The Raw Story

Monday, 2 March 2015

Oil storage tank leak near Yakima River in Washington State poses threat to animals and crops

© Washington Department of Ecology

Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused a storage tank to leak in Yakima River on Sunday.

As much as 1,500 gallons of used motor oil leaked from an above-ground storage tank in Washington state into a creek that flows into the Yakima River, vital to the apple-growing state's agricultural hub, officials said on Monday.

The cause of the spill on Sunday from the tank at a former feed lot near Sunnyside, about 170 miles southeast of Seattle, was under investigation.

Department of Ecology spokeswoman Joye Redfield-Wilder said the oil posed a threat to otters, waterfowl and fish as well as orchards and other crops in the area.

"In a couple of weeks, the canals will all be full and (farmers) will be watering their crops and their orchards, so we want to get this cleaned up," Redfield-Wilder said.

The Washington state Department of Ecology said its workers installed absorbent pads and protective booms at several sites, including about 900 feet upstream of the mouth of Sulphur Creek and at a fish hatchery on the Yakima River after Sunday's spill.

The slick could be seen in the water as far as 15 miles southeast of Sunnyside, the state said on Monday.

NRC Environmental Services, which the state hired to handle the cleanup, was using vacuum trucks to remove oil.

The Yakima River is an important water source for farm irrigation in south central Washington state. It is also a renowned trout fishing river.

© Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures during a meeting with supporters at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, February 19, 2015.

Venezuela on Monday ordered the U.S. embassy in Caracas to reduce staff from 100 to 17 amid the worst diplomatic flare-up between the two ideological foes since socialist President Nicolas Maduro was elected in 2013.

Maduro, who like his predecessor Hugo Chavez frequently locks horns with Washington, has stepped up accusations in recent weeks that the United States is seeking to topple him.

The measures announced in response to alleged coup plotting are the most significant against Washington of Maduro's nearly two-year rule, though foes say they represent a timeworn tactic to distract Venezuelans from their economic troubles.

"They have 15 days to reduce the size of their embassy to 17 staffers," Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said after a meeting with the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Lee McClenny, Washington's most senior diplomat in Venezuela.

Maduro has said 100 staffers work at the embassy, an imposing ochre building perched on a hill overlooking Caracas. Venezuela has 17 staffers in Washington, according to Maduro, who says the embassies should be on par.

Maduro over the weekend he announced that his government had detained U.S. citizens, including a pilot, on suspicion of espionage. The pilot's identity remains unclear.

Four American missionaries held for questioning for several days have been released.

'BASELESS ACCUSATIONS'

U.S. officials said they had no information about the pilot or information on additional citizens being detained.

Washington has repeatedly denied meddling in Venezuelan affairs. "There has been a lot of anti-American rhetoric coming out of the Venezuelan government with a lot of baseless allegations," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

"The meeting gave the chargé an opportunity to express our concern about some of the announcements that had been made."

The Venezuelan leader announced the embassy reduction in a thundering speech on Saturday, when he also read out a "terrorism list" of U.S. politicians, including former U.S. President George W. Bush and New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, banned from entering Venezuela.

Venezuela is also introducing visa requirements for U.S. citizens, a development Harf said was of particular concern.

Although the United States did endorse a short-lived coup against Chavez in 2002, opposition leaders say the new accusations are a theatrical smokescreen designed to hide a recession, shortages of goods ranging from toilet paper to medicines, and the region's steepest inflation.

Despite the fiery rhetoric, and Venezuela's efforts to diversify to more ideologically aligned nations like China, there has been no talk by Caracas of halting its significant oil exports to the United States.

New cases of the inexplicable disorder, dubbed "Sleepy Hollow," have appeared in Kalachi, the village in Kazakhstan where every tenth villager, including children, has mysteriously fallen asleep in broad daylight, some unable to wake up for days on end.

manbek Kalzhanov, head of the administration of Esil district, told Interfax. "

According to Kalzhanov, the overall situation in Kalachi, a village in northern Kazakhstan, is under control. The local hospital is fully operational, along with a school, attended by about 40 students.

Meanwhile, most of the inhabitants of the village, which used to be home to over 600 residents, have agreed to move to other areas, local official Sergey Kulagin said.

he said.

The first cases of the " were reported in March 2013. Everyone in the village has a family member or a friend who has fallen asleep for no apparent reason, according to locals.

Igor Samusenko, father of a child who is suffering from the illness, earlier told RTD.

a woman told RTD. Other patients may behave

Despite numerous attempts to find the cause of the inexplicable disorder, the Sleepy Hollow riddle still remains unknown.

Groups of scientists and medics, including virologists, radiologists and toxicologists, have visited the village in an attempt to find the cause of the mystery illness, all in vain.

Last month Professor Leonid Rikhvanov, from the Department of Geo-ecology and Geo-chemistry in the city of Tomsk, said that Soviet-era uranium mines could be to blame, with radon gas from the nearby mines seeping to the surface, poisoning local residents.

Radon is a colorless, odorless gas that is created through the decay of uranium. Breathing it is believed to cause lung cancer.

Rikhvanov said. People have described further symptoms, including hallucinations, memory loss, dizziness and nausea.

Rikhvanov said experts previously failed to detect radon because conventional methods of measuring radiation fail to detect it in the air.

While radiation levels in the town and at the mine closest to it are at a normal 16 micro-roentgen per hour, the RTD team's Geiger counter showed an alarming 268 micro-roentgen per hour at an abandoned, filled-in mineshaft further from the village. However, an independent analysis of Kalachi's water, soil, and vegetation samples did not detect any abnormalities.

People suffering from the sleeping sickness have been diagnosed with a range of diseases. While children are being treated for toxic encephalopathy (a brain malfunction), adults are said to have suffered strokes. But after several days in intensive care, they are usually back to normal - until they feel abnormally sleepy again. Some doctors assert that mass psychosis is to blame.

© Washington Department of Ecology

Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused a storage tank to leak in Yakima River on Sunday.

The cause of the spill on Sunday from the tank at a former feed lot near Sunnyside, about 170 miles southeast of Seattle, was under investigation.

Department of Ecology spokeswoman Joye Redfield-Wilder said the oil posed a threat to otters, waterfowl and fish as well as orchards and other crops in the area.

"In a couple of weeks, the canals will all be full and (farmers) will be watering their crops and their orchards, so we want to get this cleaned up," Redfield-Wilder said.

The slick could be seen in the water as far as 15 miles southeast of Sunnyside, the state said on Monday.

NRC Environmental Services, which the state hired to handle the cleanup, was using vacuum trucks to remove oil.

The Yakima River is an important water source for farm irrigation in south central Washington state. It is also a renowned trout fishing river.

Pakistani authorities have conducted their first-ever mass arrest of parents for refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated against polio.

Authorities in Peshawar, in the north-west of the country, detained 471 people and charged them with "endangering public security".

The local government says they will only be freed once they have pledged in writing to vaccinate their children.

The Taliban prohibit vaccinations and have attacked health workers.

The Pakistani government has declared "war" on the disease. "We have decided to deal with the refusal cases with iron hands. Anyone who refuses will be sent to jail," said Riaz Khan Mehsud, deputy commissioner of Peshawar.

Pakistan accounts for the vast majority of polio cases globally and is one of only three countries where it remains endemic.

In 2014, polio cases in the country reached a 14 year high of 306. Nine new cases have been detected so far this year.

In June 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that all international travellers from Pakistan be administered polio drops at airports to prevent its spread.

The Taliban have claimed that the polio vaccination drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.

In November four polio vaccination workers were shot dead in the south-west city of Quetta.

Can you imagine a world where your home, your vehicles, your appliances and every single electronic device that you own is constantly connected to the Internet? This is not some grand vision that is being planned for some day in the future. This is something that is being systematically implemented right now. In 2015, we already have "smart homes", vehicles that talk to one another, refrigerators that are connected to the Internet, and televisions that spy on us. Our world is becoming increasingly interconnected, and that opens up some wonderful possibilities. But there is also a downside. What if we rapidly reach a point where one must be connected to the Internet in order to function in society? Will there come a day when we can't even do basic things such as buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without it? And what about the potential for government abuse? Could an "Internet of Things" create a dystopian nightmare where everyone and everything will be constantly monitored and tracked by the government? That is something to think about.

Today, the Internet has become such an integral part of our lives that it is hard to remember how we ever survived without it. And with each passing year, the number of devices connected to the Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate. If you have never heard of the "Internet of Things" before, here is a little bit about it from Wikipedia...

Things, in the IoT, can refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters, automobiles with built-in sensors, or field operation devices that assist fire-fighters in search and rescue. These devices collect useful data with the help of various existing technologies and then autonomously flow the data between other devices. Current market examples include smart thermostat systems and washer/dryers that utilize wifi for remote monitoring.

But there is also a dark side to the Internet of Things. Security is a huge issue, and when that security is compromised the consequences can be absolutely horrifying. Just consider the following example...

It is a strange series of events that link two Armenian software engineers; a Shenzen, China-based webcam company; two sets of new parents in the U.S.; and an unknown creep who likes to hack baby monitors to yell obscenities at children. "Wake up, you little ****," the hacker screamed at the top of his digital lungs last summer when a two-year-old in Houston wouldn't stir; she happened to be deaf. A year later, a baby monitor hacker struck again yelling obscenities at a 10-month-old in Ohio.

Both families were using an Internet-connected baby monitor made by China-based Foscam. The hacker took advantage of a weakness in the camera's software design that U.S.-based Armenian computer engineers revealed at a security conference in Amsterdam last April.

The Internet allows us to reach into the outside world from inside our homes, but it also allows the reverse to take place as well.

Do we really want to make ourselves that vulnerable?

Sadly, we live at a time when people don't really stop to consider the downside to our exploding technological capabilities.

In fact, there are many people that are extremely eager to connect themselves to the Internet of Things.

In Sweden, there are dozens of people that have willingly had microchips implanted under the skin. They call themselves "bio-hackers", and they embrace what they see as the coming merger between humanity and technology. The following is what one of the founders of a Sweden based bio-hacking community had to say during one recent interview...

"The technology is already happening," says Hannes Sjoblad, one of the founders of BioNyfiken. "We are seeing a fast-growing community of people experimenting with chip implants, which allow users to quickly and easily perform a variety of everyday tasks, such as allowing access to buildings, unlocking personal devices without PIN codes and enabling read access to various types of stored data.

"I consider the take-off of this technology as another important interface-moment in the history of human-computer interaction, similar to the launches of the first windows desktop or the first touch screen. Identification by touch is innate for humans. PIN codes and passwords are not natural. And every additional device that we have to carry around to identify ourselves, be it a key fob or a swipe card, is just another item that clutters our lives."

And of course this is happening in the United States as well...

In America, a dedicated amateur community — the "biohackers" or "grinders" — has been experimenting with implantable technology for several years. Amal Graafstra, a 38-year-old programmer and self-styled "adventure technologist", has been inserting various types of radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips into the soft flesh between his thumbs and index fingers since 2005. The chips can be read by scanners that Graafstra has installed on the doors of his house, and also on his laptop, which gives him access with a swipe of his hand without the need for keys or passwords.

But you don't have to have a microchip implant in order to be a part of the Internet of Things.

In fact, there are a whole host of "wearable technologies" that are currently being developed for our society.

For instance, have you heard about "OnStar for the Body" yet? It will enable medical personnel to constantly monitor your health wherever you are...

Smart, cheaper and point-of-care sensors, such as those being developed for the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, will further enable the 'Digital Checkup' from anywhere. The world of 'Quantified Self' and 'Quantified Health' will lead to a new generation of wearable technologies partnered with Artificial Intelligence that will help decipher and make this information actionable.

And this 'actionability' is key. We hear the term Big Data used in various contexts; when applied to health information it will likely be the smart integration of massive data sets from the 'Internet of things' with the small data about your activity, mood, and other information. When properly filtered, this data set can give insights on a macro level - population health - and micro - 'OnStar for the Body' with a personalized 'check engine light' to help identify individual problems before they further develop into expensive, difficult-to-treat or fatal conditions.

If that sounded creepy to you, this next item will probably blow you away.

According to one survey , approximately one-fourth of all professionals in the 18 to 50-year-old age bracket would like to directly connect their brains to the Internet...

According to a survey by tech giant Cisco Systems, about a fourth of professionals ages 18 to 50 would leap at the chance to get a surgical brain implant that allowed them to instantly link their thoughts to the Internet.

The study was conducted on 3,700 adults working in white-collar jobs in 15 countries.

"Assuming a company invented a brain implant that made the World Wide Web instantly accessible to their thoughts, roughly one-quarter would move forward with the operation," the study found.

In the end, they are not going to have to force most of us to get connected to the Internet of Things.

Most of us will do it eagerly.

But most people will never even stop to consider the potential for abuse.

An Internet of Things could potentially give governments all over the world the ability to continually monitor and track the activities of everyone under their power all of the time.

If you do not think that this could ever happen, perhaps you should consider the words of former CIA director David Petraeus...

"Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing"

Are you starting to get the picture?

They plan to use the Internet of Things to spy on all of us.

But we just can't help ourselves. Our society has a love affair with new technology. And some of the things that are being developed right now are beyond what most of us ever dreamed was possible.

For example, Microsoft has just released a new promotional video featuring 3D holograms, smart surfaces, next-generation wearable technologies, and "fluid mobility"...

The elaborate, highly produced video shows jaw-dropping technologies like a SCUBA mask that annotates the sea with 3D holograms, a multipart bracelet that joins together to become a communications device, and interactive, flexible displays that automatically "rehydrate" with information specific to the people using them.

This video from Microsoft was posted on YouTube, and I have shared it below...

[embedded content]

So what do you think about all of this?

Please feel free to add to the discussion by posting a comment below...

© Dmitry_Chulov/iStockphoto

Highly mobile pastoralists likely contributed to the spread of the language group that evolved into English, say researchers.

Nomadic pastoralists from the Great Steppe helped spread the large group of languages that includes English, an analysis of ancient DNA confirms.

The findings, reported today in , gives weight to one of two competing hypotheses about where this language group came from.

"These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe," write the researchers in their paper.

Although English, Spanish, Russian, Urdu and Persian may sound very different, linguistic analysis suggests they all came from a common source, says lead author archaeo-geneticist Dr Wolfgang Haak of the University of Adelaide.

One idea is that this language group, now spoken throughout Europe, South Asia and the Middle East, spread with Neolithic farmers who migrated west from places like Turkey into Europe around 8000 years ago.

Another idea is that these languages must have emerged later because they include words for transport, such as wheel, a phenomenon that didn't emerge until later. Likely sources were the highly mobile cultures in the Great Steppe north of the Black Sea. These nomadic people were cattle herders who could have easily have brought language with them.

"They domesticated the horse in the Steppes around 5000 years ago and were probably using oxen-drawn carts to get around," says Haak.

But, he says, the subject has been controversial.

"The debate has been stuck for a while and has almost becomes a religious thing where you have believers of one side or the other," says Haak.

Archaeological evidence supports the 'Great Steppe' hypothesis, but until now, there has been a lack of evidence that herders migrated in large enough numbers to influence language, he says.

Ancient European DNA

Haak and colleagues analysed nuclear DNA from 69 ancient Europeans ranging from 3000 to 8000 years old, and combined this with existing data from another 25 ancient samples.

They found that there were three distinct genetic signals. The first was from 7000 to 10,000-year-old Stone-Age hunter-gatherers.

The second was from farmers that migrated from the Near East about 7500 years ago.

The third provided evidence of a migration of nomadic pastoralists west from the Great Steppe 4500 years ago.

Haak and colleagues found that the ancient central Europeans in their analysis shared 75 per cent of their DNA with these nomadic herders, suggesting these people had a large contribution to the development of language.

"It was not just a handful of people coming west. It was much much bigger than we anticipated," says Haak.

"If you have a genetic contribution that is that strong it's very very likely that language followed the same way and that what we currently speak in Europe is the aftermath of the most recent migration."

While modern speakers of Indo-European languages carry DNA markers from all three of these sources, the eastern pastoralist signal is most prominent in those from countries like Norway, Lithuania and Estonia. In countries like Greece, Spain and France, the signal is diluted out.

Haak says in future research he would like to test whether Steppe ancestry is evident in ancient Iranian or Indian populations.

He says one challenge will be finding well-preserved ancient DNA in subtropical environments.

The Raw Story

Focused on providing independent journalism.

Kiev orders crackdown on Russian TV channels

What I did after police killed my son

Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air

Monday, 2 March 2015

Oil storage tank leak near Yakima River in Washington State poses threat to animals and crops

Cleaning house: Venezuela orders US embassy to reduce staff from 100 to 17

Sleepy Hollow redux: Ninth wave of mysterious sleeping sickness strikes Kazakhstan

Oil storage tank leak near Yakima river in Washington state poses threat to animals and crops

Pakistan arrests parents for refusing polio vaccine

The dark side of the Internet of Things

Herders spread Indo-European languages

Search

Recent Posts

Popular