News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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Black, that most enigmatic of colours, has become even darker and more mysterious. A British company has produced a "strange, alien" material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record. To stare at the "super black" coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss. If it was used to make one of Chanel's little black dresses, the wearer's head and limbs might appear to float incorporeally around a dress-shaped hole. Actual applications are more serious, enabling astronomical cameras, telescopes and infrared scanning systems to function more effectively. Then there are the military uses that the material's maker, Surrey NanoSystems, is not allowed to discuss. The nanotube material, named Vantablack, has been grown on sheets of aluminium foil by the Newhaven-based company. While the sheets may be crumpled into miniature hills and valleys, this landscape disappears on areas covered by it. Vantablack ... works by packing together a field of nanotubes, like incredibly thin drinking straws. These are so tiny that light particles cannot get into them, although they can pass into the gaps between. Once there, however, all but a tiny remnant of the light bounces around until it is absorbed.
Back in December, 60 Minutes broadcast a now-notorious segment of pure access journalism in which they gullibly disseminated one false NSA claim after the next. The program claimed that Snowden “is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked”. Ever since then, that Snowden “stole” 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that “among the roughly 1.7 million documents he walked away with — the vast majority of which have not been made public — are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports”. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the unchallenged assertion that “Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.” In fact, that number is and always has been a pure fabrication, as even Keith Alexander admits. The claimed number has changed more times than one can count: always magically morphing into randomly chosen higher and scarier numbers. The reality, in the words of the General, is that the US Government ”really [doesn't know] what he actually took with him” and they ”don’t have an accurate way of counting”. All they know is how many documents he accessed in his entire career at NSA, which is a radically different question from how many documents he took. But that hasn’t stopped American media outlets from repeatedly affirming the inflammatory evidence-free claim that Snowden took 1.7 million documents.
Note: For more on the realities of intelligence agency operations, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Happiness -- you know it when you see it, but it's hard to define. We also know that we don't always have control over our happiness. Research suggests that genetics may play a big role in our normal level of subjective well-being, so some of us may start out at a disadvantage. On top of that, between unexpected tragedies and daily habitual stress, environmental factors can bring down mood and dry up our thirst for living. Being able to manage the emotional ups and downs is important for both body and mind, said Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard School of Public Health. Many scientific studies ... have found a connection between psychological and physical well-being. A 2012 review of more than 200 studies found a connection between positive psychological attributes, such as happiness, optimism and life satisfaction, and a lowered risk of cardiovascular disease. Lower blood pressure, normal body weight and healthier blood fat profiles were also associated with a better sense of well-being in this study. Some researchers speculate that positive mental states ... have a direct effect on the body, perhaps by reducing damaging physical processes.
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Unemployed, in debt and facing another year living on the streets in Hungary, László Andraschek spent his last remaining coins on a lottery ticket. Now the formerly homeless man has a choice of accommodation around the world after becoming one of Hungary's biggest lottery winners, with a prize of about Ł1.7m. Andraschek, whose 630m Hungarian forint win last September went unnoticed until he made a significant donation to a hostel for the homeless this month, said buying the ticket was a chance decision at a railway station on his way to Budapest for a workshop for recovering alcoholics. [He] now plans to use his winnings to establish a foundation for addicts and women abused by their husbands. He and his wife, Anikó, said they will invest their money cautiously and avoid the ruinous spending splurges of many a lottery winner. "I have become rich but I have not become a different person. I could buy a large-screen TV because I can afford it, but I won't buy three because I can afford it." Having struggled with alcoholism, Andraschek finally quit five years ago and says he "now has no need to return". The news of Andraschek's dramatic upturn in fortunes came as human rights activists organised a wave of protests worldwide against a new Hungarian law that bans sleeping rough, in a country that has 30,000 homeless people.
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[U.S. Senator] Elizabeth Warren is emerging as a kind of spokeswoman for the new economic populism that many Democratic activists want the party to embrace heading into 2014 and 2016. [A] speech that Warren [delivered] on the floor of the Senate suggests [that] the push to expand Social Security could become a key issue in the argument over the Democratic Party of the future. She strongly endorsed the push to boost Social Security benefits — in keeping with Senator Tom Harkin’s proposal to do the same: “Social Security isn’t the answer to all of our retirement problems. We need to find ways to tackle the financial squeeze that is crushing our families. We need to help families start saving again. We need to make sure that more workers have access to better pensions. The absolute last thing we should be doing is talking about cutting back on Social Security. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 – at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors — is allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch. Right now, more people than ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire — and the numbers continue to get worse. That is why we should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits — not cutting them. Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders from Vermont, and others have been pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly effective, it is incredibly popular, and the calls for strengthening it are growing louder every day.”
Note: For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The question in the background of Noam Scheiber's exploration of whether Elizabeth Warren could challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016 is whether, come 2015, Democrats will care very much about cracking down harder on Wall Street. An issue-based challenger needs two things to pose a serious threat to a front-runner. One is an issue that differentiates them from the front-runner. The other is for that issue to be foremost in the minds of voters. Scheiber points out that Warren's background isn't just Wall Street reform. It's protecting the middle class. The Two-Income Trap was a seminal book in defining the mounting pressures on working Americans. And Warren has long tried to protect that dimension of her work from being eclipsed by her unexpected turn as a finreg rockstar. But concern for the middle class doesn't, by and large, differentiate her from Clinton. Clinton, like Warren, believes in higher taxes on the rich and universal health care and higher-education costs and universal pre-k and so on. The danger for Clinton is if Warren is able to persuade Democrats that cracking down on Wall Street reform is the key to helping the middle class or -- perhaps more plausibly -- opposing inequality. On a policy level, that's a harder case to make. But on an emotional, who's-on-your-side level, it might work.
Note: For an excellent video showing the courage and forthrightness of Elizabeth Warren, click here. For more on government corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Washington state is the next battleground in an ongoing effort by food activists to get products containing genetically engineered ingredients labeled. Initiative 522 goes before voters Nov. 5. It would require that foods containing ingredients from genetically engineered plants be labeled as such. "We believe that we have a right to know what's in our food," said Elizabeth Larter, the Seattle-based communications director for the Yes on 522 campaign. "This campaign is not about whether GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are good or bad; this is really just providing more information for consumers." The labeling effort is being funded by grass-roots donations and a large contribution from Dr. Bronner's Magic All-One, a California soap company founded in the 1960s. "This is about chemical companies buying up the seed companies," said David Bronner, president of the company. Opponents to labeling "understand that if they lose in Washington state, game over," he said of why the company is supporting the initiative and encouraging others to do so. "In 2013 alone there have been 26 states that have introduced labeling legislation," says Katey Parker with the Just Label It coalition, a pro-labeling group based in Washington, D.C. Washington's Yes on 522 campaign so far has raised $4.8 million. Squaring off on the other side is a coalition of food manufacturers and seed producers that thus far has raised a war chest of $17.2 million. That's a state record. The top five contributors were the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences and Bayer CropScience.
Note: For lots more on the serious risks posed by genetically-modified food, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Ready for some genetically altered algae in your Dove soap or Ben & Jerry's ice cream? South San Francisco biofuel company Solazyme has struck a deal with British conglomerate Unilever to manufacture 3 million gallons of algae-based oil for the multinational whose brands include Dove and Ben & Jerry's. It's a big one for Solazyme, which started out 10 years ago producing jet and automobile fuel from algae and has since expanded into food and cosmetics with its "microalgae" additives. In addition to Dove and Ben & Jerry's, Unilever brands include Pond's, Caress and Noxzema in the personal care category, and Hellmann's, Lipton and Breyers in the food department. The "tailored oils," targeted initially at Unilever's beauty products, are the first to be produced on a commercial scale at Solazyme's sugarcane processing facility in Brazil. The company's own line of algae-infused cosmetics, including an antiaging ingredient called alguronic acid, have been sold in Sephora stores since 2011 under the Algenist label.
Even as racial barriers have tumbled and the nation has grown wealthier and better educated, the economic disparities separating blacks and whites remain as wide as they were when marchers assembled on the Mall in 1963. When it comes to household income and wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On other measures, the gaps are roughly the same as they were four decades ago. The poverty rate for blacks, for instance, continues to be about three times that of whites. The march took place at a time when the benefits of American economic growth were widely shared. Between 1947 and 1979, the wages of workers at all salary levels grew by roughly the same percentage. But between 1979 and 2007, incomes shifted drastically, with the top 5 percent of earners seeing annual salary increases more than three times the size of those in the middle, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization. Overall, 63 percent of total income growth went to the top 10 percent of households between 1979 and 2007.
Note: For more on income and wealth inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Tara Bennett-Goleman and her husband Daniel Goleman form a kind of intellectual dream team—one almost exclusively preoccupied with emotions. In best-selling books like Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman has laid out the cognitive science and theories behind our emotions and social interactions. In her work as a psychotherapist and in her best-selling book Emotional Alchemy, Bennett-Goleman has applied those theories to overcoming self-defeating habits of mind and improving our relationships. Now Bennett-Goleman has a new book called Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits. In it, she builds on the theory described in Emotional Alchemy to apply mindfulness to overcoming the ingrained emotional habits that can hurt our relationships. I spoke with Bennett-Goleman and Goleman recently. Jill Suttie: What is mind whispering exactly? Tara Bennett-Goleman: Mind whispering is an integration of Eastern and Western psychologies, the neuroscience of habit change, and principles from horse whispering, creating a new map of the emotional mind. It draws on mindfulness, cognitive therapy, and Buddhist psychology to re-pattern self-defeating habits. Daniel Goleman: Mind whispering helps us to identify our modes of being, particularly the ones that are built around self-defeating habits. Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in those. The modes are on a spectrum—there’s a self-defeating range, but then there’s a positive, healthy range. The alternative to being either anxious or avoidant is to be secure, and the research shows that if we’re in the secure base we’re more open, empathic, generous, and compassionate. The secure mode helps us connect with others.
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If we look back over the past quarter century since the end of the Cold War in 1989, we can see how quickly confidence about the future can bloom and wither. A short-lived sense of a peace died in the Gulf, the western Balkans and Rwanda. Waves of prosperity came and went with the dotcom boom and bust, and the bursting of our western credit-based bubble of prosperity in 2008. The five big challenges we face as a global community [are] wealth and poverty, war and peace, rights and respect, and the health of people and the planet. The indices of inequality keep worsening and while there are many excellent initiatives on curbing waste, meaningful reductions in carbon output still seem out of political reach. But a look at the other three big issues shows that it need not be thus. This is not a peaceful world and yet it is more peaceful today than at any time since before the first world war and, some argue, ever. Military spending remains high and armed conflict remains a major cause of death, yet by comparison with earlier times, there are markedly fewer wars and they are less lethal. There has been an avalanche of peace agreements in the two decades since the end of the Cold War and a major sustained, if quiet, effort not only to make peace, but then to lay the foundations for long term peace in conflict-affected countries. It would be wrong to look at the issues of war and peace and declare ‘job done’. If the United Nations and the peace-funding governments can stay focused, there is every reason to expect a reasonably successful record of building peace to continue.
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A number of major Bay Area companies were up for what were described as the "Oscars of the investment-relations industry." Sponsored by the trade publication IR Magazine, the event featured a notable award for "best crisis management," and San Ramon's Chevron Corp. was nominated for its handling of the Aug. 6 explosions and fire at the company's refinery in Richmond. Chevron's performance, one might recall, didn't play so well locally, having so far earned $1 million in fines and citations alleging "willful serious" health and safety violations, and the company's own admission last month "that we failed to live up to our own expectations in this incident." Perhaps it was just as well that Chevron, which was not at the event, didn't make it to the winner's circle ... at the palatial Cipriani Club 55 in New York. Few of the thousands of Richmond and other East Bay residents choking their way through black smoke to local hospitals last August would likely have appreciated it. The winner, announced with the opening of an envelope, might have seemed even less likely to the general public: JPMorgan Chase for its management of the $6.2 billion trading loss involving what was known as the "London whale" last year.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Moments before Mr. Obama left for Jordan, [Israeli] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and apologized for deadly errors in Israel’s 2010 raid on a Turkish ship that was trying to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. After years of angrily demanding an apology, Mr. Erdogan accepted Mr. Netanyahu’s gesture, and both sides agreed to dispatch envoys to each other’s nations, having recalled them in 2011. Israel and Turkey have a host of shared economic and security interests. Turkey also could play a strategic role in Washington and Jerusalem’s efforts to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, as well as in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was the Palestinian issue that opened the rift between the two, when Israeli commandos raided the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, as it was trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza to deliver supplies. Nine people were killed in clashes on board, prompting an international outcry, several investigations and a rebuke by the United Nations. Mr. Erdogan’s office, in turn, said he had accepted the apology “on behalf of the Turkish people,” and that in his conversation with Mr. Netanyahu he had emphasized their nations’ shared history and prior eras of friendship and cooperation.
The UK government [today] blocked the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon to the United States to face trial for what the U.S. government says is the biggest military computer hacking of all time. Home Secretary Theresa May said McKinnon was accused of serious crimes -- but that "there is also no doubt that he is seriously ill." The extradition order against McKinnon should be withdrawn because his Asperger syndrome and depressive illness meant "there is such a high risk of him ending his own life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with his human rights," she said. McKinnon has admitted to breaking into computers at NASA and the Pentagon but says he did so to find out if the U.S. government was covering up the existence of UFOs. The 46-year-old has fought a decade-long battle against extradition.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on UFOs, click here.
Astronomers have discovered a new supercomet that will be fifteen times brighter than the moon when it crosses the night sky next year. Calculations show that the celestial visitor could be dazzlingly bright in November 2013 and be easily visible in broad daylight as it rounds the Sun. Comet ISON is so named because it was first spotted on photos taken by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok from Russia using the International Scientific Optical Network telescope. It is currently very faint because it is out in the depths of space near Jupiter's orbit. But it will steadily brighten over the coming months until it passes less than two million km from the Sun on November 28. That makes it a type of comet called a sungrazer, and there is a risk that the comet - essentially a giant ball of rock and ice, will break up when it makes that close approach. Comet ISON, which has the official label C/2012 S1, appears to be on a nearly parabolic orbit which leads scientists to believe that it is making its first trip through the Solar System. This means it may have been dislodged from a vast reservoir of icy debris surrounding the Sun far beyond the planets, called the Oort Cloud. It is a giant ball of rock and ice that is likely to be packed with volatiles including water ice that will erupt as brilliant jets of gas and dust when it is at its best.
In 2006, after a less than illustrious career in the restaurant business, 31-year-old Ben Zempel got a job with wholesaler Costco. That wouldn’t be remarkable in itself, but Zempel has Down syndrome. Since he got the job, he’s happier than ever, according to his mom, Jane. It’s not just employees with a disability—all 163,000 people on Costco’s payroll around the world can count on extraordinary amounts of attention. They’re better paid than competitors’ staff, management solicits their input on store strategy, and full- and part-time workers alike enjoy complete health insurance coverage. It all adds up to low turnover: Just 6 percent of employees decide to leave the company after more than a year. In fact, after 20 Costco staff from Melville, New York, won a $200 million lottery prize last year, only one of them quit—not because of the unexpected fortune but because at 73, he figured it was time to retire. More and more businesses are beginning to realize, as Costco has, that it pays to invest in people. Strikingly, it’s companies that put staff at the top of the list that seem to be doing best. Costco ended 2010 and 2011—tough years for most companies—with hefty profits.
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Seventeen years ago today, in the Boston Globe Magazine, a dying man issued a plea for greater compassion in medicine. He worried that medical professionals faced increasing work demands that prioritized efficiency over empathy. Kenneth Schwartz died of lung cancer two months later, but not before founding an organization that would bring increased attention to the importance of human interactions in medicine. Research suggests that without intervention, physicians may risk becoming less empathetic over time. A recent survey of 18 studies found that medical students and residents tended to report declining feelings of empathy over the course of their training. Another study found that self-perceived empathy dropped sharply after the third year of medical school, when students start working with patients in the hospital. The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare’s flagship program, which started at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1997, encourages doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to share the complex and often distressing feelings that arise from patient care. In recent years, the Schwartz Center Rounds have expanded rapidly, spreading to more than 260 institutions in the country and 14 hospitals in the United Kingdom. The program’s growth reflects an increasing recognition that traditional ideals of the stoic, superhuman medical professional may not be healthy — for either the patient or the caregiver. Schwartz Center Rounds highlight feelings — guilt, fear, anger, or sadness — that might lead caregivers to withdraw emotionally from their work.
Brian Munyai has spent nearly all of his 22 years living in a small metal shack that has never had electricity or running water. Conditions like this are typical for the nearly 40,000 people who live in the slums of Kliptown, a district in the largely black township of Soweto, South Africa. In high school, he heard about the Kliptown Youth Program. The after-school program, commonly known as KYP, provided him with intensive tutoring that helped him pass his senior exams and find funding to attend the University of Johannesburg. Stories like this motivate Thulani Madondo, the director and co-founder of KYP. A lifelong Kliptown resident, he has a goal of helping people like Munyai change their lives and their community through education. Right now, Madondo's group provides academic support, meals and after-school activities to 400 children. Every Monday through Thursday at 4 p.m. sharp, students hit the books in the tutoring program. Primary school students are tutored by the program's staff twice a week; on alternate days, professional teachers work with the high school students to prepare them for the matriculation exams required at the end of 12th grade. Books can be borrowed from the program's library -- the only one in the community -- and there are nearly 300 Internet-accessible laptops that were donated through the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child. So far, 21 members, including Munyai, have gone on to a university. [KYP provides] some financial assistance and helps members find ways to finance the rest.
Note: Check out the Kliptown Youth Program website at www.kliptownyouthprogram.org.za and see how to help. For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Teleportation is real. Using powerful lasers and optics to manipulate photons, or units of light, researchers in China set a record for teleporting a photon more than 10 miles (16 km), TIME reported in 2010. Now a different team of physicists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai says it has shattered that record, claiming to have sent a photon more than 60 miles (97 km). Quantum teleportation, which has been around since 1997, is a little different than what you see in sci-fi movies. Teleportation is the ability [to] move one object from one place to another without traversing the space in between. The actual object is not moving from point A to point B. Rather, the distant photon mirrors the information contained by the original photon, essentially becoming an identical twin. The team’s greatest contribution is not necessarily the distance it made the data travel but the method it used to harness the 1.3-watt laser beam that carries it. The longer a beam of light travels, the more it spreads out, causing the photon to lose information and trail off course. To keep the beam on target, the researchers created a technique that focuses and steers the laser. Though beaming up humans and animals ŕ la Star Trek is not on the agenda anytime soon, as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will likely be applied to military communication. Theoretically, this method cannot be cracked or intercepted.
Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime, and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify that it will happen this year, according to a new poll. The end of the Mayan calendar — which spans about 5,125 years — on Dec. 21 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world. "Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, 1 in 7 thinks the end of the world is coming," said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Public Affairs, which conducted the poll for Reuters. Some Mayan scholars have disputed the interpretation. Responses to the international poll of 16,262 people in more than 20 countries varied widely, with only 6 percent of French residents believing in an impending Armageddon in their lifetime, compared with 22 percent in Turkey and the United States and slightly less in South Africa and Argentina. About 1 in 10 people globally also said they were experiencing fear or anxiety about the impending end of the world in 2012. The greatest numbers were in Russia and Poland, the fewest in Great Britain. Gottfried also said that people with lower education or household income levels, as well as those under 35 years old, were more likely to believe in an apocalypse during their lifetime or in 2012, or have anxiety over the prospect.
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