Orange alert issued by Chilean government as Villarrica volcano leaks steady plumes of ash, smoke

A steady stream of smoke and ash being released from the Villarrica volcano. A steady stream of smoke and ash leaking from the Villarrica volcano has residents of a nearby town wondering if - or when - disaster might strike.Chilean officials raised threat levels to orange on Wednesday due to increasing signs of activity in the 2840-meter tall volcano, leaving area residents fearful of an eruption.'No one can sleep peacefully because the other day...

Israel spied on White House talks with Iran

© Reuters Ally's snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a dealSoon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran's nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to penetrate the negotiations and then...