Topic: Drone - on June 6, 2012 at 10:20:00 PM CEST
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Drones
The Obama administration has made drone warfare a centerpiece of its counterterrorism strategies, so here's a rundown of the essentials.
Everyone is talking about drones. Also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, remote-piloted aircrafts have become a controversial centerpiece of the Obama administration's counter-terrorism strategy. Domestically, their surveillance power is being hyped for everything from fighting crime to monitoring hurricanes or spawning salmon. Meanwhile, concerns are cropping up about privacy, ethics and safety. We've rounded up some of the best coverage of drones to get you oriented. Did we miss anything? Let us know.
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Topic: weiss nicht - on June 5, 2012 at 8:16:00 AM CEST
Fettleibige Leiche löste Brand in Krematorium aus
Nach dem Brand im Krematorium beim Grazer Zentralfriedhof Mitte April ist nun die eher ungewöhnliche Brandursache aufgedeckt worden: Die Verbrennung einer stark übergewichtigen Leiche führte zu einer Überhitzung in der Filteranlage.
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Topic: POLICE REPORT - on June 3, 2012 at 9:17:00 AM CEST
Man fined for thinking dynamite was sausage
A Swedish man charged for possessing several sticks of dynamite claimed in court he was innocent as he thought the explosives were sausages.
The 50-year-old man was on trial on Malmö on charges of possessing illegal explosives, the Metro newspaper reported.
The charges were filed after police came across four kilogrammes of dynamite hidden in a plastic bag in the man's flat.
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Topic: SECURITY - on May 29, 2012 at 8:45:00 AM CEST
Selling Software That Kills
The government of Syria uses made-in-California technology from BlueCoat Systems to censor the Internet and spy on its pro-democracy activists (who are regularly arrested and tortured, not to mention slaughtered wholesale.) Amesys of France and FinFisher of the UK aided brutal dictators in Egypt and Libya. Sweden’s Teliasonera allegedly took up the same cudgel in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. McAfee and Nokia Siemens have done the same in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Meanwhile, back in the USSA, Bain Capital recently bought a Chinese video-surveillance company reportedly “used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents,” and Cisco “has marketed its routers to China specifically as a tool of repression.” You can’t help but be impressed by how globalized the oppression-technology industry has become.
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Topic: weiss nicht - on May 29, 2012 at 8:43:00 AM CEST
Analysis: JPMorgan dips into cookie jar to offset "London Whale" losses
JPMorgan Chase & Co has sold an estimated $25 billion of profitable securities in an effort to prop up earnings after suffering trading losses tied to the bank's now-infamous "London Whale," compounding the cost of those trades.
CEO Jamie Dimon earlier this month said the bank sold corporate bonds and other securities, pocketing $1 billion in gains that will help offset more than $2 billion in losses. As a result, the bank will not have to report as big an earnings hit for the second quarter.
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Topic: food - on May 26, 2012 at 11:12:00 AM CEST
Guerrilla Labeling Of GMO Foods
On a recent sunny morning at the Big Y grocery here, Cynthia LaPier parked her cart in the cereal aisle. With a glance over her shoulder and a quick check of the ingredients, she plastered several boxes with hand-designed stickers from a roll in her purse. “Warning,” they read. “May Contain GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms).”
For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Regulators and many scientists say these pose no danger. But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.
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Topic: DRUGS - on May 26, 2012 at 11:10:00 AM CEST
How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death
Pam Sakuda was 55 when she found out she was dying. Shortly after having a tumor removed from her colon, she heard the doctor’s dreaded words: Stage 4; metastatic. Sakuda was given 6 to 14 months to live. Determined to slow her disease’s insidious course, she ran several miles every day, even during her grueling treatment regimens. By nature upbeat, articulate and dignified, Sakuda — who died in November 2006, outlasting everyone’s expectations by living for four years — was alarmed when anxiety and depression came to claim her after she passed the 14-month mark, her days darkening as she grew closer to her biological demise. Norbert Litzinger, Sakuda’s husband, explained it this way: “When you pass your own death sentence by, you start to wonder: When? When? It got to the point where we couldn’t make even the most mundane plans, because we didn’t know if Pam would still be alive at that time — a concert, dinner with friends; would she still be here for that?” When came to claim the couple’s life completely, their anxiety building as they waited for the final day.
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Topic: DRUGS - on May 25, 2012 at 10:20:00 AM CEST
"Highlung" durch Drogen? - scobel
Über Chancen und Risiken Über Jahrzehnte war die Forschung mit halluzinogenen Drogen ein Tabu. Inzwischen gibt es weltweit einige wenige Forscher, die erneut die Spur der Halluzinogene aufgenommen haben und neue Erkenntnisse gewonnen haben. Gert Scobel diskutiert mit seinen Gästen über die Chancen und Risiken dieses Forschungszweigs.
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Topic: ART - on May 25, 2012 at 10:17:00 AM CEST
Quand Banksy met son site à jour !
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Topic: food - on May 22, 2012 at 1:28:00 PM CEST
French ban of Monsanto GM maize rejected by EU
The EU's food safety body ruled there is 'no specific scientific evidence' that the insect-resistant strain is harmful to health or the environment
France's attempt to ban the planting of a Monsanto strain of genetically modified maize was rejected by the EU's food safety body on Monday.
In response to scientific evidence submitted by France backing its bid to ban the GM maize, the European Food Safety Authority ruled that "there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment" to support a ban.
In 2008, France banned the the strain MON 810 following public protests against the GM maize, but this was overturned by a French court in 2011. However, in March the French government reinstated the ban, with the then agricultural minister Bruno Le Maire saying the move was "to protect the environment".
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Topic: POLITIK - on May 22, 2012 at 12:26:00 PM CEST
Gingrich's private ventures are going bankrupt
When he entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in May 2011, Newt Gingrich was the prosperous head of a small empire commonly known as Newt Inc, which included both for-profit consultancies and nonprofit foundations. Altogether, these entwined ventures pulled in more than $110 million over the past decade. Now the vestiges of this empire are mired in debt, as is Gingrich's campaign fund. A bankruptcy proceeding under way in Atlanta will determine whether the one company still owned by Callista Gingrich, Gingrich Productions, will lose an expected payout that now constitutes the bulk of the Gingriches' net worth.
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Topic: EU - on May 22, 2012 at 10:23:00 AM CEST
Greeks embrace some new myths about life with the euro
In a land of ancient myths, modern Greeks have created some of their own about their near-bankrupt country's future as an integral part of a Europe that will never kick them out.
Solemn warnings from abroad that Athens cannot stay in the euro while rejecting the terms attached to the billions offered to pull Greece out of its financial hole are widely disbelieved in a land that considers itself the envy of foreigners.
However bad their prospects, many Greeks seem to think that since money to bail them out was found in the past, it will be found again, whatever politicians say.
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