Britain: Prices Collapse for Prostitution Services
August 8th, 2013Via: The Economist:
In part, this reflects the sluggish economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4% lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer, says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; the mortgage is more important; petrol is more important.” She is offering discounts out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30) than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are to have sex.
The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities. “It’s stupidly competitive right now,” she laments. More people are entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them offering more for less.
FUKUSHIMA PLANT LEAKING 300 TONS OF TOXIC WATER INTO SEA DAILY
August 8th, 2013Via: Japan Today:
A Japanese government official on Wednesday said an estimated 300 tons of contaminated water is leaking into the ocean per day from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged on Wednesday to step up government efforts to stem radioactive water leakage.
The ministry official also said the utility would begin pumping out groundwater to reduce leakage and had aimed to be removing 300 tons per day by December, but would end up 60 tons short of that goal. Removing 300 tons of groundwater, however, would not necessarily halt leakage into the sea, he said.
Two-Year-Old Taken from Parents Because They Smoked Pot Is Murdered in Foster Care
August 8th, 2013Via: Alternet:
Two-year-old Alexandria Hill was placed in foster care after her parents were caught smoking marijuana in their home while she slept. Authorities charged them with “neglectful supervision,” and just months away from getting their baby back, the loving parents learned they would never see their young child again. Placed in a foster home to protect her from them, Alexandria was brutally killed.
On Monday night, tiny “Alex,” as her parents called her, was flown to Scott and White Children’s Emergency Hospital in Temple, Texas with severe head injuries.
“They wouldn’t tell me what condition she was in or what was wrong or what had happened,” her father, Joshua Hill, told KVUE-TV. “The only thing they would tell me is I needed to be there. When I got there, I found out that Alex was in a coma.”
Two nights passed, and Alex was taken off life support. Foster mother Sherill Small was arrested and charged with murder.
Efficient Induction of Extrinsic Cell Death by Dandelion Root Extract in Human Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) Cells
August 8th, 2013Via: PLOS ONE:
Background
Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) is a heterogeneous disease that is not only hard to diagnose and classify, but is also highly resistant to treatment. Available forms of therapy for this disease have not shown significant effects and patients rapidly develop resistance early on in therapy. These factors lead to the very poor prognosis observed with CMML patients, with median survival duration between 12 and 24 months after diagnosis. This study is therefore centered around evaluating the selective efficacy of a natural extract from dandelion roots, in inducing programmed cell death in aggressive and resistant CMML cell lines.
Methodology/Principal Findings
To confirm the induction of programmed cell death in three human CMML cell lines, nuclear condensation and externalization of the phosphatidylserine, two main characteristics of apoptosis, were detected using Hoechst staining and annexin-V binding assay. The induction of another mode of cell death, autophagy, was determined using a monodansylcadaverine (MDC) stain, to detect the formation of autophagy vacuoles. The results from this study indicate that Dandelion Root Extract (DRE) is able to efficiently and selectively induce apoptosis and autophagy in these cell lines in a dose and time dependent manner, with no significant toxicity on non-cancerous peripheral blood mononuclear cells. More importantly, we observed early activation of initiator caspase-8, which led to mitochondrial destabilization and the induction of autophagy, suggesting that DRE acts through the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis. The inability of DRE to induce apoptosis in dominant-negative FADD cells, confirms the mechanism of action of DRE in in vitro models of CMML.
Conclusion
The results from this study indicate that natural products, in particular Dandelion Root Extract, have great potential, as non-toxic and effective alternatives to conventional modes of chemotherapy available today.
Citation: Ovadje P, Hamm C, Pandey S (2012) Efficient Induction of Extrinsic Cell Death by Dandelion Root Extract in Human Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) Cells. PLoS ONE 7(2): e30604. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030604
U.S. Air Force Transported 24 Tons of Cocaine from Costa Rica to Miami, Allegedly to be Destroyed *wink*
August 7th, 2013Via: Costa Rica Star:
According to an official press release from the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish), Costa Rica will no longer send cocaine or other controlled substances to the United States, at least for the time being. The announcement comes in the wake of news reports about nearly 24 tons of cocaine transported by the U.S. Air Force to Miami on Saturday, July 27th 2013.
The OIJ further explained that officials in Costa Rica had spoken to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) about the temporary lack of an incinerator to destroy seized powder cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs. Prior to the massive airlift of cocaine to Miami in late July, the OIJ had managed to destroy almost 23 tons of drugs over the years at a cement factory in Cartago, but a couple of unfortunate incidents resulted in the stockpiling of confiscated drugs, and the OIJ ended up with too much coke.
Anonymouth to Combat Stylometry
August 7th, 2013Via: I-Programmer:
An open source project to combat “stylometry”, the study of attributing authorship to documents based only on the linguistic style they exhibit, is proving that it is possible to change writing style so as to evade detection.
Artificial Intelligence techniques are routinely used to detect plagiarism and recently were employed to reveal that Harry Potter author J K Rowling is indeed the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling published under the byline of Robert Galbraith. Now software is tackling the opposite problem – anonymizing writing style to protect the identity of the originator.
Students from the Privacy, Security and Automation Lab (PSAL) at Drexel University recently won the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award at the 12th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium for their paper “Use Fewer Instances of the Letter “i”: Toward Writing Style Anonymization,” which explains this new framework for anonymizing writing style.
The idea behind Anonymouth is that sylometry can be a threat in situations where individuals want to ensure their privacy while continuing to interact with others over the Internet.
Biotech Industry PSYOP Against Public Demands for GMO Labeling
August 7th, 2013Via: Alternet:
Monsanto and Big Food are taking the battle for consumers’ hearts and minds to the next level. And it’s no coincidence that they’re pulling out the big guns just as the Washington State I-522 campaign to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food products is gaining steam.
Can industry front groups and slick public relations firms convince us that the products they’re peddling are not only safe, but good for us? Will the millions they spend on websites and advertorials pay off?
We’re guessing not, given the latest New York Times poll stating that 93 percent of Americans want labels on foods containing GMOs.
Still, it can’t hurt to know who’s behind the latest salvo of lies and misinformation.
Children Given Lifetime Gag Order In Pennsylvania Fracking Suit Settlement
August 7th, 2013Via: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Chris and Stephanie Hallowich from talking about the 2011 settlement of their high-profile Marcellus Shale damage case in Washington County, or saying anything about gas drilling and fracking, isn’t unusual. It happens often in settling such cases.
But the insistence that their two minor children, then ages 7 and 10, are also bound by the “gag order” is.
Several independent legal scholars and attorneys involved in the Hallowich side of the case say they know of no other settlement agreements that gag the children of parents involved in legal settlements, and questioned whether such an agreement is enforceable.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Android App: DronePatrol
August 7th, 2013Looks like fun for the whole family!
Via: DronePatrol:
DronePatrol is a citizen-based government watchdog organization which reports on domestic surveillence drones flying over the United States and its territories. DronePatrol.org features a database of drone sightings submitted by citizens throughout the U.S. just like you.
Key Figure in Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp Now Thinks It Should Never Have Been Built
August 6th, 2013Via: Daily Mail:
The Pentagon official in charge of Guantanamo Bay has admitted that if he had his time over, he would have argued that the notorious detention camp should never have been built.
William Lietzau, America’s Deputy Assistant Defence Secretary for Detainee Affairs, told The Mail on Sunday in an exclusive interview that Guantanamo’s detainees should have been legally designated as prisoners of war and held in Afghanistan, or if charged with crimes, taken to prisons in America.
Mr Lietzau – who, after three and a half years in his job, last week announced he will be stepping down to take a private sector job in September – added that the best way for President Obama to close Guantanamo would be to announce that the ‘war’ with Al Qaeda is over.
Under international law, this would end any justification for continuing to hold prisoners who had not been charged with crimes.
Lietzau’s words will be seen as explosive, because alone of senior officials who serve the Obama administration in this field now, he played a key role in creating Guantanamo under George W. Bush.
As a senior military lawyer from early 2002 to mid-2003, he designed the Guantanamo ‘military commissions’ – special tribunals set up to try terrorist suspects.
These have proved a dismal failure. Their rules have repeatedly changed, and more than a decade after five men accused of plotting 9/11 were captured, their case is bogged down in pre-trial hearings which have no end in sight.
