Archive for June, 2011
China: Central Bank Finds Officials Stole Billions
June 23rd, 2011Via: MarketWatch: Corrupt Chinese officials and employees of state-owned companies have absconded with about 800 billion yuan ($123.7 billion) of public money over 15 years through 2008, much of it making its way to the U.S., Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, according to Chinese news reports citing a central bank study. The 67-page report, completed […]
Sinister Public-Private Partnership to Spy on Web Users
June 23rd, 2011Via: Guardian: When President Eisenhower left office in 1960, he provided the American people with a warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Sixty years later, […]
Taiwan: Companies Manufacturing Food Products Containing Toxic Diethylhexyl Phthalate
June 23rd, 2011Profits. Via: Herald Sun: CHINA and South Korea have both banned imports of certain food and drinks from Taiwan in a fast-expanding regional scare over contamination with a chemical usually used in plastics. The Philippines and Hong Kong have also limited imports or sales of foodstuffs from the export-dependent island after the alarm was raised […]
DARPA: Mind’s Eye Program
June 23rd, 2011Via: SRI: SRI International is leading a team to design a visual intelligence system, known as VIGIL (Visual Intelligence Grounded in Learning), to enable a new era in unmanned robotic surveillance. The SRI team is being funded through the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Mind’s Eye program. VIGIL will be integrated with other […]
At New NYC Hotel, a Robot Handles the Luggage
June 22nd, 2011Via: AP: Forget the bellhop. Meet the luggage robot. It’s the first of several high-tech, sleek amenities guests encounter at the Yotel, a new hotel that aims to provide a trendy stay at an affordable price. … The 20-foot-tall robotic arm at the entrance automatically stores bags in lockers for guests who want to wonder […]
Thailand: Corporate-Funded “People’s” Movement
June 22nd, 2011Via: Land Destroyer: So then it is alarming when these nefarious agents of the global corporate-financier elite have now aligned against yet another nation, Thailand. More alarming is how the progressive activists committed to Thaksin and his political party, are seemingly so profoundly ignorant of the nature of the movement they are helping to propel […]
Infant Mortality Rates and Vaccine Doses Tend to Increase Together
June 22nd, 2011If you are a university faculty member who would like to comment on this piece, email me your comment from your university email account. I will publish your comment here. Know that your comment will appear in full, along with your name. Via: Human & Experimental Toxicology: These findings demonstrate a counter-intuitive relationship: nations that […]
Krokodil: The Drug that Eats Junkies
June 22nd, 2011Via: Independent: The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or “crocodile”. It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 […]
When Secret Sats Spy on Us, Monsieur Legault Spies Back
June 22nd, 2011Via: Wired: From mysterious robotic space planes to giant spy satellites the size of school buses, space is teeming with secret American hardware meant to gaze down on insurgents, terrorists and, well, everybody on the third rock from the sun. For mere proles like you and me, it can be hard to get a straight […]
NATO’s First Combat Casualty of the War in Libya Was a Robot
June 22nd, 2011Via: Wired: NATO has suffered its first apparent combat casualty of the three-month-old war in Libya. And it’s a robot. Wing Cmdr. Mike Bracken said the alliance lost contact with the unmanned rotorcraft this morning. “This drone helicopter was performing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over Libya to monitor pro-Gadhafi forces threatening the civilian population,” Bracken […]
