cryptogon.com

It was not immediately clear whether Israel held Syrian troops or rebels responsible for what a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said had been a deliberate attack on Israeli patrols in the occupied territory.

Circumstances surrounding the death of Berezovsky, one of the most politically influential of Russia’s oligarchs until a bitter falling out with the Kremlin, were not immediately known, and authorities in the United Kingdom said it was being investigated.

“His death is currently being treated as unexplained and a full inquiry is under way,” Thames Valley Police said in a statement.

Officers, including specialized investigators, are conducting a number of searches “as a precaution.”

The body of Berezovsky was still at the house early Sunday after being discovered Saturday afternoon, the statement said.

Police did not detail why authorities were searching for possible chemical, nuclear, radiological or biological evidence.

Berezovsky, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, blamed the Kremlin for the 2006 death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died after being poisoned by the radioactive material polonium-210. In a deathbed statement, Litvinenko blamed Putin, an accusation the Kremlin strongly denied.

For years, Berezovsky bankrolled the effort of Litvinenko’s widow to push for an inquest into her husband’s death.

The study’s numbers claim that of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones. However, only 4.5 billion have access to a toilet.

In the past, you could get away with avoiding this reality and still manage to be a productive scientist. It was simply a well-known secret that certain parts of a scientific career were expected to be inefficient. Today however, there is an entire generation of young scientists who are taught to believe that this is just how science works, and it’s doing incredible harm to us all.

Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates.

There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah.

Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.

“Cancer statistics are hard to come by, since only 50 per cent of the healthcare in Iraq is public,” Dr Salah Haddad of the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion told Al Jazeera. “The other half of our healthcare is provided by the private sector, and that sector is deficient in their reporting of statistics. Hence, all of our statistics in Iraq must be multiplied by two. Any official numbers are likely only half of the real number.”

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In July 2010, Busby released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah since the 2004 attacks. The report also showed the sex ratio had become skewed to 86 boys born to every 100 girls, together with a spread of diseases indicative of genetic damage – similar to, but of far greater incidence than Hiroshima.

Dr Alani has visited Japan where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between one and two per cent. Alani’s log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the effected areas of Japan.

In March 2013, Dr Alani informed Al Jazeera that the incident rates of congenital malformations remained around 14 percent.

But they put off voting on a crucial new proposal until later this weekend — one that would confiscate a stunning 22 percent to 25 percent of uninsured deposits over 100,000 euros through a new tax to be placed on account holders in one of the nation’s most troubled banks.

And so, going into the weekend ahead of a Monday deadline imposed by the European Central Bank, it appeared there was still no immediate path to a lifeline of 10 billion euros, or $13 billion, that Cyprus needs to keep its banks from collapsing.

Monday is a national holiday, but banks are supposed to reopen on Tuesday for the first time in more than a week, and there is widespread fear of a classic bank run, as investors of all sizes drain their accounts.

After 780 hours of political cable news, 6000 hours of live financial television, 45 cities, 2 national jobs tours, 277,963 signatures to amend The Constitution, 245 pages of book and a promotion tour for Greedy Bastards, I was exhausted.

It was a three-tour Iraq combat Marine and his war-protestor wife who pointed me in a new direction. They were guests on my show last June discussing how they were bootstrapping their way to operate a high-yield hydroponic organic farm that uses 90% less water and produces three times as much food. It was a business that promised to cure food deserts – areas where access to fresh and healthy food is limited – while having the potential to create jobs for thousands of combat veterans, each of whom was the beneficiary of $1 million in military training while on active duty.

The couple even created a school where they trained other veterans to open their own farms or establish their own organic businesses in pursuit of a dream of creating thousands of American jobs and feeding millions of people.

They garnered the support of a senior military General and his wife, who were so inspired that they decided to do anything they could to help other veterans find meaningful work healing communities by teaching them how to build and run their own sustainable food-producing systems.

I returned late last summer to where I grew up in the Adirondack Mountains, I imagined those veterans partnering with industry leaders, scientists, Hollywood producers and Texas oilmen in a project that could create millions of domestic jobs while solving America’s core challenges: sustainable food, health, energy, education and infrastructure. The model had been set by my grandparents’ generation when returning World War II Veterans re-built America into a modern age.

From Imagination to Reality…

Since I left MSNBC and dylanratigan.com last June, I first started working with these inspiring visionary veterans on the phone, and then in person to expand their dream and help turn it into a reality. The process alone has restored meaning and purpose in my life, my health and spirit have taken on a renewed vitality and, because of my time with you, I have had the opportunity and privilege to literally put my money where my mouth is.