Trucker Killed in Semi VS Bison Accident

A South Hutchinson (Kansas) man was killed when his semi hit a bison on a Colorado highway.

The accident happened around 3:30 Tuesday morning, a semi hauling salt was traveling westbound on Highway 36 NE of the town of Byers, which about 30 miles east of Denver.

A bison was standing in the roadway and was struck by the semi. After hitting the bison, the semi went off the right side of the road and overturned. The driver, 74-year-old Manard Bontrager of South Hutchinson was killed.

The bison was also killed in the accident.

Read full story from KAKE.

Trucker Killed in Semi VS Bison Accident

68% of Voters Want Government to Hold Polluters Accountable

In spite of massive astroturfing campaigns by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major industrial polluters, a clear majority of Americans support the regulation of greenhouse gases, according to a poll commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Remarkably, just 34 percent said they oppose the plan, while 60 percent were in favor, according to Bloomberg.

A smaller majority, 54 percent, said they felt confident in the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to effectively regulate greenhouse gases. Just 51 percent said they support the agency actually issuing the regulations, while 40 percent were opposed.

An overwhelming majority of respondents, 68 percent, said the government must "do more to hold corporations accountable for their pollution."

Read full story from Raw Story.

68% of Voters Want Government to Hold Polluters Accountable

12 U.S. Troops Killed in 2 Days in Afghanistan

19 killed since Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Five U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs and insurgent fire in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the latest casualties in a particularly bloody spell that has left 12 service members dead in two days, and 19 since Saturday.

Meanwhile, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Kabul, a gunman opened fire on a busload of Afghan Supreme Court clerks, killing three and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry reported.

Assailants on two motorcycles halted the bus Tuesday morning in the Musayi district, an area where insurgents are active, court spokesman Abdul Malik Kamawi said. One gunman then boarded the bus and opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing two people, Kamawi said. A third died later in a hospital.

Read full story from L.A. Times.

12 U.S. Troops Killed in 2 Days in Afghanistan

Greenpeace Blocks Oil Drilling in Greenland

Greenpeace forced a Scottish company to stop drilling off Greenland on Tuesday by having four activists climb onto an oil rig.

The activists, having breached a 1,650-feet (500-meter) security perimeter around the Stena Don rig off western Greenland, climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, police spokesman Morten Nielsen told The Associated Press.

The breach triggered an automatic shutdown of the rig's operations.

The activists are still on the rig and will be arrested, said Nielsen.

Read full story from Raw Story.

Greenpeace Blocks Oil Drilling in Greenland

Canadians Developing Electric Car with Hemp Body

An electric car made of hemp is being developed by a group of Canadian companies in collaboration with an Alberta Crown corporation.

The Kestrel will be prototyped and tested later in August by Calgary-based Motive Industries Inc., a vehicle development firm focused on advanced materials and technologies, the company announced.

The compact car, which will hold a driver and up to three passengers, will have a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour and a range of 40 to 160 kilometres before needing to be recharged, depending on the type of battery, the company said in an email to CBC News Monday.

Read full story from CBC News.

Canadians Developing Electric Car with Hemp Body

California Primed For The Big One

Southern California is long overdue for a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault, according to a landmark study of historic seismic activity released Friday.

The study, produced after several years of field studies in the Carrizo Plain area about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, found that earthquakes along the San Andreas fault have occurred far more often than previously believed.

For years, scientists have said major earthquakes occurred every 250 to 450 years along this part of the San Andreas. The new study found big temblors on the fault every 88 years, on average.The last massive earthquake on that part of the fault was in 1857, leading scientists to warn that another such temblor is likely in Southern California.

Read full story from the L.A. Times.

California Primed For The Big One

Bush Administration Overlooked Pfizer Pfraud; Too Big to Nail

(NaturalNews) When the world's largest pharmaceutical company was found to have engaged in a massive illegal marketing campaign, federal prosecutors decided the company was too big to punish -- so they let it set up a shell corporation to take the blame.

In 2001, the FDA approved Bextra for the relief of arthritis and menstrual cramps, but did not approve it for more severe surgical pain. Yet Pfizer aggressively promoted the drug to anesthesiologists and surgeons -- "anyone that use[d] a scalpel for a living," in the words of one internal company document. Company employees also told doctors that the FDA had approved Bextra as safe in doses as high as 40 milligrams, whereas the agency had actually only approved doses up to 20 milligrams.

Yet when the government threatened Pfizer with prosecution for off-label marketing fraud, it realized that a conviction would, under federal law, require that Pfizer be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid -- and that this would probably put the company out of business.

"If we prosecute Pfizer, they get excluded," said federal prosecutor Mike Loucks. "A lot of the people who work for the company who haven't engaged in criminal activity would get hurt."

Prosecutors were also concerned that forcing the company out of business might take important drugs off the market.

"We have to ask whether by excluding the company, are we harming our patients," said Lewis Morris of the Department of Health and Human Services.

So Pfizer and the government agreed that a subsidiary of the company would plead guilty instead. That subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., was formed in 2007 to plead guilty to another charge and has never conducted any business.

"It is true that if a company is created to take a criminal plea, but it's just a shell, the impact of an exclusion is minimal or nonexistent," Morris said.

Read full story from Natural News.

Bush Administration Overlooked Pfizer Pfraud; Too Big to Nail

Artist Uses Genetic Engineering to Create Actual Soundgarden

Acoustic Botany uses genetically modified plants to produce a "fantastical acoustic garden," where sounds literally grow on trees. "Desired traits such as volume, timbre and harmony are acquired through selective breeding techniques," the artist explains.

There are thus "singing flowers," "modified agrobacteria" that ingeniously take "sugars and nutrients from the host plant to encourage the growth of parasitic galls and fill them with gas to produce sound," and "string-nut bugs" that have been "engineered to chew in rhythm" inside hollow gourds.

Read full story from BLDGBLOG.

Artist Uses Genetic Engineering to Create Actual Soundgarden

Swimming Pool Feeds Family of Four

A family living in Mesa, Arizona, has decided to convert an old unused backyard swimming pool into a very productive DIY urban greenhouse, which they named Garden Pool. Within a small, mostly enclosed space, they grow all kinds of vegetables and herbs, as well as raise chickens and tilapia fish. They started this project in 2009 and expected to be "self-sufficient" by 2012, but they've reached that goal this year, getting "8 fresh eggs a day, unlimited tilapia fish, organic fruit, veggies, and herbs 365 days a year" (though I'm not sure if by self-sufficient they mean that they could theoretically live off the amount of food the Garden Pool produces, or if they actually do it).

Read full story from Treehugger.com.

Swimming Pool Feeds Family of Four

School Food Trends Toward Healthy

That delicious-smelling breakfast sausage? It’s turkey. And that pizza crust that doesn’t have a hint of healthy-looking brown in its coloring? Fooled ya’ – chances are it’s made of nutritious whole grains. Even salads are getting a makeover, with cafeterias gradually increasing the percentage of heartier greens mixed into the crispy iceberg lettuce kids are used to.

The School Nutrition Association (SNA) reports progress as students head back to school. According to a new survey completed by nutrition directors in 538 districts around the country:

95 percent are increasing whole-grain offerings

90 percent are providing more fresh fruits and vegetables

69 percent are reducing sodium

66 percent are reducing added sugar

67 percent of those with vending services are making healthier drinks more available

Among the new menu items schools are serving up for 2010-11: jicama, star fruit, sweet potato puffs, collard greens, edamame, egg-white omelets, and fish tacos.

Read full story from the Christian Science Monitor.

School Food Trends Toward Healthy

Walmart Raises Prices

Wal-Mart Stores, which for years has touted its prowess at lowering prices, has been doing the opposite as it tries to bolster its bottom line amid stagnating sales.

A JPMorgan Chase study of a Walmart Supercenter in Virginia found that the world's largest retailer has raised prices by nearly 6% on average over the past six weeks, according to the New York Post. Reuters says it was the biggest sequential increase since JPMorgan started the study in January 2009.

Some of the price hikes were considerably larger. For instance, the price of a 32-ounce bottle of Windex household cleaner jumped 50%, a 12-ounce box of Quaker Oats instant grits climbed 65% and a 50-ounce container of Tide detergent rose by more than 50%. A spokesperson for the Bentonville, Ark., company could not immediately be reached for comment.

READ FULL STORY from Daily Finance.

Walmart Raises Prices

Meditation Elevates Brain Function

A Chinese-influenced meditation technique appears to help the brain regulate behavior after as little as 11 hours of practice, according to a study released Monday.

Researchers at the University of Oregon and Dalian University of Technology charted the effects of integrative body-mind training (IBMT), a technique adapted in the 1990s from traditional Chinese medicine and practiced by thousands in China.

The research to be published in the upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences involved 45 test subjects, about half of whom received IBMT, while a control group received relaxation training.

Imaging tests showed a greater number of connections in the anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain which regulates emotion and behavior -- among those who practiced meditation compared to subjects in the control group.

Read full story from Raw Story.

Meditation Elevates Brain Function

Sierra Club's Top 100 Green Colleges

The headline's pretty self-explanatory, right?  CLICK HERE to see if your favorite school made the list!

Sierra Club's Top 100 Green Colleges

Sharp Decline in UK Breast Cancer Rate

Death rates from breast cancer have fallen more dramatically in the UK than any other European county, cancer researchers have said.
The study, which examined mortality rates in 30 countries over the past two decades, challenges claims that survival rates in the UK are worse than anywhere else in western Europe. Researchers, who reported a fall in death rates of about a fifth across all countries, said that the apparently poor survival rates in the UK are misleading because of the way cancer patients are registered, whereas population-based mortality rates are more reliable.
England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland had the second, third, and fourth largest decreases of 35%, 29%, and 30%, coming after Iceland with a 45% drop, according to the study, published in the British Medical Journal. In France, Finland, and Sweden, death rates decreased by 11%, 12% and 16% in comparison.
Anna Gavin, one of the report's authors, said: "We were very pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Despite the fact that the number of cases are going up, and the population is getting older, deaths have still fallen."


Read full story from The Guardian UK.

Sharp Decline in UK Breast Cancer Rate

Irony: Biochar Could Reduce CO2 Emissions

ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2010) — As much as 12 percent of the world's human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing biochar, a charcoal-like substance made from plants and other organic materials. That's more than what could be offset if the same plants and materials were burned to generate energy, concludes a study published August 10 in the journal Nature Communications.

For their study, the researchers looked to the world's sources of biomass that aren't already being used by humans as food. For example, they considered the world's supply of corn leaves and stalks, rice husks, livestock manure and yard trimmings, to name a few. The researchers then calculated the carbon content of that biomass and how much of each source could realistically be used for biochar production.

With this information, they developed a mathematical model that could account for three possible scenarios. In one, the maximum possible amount of biochar was made by using all sustainably available biomass. Another scenario involved a minimal amount of biomass being converted into biochar, while the third offered a middle course. The maximum scenario required significant changes to the way the entire planet manages biomass, while the minimal scenario limited biochar production to using biomass residues and wastes that are readily available with few changes to current practices.


Read full story from Science Daily.

Irony: Biochar Could Reduce CO2 Emissions

New Chinese Bus Straddles Cars, Holds 1300

The finished project is known officially as the "3D fast bus," but the nickname "straddling bus" is no misnomer. The bus will literally straddle the road and carry a shocking number of people -- around 1300 passengers -- over cars and under overpasses.

Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd, proposed the bus idea. They say the bus will travel at up to 60 km/h (about 37mph). Construction of the 186 km of rails that will carry the bus will begin at the end of the year.

And the end of the year is by no means too soon for greenhouse gas-reducing technology. In terms of CO2, we're at 380 parts per million -- that's 100 ppm higher than it was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. According to the chairman of the Shenzhen Hashi, their bus can save up to 860 tons of fuel per year, which would prevent the emission of 2,640 tons of carbon.

Read full story from Care 2.

New Chinese Bus Straddles Cars, Holds 1300

Health Insurance Execs Cash In, Plan Fee Hikes

Leaders of Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna received nearly $200 million in compensation in 2009, according to a report, while the companies sought rate increases as high as 39%.

Read full story from L.A. Times.

Health Insurance Execs Cash In, Plan Fee Hikes

WHO Reveals Financial Ties to Pharma, Insurance Companies

(NaturalNews) After months of stalling, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally revealed the names of key pandemic advisors who influenced its decision to declare a phase six pandemic last year -- a decision that resulted in a financial windfall for vaccine manufacturers. As you'll see here, that list includes at least five expert advisors received money from vaccine companies.

Read full story from Natural News.

WHO Reveals Financial Ties to Pharma, Insurance Companies

GM Plants Invade American Wild

US farmers have dramatically increased their use of GM crops since the plants were introduced in the early 1990s. Last year, nearly half the world's transgenic crops were grown in US soil — Brazil, the world's second heaviest user, grew just 16%. GM crops have broken free from cultivated land in several countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan, but they have not previously been found in uncultivated land in the United States.
"The extent of the escape is unprecedented," says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed).

Read full story from Nature.com.

GM Plants Invade American Wild

U.S. Court Rejects Turkish-American Genocide Denial

A US appeals court has upheld a ruling that blocks schools in the state of Massachusetts from teaching literature that denies the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 was a genocide.

The ruling came in response to a 2005 lawsuit filed by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, a US lobbying group. A lower court dismissed the suit in June, and the appeals court upheld that decision on Wednesday.

State curriculum in Massachusetts requires schools to teach a unit about the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and other "recognised human rights violations and genocides."

The appeals court ruled that "law would not allow the genocide denial actions that the plaintiffs sought."

Turkish-American groups have lobbied schools to include materials that question whether the 1915 killings were, in fact, a genocide.

Read full story from Aljazeera.

Bravo comment:  And I reject America's denial of the genocide it committed against Native Americans.

U.S. Court Rejects Turkish-American Genocide Denial

Breaking: Plane Carrying Alaska Senator Ted Stevens Crashes

A U.S. government official says former Sen. Ted Stevens is believed to have been aboard the airplane that has crashed in Alaska.

The official tells The Associated Press Alaska authorities have been told the former longtime Republican senator is among several passengers on the plane. The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, says Stevens' condition is unknown.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigative team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C., and was expected on the ground Tuesday morning.

The federal official declined to be publicly identified because the crash response and investigation are under way. The Alaska National Guard has said there are possible fatalities.

Bravo comment:  Ted Stevens has lived a long, full lie.  I mean life.  But seriously, while it's not cool to hope for someone's death our democracy would be better off without him.

My only remaining question is: Did he take any energy lobbyists with him?

Breaking: Plane Carrying Alaska Senator Ted Stevens Crashes

Report: Pharma-Funded Studies Almost Always Favor Releasing Drug

(NaturalNews) A recent study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine has revealed that industry-funded clinical trials -- that is, drug trials funded by pharmaceutical companies -- almost always show positive results for the drugs they test. In contrast, only about half of government-funded studies show the same drugs to be safe and effective.

The results of the study may not come as much of a surprise to many who already recognize the corruption inherent in drug company-funded clinical trials. But they do broadcast this reality to a much larger audience than ever before.

Read full story from Natural News.

Report: Pharma-Funded Studies Almost Always Favor Releasing Drug

Pharma Fraud Researcher Claims Bipolar Disorder Made Him Do It

(NaturalNews) Defense attorneys for the perpetrator of one of the largest research frauds in history have claimed that their client, Scott S. Reuben, MD, suffered from "serious, but undiagnosed" bipolar disorder that led him to fabricate data and otherwise falsify his research.

More than 20 of Reuben's papers have since been retracted. He has pleaded guilty to fabricating data and patients, and has also been accused of adding the names of uninvolved co-authors without their permission. He has agreed to repay $361,932 in research funding to several pharmaceutical companies, and $50,000 in penalties to the U.S. government.

Seeking a light sentence for Reuben -- who faces up to 10 years in prison for his crimes -- defense attorneys have argued that his undiagnosed bipolar disorder caused Reuben to commit suicide twice, be hospitalized three times, and fabricate his data.

Glenn J. Treisman, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, expressed skepticism that Reuben, an MD married to a psychiatrist, could suffer from undiagnosed bipolar disorder for so long.

"By the time someone's tried suicide twice, their psychiatrist wife would have known something was going on," he said.

Read full story from Natural News.

Pharma Fraud Researcher Claims Bipolar Disorder Made Him Do It

Animal Cruelty at KU Med

The University of Kansas Medical Center has become known for violating the Animal Welfare Act. In fact, recent inspections for the period from September 2007 to June of 2009 catalogue 58 pages of violations, many of which involve primates and their deaths. The USDA inspectors who wrote these documents uncovered heinous acts of cruelty which prolonged the pain these animals endured. One monkey was allowed to deteriorate so severely that his/her weight dropped by 26.8%, or just over ¼. Another primate, whose skull had been opened to have a recording chamber put into place, did not receive anything close to adequate treatment. These recording chambers can harbor serious bacterial infections which can lead to brain abscesses, and so they are supposed to be cleaned regularly. The chamber of one animal at this facility had not been cleaned for three weeks. It is amazing that s/he was still alive.


Internal records from the University of Kansas Medical Center reveal that a rhesus monkey, #3A5, endured terrible pain on 8/4/2009: “increased agitation and stress from morphine withdrawal.” Other observations from the same day reveal continued agony: “Patient is agitated and vocalizing more. Appears to be more aggressive and keeps moving from perch to floor and back. … Patient is screeching very loudly when moving and grimacing a lot. Muscle tremors noted along with lying down in cage. … P.M. (8:00): Severe muscle tremors noted to the point that animal could not control his right leg and started to bite it; no lacerations or punctures noted.”


Read full blog.

Animal Cruelty at KU Med

Latest NATO Strike Kills More Civilians

NATO officials acknowledged preliminary reports that four to a dozen or more civilians were killed in a coalition airstrike Thursday in Nangarhar Province. Afghan accounts put the civilian deaths as high as 32.

“Coalition forces deeply regret that our joint operation appears to have resulted in civilian loss of life and we express our sincerest condolences to the families,” Rear Adm. Greg Smith, the international force’s director of communication, said in a statement.


At the scene, in the village of Hashim Khail Wadi in the Khogyani district, a reporter for The New York Times counted 12 fresh graves. Residents said that they had just buried civilian victims of the bombing and that a total of 32 people had been killed there and in another village nearby, Nakrro Khail, in the Sherzad district.
Read full story from New York Times.

Bravo comment:  Hearts and minds.  Hearts and minds.

Latest NATO Strike Kills More Civilians

Majority of Americans Now Accept Gay Relations

Americans' support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations "morally wrong" dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup's decade-long trend.

Read full story from Gallup.

Majority of Americans Now Accept Gay Relations

U.S. taxpayers pitch in $22 million to train foreigners for outsourced jobs

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

Read full story from Information Week.

U.S. taxpayers pitch in $22 million to train foreigners for outsourced jobs

Tea Party Kills Career of Conservative Republican Congressman

It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn't sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn't ponied up. Inglis' task: Get them back on the team. "They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.

As he tells this story, the veteran lawmaker is sitting in his congressional office, which he will have to vacate in a few months. On June 22, he was defeated in the primary runoff by Spartanburg County 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who had assailed Inglis for supposedly straying from his conservative roots, pointing to his vote for the bank bailout and against George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. Inglis, who served six years in Congress during the 1990s as a conservative firebrand before being reelected to the House in 2004, had also ticked off right-wingers in the state's 4th Congressional District by urging tea-party activists to "turn Glenn Beck off" and by calling on Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to apologize for shouting "You lie!" at Obama during the president's State of the Union address. For this, Inglis, who boasts (literally) a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party, losing to Gowdy 71 to 29 percent. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven "demagoguery" that he believes will undermine the GOP's long-term credibility. And he's freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.

Read full story from Mother Jones.

Bravo comment:  I highly recommend reading this piece in its entirety.  I also recommend you send it to all your Republican friends.  What do you mean you don't have any?  Even I have Republican friends.  When a conservative with a 93% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is too liberal just because he won't support Glenn Beck's lies, GOP Mission Control has a problem.

Tea Party Kills Career of Conservative Republican Congressman

Miss NY to promote gay rights

She’s like the anti-Carrie Prejean. I’ve never liked beauty pageants and am certain I never will, but I’m rooting for Miss New York to win the title for Miss America next year.

Claire Buffie won the competition for Miss New York this summer, with her platform being gay rights. Below is a recent interview where she discusses what she’s looking to achieve.



Read full story from Feministing.com

Miss NY to promote gay rights