The Raw Story

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

Tuesday, 16 June 2015

Moscow cuts dependence on US dollar, builds a more self-sufficient financial system

© Reuters/Jim Bourg The U.S. Treasury Department in Washington Russia held US Treasury bills worth $66.5 billion as of April this year, according to the latest monthly report from the US Treasury. That compares with the $116.4 billion held a year ago. From March to April 2015, Russia sold $3.4 billion in US Treasury bonds,reported US Department of the Treasury Monday. Since August 2014, the value of US bonds in the Russian government portfolio...

Abbas says Palestinian government to resign within 24 hours

© Reuters/Suhaib Salem The Palestinian government is to be dissolved within 24 hours, reports, quoting a statement made by President Mahmoud Abbas. The government's spokesman, however, denies any such discussion of dissolution. "Within 24 hours the Palestinian government will resign," Abbas told members of the Revolutionary Council of his Fatah movement in Ramallah, reports, citing several officials present at the meeting. #BREAKING Abbas says...

When it comes to water, we're not all equal

As water resources in California near a worst-case scenario where all surface water sources have run out, the ultra wealthy have yet to pull back on their usage. In response, counties all over the state have implemented water restrictions with hefty fines for those who go over their daily allotments. But those fines, often amounting to a small drop in the bucket for the more well off, have done little to curb use in high dollar communities. Moreover,...

Facial Recognition-Fest: UK Police Scan 100,000 Concertgoers

UK police used facial recognition technology to scan the faces of 100,000 concertgoers in Leicestireshire over the weekend. (Photo:Tom Blackwell/flickr/cc) Just in time for facial recognition technology to lose its few privacy allies in the U.S., police in the U.K. demonstrated just what that kind of mass surveillance of the public might look like in reality. Over the weekend, Leicestireshire police planted a series of "strategically...

Genetically Modified Insects for Florida

Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes are set to be released in Florida. It’s a move from biotech company Oxitec, who already released GM olive flies into the Cayman Islands environment as a way to combat wild pests that damaged crops.[1] But, as there are concerns for the olive flies pesticide resistance developing into the ‘wild’ populations, the release of GM mosquitos are also posing questions of risk. The approach to containing...

More dead fish wash up on shore in Riverhead, New York

© WABC For the second time in weeks, a large number of dead fish have washed up to the shoreline in Riverhead. There's a dead fish mystery on Long Island. For the second time in weeks, a large number of dead fish have washed up to the shoreline in Riverhead. "Just look, the smell, oh my God, it's terrible," a resident said. And that's putting it mildly. "It's just a shame. A lot of guys who own these boats they don't even want to come down here...

Mysterious underwater vortex filmed in Thai lake

© YouTube Screen Capture A mystery vortex filmed swirling around in a lake in Thailand has left witnesses baffled. The whirlpool was spotted in the aqua blue waters of Cheow Lan Lake, a dammed reservoir in Khao Sok National Park in the Surat Thani Province, and lasted for about two minutes. The swirl left a long, wide trail of white bubbles as it moved through the water in a seemingly random figure-8 path in the video published on YouTube (watch...

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Wall Street takes offense at consumers' failure to follow orders and spend, spend, spend

Last week the government reported personal income and spending for April. After months of blaming non-existent consumer spending on cold weather, shockingly occurring during the Winter, the captured mainstream media pundits, Ivy League educated Wall Street economist lackeys, and Keynesian loving money printers at the Fed have run out of propaganda to explain why Americans are not spending money they don't have. The corporate mainstream media is...

The American Medical Association just voted to end personal vaccination exemptions

© luckyraccoon/Shutterstock The American Medical Association, the country's largest association of physicians, is weighing in on the vaccination debate by supporting the end of personal vaccination exemptions on both the state and federal levels. At the group's annual meeting in Chicago on Monday, members voted to mobilize the organization in order to persuade state legislatures to eliminate nonmedical reasons for exemption, such as religion, which...

US politicians use "Rent a Crowd" company to give illusion of support

© The Rundown Live Have you ever wondered how a politician disliked by most could fill a room with screaming supporters giving the perception they have your local communities support? Look no further than a company called "Crowds on Demand", a company who hires multi-talented actors who are experts of improvisational theatre to provide the illusion of support for a candidate. Nothing draws a crowd, like a crowd. The company who has provided its...

Bitcoin Spikes As Greeks Follow Cyprus "Template"

In March/April 2013, Bitcoin prices started to soar as Dijsselbloem's "template" applied toCyprus prompted many to rethink money entirely. As the reality of a possible Grexit looms and Capital Controls are denied (just as they were in Cyprus), so Bitcoin prices are once again surging (up 10% in the last few days) as non-fiat currency once again becomes bid. Cyprus... 2013   Greece... 2015   As we noted in 2013, what...

Thousands of tiny red crabs continue to wash up on California beaches

© Credit: KTLA Thousands of dead or dying red crabs washed up onto the sand at Huntington Beach on June 15, 2015. Thousands of small crabs native to the waters off Baja California have washed up on beaches in Orange and San Diego counties, coating the sand in a spiky layer of red. The crustaceans — Pleuroncodes planipes, known as red crabs, or tuna crabs — began appearing in great numbers last week. Out of the water, they become stranded and typically...

Starfish are capable of ejecting foreign objects from their bodies to quickly heal themselves

© University of Southern Denmark A starfish squeezes a foreign body through its arm tip. Starfish have strange talents. Two biology students from University of Southern Denmark have revealed that starfish are able to squeeze foreign bodies along the length of their body cavities and out through their arm tips. This newly discovered talent gives insight into how certain animals are able to quickly heal themselves. The two biology students, Frederik...

6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes off East Indonesia; no tsunami warning issued

© theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale jolted North Sulawesi province in the eastern part of Indonesia earlier Tuesday, but it was not potential for tsunami and left no casualties, an official said in Jakarta.The quake struck at 04:04 a.m. Jakarta time Tuesday with epicenter at 71 km northeast Sangihe Island of the province and with the depth at 71 km under seabed, an official of the Meteorology and...

Truvia's deception: A highly processed GMO sweetener that contains only 5% stevia

If you're one of the people who was excited when the "natural" sweetener that was allegedly made from the stevia plant became more commonly available, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. All of that hype about the "new" zero-calorie Truvia? All the talk about how natural it is? That's just not true. Incidentally, while the FDA has approved this bastardization of stevia, the actual leaf, where the active chemicals are found, is banned from sale...

Washington's Puget Sound skies dotted with 'fire rainbows'

© Jen Brazas The thin, wispy clouds floating around the Puget Sound region Monday usually do nothing more than give the blue skies a little bit of character. But today, they were giving the skies a little bit of color. © Brian Willard Roetger We had a number of reports of rainbow arcs in the sky -- both in a circular halo around the sun and just lighting up some clouds near the horizon -- a circumhorizontal arc, otherwise known informally as...

So much for food safety: Each week products are found contaminated with allergens, pathogens, particulate matter

One of the clear and present dangers in having such a highly industrialized, highly centralized food system in this country (a system where a whopping 96% of everyone relies on the other 4% for their food) is contamination. Our food is so centralized now that 10 megacorporations essentially own and produce all the brands you see on your grocery store shelf. In short, it ain't like your mom's mom's mom used to make. So in a typical week, several...

House-shaking mammoth bang baffles Auckland residents (again)

© File photo/NZ Herald The mysterious sound was heard in the Auckland suburbs of Onehunga and Mangere Bridge on Sunday night. A house-shaking explosion noise has baffled Auckland residents. The mammoth bang was heard by residents in the suburbs of Onehunga and Mangere Bridge about 10.30pm on Sunday. One reader who wrote in to the said they could feel the house shake. The scary noise sounded "super sonic" and no one knew what it was, the woman said. Residents...

South Front Crisis News 16 June: Kurds retake Tal Abyad, U.S. warplanes strike Iraqi army

Syria's Kurdish forces have taken control the strategic northern border town of Tal Abyad in Raqqa province from Islamic State militants UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported on Monday. Some 40 terrorists were killed as they fled the town after the Kurdish People's Protection Units advanced into the city, the monitoring group added. [embedded content] Fighter jets of the US-led coalition once again struck the Iraqi forces in the...

TTIP talks and industry pressure caused EU bureaucrats to cancel pesticide bans

© n Using the argument of the top secret Trans-Atlanic Trade and Investment Partnership talks, as well as enormous reported lobbying pressure from such chemical giants as Bayer AG and BASF as their excuse, the EU Commission has quietly abandoned plans for tighter safety regulations on pesticides. This is no minor bureaucratic issue. The health and safety of hundreds of millions of people in the EU are at risk to say nothing of animals, birds and...
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