The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act
October 1st, 2013Via: Vote Hemp:
Vote Hemp and the Hemp Industries Association (HIA), the nation’s leading hemp grassroots advocacy organization and industry trade group, respectively, each working to revitalize industrial hemp production and processing in the U.S., are excited to report that Governor Jerry Brown has signed SB 566, the California Industrial Hemp Farming Act. After moving smoothly through the California legislature with strong bi-partisan support, this landmark legislation has now become California law.
Introduced by Senator Mark Leno earlier this year, SB 566 ensures that California is prepared to begin registering hemp farmers once the federal government has given states the green light. The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act will establish a framework for farming the oilseed and fiber varieties of the plant, which are used in a myriad of everyday consumer products, including food, body care, clothing, paper, auto parts, composites, building materials, and bio-fuels. Enforcement and oversight of hemp production would be conducted in concert with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and county agricultural commissioners, as is done with other crops.
“SB 566 demonstrates the real momentum behind the national movement to legalize industrial hemp,” said Eric Steenstra, Executive Director of the Hemp Industries Association. “With Congressional bills to legalize hemp currently in both the House and Senate, California is on the cutting edge, pushing forward with an industrial hemp law that would not only stimulate much needed growth in local business and farming sectors, but ultimately lead the nation toward a federal policy change that would open hemp cultivation to hemp farmers around the country. This will lower our dependence on Canada and China for hemp imports, and empower our agrarian and manufacturing economies to finally tap into one of the fastest growing natural products in the market.”
Mystery Parachuters Dressed in Black Land in Lower Manhattan
October 1st, 2013[???]
Via: NBC:
Police are looking for a pair of parachuters wearing black suits and helmets who landed near the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan early Monday, Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
The parachuters landed on the sidewalk at about 3 a.m. near the Goldman Sachs building on West Street, Kelly said.
It’s not clear what they were doing or where they came from. The FAA is looking into the matter.
Student Loan Defaults Hit Highest Default Rate Level Since 1995
October 1st, 2013Via: Bloomberg:
About one in seven borrowers defaulted on their federal student loans, showing how former students are buckling under higher-education costs in a weak economy.
The default rate, for the first three years that students are required to make payments, was 14.7 percent, up from 13.4 percent the year before, the U.S. Education Department said today. Based on a related measure, defaults are at the highest level since 1995.
Navy Research Blimp Hovering Over Maryland
September 30th, 2013[???]
Via: CBS:
The U.S. Navy research laboratory says the blimp is a government research airship conducting aerial mapping, and that the MZ-3A lighter than air blimp began roaming above the D.C. area on Sept. 21 and can remain stationary for more than 12 hours.
The blimp is mapping in the flight restriction zones around Washington, D.C. It includes places like the Department of Agriculture and some of our major airports like BWI.
Swiss War Game Envisages Invasion by Bankrupt French
September 30th, 2013[???]
Via: Telegraph:
Hordes of bankrupt French invade Switzerland to get their hands on their “stolen” money — such is the imaginary scenario cooked up by the Swiss military in simulations revealed over the weekend.
Carried out in August, the apparently outlandish army exercise was based on the premise of an attack by a financially stricken France split into warring regions, according to Matin Dimanche, the Lausanne-based daily.
One of these, “Saônia,” corresponding to the existing Jura region, was preparing attacks on Switzerland to retrieve money it had apparently swiped from France.
Operation “Duplex-Barbara” went as far as imagining a three-pronged invasion from points near Neufchâtel, Lausanne and Geneva, according to a map published in the Swiss newspaper.
Behind the dastardly raid was a paramilitary organisation dubbed BLD, the Dijon Free Brigade bent on grabbing back “money that Switzerland had stolen from Saônia”.
“For its credibility, the Swiss army must work (to ward against) threats of the 21st century,” Antoine Vielliard, Hauate-Savoie councillor, told Matin Dimanche.
However, Daniel Berger, captain of the Swiss armoured brigade, sought to play down the specificity of the threat.
“The exercise has strictly nothing to do with France, which we appreciate” he told the Swiss press. “It was prepared in 2012, when fiscal relations between both countries were less tense.” “French towns were cited to provide soldiers with a real scale,” he said.
Related: Swiss Transportation Infrastructure Rigged to Blow in Event of Invasion
DARPA’s Plan to Flood the Sea With Drones, Carrying More Drones
September 30th, 2013Via: Wired:
DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency, has recently revealed its plans to boost the Navy’s response to threats in international waters by developing submerged unmanned platforms that can be deployed at a moment’s notice.
Hydra, named after the serpent-like creature with many heads in Greek mythology, would create an undersea network of unmanned payloads and platforms to increase the capability and speed the response to threats like piracy, the rising number of ungoverned states, and sophisticated defenses at a time when the Pentagon is forced to make budget cuts. According to DARPA, the Hydra system ”represents a cost effective way to add undersea capacity that can be tailored to support each mission” that would still allow the Navy to conduct special operations and contingency missions. In other words, the decreasing number of naval vessels can only be in one place at a time.
Russian Scientists Report Asteroid Near-Miss
September 30th, 2013Via: RIA Novosti:
A 15-meter (approximately 50 feet) asteroid, similar to the one that exploded above Russia in February, was detected hours before it narrowly missed the Earth over the weekend, Russian scientists said.
Vladimir Lipunov of the Moscow State University and the Sternberg Astronomical Institute said on Sunday a network of telescopes operated by his team recorded a celestial body approaching the planet.
“[The asteroid] was discovered on Friday night by our station near Lake Baikal and nine hours later it flew within 11,300 kilometers of the Earth surface, below the orbit of geostationary satellites. It was about 15 meters in size,” he said.
India’s Booming ‘Rent-A-Womb’ Industry
September 30th, 2013Via: Reuters:
India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002. It is among just a handful of countries – including Georgia, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine – and a few U.S. states where women can be paid to carry another’s genetic child through a process of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.
The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of surrogates have made India a preferred destination for fertility tourism, attracting nationals from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, to name a few.
There are no official figures on how large the fertility industry is in India. A U.N.-backed study in July 2012 estimated the surrogacy business at more than $400 million a year, with over 3,000 fertility clinics across India.
The Akanksha clinic in Anand is the best-known at home and abroad, giving the small town in Gujarat state the reputation as India’s “surrogacy capital”.
NASA Images of Pakistan’s ‘Earthquake Island’
September 29th, 2013Via Russia Today:
Amidst the destruction caused by the devastating earthquake in Pakistan that killed more than 500 people, a new island emerged from the depth of the sea. NASA has released images of the newly formed islet.
NASA has released before and after photos of a new terrestrial body that was born on September 24 during a quake that struck Pakistan.
Called Zalzala Jazeera, or a an earthquake island, the terrestrial formation can now be found 380 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter in Paddi Zirr Bay near Swadar, Pakistan in the Arabian Sea.
The first image of the island was taken by NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite on September 26, while the second snapshot shows the same bay on April 17 with water and no landmass around the coordinates that the new island now inhabits.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
September 29th, 2013Thank you very much.
JG2 $20
Eileen $100
KL $10
PC 2 Bitcoins [!!!]
UR $50
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