Picture perfect proof that Mars once had wet seasons

© NASA/JPL/Caltech/MSSS

Cross-bedded sandstones imaged at the edge of Gale Crater's Hidden Valley.

It looks like a freeze dried desert now, but this image taken by the Mars Curiosity rover is proof that the red planet once had regular wet seasons, and was capable of supporting life. This layered rock photographed by the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows thick-laminated, evenly-stratified sandstone layers, which are commonly found on Earth where river deltas flow into lakes and seas.

The suspended material in the water then settled onto the ancient lake bed and gradually, over years, built up the many layers, which are now exposed in this rock outcrop. These multiple layers of sedimentary deposits are evidence that there were regular cycles of water carrying plumes of river sediments flowing into the lake which once filled Gale crater.

The sandstone has slowly eroded away over billions of years through the actions of sand blasting winds. These cross-bedded sandstones were imaged at the edge of a location called Hidden Valley, which is on the foot hills of the crater's five kilometre high central peak, Mount Sharp. The scene combines multiple frames taken with Curiosity's right-eye camera on August 7th, 2014, during the 712th Martian day or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.

The colour has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.

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In 40 years, U.S. neighborhoods stricken by poverty almost triples

© AFP/Mark Ralston

Contrary to the perception in the media, poverty - not gentrification - is booming in US neighborhoods. When such conditions double or triple, areas quickly fall into disrepair, services are cut, and crime escalates, according to a new report.

Media attention tends to focus on poor neighborhoods that are rapidly undergoing gentrification by way of investments and an influx of wealthier new residents, but a paper by cityobservatory.org shows a troubling trend that is more prevalent. The number of poor people living in high-poverty urban neighborhoods has more than doubled, the report found, from two million to four million over the past 40 years. Additionally, the number of high-poverty neighborhoods has nearly tripled from 1,100 to 3,100.

"The direct negative economic consequences of concentrated poverty are well established...fewer local job prospects...poor physical connections to growing job centers...[worse] health...poor quality public services that worsen the experience of poverty for neighborhood residents, and make it harder to attract new residents and businesses, adding to a cycle of decline," said the report's authors Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi.

The study, titled 'Lost in Place,' looks into why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty - not gentrification - is the biggest urban challenge in the US. It analyzed changes in high-poverty neighborhoods in 51 of the largest metropolitan areas between 1970 and 2010. In these areas, 30 percent or more of the population lives below the poverty line.

Several factors contributed to concentrated poverty. People that could leave the neighborhoods because of education and income did, leaving poorer residents behind. Because of poverty, aging buildings and infrastructure became neglected. As the buildings got older, their value went down and became more affordable for low income families.

"Because the slow decline is more common and less visible, it is seldom remarked upon, while gentrification, when it happens - which is both unusual and dramatic - is far more evident change," explains the report.

The report shows that Brooklyn, for example, went from having four poor neighborhoods to having five, while it went from having zero rich neighborhoods to having two. Despite gaining a poor neighborhood, Brooklyn was singled out as having the least amount of affordable housing in the US.

© AFP/Mark Ralston

Concentrated poverty disproportionately affects persons of color, too, the report found. About 75 percent of those living in high-poverty neighborhoods are African-American or Latino. The federal poverty threshold is currently set at approximately $23,000 per year for a family of four.

"In the USA, there are now more census tracts of concentrated poverty than have never been recorded before, resulting in more than 11 million Americans, or four percent of the population, living in severely distressed neighborhoods," said Rutgers professor Paul Jargowsky.

"The increase in concentrated poverty was highest in the Midwest, which experienced a 132 percent increase in the number of people living in high poverty neighborhoods, to 2.7 million; followed by the South, which suffered a 66 percent increase to 4.6 million."

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Terrorists holding up to 20 hostages in an armed siege in a cafe in Sydney

Terrorists were today holding up to 20 hostages in an armed siege in a cafe in Sydney where an extremist flag was being held up in a window. Witnesses reported seeing staff and customers sobbing as they were forced to stand with their hands pressed against the windows of the Lindt cafe.

At least two gunmen are involved in the siege but dozens of armed police have sealed off the streets surrounding the site. One gunman is believed to have a shotgun and possibly an explosive device. Martin Place has been shut down and scores of police are surrounding the building after the alarm was raised about 9.45am.

Journalist Chris Kenny, who was in the shop about 20 minutes before the siege began, said he understood the automatic glass sliding doors had been disabled.

'I did speak to a couple of people who saw a bit more of this unfold than I did,' he said.

'One woman said she tried to go into the shop just after I came out with my takeaway coffee but the doors wouldn't open.

'So obviously whoever is doing this has disabled the automatic glass sliding doors to stop anyone else going in and she said immediately she could see there was a weapon.

'The woman was quite frantic but very clear what she was telling (the police).

Additional images

'I know the faces of the people who are sitting there enjoying a morning coffee.'

The Seven Network newsroom, which is in a building opposite the cafe, has been evacuated.

Other buildings in Martin Place, including the nearby Westpac building, have been cleared.

'We're just recommending no one go near Martin Place at the moment,' a NSW Police spokeswoman said.

Martin Place train station has been closed, public buses are being turned away and air space over Sydney has reportedly been closed.

A staff member at the Reserve Bank told Daily Mail Australia they were unable to be evacuated because Martin Place had been closed. Staff have been told to move away from the windows.

Another woman who works in the government building opposite the cafe tried to call her her office to say she couldn't get past cordons and all the phone lines were down.

It was alleged that Omarjan Azari, the 22-year-old Sydney man arrested on terrorism charges in September, was planning a public beheading in Martin Place.

The alleged terror plot, mentioned in a conversation between Australian terrorism recruiter in Syria, Mohammad Ali Barylei and Azari, involved selecting a member of the public at random, beheading them and then covering their body in a flag.

The whole incident was going to be filmed, and then used as propaganda for the ISIS cause.

Federal prosecutors said the alleged terror plot was 'clearly designed to shock, horror and terrify the community'.

Police Prosecutor Michael Allnutt said that Azari had made a threat which involved a 'random selection of persons to execute' during a telephone conversation with Baryalei.

Azari was arrested on September 18 and charged with preparing for an act of terrorism.

He is due in court this week for a bail application.

The flag being held up in the window of the cafe is believed to be a Shahada flag, which is used by the group, Jabhat al Nusra.

Jabhat al Nusra was formed in January 2012, in the Syrian civil war to fight the Syrian government forces.

Jabhat al Nusra, or JN, aims to overthrow the Assad regime and replace it with a Sunni Islamic state.

Although the group is affiliated with al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra does not emphasize Western targets or global jihad, focusing instead on the 'near enemy' of the Syrian state.

Martin Place is one of Sydney's busiest streets and is at the centre of the CBD. The Lindt cafe where the hostages are being held specialises in chocolate and has a number of branches across the city.

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Baltimore police officer assaults, tasers woman who filmed them beating man in custody

© Screenshot from youtube.com video

Stopping to film Baltimore police officers kicking a handcuffed man, a local woman says she found herself being tasered and arrested while police hurled expletives. She is now suing the department.

Kianga Mwamba, 36, claims she was tasered and arrested by Baltimore Police Department officers in March while filming the arrest of another man on her mobile phone. After she was released, she noticed someone had tampered with her mobile phone - erasing the arrest video. Charges against her were eventually dropped in September, but Mwamba recently served the police department with a lawsuit seeking $7 million.

"I'm in shock for real, like are they really doing this to me," Mwamba, the daughter of a veteran of the Maryland Capitol Police, said as she recalled the arrest in an interview this fall with the .

The lawsuit filed with the Circuit Court for Baltimore City last Thursday said the police "attacked" her, "dragged" her from her vehicle, and "threw her onto the street, handcuffed her, tasered her, called her a 'dumb bitch,' and kept her restrained."

The suit alleges the officers arrested Mwamba to "prevent the disclosure of the video taken of them beating a handcuffed man."

Video of the March 30 melee surfaced online this week. Police erased the 135-second recording from Mwamba's phone, but it was recovered from her cloud account, according to the lawsuit.

Mwamba was driving home from a family gathering in March. Stopped in traffic, she began filming the nearby arrest of a man who she says was kicked by police. On the video we hear the following:

"You telling me I can't record," the woman says on the video as police tell her to move on.

"I'll park. I'll park. I'll park," the woman is heard saying in her own recording.

All of a sudden an officer says, "Out of the car. Out of the car."

After she is reportedly yanked out of her car, the woman is heard screaming, "He burning me. He burning me."

Mwamba was arrested on charges of assault for allegedly trying to run over two officers. Charges were dropped, and she suffered cuts and bruises.

At the end of the tape, an officer says, "You a dumb bitch, you know that?"

"What did I do?" she asks.

"You just tried to run over an officer," the officer responds.

While in custody, she gave her phone to an officer to show that in the video she didn't try to run over anyone. The video was allegedly erased from the phone in what her attorney, Joshua Insley, described in a telephone interview as a "cover-up."

The police department said in a statement that the language the officer used was "both offensive and unacceptable."

"The video does not capture enough information to draw definitive conclusions about what transpired before, during, and after the arrest," the department said. "What is clear is that the language used is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."

Meanwhile, the handcuffed man was Cordell Bruce, who faces assault charges on allegations of striking an officer outside a nightclub - charges Bruce denies. The video does not capture him being beaten by police.

The lawsuit comes as the Baltimore Police Department has been undertaking broad reforms due to a pattern of forceful of arrests and complaints. This year, there have been 66 complaints over forceful arrests, compared to 122 in all of 2012. The department has also received 55 notices from lawyers planning to sue police. Those have dropped a third from the number in 2012, the Sun reported.

But the found that some Baltimore officers were involved in multiple lawsuits and there were gaps in monitoring misconduct at the department.

"The police department has asked the U.S. Justice Department to review how the city paid $5.7 million in court judgment and settlements in 102 civil suits alleging police brutality since 2011," the newspaper reported.

[embedded content]

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New Comet: P/2014 X1 (ELENIN)

CBET nr. 4034, issued on 2014, December 14, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~18) by Leonid Elenin on three CCD images taken on 2014, December 12 with a 0.4-m f/3 astrograph at the ISON-NM Observatory near Mayhill, NM, USA. The new comet has been designated P/2014 X1 (ELENIN).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 120-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, December 12.4 from H06 (iTelescope network - Mayhill) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + f/4.5 focal reducer, under bad seeing conditions, shows that this object is slightly diffuse with FWHM about 20% - 30% wider than that of nearby field stars of similar brightness.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)

© Remanzacco Observatory

M.P.E.C. 2014-X66 (including pre-discovery Pan-STARRS1 and Mount Lemmon observations, found by G. V. Williams in the MPC archive from September and October) assigns the following elliptical orbital elements to comet P/2014 X1: T 2015 Jan. 7.74; e= 0.71; Peri. = 34.36; q = 1.81; Incl.= 25.97

Congrats to Leonid for the discovery of his third comet!

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Study: Over 22 different diseases linked to GMO's

Yet More Evidence GMOs Should be Banned

A new study released in September of this year gives even more evidence that GMOs should have been banned before they were ever allowed on the market. Read on to find out how " pinpoints a significant correlation between GMOs and 22 diseases.

Why does the biotech industry keep hiding the toxicity of their products? Well, there are numerous reasons - the corruption of the American and international governments, the fact that the USDA's main man appointed by Obama was a former Monsanto executive, and the tremendously deep pockets of mega-corporations to launch propaganda campaigns - are just a few.

The aforementioned title was published in The Journal of Organic Systems. It is full of very detailed evidence of the link between genetically modified ingredients and diseases such as liver failure, urinary and bladder cancers, hypertension, thyroid disease, stroke, obesity, and more. It is replete with telling charts and graphs that describe visually the mayhem that GMOs have unleashed on society.

Much of the study focuses on the introduction of glyphosate and its subsequent ramifications on human health. The herbicide was introduced in 1974, but the research conducted within this study relied on data since the 1990s, since that is all that was available. Since the early 90s, glyphosate use has grown astronomically.

As the study details:

". . .glyphosate disrupts the ability of animals, including humans, to detoxify xenobiotics. This means that exposures to the numerous chemicals in food and the environment, such as endocrine disrupting chemicals and carcinogens, could be causing levels of damage that would not occur if the body were able to detoxify them."

Though the authors admit that correlation is not proof of causation, they state that:

". . .we have data for 22 diseases, all with a high degree of correlation and very high significance. It seems highly unlikely that all of these can be random coincidence."

They also bring attention to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine's position paper on genetically modified (GM) foods:

"[S]everal animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system."

So what did the authors of this study conclude?

There is an obvious and significant correlation between the increased use of glyphosate and genetically engineered crops grown specifically to withstand its use, and a growing multitude of diseases and their frequency. Many of the graphs show a marked increase right around the 1990s when the makers of glyphosate enjoyed a boost in their profits and an enormous swell of herbicide use from products like RoundUp and others containing the same chemicals.

There is no mistaking the data - the large increase in glyphosate use in the US is mostly due to the increase in glyphosate-resistant GE crops - and this has led to more disease.

The researchers state:

"The probabilities in the graphs and tables show that it is highly unlikely that the correlations are a coincidence. The strength of the correlations shows that there is a very strong probability that they are linked somehow. The number of graphs with similar data trends also indicates a strong probability that there is a link. Although correlation does not necessarily mean causation, when correlation coefficients of over 0.95 (with p-value significance levels less than 0.00001) are calculated for a list of diseases that can be directly linked to glyphosate, via its known biological effects, it would be imprudent not to consider causation as a plausible explanation."

Sure there are many reasons for chronic disease - diet, lack of exercise, exposure to other environmental toxins, and even genetic predisposition among them, but when your body can't rid itself of a known carcinogen because it is added straight to the food supply in copious amounts - of course you are going to get sick. It doesn't take 22 charts to figure that out. After all, glyphosate is appearing in people's urine, blood, and breast milk.

Since glyphosate is also an endocrine disruptor, this would imply that the current permitted residue levels in food could be causing multiple health problems that have been documented in the scientific literature.

The endocrine system is essential to human health. Since it is being attacked by biotech chemicals on a daily basis, the glands in our bodies like the pituitary, thymus, and pineal can't secrete hormones that keep us fit, healthy, and disease-free.

All of these functions are carried out by the endocrine system:

• Growth and development

• Homeostasis (the internal balance of body systems)

• Metabolism (body energy levels)

• Reproduction

• Response to stimuli (stress and/or injury)

Of course, the body will start to respond with disease-like symptoms when the metabolism, reproductive system, and nervous system are constantly trying to right themselves due to glyphosate exposure.

We are the guinea pigs of biotech - a grand science experiment gone wrong (or depending on who you talk to and the motives suspected behind biotech technologies).

The researchers urge independent scientific research. They expound:

"The data presented in this paper highlight the need for independent scientific research to be conducted, especially in the areas of the endocrine disruption, cancer precursor, oxidative stress, gut microbiome and the Cytochrome P450 pathways. It is our hope that, in addition to more basic research in the form of toxicology and carcinogenic studies, epidemiology studies will be undertaken by experts in each of these disease categories."

In my estimation, there is already ample evidence, even with the biotech white-wash and out-right manipulation of universities, non-profits, and scientific journals, that GMOs are dangerous.

So, until we are able to ban all GMO crops completely, add these 10 GMO foods to your GMO foods list so you can more easily avoid them. You can also avoid the eight main GM crops:

• Corn


• Soybeans


• Canola


• Cottonseed


• Sugar Beets


• Most Hawaiian Papaya


• Some Zucchini and Yellow Squash


• Sugar Derived from GMO Sugar Beets


• Dairy is additionally likely to be GMO unless it is labeled No rBGH, rBST, or artificial hormones.

Below are some of the key charts from the study. You can also read the full study on the correlation between GMO and 22 different diseases for more details.

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Spy equipment found near parliament in Oslo, Norway

© Vidar Ruud/NTB scanpix

Leader of the Christian Democrats, Knut Arild Hareide, talks on his mobile on his way to Norway's parliament last month.

Spy equipment that can be used to eavesdrop on the mobile phones of politicians and ordinary Norwegians has been discovered in several places in the Oslo area, including close to the country's parliament, newspaper has revealed.

The equipment, hidden in fake mobile base stations, can be used to monitor all mobile activity in the vicinity. The paper conducted tests close important buildings in central Oslo and discovered a number of the devices, including close to the prime minister's residence on Parkveien and close to the government offices.

The purpose of the equipment appears to have been to find out who was entering and passing parliament, the government offices and other buildings in the area. It could also be used to listen to phone calls and monitor data traffic of selected people in the area, the paper says.

It is not known who placed the equipment, according to the paper, but no Norwegian agency has admitted to being responsible. Only the police, security police and the National Security Agency (NSM) are entitled to use eavesdropping equipment under Norwegian law.

The security police (PST) said that "very many" organisations could be responsible for the fake base stations:

"It could be private actors or state actors," said the PST's Arne Christian Haugstøyl.

"I can't on the basis of these discoveries say that it is a foreign intelligence agency, but I can say that we know that foreign intelligence agencies have this kind of capacity. And in our preventive work we advise those looking after Norwegian interests not to talk about sensitive issues on mobile phones," he said.

The National Security Agency was told of 's discovery on Thursday, and started its own investigation around central Oslo on Friday.

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