Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, Theft, Abuse
May 21st, 2014Via: CBS:
When asked why he would risk his job and speak publicly, Detective Thomas Fiore considered the question carefully before answering.
“People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”
Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.
“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.
Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.
“I was instructed that I was to stop conducting investigations pertaining to controlled substance discrepancies,” he recalled.
He said he was personally told to stop investigating them by the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Vincent DeGennaro.
“I have no idea why,” he said. “He’s the chief of staff he doesn’t have to tell me why.”
China and Russia Sign $400 Billion Gas Deal
May 21st, 2014Via: USA Today:
China and Russia signed off on a huge gas deal worth as much as $400 billion Wednesday that heralds a pivot east for Russian business amid ongoing tensions with the West over Ukraine, though few details of the deal were made public.
The 30-year gas-export contract, seen as a move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to aggressively shift the country’s commercial interests east amid mounting sanctions from the United States and Europe, was signed as the Russian leader has enjoyed a warm welcome in China, where the two countries have inked a raft of agreements during his ongoing, two-day visit.
The price China is paying for Russia’s gas was not disclosed but the value of the agreement is thought to be somewhere near $400 billion. The deal, which will see Gazprom gas flow to China from a pipeline in Siberia, was confirmed by China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation.
The eleventh-hour deal represents “good news for both countries,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at People’s University of China, in Beijing. “The political requirements on both sides are so powerful they can overcome the concerns on price,” he said. “This is a political action by both sides.”
Talks for the deal had been going on for more than a decade and will see Russia export up to 38 billion cubic meters of gas per year, for 30 years, starting in 2018. The export agreement is significant because it will permit Russia to diversify the market for its gas away from Europe, which has threatened sanctions over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.
Israeli Forces Shoot Dead Two Unarmed Palestinian Teenagers from 200 Meters
May 21st, 2014Via: Al Jazeera:
Defence for Children International (DCI) posted the two-minute video on YouTube, which it said was edited from six hours of surveillance footage from fixed security cameras at a Palestinian-owned business that overlooked the scene.
The group said the video showed that troops had committed “unlawful killings where neither child presented a direct and immediate threat to life at the time of their shooting”.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said the images back its findings that troops killed the teens without cause by firing live rounds from more than 200 metres away. The soldiers were in “zero danger” at the time, said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem.
Palestinian hospital officials said Mohammad Abu Thaher and Nadim Nuwara were both shot in the heart. Officials originally gave their respective ages as 22 and 17, but later said they were 16 and 17.
Inside Italy’s Secret Toxic Waste Crisis
May 21st, 2014Via: Journeyman Pictures:
Class Action Suit Against Google for Ripping Off Website Operators
May 20th, 2014This happened to me back in 2006. *sigh* So this is definitely one for the News-Not-News file folder…
I used to recommend AdBlock Plus, which even blocks ads on my own site. More recently, Google has apparently bought off AdBlock Plus developers to cause the software to not block Google ads by default. You will want to go into Options – Filter Preferences and uncheck, “Allow some non-intrusive advertising.” After that, AdBlock Plus should work properly against Google again.
Via: Hagens Berman:
Hagens Berman, a consumer rights law firm, today filed a national class-action lawsuit against Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), claiming the company unlawfully denies payments to thousands of website owners and operators who place ads on their sites sold through Google AdWords.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Google abruptly cancels website owners’ AdSense accounts often without explanation shortly before payments are due, and refuses to pay for the ads that ran prior to the cancelation.
“This wrongful practice has sparked numerous bitter complaints from website owners across the Web, with some reporting losses reaching thousands of dollars a pop,” said Steve Berman, attorney representing consumers and founding partner of Hagens Berman. “What we believe to be true from our research is that Google’s practice is likely hurting thousands of website owners and operators who feel they have no way to fight giant company like Google.”
According to the suit, Google’s popular AdSense program translates annually to billions of dollars payable to website operators that host its ads via AdSense. Google’s AdSense advertising program induces website operators to host space for ads on their websites. Each time a visitor to the website interacts with the ad, the ad publisher who hosts the ad earns payment.
The complaint claims that the contracts and terms of service Google requires web publishers to sign are unconscionably one-sided, giving Google free reign to embark on what the suit claims are actions devoid of good faith or fair dealing.
“We have heard from Web publishers who tell us the same thing: Google cuts them off right before a payment is due, and stonewalls them when they object,” Berman said. “Google’s company motto is ‘Don’t be evil.’ Knowing what we know, I think they have a lot of work to do to be true to that goal.”
“Why I Was Forced to Shut Down Lavabit”
May 20th, 2014Via: Guardian:
If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did – standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people’s defense against an abuse of the state’s power.
China Bans Use of Microsoft’s Windows 8 on Government Computers
May 20th, 2014To save energy. *wink*
Via: Reuters:
China has banned government use of Windows 8, Microsoft Corp’s latest operating system (OS), in a blow to the U.S. technology company which has long been plagued by sales woes in the country.
The Central Government Procurement Center issued the ban on installing Windows 8 on government computers as part of a notice on the use of energy-saving products, posted on its website last week.
Focus Fusion
May 20th, 2014Via: Indiegogo:
The goal of Focus Fusion is to provide clean, safe and affordable energy around the globe.
Scientists at LPP Fusion, led by Chief Scientist Eric Lerner, are just one step away from this groundbreaking technology and we need your help for the final push.
With only 1/1000th the budget of the huge government funded projects, we are closer to affordable, unlimited, and ultra-clean energy than anyone else in the world.
Related: Focus Fusion Society
Illuminating Neuron Activity in 3-D
May 20th, 2014Via: MIT News:
Researchers at MIT and the University of Vienna have created an imaging system that reveals neural activity throughout the brains of living animals. This technique, the first that can generate 3-D movies of entire brains at the millisecond timescale, could help scientists discover how neuronal networks process sensory information and generate behavior.
The team used the new system to simultaneously image the activity of every neuron in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, as well as the entire brain of a zebrafish larva, offering a more complete picture of nervous system activity than has been previously possible.
“Looking at the activity of just one neuron in the brain doesn’t tell you how that information is being computed; for that, you need to know what upstream neurons are doing. And to understand what the activity of a given neuron means, you have to be able to see what downstream neurons are doing,” says Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and one of the leaders of the research team. “In short, if you want to understand how information is being integrated from sensation all the way to action, you have to see the entire brain.”
Russia Close to $400 Billion Gas Pipeline Deal in Pivot to China
May 20th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
Russia is close to signing a decades-long contract to supply natural gas to China at a price that would value the deal at about $400 billion, according to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev’s boss Vladimir Putin arrives in Shanghai today to try and complete an agreement after more than 10 years of talks. The stumbling block has been price, but with Putin facing trade and financial sanctions from the U.S. and European Union after he annexed Crimea from Ukraine, a deal is seen as probable.
“It’s time we reached an agreement with the Chinese on this issue,” Medvedev said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Moscow yesterday. “It is very likely that there will be a contract, which means long-term contracts.”
OAO Gazprom (OGZD), the world’s largest natural gas producer, aims to sign a contract with China National Petroleum Corp. during the visit, Russian executives and officials have said. China, Russia’s largest trading partner with $94.5 billion of business last year, was the only country in the United Nations Security Council not to censure Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
“We expect the Sino-Russia gas deal to be finally ratified during President Putin’s visit and the pricing terms will not be too demanding for China,” said Simon Powell, head of oil and gas research as CLSA Ltd. in Hong Kong.
