Son of Boston Police Captain Arrested as Possible Terrorist
July 14th, 2015Via: ABC:
The estranged son of a respected Boston police captain was arrested July 4 by FBI agents as part of a counter-terrorism operation against alleged ISIS-inspired domestic terrorists, federal officials told ABC News today.
Alexander Ciccolo, 23, of Adams, Mass., was taken into custody on gun charges after buying two pistols and two rifles from an undercover FBI confidential informant, federal officials said. In a search of his apartment, officials reported they found it loaded with possible bomb-making equipment including a pressure cooker, a variety of chemicals, an alarm clock, along with “attack planning papers” and “jihad” paperwork. FBI agents said he used the name Abu Ali al-Amriki and neighbors said he was a recent convert to Islam.
London Is Now the Global Money-Laundering Centre for the Drug Trade, Says Crime Expert
July 13th, 2015Via: Independent:
The City of London is the money-laundering centre of the world’s drug trade, according to an internationally acclaimed crime expert.
UK banks and financial services have ignored so-called “know your customer” rules designed to curb criminals’ abilities to launder the proceeds of crime, Roberto Saviano warned. Mr Saviano, author of the international bestseller Gomorrah, which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation Camorra, said: “The British treat it as not their problem because there aren’t corpses on the street.”
His warning follows a National Crime Agency (NCA) threat assessment which stated: “We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”
Research Credit: Jb
Boeing Patents Laser-Powered Fusion-Fission Jet Engine for Airplanes, Spacecraft
July 13th, 2015Via: Ars Technica:
Assume the brace position. Boeing has received a patent for, I kid you not, a laser-powered fusion-fission jet propulsion system. Boeing envisions that this system could replace both rocket and turbofan engines, powering everything from spacecraft to missiles to airplanes.
The patent, US 9,068,562, combines inertial confinement fusion, fission, and a turbine that generates electricity. It sounds completely crazy—and it is completely unrealistic given our current mastery of fusion, or lack thereof—but, in the future perhaps, this could be a rather ingenious solution.
To begin with, imagine the silhouette of a big turbofan engine, like you’d see on a commercial jetliner. Somewhere in the middle of the engine there is a fusion chamber, with a number of very strong lasers focused on a single point. A hohlraum (pellet) containing a mix of deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) is placed at this focal point. The lasers are all turned on at the same instant, creating massive pressure on the pellet, which implodes and causes the hydrogen atoms to fuse. (This is called inertial confinement fusion, as opposed to the magnetic confinement fusion that is carried out in a tokamak.)
According to the patent, the hot gases produced by the fusion are pushed out of a nozzle at the back of the engine, creating thrust. But that’s not all! One of the by-products of hydrogen fusion is lots of fast neutrons. In Boeing’s patented design, there is a shield around the fusion chamber that’s coated with a fissionable material (uranium-238 is one example given). The neutrons hit the fissionable material, causing a fission reaction that generates lots of heat.
Finally, there’s some kind of heat exchanger system that takes the heat from the fission reaction, and uses that heat (via a heated liquid or gas) to drive a turbine. This turbine generates the electricity that powers the lasers. Voilà: a fusion-fission rocket engine thing.
New Zealand: “HPV Vaccine Has Done This to My Child”
July 12th, 2015Via: Youtube / Amber Smith:
This was a very hard video to post, my 12 yr old daughter was fine before her vaccine, now this is her life. We live in New Zealand and I thought our healthcare system was ok, we have been left to deal with this ourselves. I’m showing this because I want people to know what damage this vaccine can and does cause. Please research before deciding. I didn’t.
Related: European Union medicines agency investigating reports of rare but severe reactions
On Thursday, Wind Power Generated 140% of Denmark’s Electricity Demand
July 11th, 2015Via: Guardian:
So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.
On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.
Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.
All-Electric Airbus E-Fan Aircraft Crosses the English Channel
July 10th, 2015Via: The Verge:
This adorable little two-seater isn’t about to replace Airbus’ airliners, but the E-Fan — a light aircraft powered by lithium-ion batteries and two electric motors — just set a notable aviation milestone by crossing the English Channel. The 36-minute event took place earlier today, departing from Lydd, England and arriving in Calais, France.
More: Airbus Group’s E-Fan Technology Demonstrator
Blood & Fog: The Military’s Germ Warfare Tests in San Francisco
July 10th, 2015Via: Discover:
The Nuremberg Code was drafted in 1947 following the appalling revelations of human experimentation committed in Nazi concentration camps. The overarching goal of the Code was to establish a set of rules for the ethical conduct of research using human subjects, guaranteeing that the rights and welfare of such participants would be protected. Two important principles guide and define this Code: the concept of voluntary, informed consent and that no experiment shall be conducted in which “there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur.”
Just four short years later, the government of the United States would violate the Code as it undertook one of the largest human experiments in history, spraying the city of San Francisco with a microbe, Serratia marcescens, in a simulated germ warfare attack.
Jade Helm: No Media Allowed
July 9th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
Jade Helm 15, the controversial Special Operations exercise that spawned a wave of conspiracy theories about a government takeover, will open next week without any media allowed to observe it, a military spokesman said.
Embedded reporters won’t be permitted at any point during the exercise, in which military officials say that secretive Special Operations troops will maneuver through private and publicly owned land in several southern states. Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a spokesman for Army Special Operations Command, said his organization is considering allowing a small number of journalists to view selected portions of the exercise later this summer, but nothing is finalized.
“All requests from the media for interviews and coverage of U.S. Army Special Operations Command personnel, organizations and events are assessed for feasibility and granted when and where possible,” Lastoria said in a statement released Wednesday to The Washington Post. “We are dedicated to communicating with the public, while balancing that against the application of operations security and other factors.”
NYSE HALTED
July 8th, 2015[???/Coincidence] “Bizarre: New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street Journal, and United Airlines all downed by technical glitches”
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[Related?] United Airlines Ground Stop, “Automation Issue”
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Update: BloombergTV Live: DHS and FBI Treating Outage as Internal Technical Issue with NYSE
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Update: BloombergTV Live: Orderly Trading Continues on Other Market Systems
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Yep. Technical difficulties. Sure. In other news, China’s stocks have been nosediving for days. Also, China Bans Stock Sales by Major Shareholders for Six Months.
Via: CNBC:
Trading in all symbols was halted on the New York Stock Exchange floor Wednesday due to an apparent technical issue.
“NYSE/NYSE MKT has temporarily suspended trading in all symbols. Additional information will follow as soon as possible,” the NYSE said in a statement on its status page.
The exchange was investigating the issue that caused the halt, Reuters reported, citing a source. Trading stopped around 11:30 a.m. ET.
The NYSE said all open orders would be canceled, according to Reuters. The issues seemed to be limited to the NYSE floor, and the exchange said it did not affect the NYSE Arca and NYSE Amex/Arca Options.
Heroin Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Nearly Quadrupled Between 2002 and 2013
July 8th, 2015One more for your herniating Mission Accomplished file folder.
Via: Reuters:
Heroin overdose deaths in the United States nearly quadrupled between 2002 and 2013, fueled by lower costs as well as increased abuse of prescription opiate painkillers, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.
The report found that heroin use increased by 63 percent from 2002 to 2013. In 2013, roughly 517,000 people reported that they had used heroin in the last year, a 150 percent increase from 2007. As many as 8,200 people died from heroin overdoses in 2013 alone.
Such medicines, which include Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet, increase individuals’ susceptibility to heroin addiction, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters.
“Everything we see points to more accessible, less-expensive heroin all over the country,” Frieden said of the joint report by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration which analyzed national survey data on drug use from 2002 to 2013.
The report found that nearly all people (96 percent) who use heroin also use multiple other substances, and that the strongest risk factor for heroin abuse is prescription opiate abuse. In recent years people in nearly every demographic group are using the drug more: For example, heroin use has doubled among women.
According to the report, individuals who abuse prescription opiates have a 40 times greater risk of abusing heroin. The increased use has fueled sharp increases in overdose deaths.
