Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music is brought to you by guest VJ NCTim and features blues, soul, gospel, country, and rhythm & blues group The Holmes Brothers. Enjoy!
The Holmes Brothers and Joan Osborne - Feed My Soul
Do not grieve. Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and what cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.
Big Elk - Omaha Chief
News and Opinion
The Evening Blues
We dig up what the MSM buries.
Contributors:
enhydra lutris
The shocking court case that proves the government’s shameful Petraeus hypocrisy
A former CIA officers faces decades in prison. David Petraeus got two years probation for similar charges. But why?
On April 20, 2015, federal prosecutors urged a judge to impose a “severe,” “substantial,” “significant and lengthy” sentence for former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted of giving classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen about “Operation Merlin,” a botched attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Sterling was convicted of nine felony counts in January, including seven under the Espionage Act — an antiquated law that the Obama administration has used more than all its predecessors combined to go after leaks of information that expose government incompetence or illegality.
The tissue of lies in the government’s sentencing memorandum begin with its revisionist history about what is universally regarded as a colossal CIA blunder. Operation Merlin provided flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in order to sabotage proliferation, but the flaws were so obvious that the Iranians detected the ruse and, in the process, the United States inadvertently gave Iran genuine nuclear weapons secrets. But the government describes the Merlin program as “meticulously conceived and developed over a period of many years by the CIA, in consultation with this country’s foremost nuclear experts . . . It was reviewed, vetted, and approved by high-level officials in the United States government, and used not only against Iran but other countries as well.”
The government doth protest too much about this “ingenious” effort of the CIA. As can be gleaned from a more transparent section of the government’s memo later on, its real beef is that Operation Merlin was exposed as “a ‘rogue’ operation, as characterized by [Mr. Sterling] and Mr. Risen…that made the agency appear hapless, even reckless, in its handling of the program.” President Obama has thus turned embarrassing the government into a federal offense by allowing the Justice Department, part of the Executive branch, to prosecute leaks under the Espionage Act, a law meant to go after spies.
The government’s sentencing memorandum is notable for its vitriol, describing Mr. Sterling as vindictive (five times) and selfish (three times). But putting aside the government’s serious need for a thesaurus, the memorandum takes a bizarre detour into whistleblower terrain, and then makes demonstrably misleading statements about espionage cases.
Republicans put plans to reauthorise Patriot Act on hold after court ruling
- US appeal court rules NSA bulk data collection illegal under old law
- Senate Republicans scramble for short-term fix on surveillance
- Senate Republicans have conceded they may have to temporarily suspend plans for a long-term reauthorisation of the Patriot Act after a court ruling against its use by the National Security Agency dramatically turned around the prospects for surveillance reform in Washington.
Three US appeal court judges threw the existing plan – to extend the NSA’s power to collect bulk metadata from American phone records for five years – into chaos on Thursday when they ruled that it was unlawful even under the old legislation.
Now, with the relevant section of the Patriot Act due to expire at the end of the month, Republican leaders in Congress are scrambling to find a shorter-term fix to keep the programme alive as it looks likely that the court ruling will prevent them from securing the necessary votes for a full extension in the remaining six days of this legislative session.
“I hope we can [pass a clean reauthorisation] for at least a short period of time just so we can have this debate,” Senator John Cornyn, the majority whip, told reporters. “It’s an important debate and an important law, it’s protected Americans and saved lives, and so we don’t need to make this decision in haste.”
The Edward Snowden Interview the U.S. Media Didn’t Want You to Watch
It’s gone largely unnoticed that the first interview Edward Snowden gave a media outlet after he leaked National Security Agency documents—conducted by German broadcaster ARD—was not covered by American media outlets and YouTube. But in light of the recent revelations gleaned from the Snowden documents, we dug up the video and transcript from Sunday, January 26, 2014.
Here’s what the blog DC Clothesline had to say about the interview being blocked:
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden was interviewed on the German television network ARD. What many Americans may be unaware of is that the Edward Snowden interview was intentionally blocked from the US public with none of the major new outlets covering the interview or its contents. YouTube has even taken steps to remove the post as soon as it is reposted.
The video got a wide viewing in Europe and it is not only an important interview when it comes to the vast surveillance state that is currently constructed, but is also still future.
Snowden explained to German television (oh the irony here is rich) how tyrannical surveillance programs erode human rights and individual liberty and freedom…Snowden continued, “The public had a right to know about these programs. The public had a right to know that which the government is doing in its name, and that which the government is doing against the public.”
One has to wonder about the complicity of the media in blacking out vital information that exposes the criminal activity of the federal government. While many debate whether or not Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, Snowden decided to answer for himself.
Enforcing the Ukraine ‘Group Think’
By Robert Parry
It may be fitting that the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty would be the latest media outlet to join in the bashing of an American academic who dares to disagree with U.S. policies on Ukraine, which have included supporting a 2014 coup that ousted the elected president and installing a new regime in which neo-Nazis play a prominent role. After all, Radio Liberty has a history of cuddling up to Nazis.
On May 6, a Radio Liberty pundit named Carl Schreck joined the Official Washington herd in demeaning Russian scholar Stephen Cohen as “a Putin apologist” who, Schreck said, was once “widely seen as one of the preeminent scholars in the generation of Sovietologists who rose to prominence in the 1970s, [but] Cohen these days is routinely derided as Putin’s ‘toady’ and ‘useful idiot.’”
While hurling insults, Schreck did little to evaluate the merits of Cohen’s arguments, beyond consulting with neoconservatives and anti-Moscow activists. Cohen’s daring to dissent from Official Washington’s conventional wisdom was treated as proof of his erroneous ways.
In that sense, Schreck’s reliance on vitriol rather than reason was typical of the “group think” prevalent across the U.S. mainstream media. But Radio Liberty does have a special history regarding Ukraine, including the use of Nazi sympathizers during the ramping up of the Cold War propaganda by Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s.
In WWII 3 out of 4 German KIA Were by Soviet Army
WWII’s Eastern Front was by far the bloodiest theater of war the world has ever seen. It cost the lives of nearly 12 million combatants of which 4.3 million Axis troops including 3.55 million Germans - death tolls far in excess of those in the west
The best available estimate of WWII German military deaths comes from German historian Rüdiger Overmans. Most estimates are based on wartime casualty reports of the German military; but Overmans shows convincingly that the system was unreliable and eventually broke down, so that preceding estimates underestimate the number of German military men who fell in WWII.
Overmans, after extensive research of his own, put the total German military war dead at 5,318,000. This figure includes deaths of Volksturm militiamen and foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht. It does not include the deaths of Soviet citizens in German service.
Of these, 459,000 are known to have died in captivity, including 363,000 as prisoners of the Soviets. Overmans suggests the figure of German POWs who perished in Soviet captivity may be far higher than the 363,000 recorded deaths, and could reach as many as one million men. This is speculation, however, since Overmans, working from the German archives, had no way to study the subject.
The Russian historian Krivosheev, who was better positioned to study the subject, instead estimates there were a total of 450,000 German POW deaths in Soviet hands, including the deaths of 94,000 prisoners who never made it to POW camps and whose deaths are thus not reflected in their records.
‘No more f*king Tory cuts’: Scuffles at anti-austerity demo in London
One protester and several law enforcement officials were injured during heavily-policed protests against the newly-elected Conservative government outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.
“No more f*king Tory cuts!” and “Tories – scum!” slogans were chanted repeatedly by a crowd of anarchists, left-wingers and Scottish National Party (SNP) supporters.
At least 17 people have been arrested following the scuffles, Scotland Yard said. According to the Metropolitan Police, five police officers were injured, and two of them were taken to hospital.
Among the placards held by the supporters, who numbered in the hundreds, were “Austerity kills” and “I pledge to resist.”
There was a heavy security presence, including riot police and officers on horseback. The law enforcement officials “kettled” – or sealed off - segments of the crowd, which they adjudged to contain potential troublemakers.
Johns Hopkins analysis: North Korea’s ballistic missile submarine
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Johns Hopkins University’s U.S.-Korea Institute published an analysis about North Korea’s capability to build a ballistic missile submarine on January 8, well ahead of Saturday’s report of an apparently successful sub-launched missile test by Pyongyang. The analysis by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. appeared in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies publication 38th North.
“Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that the conning tower of a new North Korean submarine first seen in July 2014 houses 1-2 possible vertical launch tubes for either ballistic or cruise missiles. The boat could serve as an experimental test bed for land-attack missile technology, which if successful, may be integrated into a new class of submarines. In addition, imagery over the past six months indicates that North Korea has been upgrading facilities at the Sinpo South Shipyard in preparation for a significant naval construction program, possibly related to submarine development.
North Korea’s development of a submarine-launched missile capability would eventually expand Pyongyang’s threat to South Korea, Japan and US bases in East Asia, also complicating regional missile defense planning, deployment and operations. Submarines carrying land-attack missiles would be challenging to locate and track, would be mobile assets able to attack from any direction, and could operate at significant distances from the Korean peninsula …
The Taliban undergo gene therapy
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The “Qatar dialogue” last week between the representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban raises hopes. But there are caveats.
To be sure, as more and more details emerge as to the happenings at the Al-Kohr resort, an extraordinary picture emerges of the Taliban having undergone a gene therapy in these years since they disappeared from Kabul and Kandahar into the fastness of the night in the winter of 2001.
Quite obviously, they still wear black turban and have use for the kohl eyeliner. But a mutated gene that caused a ghastly disorder and brought then much disrepute in the nineties appears to have been “knocked out” (to use the medical terminology.)
The result is stunning: Taliban no longer have that congenital aversion toward mixing with the female gender, which once prompted the then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright to call the “Afghan Nazis”.
Scottish National Party landslide shakes up UK politics
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — The last time Britain held a national election, Mhairi Black wasn't old enough to vote. On Friday, the 20-year-old university student was elected to Parliament as part of a Scottish nationalist wave that has transformed British politics and raised questions about the country's future.
Black defeated Labour bigwig Douglas Alexander, an upset that symbolized the scale of the Scottish National Party's triumph. Seven months after losing a bid for independence from England, the party took 56 of Scotland's 59 seats, ending decades of Labour dominance.
"The people of Scotland are speaking, and it is time for their voice to be heard at Westminster," said Black, the youngest British lawmaker since 13-year-old aristocrat Christopher Monck was elected in 1667.
The SNP is now the third-largest group in Parliament after the Conservatives and Labour, an ironic position for a party that wants to break off from the United Kingdom.
AP Exclusive: Libya rejects EU migrant plan, says not asked
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Libya's ambassador to the United Nations is largely rejecting a European Union plan to fight the growing migrant crisis that is centered in his crumbling country, saying his Western-backed government hasn't even been consulted and ruling out EU forces on Libyan soil "at this stage."
In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said the best way to resolve the issue is to arm the "legitimate" government. A rival regime is backed by Islamist-allied militias who have taken the capital, Tripoli.
And the ambassador warned that if there is no progress in U.N.-led peace talks between the two sides in the coming weeks, his government, which is under a U.N. arms embargo, "has to take necessary steps even to take the capital by force."
Dabbashi said his government has been left out of the urgent international discussion of the migrant crisis, with thousands of people from the Middle East and Africa departing from Libya's shore for Europe and many dying at sea. The crisis has grown amid the chaos that has consumed Libya since the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, after a Security Council-authorized military intervention.
EU wants Asian investors
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
Europe is seeking a cash lift from Asia.
It’s fairly well known that Asia is flush with liquidity, while Europe is in serious need of some economic growth. So, the European Union decided to seek Asian investors to “inject 315 billion euros into a range of long-term projects from broadband infrastructure to green energy,” reported Reuters.
The EU brought the dog-and-pony show to Hong Kong Thursday to present its new European Fund for Strategic Investment. The EU hopes the new plan will revive growth and create more than one million jobs. The EU said it plans to fund about 20% of each project and is currently willing to guarantee 16 billion euros of loans. Under the plan, “EU institutions would act as junior partners in any investment, meaning they would take the first hit were the project to run into problems,” said Reuters.
The prices on European companies are so low that the idea is a “no brainer”, Vincent Chu, chairman of First Eastern Investment Group, told Reuters. His firm has already invested more than $300 million in Europe, China’s biggest export market. Chu said Chinese companies are keen to get into Europe to access technology and know-how and bring these back into Asia. Some say access, some say steal.
Those in the latter group, small, family-owned European firms, are not in any rush to accept Chinese investors.
Russia, China agree to integrate Eurasian Union, Silk Road, sign deals
Russia and China have signed a number of energy, trade and finance deals on Friday aimed at strengthening economic ties. The two countries have multiple mutual projects which “achieved a unity of views on a wide range of issues.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have signed a decree on cooperation in tying the development of the Eurasian Economic Union with the "Silk Road” economic project.
“The integration of the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road projects means reaching a new level of partnership and actually implies a common economic space on the continent," Putin said after the meeting with his Chinese counterpart. President Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on Friday for the 70th anniversary celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
China will also invest $5.8 billion in the construction of the Moscow-Kazan High Speed Railway, the Russian President said. The railway is to be extended to China, connecting the two countries through Kazakhstan. It can become part of the route of the new Silk Road project, which is aimed at tying China with European and Middle Eastern markets. The total cost of the Moscow-Kazan high speed railroad project is $21.4 billion.
Pentagon: Texas has nothing to fear from upcoming military exercise
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has a message for Texas: chill.
Defense officials Monday dismissed as “wild speculation” an Internet-fueled claim that a massive summertime exercise called Jade Helm 15 for special operations commandos is a covert operation by President Barack Obama to take over Texas.
That claim was given legitimacy by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s order last week for the Texas State Guard to monitor the exercises.
“Operation Jade Helm poses no threat to any American’s civil liberties,” Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday. “Operation Jade Helm is being conducted by Americans – by, specifically, American special forces personnel.”
Bernie Sanders: Any Supreme Court Nominee of Mine Must Pledge to Overturn Citizens United
Though he went almost seven months without being mentioned on Meet the Press, Bernie Sanders has been making the rounds on the other Sunday morning shows since announcing his candidacy almost two weeks ago. Last Sunday, he sat down with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, and today he fielded questions from Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer [video embedded below], stressing the importance of campaign finance reform and combating what he calls “the billionaire class in America”:
There is, in my view, massive dissatisfaction with the corporate establishment and the greed of corporate America… when you have 99% of new wealth going to the top 1%, when you have the top tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90%... people don’t think that’s a good idea. As a result of this disastrous Citizens United Supreme court decision, clearly the billionaires - Koch brothers and others - are owning the political process. They will determine who the candidates are.
But when prompted by the CBS host to critique Hillary Clinton’s use of a Super PAC - the primary fundraising mechanism resulting from Citizens United - the Vermont Senator refused to go all out, stressing that he “understood why she was doing it”.
Sanders claims to have over 200,000 volunteers signed up and received over 90,000 donations at an average donation of $43 from “mostly working and middle-class Americans”.
Lakota Sioux Tribe Invokes "Bad Men" Treaty Clause Over Keystone Pipeline
Lower Brule, Lower Brule Indian Reservation, South Dakota - The Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation as it known in English, pressed on in its fight against the Keystone Pipeline. In a press release dated April 29, 2015, the Lower Brule Lakota Sioux Tribe of South Dakota invoked a clause from the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 wherein the US Government agreed to "proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States." The accused "offender" in this case: foreign tar sands pipeline company TransCanada.
The press release calls for the enforcement of this treaty clause against TransCanada, and also states that "roughly 40% of South Dakota is off limits to TransCanada."
1868 Fort Laramie Treaty General Sherman was the chief negotiator of the treaty way back in 1868, and although the "bad men" clause has been utilized in only a handful of cases over the past century-and-a-half, success for the plaintiffs has been rare, and according to a historical analysis in the Harvard Law Review, solitary. The report, aptly titled A Bad Man Is Hard To Find, claims that only in one instance, albeit recently, has the clause been deployed successfully. The plaintiff was a woman named Lavetta Elk, and although she is the only known victor in a "bad men" case, the report also suggests that the instance could set precedent and pave the way for more victorious applications of the clause in the future. The report states:
Nine treaties concluded between the United States and various Indian tribes in 1867 and 1868 each contain what is known as a "bad men" provision. Within each of these provisions is a clause in which the United States promises to reimburse Indians for injuries sustained as a result of wrongs committed by "bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States."
Although these "bad men among the whites" clauses have rarely been used in the last century and a half, they remain the source of a viable cause of action for Indians belonging to those tribes that signed the nine treaties of 1867 and 1868. In 2009, Lavetta Elk won her action for damages under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, recovering a judgment in the Court of Federal Claims of almost $600,000 from the United States government. Elk is the first and only plaintiff to take a "bad men among the whites" action through trial and win on the merits.
China cuts interest rates for third time in six months as economy sputters
China cut interest rates for the third time in six months on Sunday in a bid to lower companies' borrowing costs and stoke a sputtering economy that is headed for its worst year in a quarter of a century.
Analysts welcomed the widely-expected move, but predicted policymakers would relax reserve requirements and cut rates again in the coming months to counter the headwinds facing the world's second-largest economy.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website it was lowering its benchmark, one-year lending rate by 25 basis points to 5.1 percent from May 11. It cut the benchmark deposit rate by the same amount to 2.25 percent.
"China's economy is still facing relatively big downward pressure," the PBOC said.
New cartel arises from Mexico's assault on big drug lords
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
MEXICO CITY (AP) — It has the drugs and distribution system of a traditional cartel — and it has the modern weapons and audacity of an army. After attacking federal forces, downing a military helicopter and shutting down streets in Mexico's second-largest city last week, the New Generation Jalisco cartel is now the main enemy in the country's fight with drug cartels.
In just a few years, New Generation has grown from being an offshoot of the powerful Sinaloa cartel to one of Mexico's strongest criminal groups in its own right, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, whose Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains a "black list" of drug trafficking organizations.
Its quick rise reflects a rapidly changing organized-crime landscape in Mexico as the government targets top leaders of established cartels. More than any other criminal group, New Generation has taken advantage of the government's top-capo strategy, strengthening and grabbing territory from other cartels as they are weakened.
"You're talking about a powerful, large organization with grand logistics, well-made structures, a strong group of assassins, and dedicated and qualified people with high-caliber weaponry," Guillermo Valdes, a security expert and former director of the Mexican intelligence agency, told The Associated Press. "It's a new cartel, a second generation born in a restructuring process."
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature a report on and a letter from Mother Jones in Montana. And also: the Rebel Girl, herself, visits with Joe Hill in the Salt Lake County Jail.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Robots are coming for your job: Amazon, McDonald’s and the next wave of dangerous capitalist “disruption”
Says one builder: "Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them”
In the United States and other advanced economies, the major disruption will be in the service sector—which is, after all, where the vast majority of workers are now employed. This trend is already evident in areas like ATMs and self-service checkout lanes, but the next decade is likely to see an explosion of new forms of service sector automation, potentially putting millions of relatively low-wage jobs at risk.
San Francisco start-up company Momentum Machines, Inc., has set out to fully automate the production of gourmet-quality hamburgers. Whereas a fast food worker might toss a frozen patty onto the grill, Momentum Machines’ device shapes burgers from freshly ground meat and then grills them to order—including even the ability to add just the right amount of char while retaining all the juices. The machine, which is capable of producing about 360 hamburgers per hour, also toasts the bun and then slices and adds fresh ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and pickles only after the order is placed. Burgers arrive assembled and ready to serve on a conveyer belt. While most robotics companies take great care to spin a positive tale when it comes to the potential impact on employment, Momentum Machines co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas is very forthright about the company’s objective: “Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” he said. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.” The company estimates that the average fast food restaurant spends about $135,000 per year on wages for employees who produce hamburgers and that the total labor cost for burger production for the US economy is about $9 billion annually. Momentum Machines believes its device will pay for itself in less than a year, and it plans to target not just restaurants but also convenience stores, food trucks, and perhaps even vending machines. The company argues that eliminating labor costs and reducing the amount of space required in kitchens will allow restaurants to spend more on high-quality ingredients, enabling them to offer gourmet hamburgers at fast food prices.
Those burgers might sound very inviting, but they would come at a considerable cost. Millions of people hold low-wage, often part-time, jobs in the fast food and beverage industries. McDonald’s alone employs about 1.8 million workers in 34,000 restaurants worldwide. Historically, low wages, few benefits, and a high turnover rate have helped to make fast food jobs relatively easy to find, and fast food jobs, together with other low-skill positions in retail, have provided a kind of private sector safety net for workers with few other options: these jobs have traditionally offered an income of last resort when no better alternatives are available. In December 2013, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked “combined food preparation and serving workers,” a category that excludes waiters and waitresses in full-service restaurants, as one of the top employment sectors in terms of the number of job openings projected over the course of the decade leading up to 2022—with nearly half a million new jobs and another million openings to replace workers who leave the industry.
In the wake of the Great Recession, however, the rules that used to apply to fast food employment are changing rapidly. In 2011, McDonald’s launched a high-profile initiative to hire 50,000 new workers in a single day and received over a million applications—a ratio that made landing a McJob more of a statistical long shot than getting accepted at Harvard. While fast food employment was once dominated by young people looking for a part-time income while in school, the industry now employs far more mature workers who rely on the jobs as their primary income. Nearly 90 percent of fast food workers are twenty or older, and the average age is thirty-five. Many of these older workers have to support families—a nearly impossible task at a median wage of just $8.69 per hour.
Liberia is free of Ebola, says World Health Organization
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberia is now free of Ebola after going 42 days — twice the maximum incubation period for the deadly disease — without any new cases, the World Health Organization announced Saturday.
While celebrating the milestone, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told The Associated Press the damage wrought by the worst Ebola outbreak in history is "a scar on the conscience of the world."
For some survivors, she said, "the pain and grief will take a generation to heal."
Meanwhile, new cases were reported this week in neighboring Sierra Leone and in Guinea, the other two countries hit hardest by Ebola. Officials said they are cautious about openly celebrating the end of Ebola in Liberia, as the continued presence of the disease in the region means just one sick patient slipping over the border into Liberia could spark a resurgence of cases.
Master orchestrator of the genome is discovered, stem cell scientists report
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
One of developmental biology's most perplexing questions concerns what signals transform masses of undifferentiated cells into tremendously complex organisms, a process called ontogeny.
New research by University at Buffalo scientists, published in PLOS ONE, provides evidence that it all begins with a single "master" growth factor receptor that regulates the entire genome.
"The finding provides a new level of understanding of the fundamental aspects of how organisms develop," says senior author Michal K. Stachowiak, PhD, professor in the Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and senior author. He also directs the Stem Cell Engraftment and In Vivo Analysis Facility and the Stem Cell Culture and Training Facility at the Western New York Stem Cell Culture and Analysis Center at UB.
"Our research shows how a single growth factor receptor protein moves directly to the nucleus in order to program the entire genome," he said.
Cuomo says New York nuclear plant fire caused oil spill in Hudson River
- Governor says heat from Saturday blaze at Indian Point 3 ignited second fire
- Emergency crews encircle leak of thousands of gallons with booms
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday that part of a nuclear power plant remained offline after a transformer fire. The fire, he said, created another problem: thousands of gallons of oil leaking into the Hudson River.
Cuomo spoke at a briefing on the Indian Point 3 plant, which is around 35 miles north of New York City. He said that after the transformer fire was doused on Saturday night, the heat ignited a second blaze that was also put out.
But, Cuomo said, transformer fluid seeped into the river. Emergency crews circled the leakage with booms that cover a diameter of about 300ft.
“If you are on site, you see an oil sheen all over the area where the transformer went on fire, and it was a significant area that was covered by oil, foam and water,” Cuomo said.
Australia Pays Labor Cost of Climate-Driven Heat Waves
LONDON—Climate change can be bad for a country’s economic health. Absenteeism and lower productivity because of heat stress may have cost the Australian economy an estimated US$6.2 billion in the year 2013/14, according to new research in Nature Climate Change.
The summer of 2013 brought the hottest year ever recorded to Australia, a year marked by record temperatures linked to human-made climate change as a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels.
Studies of physiological response to unusual heat predict that economic productivity could be affected. But Kerstin Zander of Charles Darwin University in Darwin in the Northern Territories and colleagues decided to find out directly by asking people what happened to them as the temperatures soared to dangerous levels, and stayed there.
In 2014, they asked 1,726 employed Australians—office workers, labourers, managers, technicians, sales people and professionals—to recall the days that they missed work because of the heat, and the days on which they went to work but didn’t achieve very much because of the heat, and then calculated an economic loss linked to each answer.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
Colombia suspending use of anti-coca herbicide
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos announced Saturday he is halting use of a herbicide that has been a key part of U.S.-financed efforts to wipe out cocaine crops, saying the country will seek other ways to destroy coca plants.
Santos said he was taking the move following a Health Ministry recommendation based on a World Health Organization decision to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen.
Speaking at an event in the capital, Bogota, Santos said that defense and health officials should agree on a transition period, during which "spraying of glyphosate has to be replaced with other mechanisms, for example, intensifying manual eradication" of coca plants.
The U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker, said a decision on whether to use the chemical is a decision for Colombia and the U.S. government respects it.
Little flies in the big city: What you find depends on how you look
A group of researchers from the U.S. and Australia have announced the completely unexpected discovery of exotic "vinegar flies" (drosophilids) in urban Los Angeles in a paper appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, titled "Strange Little Flies In The Big City: Exotic Flower-Breeding Drosophilidae (Diptera) In Urban Los Angeles."
Two species, previously known only from outside the U.S., were collected by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County project, Biodiversity Science: City and Nature (BioSCAN). "I was as surprised as anyone when such unusual flies were found in our samples," said Brian Brown, NHM Entomology Curator and one of this study's authors. "But urban biodiversity is an almost unknown frontier."
Flies in the insect genus Drosophila (the "fruit" flies, more accurately called "vinegar flies") are among the world's most-studied organisms -- over 16,000 research papers were published in the last five years with the word "Drosophila" in the title. "Drosophila" is probably the only insect genus name most people have heard. Yet we still know little about their natural history, this study shows.
One of the newly-noted species, Drosophila gentica, is the second-most common fruit fly in the Los Angeles BioSCAN traps. This species was described in 1962 based on specimens collected in El Salvador in 1954, the first and last time it's been recorded anywhere until now. "Los Angeles is definitely not the first place I'd have started looking for new specimens of this species," said David Grimaldi, Curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, also an author on the paper.
Huffing and puffing won't blow these straw homes down
A batch of straw houses have gone on sale in the UK – and their manufacturers insist that unlike the home featured in classic nursery rhyme The Three Little Pigs, huffing and puffing will not lead the buildings to blow down.
In fact, the architect of the scheme, Professor Pete Walker of the University of Bath, says that using straw in home construction isn’t just viable, but safer than other traditional building materials, and will lead to vastly reduced energy bills for inhabitants.
Seven of the homes have been built in the west country town of Shirehampton, and cost a similar amount to a traditional red-brick house to construct. According to Walker, “you can see that the building is clad in red brick but underneath that are the straw bales which form this super-insulated wall construction, whereas the houses around here are largely brick cavity construction. So the innovation really has laid in developing the suitability of straw as a construction material and also convincing people that straw is a viable construction material. People often refer to the nursery rhyme of the Three Little Pigs, and as a result I think people need convincing that straw is robust, safe, durable, and a modern construction material.”
Walker says that straw is used in two different ways in the construction. “In this particular building straw has been used in two ways. First of all it’s used as straw bales, so the bales come directly from the farmer from wheat straw, and that is in the outside of the walls, so it’s there as installation behind the brick walls, and then inside compressed straw panels are being used as lining panels and as dividers to separate the rooms as well,” he said.
Birds abandon mating sites near wind turbines
Shifting to renewable energy sources has been widely touted as one of the best ways to fight climate change, but even renewable energy can have a downside, as in the case of wind turbines’ effects on bird populations. In a new paper in The Condor: Ornithological Applications, a group of researchers demonstrate the impact that one wind energy development in Kansas has had on Greater Prairie-Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) breeding in the area. Virginia Winder of Benedictine College, Andrew Gregory of Bowling Green State University, Lance McNew of Montana State University, and Brett Sandercock of Kansas State University monitored prairie-chicken leks, or mating sites, before and after turbine construction and found that leks within eight kilometers of turbines were more likely to be abandoned.
Leks are sites at which male prairie-chickens gather each spring to perform mating displays and attract females. The researchers visited 23 leks during the five-year study to observe how many male birds were present and to record the body mass of trapped males. After wind turbine construction, they found an increased rate of lek abandonment at sites within eight kilometers of the turbines as well as a slight decrease in male body mass. Lek abandonment was also more likely at sites where there were seven or fewer males and at sites located in agricultural fields instead of natural grasslands.
This paper is the latest in a series of studies on the effects of wind energy development on prairie-chickens. “To me, what is most interesting about our results is that we are now able to start putting different pieces of our larger project together to better understand the response of Greater Prairie-Chickens to wind energy development at our field site,” says study co-author Virginia Winder. “We have found that both male and female prairie-chickens have negative behavioral responses to wind energy development. The data we collected to monitor this response have also allowed us new insights into the ecology of this species. For example, lek persistence at our study site depended not only on distance to turbine, but also male numbers and habitat.”
More than 20 dead whales found beached in Chile
Santiago (Chile) - 08 May 2015
More than 20 whales were found dead and rotting along a rocky coast of southern Chile, maritime officials said Friday, as they tried to determine what killed them and when.
The whales, discovered beached north of the Gulf of Penas, measured about 10 meters (33 feet) long, according to officials with Chile's national fisheries service.
Officials identified them as sei whales, which are internationally protected after being hunted nearly to extinction during the middle of the 20th century.
Images showed the decaying mammals grouped together and laid out along a grass-and-rock shoreline.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
8 Essential Lessons We Learned From the Vietnam Antiwar Movement
4 Things You Should Know About the Plutocrats Buying Our Democracy
Challenging a "Disposable Future," Looking to a Politics of Possibility
For Mother's Day
Hellraisers Journal: Teamster Strike at "Fever Heat," death struggle between strikers & capitalists.
Putin's Speech
c99p: Monsters Inc. - Starring Hillary T. Inevitable
A Little Night Music
The Holmes Brothers - Soldier Of Love
The Holmes Brothers - We Meet We Part
The Holmes Brothers - You're the kind of Trouble
The Holmes Brothers - My Girl Josephine
Van Morrison with The Holmes Brothers - That's Where It's At
The Holmes Brothers - I Want You To Want Me
The Holmes Brothers - Darkest Hour
The Holmes Brothers - High Heel Sneakers
The Holmes Brothers - Shine
The Holmes Brothers - Walk In The Light
The Holmes Brothers - Opportunity to Cry
Holmes Brothers - (What's so funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?
Odetta & The Holmes Brothers - This Little Light Of Mine
The Holmes Brothers - There's A Train
The Holmes Brothers - You've To Lose
The Holmes Brothers - Bad Moon Rising
The Holmes Brothers - Dark Cloud
Joan Osborne w/The Holmes Brothers - Nobody's Fault But Mine