AP
Huguette Clark
A newly publicized will by an heiress to a Montana copper mining fortune leaves most of her $400 million estate to her family, while a will signed just weeks later left nothing to relatives.
The childless Huguette Clark died in May at age 104 -- a last breath of New York's Gilded Age that produced the Rockefellers, Astors and Vanderbilts.
Her relatives brought the new will to light on Monday: They filed court papers asking a Surrogate's Court judge to involve them in proceedings about how her money was spent -- and by whom -- while she was alive.
Clark's relatives accuse her co-executors, attorney Wallace Bock and accountant Irving Kamsler, of plundering her fortune. The two were among the few who for years had access to the reclusive Clark in her Manhattan hospital room. Clark had left her 42-room Manhattan home -- the largest residence on Fifth Avenue -- decades earlier, choosing to live undisturbed at the hospital.
A court-ordered accounting of the Paris-born heiress' finances as overseen by Bock and Kamsler in the last 15 years of her life is "a chilling report of the mishandling, misappropriation and mismanagement" of her assets, the relatives' lawyer, John R. Morken, wrote in papers filed Monday.
While Clark was confined to a hospital room, her spending amounted to about $1 million each month, Morken said, citing the figures.
Monday's filing included a will signed in March 2005, about six weeks before another will that Bock and Kamsler filed shortly after Clark's death.
The March 2005 will benefits 21 relatives on the side of Clark's father, U.S. Sen. William A. Clark, who represented Montana after building one of America's largest fortunes mining copper, building railroads and founding Las Vegas. Nevada's Clark County is named for him. His wealth vied with that of the Rockefellers.
A will signed in April 2005, by contrast, gives Clark's family nothing and leaves her money mainly to charity and her nurse.
Morken writes that beyond any financial interest, the relatives are concerned about their heritage -- and "that a very significant member of their family should have fallen victim, it appears, to the greed of persons who had put themselves in a position of trust with their great-aunt."
No criminal charges have been filed against Bock or Kamsler, and both have denied any wrongdoing in their dealings with Clark. Bock "always acted consistent with her wishes and carried them out to the letter," his lawyer, Robert J. Anello, said Monday.
Kamsler, his lawyer and an attorney for the Clark estate didn't immediately return phone calls Monday.
The Manhattan district attorney's office has been looking into how Clark's affairs were managed in the past two decades, people familiar with the probe have said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office did not immediately respond Monday to an inquiry about Clark.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office also is keeping an eye on the Clark estate as part of its oversight role over estates and the execution of them.
It's not the first time the handling of Clark's finances -- and her life -- has come into question.
The April 2005 will showed she was leaving $34 million to her longtime private nurse and about $300 million to the arts. The fortune includes a prized Claude Monet water-lily painting not seen by the public since 1925; she gave it to Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art.
In that will, Clark left instructions for the creation of a foundation "for the primary purpose of fostering and promoting the arts" -- based at her 24-acre oceanfront estate in Santa Barbara, Calif., which would be converted into a museum. Bock and Kamsler would oversee the foundation; they also were left $500,000 apiece.
The Santa Barbara estate was where Clark spent her youth, but she had not been back since 1963, when her mother died.
Clark was married briefly in her 20s to a poor bank clerk studying law. They parted ways after only nine months.
After her mother's death, her once lively life amid New York's cultured world -- with forays to Europe -- became more solitary, and she rarely ventured from her Fifth Avenue home.
About six months before Clark's death, three of her relatives asked a Manhattan judge to appoint a guardian for her. Citing news reports and other information, they accused Bock and Kamsler of exercising "improper influence" over her and limiting family members' contact with her. But the state Supreme Court justice rebuffed the request, saying the relatives relied on hearsay and "speculative assertions" that she was incapacitated.
Clark died on May 24, more than a century after she was born in Paris to the 67-year-old U.S. senator and a 28-year-old Michigan woman.
Monday, November 28, 2011
New York City Filing: Heiress Signed Two Wills, One Leaves Nothing To Relatives
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
CherPumPle Lives!
Three layers of cake containing a cherry pie, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie. What more do you want from me? It’s a damn pastryception!
Greg Palast » Goldfinger eats Congo
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Goldfinger eats Congo
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!...
"Top funders of the Republican Party have demanded that two African nations pay them over half a billion dollars.... Is one of these vulture’s claims based on a stolen security, criminally transferred to an American financier called 'Goldfinger'?
Greg Palast, author of the new book, Vultures' Picnic, investigates for BBC Television and The Guardian."
Greg Palast reporting from Kinshasa, Congo; Sarajevo, Bosnia; and Brooklyn, New York
If God doesn't give a rat's ass about The Vulture, and what he does for a living, and what he's done for Africa, why should I?
The thought struck me while sitting here, coffee getting cold, in my old Toyota, trying to look invisible, staked out in front of 300 Dekalb Avenue. It's just after dawn here in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm hoping that Peter Grossman, a Wall Street star, will pop out of his posh brownstone for a jog or a cup of joe. Then I can jump him. He's on the look-out for me because I'd already jumped his crony, Goldfinger, the man who's making Grossman stunningly rich.
Grossman's riches, nearly $100 million for his firm, FG Management, come from the Congo. I was just there in Congo, two days before this stake-out, at a cholera quarantine center in the capital, Kinshasa.
Besides lots of cholera, Congo has lots of cobalt. Grossman has, through a crazy legal loophole in British law, waylaid a payment of $80 million to the African government for a shipment of cobalt from a government-owned mine.
Grossman is a "vulture," the name Wall Street gives, with an affectionate smile, to those who somehow can get their hands on old, forgotten debts of desperately poor nations––Congo, Zambia, Peru, and Liberia are cases I've investigated––which they pick up for pennies on the dollar of face value.
When ––usually after a Bono concert–– Western nations forgive debts owed by these poor countries, the nation receiving this aid is now ripe enough, and flush enough, for attack by the Vulture who demands many a pound of flesh for the debt he suddenly brandishes.
In Grossman's case, his company FG paid about $3 million for a debt Zaire (now Congo) owed Yugoslavia (now Bosnia). A court on the tiny island of Jersey, a tax haven in the English Channel, has ordered Congo to turn over the $80 million the African nation has in a bank account there, the payment for the cobalt. Furthermore, Congo must pay an additional $20 million to Grossman if the Africans can find it.
If that seems weird and nuts to you, it is. The United Kingdom and other nations bar collections by vultures against poor countries where Western government treasuries have agreed to give up their own claims. However, Vulture Grossman was free to pounce on Congo in Jersey, a pseudo-colony of Britain, because Britain's Parliament failed to include the magic words, "and Jersey" in its anti-Vulture law.
Question: How did Vulture Grossman get his hands on Congo's debt to Bosnia? That's what, while suppressing my need to urinate, I was waiting in the Brooklyn cold to ask him.
Here's what I can piece together: Only three days before I was in the Congo cholera clinic, I was in the office of the chief of financial police in Sarajevo, Bosnia. With master sleuth Drew Sullivan of the Sarajevo Center for Investigative Reporting, we tracked down the police report asserting that the nation's own prime minister had slipped control of the debt to one Michael Sheehan, a.k.a. Goldfinger who, for a fee, passed it from the Bosnia state power company to Grossman.
Goldfinger. We meet again. The Bond-movie Goldfinger is a Girl Scout compared to the real one. He's the man I discovered four years ago who paid off the President of Zambia to shaft his own nation out of its AIDS medicine money. The FBI and I have been discussing Goldfinger.
In Sarajevo, the Bosnian police chief told me the little hand-to-hand-to-hand business with the Congo debt was a crime, and the (now former) prime minister, a man named Nedzad Brankovic, should be in prison. The cops have written out the criminal complaint, but prosecutors have yet to touch the powerful politician.
I got to the man who blew the whistle on Brankovic, Brigadier-General Izet Spahic. He'd worked out a deal for the Bosnia power company (desperately broke) to make power pylons for the Congo (desperately broke). The project would generate electricity, clean water and profits for both countries.
It was quite a heart-warming story of two nations coming out of civil wars, with a combined total of four million dead, helping each other. But when it was discovered that the Vulture at 300 Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn had secretly seized control of the debt between the nations, the electricity deal was off.
I went by the Bosnia pylon-making factory. It was now shut and its several thousand workers gone. At least there's no cholera.
The Brigadier was furious. He asked me, how could these people think about making a profit off of civil war, poverty and unimaginable suffering?
Well, General, When do humans grow feathers and claws?
It's a question I'm going to ask Vulture Grossman when he comes out because the Guardian and BBC Newsnight want me to ask.
For myself, the Vulture's answer is inconsequential.
I assume that after we break our story, the British Parliament will move to close the loophole it so glaringly left open to the Vulture; and the US Congress will at least pretend to consider anti-vulture legislation now languishing in some committee.
But I think the focus on Grossman and his fellow carrion chewers is distracting. The destruction of Bosnia's power-pylon industry was the direct consequence of privatizing it, bringing the free market to socialist Yugoslavia and Brankovic to power, allowing him to buy and sell debt securities on the de-regulated world financial market.
It was the privatization of Congo's state cobalt mine and the looting of its riches, all at the behest of the World Bank, IMF and privateers, that drained Congo's treasury.
Grossman is just the re-po man, the latest of the financial carnivores who've bitten into Congo and Bosnia––and Greece and Detroit.
Grossman's vulture operation is just over the bridge from Occupied Wall Street, occupied at the bottom by protesters, "The 99%," and occupied at the top by The One Percent, those who kill economies for a profit.
It's easy to target Grossman. But Vultures can only feast when the system kills, when, for easy profits, economies are turned into rotting carcasses.
****
Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, released this week in the US and Canada by Penguin.
You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here.
WBAI will launch Palast's new book in New York City on December 5. Get your tickets here.
Get info here on these tour cities:
Chicago - Nov 28 & 29
Madison - Nov 30
Albuquerque - Dec 1
Santa Fe - Dec 2
New York - Dec 5
Washington, DC - Dec 6
Houston - Dec 8
Baltimore - Dec 9
Burlington VT - Dec 12
Atlanta - Dec 15
***
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Woman ticketed in late-night vacuuming | NewsOK.com
Woman ticketed in late-night vacuuming
An Oklahoma City woman was cited on an excessive noise complaint after a neighbor called police and said she had been running her vacuum after midnight for more than an hour.
A late-night vacuuming session ended with a northwest Oklahoma City woman being cited for excessive noise, according to a police report.
Shelly Lea Armstrong, 42, was cited after her neighbor, Joe Wayne Green, 74, called police on Nov. 15 to report Armstrong had been running a vacuum cleaner in the apartment next door for about an hour after midnight.
According to the report, Armstrong was not using a vacuum when police arrived. Green signed a complaint against his neighbor and police presented Armstrong with a ticket. She was not arrested.
Neither Armstrong nor Green could be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Police said the fine for excessive noise typically is $167.
Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion Inevitable at Fukushima - Infowars
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 22, 2011
On November 17, the architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, was interviewed in Japan. He warned that a “China Syndrome” situation is inevitable at the plant.
Haruo said that considering eight months have passed since the tsunami and the crippling of the nuclear plant without any improvement in the condition of the reactors, it is likely melted fuel has escaped the container vessel and is now burning through the earth.
On September 20, 2011, Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, estimated that material from the nuclear fuel rods may be twelve meters deep underground at reactors one and three.
Haruo said debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. On November 15, tons of radioactive debris reached the Marshall Islands.
If the fuel reaches an underground water source, Haruo explained, it will result in the contamination of water, soil and the sea. More catastrophic, underground super-heated water will ultimately create a massive hydrovolcanic explosion.
Although media in Japan and the alternative media have covered this story over the last few days, it has been uniformly ignored by the corporate media.
Fukushima is no longer news worthy. Instead, the corporate media has turned its attention to Rob Kardashian and Dancing with the Stars and the other major distraction that is likely to persist through the holidays, the re-opened 30 year old murder investigation of actress Natalie Wood.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
25 Worst Internet Passwords
If “password” is your password, chances are you’ve been the victim of a hack attack.
“Password” is the least successful, according to SplashData’s annual list of worst Internet passwords.
The list, notes Mashable.com, is somewhat predictable. Sequences of adjacent numbers or letters on the keyboard, such as “qwerty” and “123456,” and popular names, such as “ashley” and “michael,” all are common choices. Other common choices, such as “monkey” and “shadow,” are harder to explain.
As some websites have begun to require passwords to include both numbers and letters, it makes sense varied choices, such as “abc123″ and “trustno1,” have become popular choices.
SplashData created the rankings based on millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers. Here is the complete list:
- 1. password
- 2. 123456
- 3.12345678
- 4. qwerty
- 5. abc123
- 6. monkey
- 7. 1234567
- 8. letmein
- 9. trustno1
- 10. dragon
- 11. baseball
- 12. 111111
- 13. iloveyou
- 14. master
- 15. sunshine
- 16. ashley
- 17. bailey
- 18. passw0rd
- 19. shadow
- 20. 123123
- 21. 654321
- 22. superman
- 23. qazwsx
- 24. michael
- 25. football
SplashData CEO Morgan Slain urges businesses and consumers using any password on the list to change them immediately.
“Hackers can easily break into many accounts just by repeatedly trying common passwords,” Slain says. “Even though people are encouraged to select secure, strong passwords, many people continue to choose weak, easy-to-guess ones, placing themselves at risk from fraud and identity theft.”
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Swearing Baby Doll? Listen and Decide for Yourself
Swearing Baby Doll? Listen and Decide for Yourself
Updated: Friday, 18 Nov 2011, 9:50 PM MST
Published : Friday, 18 Nov 2011, 9:49 PM MSTPHOENIX - It may be on the top of Christmas wishlists this year -- talking triplet dolls. But one of those triplets may need to get her mouth washed out with soap!
Well a cute little doll is making some noise -- the kind that's raising more than a few eyebrows.
The You and Me Play and Giggle Triplets are a hot toy item of the 2011 holiday season but most of the attention they’re getting has to do with their best feature -- their ability to talk.
We heard that one of the triplets has a potty mouth, so we bought one and took it to other shoppers to see what they thought.
“It just said how you doing witch!”
“It sounded like witch with a b to me!”
“Don’t know if that’s what I was supposed to hear but that’s what I heard.”
“Yeah something that rhymes with witch.”Swearing Baby Doll? Listen and Decide for Yourself: MyFoxPHOENIX.com
In a statement, Toys R Us claims what you're hearing is not swearing, it's baby babble.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Bullet strikes White House window - CNN.com
updated 11:49 AM EST, Wed November 16, 2011Bullets are believed to have hit the exterior window on the south side of the White House on Friday.
Washington (CNN) -- The Secret Service is looking into whether a bullet fired into a window at the White House is connected to a shooting nearby last Friday.STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- No specific concern for the president's safety, a Secret Service official says
- The man being sought had a "direction of interest" toward the president, a law enforcement official says
- The bullets were found on the south side of the White House
- A bullet pierced the historic glass and was stopped by ballistic glass
The bullet was stopped by a bullet-proof window and did not enter the White House, the Secret Service said Wednesday. Authorities also found another round in the exterior of the White House. The bullets were found Tuesday, the Secret Service said.
"A round was stopped by ballistic glass behind the historic exterior glass. One additional round has been found on the exterior of the White House. This damage has not been conclusively connected to Friday's incident, and an assessment of the exterior of the White House is ongoing," a Secret Service statement said.
There is no specific concern for President Barack Obama's safety, a Secret Service official not authorized to speak on the record told CNN.
The bullets were found on the south side of the White House, the official told CNN.
Last Friday night at about 9 p.m., U.S. Park Police and the Secret Service investigated after hearing shots fired about 700 to 800 yards from the White House, the Secret Service statement said.
Within five minutes, officers located a vehicle in the 2300 block of Constitution Avenue. Evidence in the vehicle led to U.S. Park Police obtaining an arrest warrant for Oscar Ortega-Hernandez," described as a 21-year-old Hispanic male, 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds.
A weapon registered to Ortega-Hernandez was found in the car, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.
The Secret Service interviewed people who know Ortega-Hernandez, and determined he had a "direction of interest toward the president and the White House" -- a term that does not suggest a direct specific threat.
Authorities are searching for Ortega-Hernandez, with the FBI, ATF and Metropolitan Police Department all taking part, officials said.
"There's always an outer perimeter and this was on the very outer perimeter of our security," the Secret Service official said. "The gun and car were found within several minutes. We have a lot of security -- a lot of layered security down there and the security worked."
The law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said when shots were heard Friday night, there were reports of tires screeching and cars racing.
CNN's Carol Cratty, Athena Jones and John King contributed to this report.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Why the Milky Way May Be Facing a Midlife Crisis - Yahoo! News
Our Milky Way galaxy and its neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, seem to be going through a midlife crisis.
New research reveals that both galaxies are in the middle of transitioning from young, star-forming regions into older, stagnant ones, a transition that is revealed by the galaxies' color. Generally, such a change comes after two galaxies collide, astronomers said, but this pair seems to be making the shift on its own.
In galaxies, star formation rates and color are closely related. But, analyses of the shade of the Milky Way are surprisingly rare.
A team of Australian astronomers, led by Simon Mutch, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, sought to determine the color the Milky Way and the nearby spiral Andromeda galaxy. [Stunning Photos of Galaxy Collisions]
Too young to feel this old
Instead of the young, active signs they expected, the astronomers determined that both galaxies are not the typical blue or red color, but instead, fall in an in-between state of green.
Scientists have long regarded the Milky Way as a "typical" spiral galaxy, but in regards to color, the galaxy doesn't quite follow the standard model.
"Green galaxies are commonly thought to represent galaxies which are undergoing the transition from being young, dynamic, energetic, star-forming blue galaxies to being old, lethargic red galaxies," Mutch told SPACE.com in an email interview.
"In terms of a human being, this transitional phase could be thought of being akin to a midlife crisis."
Astronomers can't figure out the color of the Milky Way easily by examining it from the inside, because the position of the sun within the galaxy makes it a challenge.
"Determining the state of our own galaxy, while we're stuck inside it, is very difficult to do," Mutch said. "The phrase 'hard to see the forest for the trees' rings true here. When we look at the galaxy, much of it is obscured from our view by intervening gas and dust."
Viewing the Milky Way from the outside
To peek inside, Mutch and his team studied the mass of stars, the rate of star formation and the brightness and color of the stars within the two galaxies. These measurements provide a snapshot of the galactic pair.
The astronomers then modeled how galaxies grow, selecting an evolutionary track that fulfilled several of the properties of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies today.
Now, instead of looking at the galaxy from the inside, the team was able to get a glimpse from the outside instead, which gave them a clear view of the color.
Star formation dominates in blue galaxies, where the glow of young stars gives a galaxy its shine. As the stars die, they explode in supernova blasts that distribute gas throughout the galaxy, which is then recycled into newborn stars.
But galaxies aren't sitting quietly; they are constantly moving in the expanding universe. When galaxies collide, gas flows into the black hole at the newly merged center.
The resulting active galactic nucleus, or AGN, is among the brightest radio signals in the universe, and can be seen across great distances. Because it consumes the gas that baby stars need, the AGN slows star formation, and the galaxy loses its blue hue and gradually shifts to red, the astronomers said.
What caused the midlife crisis?
But the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are shifting from blue to red without a collision, which was a surprising discovery, the researchers explained.
Since they are already slowing down, when they crash into each other in the future, the collision most likely won't generate a new powerhouse.
"Our finding that both the Milky Way and Andromeda are green suggests that there will be little cold gas left in both these galaxies when they merge sometime in the next 5 billion years or so," Mutch said. "They will likely be unable to produce an AGN."
So, why is the Milky Way running out of dust? Mutch isn't sure.
Sometimes black holes will inject large amounts of energy into the surrounding region, Mutch explained. This keeps new gas from being accreted.
"However, we know from observations that the central black hole of our galaxy is not particularly active," Mutch said.
The new color "provides us with an interesting open question as to what exactly is causing the Milky Way and Andromeda to be running out of fuel for producing new stars."
Details of the study were published in the July edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Scientists find two 'sunken islands' off WA - part of Gondwana land link | Perth Now
Narelle Towie Science Reporter
MYSTERIOUS: An image of one of the sunken islands. Source: PerthNowSCIENTISTS have discovered two huge sunken islands in the Indian Ocean west of Perth.The islands, about the size of Tasmania, were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana and are more than 1.5km underwater.
Researchers from the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and the University of Tasmania say the islands were once above water and formed part of the last link between India and Australia.
They made the discovery while mapping the seafloor of the Perth Abyssal Plain.
“The data collected on the voyage could significantly change our understanding of the way in which India, Australia and Antarctica broke off from Gondwana,” University of Sydney geologist Dr Joanne Whittaker said.
The scientists returned to Perth last week after carrying out the complicated task of dredging up hundreds of kilograms of rock samples from the steep slopes of the two islands during a three-week expedition aboard CSIRO vessel Southern Surveyor.
We expected to see common oceanic rocks such as basalt in the dredge, but were surprised to see continental rocks such as granite, gneiss and sandstone containing fossils,” University of Sydney’s chief expedition scientist Dr Simon Williams said.
“A detailed analysis of the rocks dredged up during the voyage will tell us about their age and how they fit into the Gondwana jigsaw.”
The islands, called ‘micro-continents’, were formed when India began to move away from Australia, about 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
They became stranded thousands of kilometres from either coast as the land masses separated, the scientists say.
“The sunken islands charted during the expedition have flat tops, which indicates they were once at sea level before being gradually submerged,” Dr Whittaker said.
“Our preliminary analysis of the magnetic data that we collected could cause us to rethink the plate tectonic story for the whole of the Eastern Indian Ocean,” she said.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Canada eyes Asia after U.S. delays Keystone project | Reuters
Demonstrators carry a giant mock pipeline while calling for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline during a rally in front of the White House in Washington November 6, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts
HONOLULU |
HONOLULU (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Sunday his country will make a bigger push to sell its energy products to Asia after Washington delayed a decision to approve the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline project.
"This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we are able to access Asia markets for our energy products," Harper told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
"That will be an important priority of our government going forward and I indicated that yesterday to the president of China."
The Obama administration recently announced it would study a possible new route for TransCanada Corp's proposed $7 billion pipeline, which could end up killing the project.
Harper reiterated the Canadian government's disappointment and said he remained optimistic the United States would eventually give it the green light.
"It's important to note there has been extremely negative reaction to this decision in the United States," Harper said ahead of a one-on-one meeting with President Barack Obama.
(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
Radiation in Europe: UN nuclear agency mystified by soaring levels | Mail Online
Very low levels of radioactive iodine-131 have been detected throughout Europe, but the particles are not believed to pose a public health risk, the U.N.nuclear agency said on Friday.
NASA have released images of 2,400 stars, known as the Tarantula Nebula, that are producing intense radiation and powerful winds, believed to be the cause for the detection in the atmosphere
Closer look: Known as the Tarantula Nebula, these stars have produced intense radiation say NASA
Outbreak: Unusual levels of iodine-131 have been detected in the Czech Republic and northern Germany
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based U.N. watchdog, said it did not believe the radioactive particles were from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant after its emergency in March.
Professor Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital, said any link with Fukushima was extremely unlikely.
'It is far more likely that the iodine may be as a result of excretion by patients undergoing medical treatment.
'Whilst such patients are carefully controlled, some release of iodine into the environment may be inevitable but would certainly be well below any limits where health detriment would even begin to be an issue for concern," he said.
Blameless: The Fukushima explosion is not believed to be the root cause for the increase in iodine-131 levels
The Czech Republic's nuclear security watchdog said it had tipped off the IAEA after detecting the radiation it thought was coming from abroad but not from a nuclear power plant. It suggested it may come from production of radiopharmaceuticals.
Germany's Environment Ministry said slightly higher levels of radioactive iodine had been measured in the north of the country, ruling out that it came from a nuclear power plant.
Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Sweden also reported traces at very low levels that did not pose a health risk.
Experts said the origin of the radiation - which has been spreading for about two weeks - remained a mystery but could come from many possible sources ranging from medical laboratories or hospitals to nuclear submarines.
Iodine-131, linked to cancer if found in high doses, can contaminate products such as milk and vegetables.
Paddy Regan, a professor of nuclear physics at Britain's University of Surrey, said the suggestion that it may have leaked from a radiopharmaceuticals maker 'sounds very sensible and totally reasonable.'
He said since iodine was used in the treatment of thyroid conditions it was also likely that hospitals in many European countries would have it in their stores.
'It would be very unlikely for it to have come from Fukushima since the accident was so many months ago and iodine-131 has a brief half-life,' he said.
Iodine-131 is a short-lived radioisotope that has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days, the IAEA said.
Massimo Sepielli, head of the nuclear fission unit of Italy's national alternative energy body ENEA said any number of sources could be to blame for the readings.
'It could be coming from the transporting of (nuclear) material, it could come from a hospital ... it could even come from a nuclear submarine, even if it's a more complicated possibility ... but you can't rule that out.'
Officials in Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Finland, France, Britain, Switzerland, Poland and Norway said they had not detected any abnormal radiation levels. Romania's watchdog said there had been no incident at the country's sole nuclear plant.
Austria's Environment Ministry said small levels were measured in the east and north of the Alpine country, saying the estimated dose level for the population was one 40,000th of the dose of radiation received in a transatlantic flight.
In the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, an earthquake followed by a massive tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima plant in Japan, causing a reactor meltdown and leakage of radiation, including of iodine.
In the days and weeks after the accident, tiny amounts of iodine-131 believed to have come from Fukushima were detected as far away as Iceland and other parts of Europe, as well as in the United States.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Duqu Trojan revealed to be shape-shifting killer - Technology & science - Security
Embedded in the code are humorous references to the Showtime show 'Dexter'
By Paul Wagenseil
Security analysts have found more mysterious but fascinating details in the Duqu Trojan, the so-called "son of Stuxnet" discovered just two months ago.
Moscow's Kaspersky Lab got hold of a different variant of Duqu than the original, and found that the Trojan's creators not only may have been working on Duqu since 2007, but seem to have a sense of humor as well.
According to Kaspersky's Alexander Gostev, the Duqu infection vector is customized for each target, and its code contains a joking reference to "Dexter," the long-running Showtime TV series about a morally ambiguous serial killer.
Kaspersky analyzed a spear-phishing email directed at an undisclosed company, which was attacked by Duqu twice in mid-April of this year but did not realize what hit it until recently.
As with the earlier version of Duqu found in September by Hungary's CrySyS lab, the Kaspersky variant used a "dropper" — a separate piece of malware — to burrow into PCs via a font embedded in a Word document. (The Windows vulnerability, which had not previously been known of, has not yet been patched, but there is a workaround.)
The fictitious font is named "Dexter Regular." Buried in the dropper code is the text string, "Copyright 2003 Showtime Inc. All rights reserved. Dexter Regular version 1.00. Dexter is a registered trademark of Showtime Inc." ("Dexter" actually was first broadcast in 2006. None of this implies that Showtime is behind the Duqu Trojan.)
The next step in the Duqu infection pattern is to load a driver into the Windows kernel. Kaspersky found that its driver was compiled in August 2007, while the one found by Crysys was dated March 2008.
"If this information is correct, then the authors of Duqu must have been working on this project for over four years!" Gostev wrote.
If that's true, then Duqu, dubbed the "son of Stuxnet" because of its startling similarity to the military-grade worm that infected and disrupted Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010, may actually be the father of the more famous bug.
There's another Iranian connection as well, according to Gostev. The April attacks on the unnamed company took place just before Iran announced that it had been attacked by a second piece of malware, which Iranian researchers called the "Stars" worm.
Unfortunately, Iran never shared samples of the Stars worm, which led some in the West to suspect it was mere propaganda from the Islamic Republic. (Samples of Stuxnet were distributed worldwide because an Iranian security researcher emailed a copy to a former colleague in the Ukraine.)
But Gostev thinks the Iranians might have found Duqu without realizing it.
"Most probably, the Iranians found a keylogger module that had been loaded onto a system," he wrote. "It's possible that the Iranian specialists found just the keylogger, while the main Duqu module and the dropper (including the documents that contained the then-unknown vulnerability) may have gone undetected."
Perhaps most ominously, there are enough differences among the known variants of Duqu to lead Gostev to suspect that the Trojan's creators are carefully tailoring the malware package for each specific target as needed, if the compilation dates on the main Trojan component are accurate.
"This fact shows that the authors build a separate set of files for each specific victim, and do so right before the attack," Gostev wrote.
Such fine-tuning would make Duqu and its creators more sophisticated and persistent that the so-called "advanced persistent threat" attacks — widely assumed to be coming from China — that have penetrated Western companies over the past few years.
In those cases, spear-phishing emails also provide the infection vector, but the installed malware does not vary from one target to the next.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Kidnapped ballplayer Ramos found alive in Venezuela | Reuters
People stand outside the family house of kidnapped baseball player Wilson Ramos in Valencia November 10, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Hernandez
CARACAS |
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan security forces found kidnapped Major League baseball player Wilson Ramos alive on Friday in mountains near where he was seized, Information Minister Andres Izarra said.
"Baseball player Ramos was found alive by security forces in mountainous area of Montalban, Carabobo state," Izarra said on Twitter.
There were few other details immediately available.
The 24-year-old Washington Nationals catcher was abducted by armed men on Wednesday night while he chatted with friends and relatives at his mother's home in the city of Valencia.
He had been due to play for the local Aragua Tigers during the U.S. off-season.
Kidnappings, armed robberies and murders are common in Venezuela, where worries about personal security routinely top surveys of voters' concerns before a presidential election next October.
Ramos' case particularly shocked this baseball-mad nation, putting huge pressure on the authorities to find him. He is one of the many players from Venezuela who have found stardom and wealth playing baseball in the United States.
Ramos is considered one of the more highly regarded catching prospects in baseball. He had a .267 batting average with 15 home runs and 52 runs batted in for the Nationals during the 2011 season, his first in the major leagues.
(Additional reporting by Mario Naranjo; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Motorcycle Powered by Sewage, Has Toilet for Seat | NBC Los Angeles
Seat is a toilet. Seriously.
By Greg Wilson
| Friday, Nov 11, 2011 | Updated 10:21 AM PST
A new motorcycle that has a toilet for a seat and runs on sewage just completed a 600-mile trek across Japan.The three-wheeled vehicle, developed by Japanese toilet maker Toto, features a toilet for a seat and has a giant roll of toilet paper mounted on the back that flutters in the breeze as the bike cruises along.
The eco-friendly, three-wheel Neo runs on biogas produced from sewage and was built by Japanese toilet maker Toto. It has a (non-working) toilet for a seat and a giant roll of toilet paper mounted on the back.
While the bike is not for sale and not designed for mass production, Toto hopes it will promote um, renewable energy. The bike's fuel is produced from a combination of household and livestock waste, broken down and fermented, company spokesman Kenji Fujita said. "Although the seat of the bike is indeed a toilet, it is not for actual use," Fujita told Reuters. "The fuel is eco-friendly biogas, stored in the tanks on the back."
"It's a surprisingly nice way to travel."
The motorcycle can reach 45 miles per hour.
Ichie Tanaka, one of six people who rode the Neo across Japan during the three-week tour, said she was relieved the journey was over. "At first when I saw the bike, I was taken aback. But after riding it, I found it quite interesting," she said. "It doesn't hurt at all and is actually quite comfortable to sit on."
PBS story on Safecast
Earlier this year Miles O’Brien and Xeni Jardin joined us in Japan to learn a bit about Safecast and joined us on a trip through Fukushima – I blogged about the day when it happened. They were working on a piece for PBS which aired in the US tonight. The full segment is viewable above, and the transcript is available here. There is also a accessory story about some of the abandoned pets we saw on the trip. These are fantastic pieces that really capture what we’re trying to do with Safecast.
Also, here’s a related piece where Miles tells Hari Sreenivasan a bit about Safecast’s hacker roots.
Super Strong 'Mighty Mouse' Created By Swiss Scientists | Wild Nature - Scitech
LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Swiss scientists created super-strong mice, with muscles twice as strong as those of normal mice, by tweaking a gene.
The "Mighty Mouse" is stronger, faster and can run twice the distance of ordinary mice before showing signs of fatigue, according to a team of scientists from the Laboratory of Integrative Systems Physiology, in Lausanne.
The team, working in collaboration with scientists from the University of Lausanne and California's Salk Institute, created the super mice by reducing the function of a natural inhibitor -- called NCoR1 -- which they believe may be responsible for how strong and powerful muscles can be.
Without the inhibitor, the muscle tissue developed much more effectively, according to the study, published in the journal Cell. Similar results also were observed in worms.
If scientists can replicate the effect in humans, they may be able to use the technique to successfully treat age-related or genetically-caused muscle degeneration.
"This could be used to combat muscle weakness in the elderly, which leads to falls and contributes to hospitalizations," researcher Johan Auwerx said. "In addition, we think that this could be used as a basis for developing a treatment for genetic muscular dystrophy."
However, if the results are confirmed in humans, the scientists warned that it may also attract interest from athletes.
"It will be important for anti-doping authorities to monitor that these treatments are not used in an unauthorized manner," Auwerx added.
The Government Wants to Seize Your Vitamins : Personal Liberty Digest
November 11, 2011 by Chip Wood
PHOTOS.COMThe Food and Drug Administration has drafted a proposal to regulate what it calls “new dietary ingredients.”
No matter how many times you beat back a Federal power grab, it is almost impossible to kill the monster. Like the most terrifying villain in the worst horror movie you’ve ever seen, it keeps coming back to life and threatening the townspeople.
Consider the efforts by the Food and Drug Administration to make it impossible for you to buy the vitamins you want. The FDA first tried to make many supplements illegal in the early 1990s. But its overzealous persecution of vitamin makers (I was one of them) caused millions of consumers to demand that Congress block the FDA.
As a result, in 1994 Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). While the law was far from perfect (what Federal legislation ever is?), it did protect the right to take the supplements of our choice. The only way the FDA could intrude was if it could prove a supplement was unsafe. I don’t know of a single case in which that happened. So for 17 years, those of us who take vitamins to protect our health were safe from government meddlers.
Unfortunately, there was a dangerous loophole in that 1994 law. While supplements that existed at the time were protected by law, the FDA was given the authority to regulate any new ingredients that were introduced after Oct. 15, 1994.
What happened? At first, nothing did. For 17 years, the FDA took no action.
That’s been a good thing, because for 17 years the dietary supplement industry continued to innovate. It discovered new ingredients and formulations and found better ways to extract and concentrate the most effective natural ingredients. As a result, millions of consumers benefited. They protected their hearts and arteries, found relief from joint pain, improved their memory, protected their prostate and much more.
Meanwhile, some deadly dangers did exist. Pathogens like E. coli in food kill at least 2,000 people every year. Acetaminophen, the painkiller in Tylenol and other drugs, is known to kill hundreds more. An FDA researcher estimated that there may have been more than 27,000 deaths linked to the use of Vioxx before the FDA finally took the drug off the market.
Now, the FDA wants to act like the past 17 years never happened. The agency has drafted a proposal to regulate what it calls “new dietary ingredients.” If this proposal is implemented, some of the most effective nutrients you take will be pulled from the market. Nutrients like resveratrol, ubiquinol CoQ10, bacopa, strontium and more.
That’s not all. Under these guidelines, the FDA can define almost anything as a new dietary ingredient. For example:
- If a supplement includes more of an ingredient than was used 17 years ago (even something like vitamin C), it’s new.
- If an ingredient uses a different extraction process (like baking or fermentation), it’s new.
- If a supplement uses an ingredient at a different “life stage” (such as using ripe rather than non-ripe apples), it’s new.
- If a supplement duplicates an ingredient in a laboratory rather than extracting it from the food (even though it’s chemically identical), it’s new.
- And if a probiotic formula includes a strain of bacteria that wasn’t found in yogurt 17 years ago, it’s new.
What would happen to these “new” ingredients? The manufacturers would have to take them off the market until they could prove the ingredients are safe — even if those ingredients have been safely used for 17 years.
What kind of proof is the FDA demanding? According to the guidelines, many companies would have to conduct animal studies using a dosage that’s 1,000 times the typical dose.
I’m not kidding. The FDA wants vitamin makers to do studies for a full year, at 1,000 times the typical dose.
So a fish oil manufacturer would have to conduct a one-year study in which animals are force-fed the human equivalent of 240,000 milligrams of fish oil each and every day. Do you think this outrageous overdose might injure or kill its victim? Of course it could. And that would give the FDA all the excuse it needed to outlaw any product that contained it.
But wait, it gets even worse. If one fish oil manufacturer performed such a study and it passed, it doesn’t mean that other fish oil makers can use the same data. No, sir. They are still required to go out and do their own studies before they’re allowed to sell their product.
These studies are very expensive. A study like the one above typically costs $100,000 to $200,000 to perform. Multiply that by several ingredients in several products and you get an idea of the cost.
Say a company carries six products containing six ingredients each. It would cost between $3.6 million and $7.2 million in studies before that company could even offer the products for sale. For a larger company offering 50 products or more, the costs would be astronomical.
Even if the company did all of that, every penny of those new and higher costs would be passed on to you, the consumer.
Anyone on a tight budget (and that’s almost all of us these days) would find the supplements they rely on becoming prohibitively expensive — if they were even on the market anymore.
Few supplement makers will be able to afford these studies. Many of them will be forced out of business. The ones that remain would still be at the mercy of the FDA. That’s because there are no requirements for the FDA to approve anything. It can approve or reject anything it wants. In the past, it has rejected the majority of ingredients submitted to it.
That means most of the nutrients you buy today will be pulled from the market and never return. Those that do return will be a lot more expensive — or may be available only as prescription drugs.
This is a blatant abuse of power. What the FDA is doing is performing an end-run around the existing law. According to the law, the FDA has to prove a dietary supplement is unsafe for it to be taken off the market. These new guidelines turn that on its head. They are clearly not what Congress intended.
Fortunately, these FDA guidelines have not yet been finalized. All Federal agencies are required to give the public an opportunity to comment on a draft before it is made final. In this case, the FDA has given interested parties until Dec. 1 to comment on the draft. That means there’s a small window of opportunity for you to voice your disapproval.
Frankly, I wouldn’t bother commenting to the FDA. The process is deliberately cumbersome. Those unelected bureaucrats don’t care what you think, anyway.
Instead, please contact the people you do elect: your Congressman and your two U.S. Senators. They have the power to rein in the FDA, and they have done so before — when enough voters complained.
We may not be able to kill the monster, but we can drive it back into its cave. Whether we do is up to you.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
–Chip Wood
Thursday, November 10, 2011
'Fracking' chemical found in town's aquifer - US news
By Abrahm Lustgarten
As the country awaits results from a nationwide safety study on the natural gas drilling process of fracking, a separate government investigation into contamination in a place where residents have long complained that drilling fouled their water has turned up alarming levels of underground pollution.
A pair of environmental monitoring wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new water test results released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The findings are consistent with water samples the EPA has collected from at least 42 homes in the area since 2008, when ProPublica began reporting on foul water and health concerns in Pavillion and the agency started investigating reports of contamination there.
Last year -- after warning residents not to drink or cook with the water and to ventilate their homes when they showered -- the EPA drilled the monitoring wells to get a more precise picture of the extent of the contamination.
The Pavillion area has been drilled extensively for natural gas over the last two decades and is home to hundreds of gas wells. Residents have alleged for nearly a decadethat the drilling -- and hydraulic fracturing in particular -- has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline. Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment, loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants.
The gas industry -- led by the Canadian company EnCana, which owns the wells in Pavillion -- has denied that its activities are responsible for the contamination. EnCana has, however, supplied drinking water to residents.
The information released yesterday by the EPA was limited to raw sampling data: The agency did not interpret the findings or make any attempt to identify the source of the pollution. From the start of its investigation, the EPA has been careful to consider all possible causes of the contamination and to distance its inquiry from the controversy around hydraulic fracturing.
Still, the chemical compounds the EPA detected are consistent with those produced from drilling processes, including one -- a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) -- widely used in the process of hydraulic fracturing. The agency said it had not found contaminants such as nitrates and fertilizers that would have signaled that agricultural activities were to blame.
The wells also contained benzene at 50 times the level that is considered safe for people, as well as phenols -- another dangerous human carcinogen -- acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel.
The EPA said the water samples were saturated with methane gas that matched the deep layers of natural gas being drilled for energy. The gas did not match the shallower methane that the gas industry says is naturally occurring in water, a signal that the contamination was related to drilling and was less likely to have come from drilling waste spilled above ground.
EnCana has recently agreed to sell its wells in the Pavillion area to Texas-based oil and gas company Legacy Reserves for a reported $45 million, but has pledged to continue to cooperate with the EPA's investigation. EnCana bought many of the wells in 2004, after the first problems with groundwater contamination had been reported.
The EPA's research in Wyoming is separate from the agency's ongoing national study of hydraulic fracturing's effect on water supplies, and is being funded through the Superfund cleanup program.
The EPA says it will release a lengthy draft of the Pavillion findings, including a detailed interpretation of them, later this month.
OccupyCal folks get pummeled by Police - via TYPEWRITER.
10 November 2011home
This is video, reportedly shot during the OccupyCal protests yesterday, November 9, of Berkeley, California police officers driving their batons into the stomachs of protesters at UC Berkeley, who appear to be doing nothing but linking arms and voicing opinions. The officers in the middle are striking the two women directly in front of them square in the gut, ruthlessly and mercilessly. I don’t see any projectiles thrown or anything else that could possibly justify the brutality we’re seeing here. Unless cops just don’t like the concept of peaceful protests.
Reblog this, folks.
(h/t katiesilorio, et al)
CNBC Cans Debate Poll Because Ron Paul Was Leading
Network Managing Editor claims having well organized political support constitutes “gaming”
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
November 10, 2011CNBC pulled an online poll 25 minutes after last night’s GOP debate, reasoning that “one candidate” was leading by a large margin – that candidate was, of course, Ron Paul.
As the following video shows, Ron Paul was ahead of the pack by a large margin, before the poll was unceremoniously pulled from the CNBC site altogether and replaced with a generic article titled “Who won the debate – Attendees weigh in”:
CNBC Managing Editor Allen Wastler issued the following statement explaining the reason the poll was removed:
Gamed Poll…So We Took It Down
We had a poll up from our Republican Presidential Debate asking readers who they thought won. One candidate was leading by such a margin that it became obvious the polling wasn’t so much a reading of our audience, but of the Internet prowess of this particular candidate’s political organization. We have therefore taken the poll down. Yes, we’ve gone through this exercise before.
Wastler included a link to a previous statement from 2007, where exactly the same thing happened.
In an “open letter to the Ron Paul faithful”, Wastler sardonically exclaimed “Congratulations. You folks are obviously well-organized and feel strongly about your candidate and I can’t help but admire that”
“But you also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest “show of hands” — it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum.” Wastler added.
Of course, CNBC provides no actual proof that the latest poll was “gamed”.
Any serious online poll restricts voting to one per IP address. Waslter bemoans the fact that Paul’s online supporters came in droves to vote, yet he does not consider why supporters of the other candidates did not do the same.
Brandon Smith of Alt-Market has a great commentary piece on the pulled poll, wherein he points out that punishing Ron Paul and his supporters for being highly motivated is asinine:
“What margin of success does CNBC consider “realistic” for a presidential candidate?” Smith writes. “I mean, is it really necessary for you to punish Ron Paul for being a popular candidate, or to punish his supporters for being well organized and showing up for the vote? Do you not see the half-assed absurdity of your claim that Ron Paul won by “too much”?”
As we have previously documented, it seems that a poll is only deemed legitimate by the mainstream media if Ron Paul doesn’t win it. If Paul is successful, the poll is automatically considered null and void.
This is to be expected given the fact that there is an admitted media talking point to ignore Ron Paul’s campaign and try and write him off entirely.
The mainstream media sponsored debates are a prime example. A University of Minnesota study recently confirmed the fact that Ron Paul has been given the least time to speak OUT OF ALL THE CANDIDATES at the debates, despite national polls consistently proving he is a genuine top tier candidate.
When Paul is given the opportunity to speak, he is faced with questions that directly insinuate his ideas are practically insane.
As Jack Hunter points out, during last night’s CNBC debate, the station flashed up a graphic indicating that tuition prices have gone up nearly 500% since the inception of student loans and American student debt is now $1 trillion. The anchors then proceeded to grill Paul on his plans to phase out the Federal government’s involvement in student loans, as if he were crazy to suggest the system was failing!
Paul was even interrupted mid-speech by one anchor asking him “how are students going to pay for education”, to which the Congressman shot back “The same way you pay for computers and cell phones.”, explaining that having a market place with healthy competition will naturally bring costs down and improve quality.
Watch the video (specific section at 7 mins):
It is quite clear that Ron Paul is maintaining a top tier status IN SPITE OF the mainstream media’s best efforts to derail his campaign.
With the first caucuses impending, Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton said Wednesday that the Congressman must finish in the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire in order to maintain a strong position:
“We need to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, because it’s very important for perception,” Benton told POLITICO after the Michigan GOP debate. “It’s also important because the voters in those states are very adept and astute at evaluating candidates, so we need to be in the top three in those states, no question about it.”
He continued: “But we’re setting up organizations in caucus states across the country and we have a real plan to win the delegates necessary to be the Republican nominee. I don’t think anyone, outside of perhaps Mitt Romney, can say that.”
GOP leaders in Iowa share Benton’s view that Ron Paul is the only other candidate aside from Romney with a strong enough core of supporters to carry him through the caucuses.
But hey, according to CNBC and the rest of the mainstream media frothbots, having dedicated and organized supporters renders a candidate unworthy to be even considered for the nomination.
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.