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Egypt shuts off Internet, cellphones as country braces for ‘Angry Friday’ protests
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 28, 2011; 4:59 AM
CAIRO – The streets of Egypt were tense Friday morning as the country braced for major protests, with the government preemptively disrupting communications networks and vowing to crack down on demonstrators.
Police in full riot gear lined major public squares and other critical intersections in this teeming capital city. Overnight, security services raided the homes of opposition leaders — including those of the Muslim Brotherhood — and arrested dozens. Meanwhile, Internet connections and mobile phone networks were down in Cairo and in other major cities.
Protest organizers have called for Egyptians to demonstrate against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak following noontime prayers on Friday, in defiance of a government ban.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, which has largely been absent from the protests that have roiled the nation this week, has said it will fully participate in Friday’s demonstrations, potentially drawing many more people to the streets. Read more…
U.S., Japan told time running out to deal with debt
IMF warns Japan and United States on need to tackle debt
* Politics make reining in U.S., Japan deficits difficult
* S&P downgrades Japan, sees no strategy to handle debt
* Bond markets calm on Friday, Japan vows fiscal discipline (Adds bullet points)
By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Lesley Wroughton
TOKYO/WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Japan and the United States faced new pressure to confront their swollen budget deficits as the IMF and rating agencies demanded more evidence they can bring their public debts under control.
The International Monetary Fund said the G7’s two biggest economies needed to spell out credible deficit-cutting plans before the markets lose patience and dump their bonds.
On Friday, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed to push ahead with tax reforms aimed at curbing the country’s debt, but an uncooperative opposition and divisions within his own party on policy make the chances of success slim.
“The important thing is to maintain fiscal discipline and ensure market confidence in Japan’s public finances,” Kan, who took over in June as Japan’s fifth premier since 2006, told parliament’s upper house.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut Japan’s long-term debt rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002, and hours later Moody’s Investors Service warned the risk of the United States losing its top AAA rating, although small, was rising. Read more…
No baby oysters being found in Louisiana’s most productive areas
Oyster fishermen worried about problem area along the coast
NEW ORLEANS — In the waters stretching from the MR-GO, down to the mouth of the Mississippi River, oysters are having a tough time, and a mystery is unfolding in one of the state’s most productive areas for oysters.
“It’s not a good sign,” said John Tesvich, chairman of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force.
The sign is a lack of oyster spat, in what is known as coastal zone number two. Scientists are baffled, and they said so at a meeting on Tuesday of the Oyster Task Force.
“That’s really alarming, when we see large areas, some of the areas that are the heart of the predominant oyster seed ground, we’re not seeing the young spat this year,” Tesvich said. Read more…
“Atlantis Anomaly” Causes Shutdown Of US Army Weapons Base
A Russian Space Forces (VKS) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that one of their Kosmos-2469 satellites currently in orbit over North America has detected a gamma ray burst of “unprecedented proportions” emanating from the United States Army’s main weapons base Dugway Proving Ground located in their State of Utah.
According to this report, since the formation of what is described as a “magnetic vortex” began appearing in the Gulf of Aden (see our December 1, 2010 report Mysterious ‘Vortex’ Warned Is Creating Global Weather Catastrophe) a growing number of gamma ray bursts emanating from beneath our Earth and its seas, and directed towards the Sirius star system [Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky], have been detected and have given rise to the belief of many Russian scientists that they belong to an ancient “early warning system” of some type.
One of the largest of these gamma ray bursts was detected coming from the seas off the Florida coast in an area long believed to have once been a part of the Lost Continent of Atlantis described by the classical Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato (428-347BC) as being a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. Read more…
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.
by narmer
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.
The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.
Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.
The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.
The rice’s producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yogurt and muesli bars.
The news provoked horror among GM critics and consumer groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as “very disturbing”. Researcher Becky Price warned: “There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this.”
Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: “Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development.
“If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers’ plates Read more…
Seismic fault beneath us is ‘fully loaded’ after 311 years
Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist
As if you didn’t have enough worries, here is one more to add to that massive list:
“It’s been 300 years,” Bill Steele said Tuesday. “We have a fully loaded subduction zone.”
Actually, it’s been 311 years since the .
Steele, a University of Washington seismologist and spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, said scientists have determined the monster quake occurred Jan. 26, 1700 — 311 years ago tonight.
It happened off the Northwest coast, and created huge tsunamis that devastated shorelines here and in Japan.
What’s amazing is how much is known, considering that in 1700 there were no Europeans in the Northwest. British Capt. George Vancouver wouldn’t find his way here until 1792. The Lewis and Clark Expedition to the West didn’t start until 1804. Historians have no original account of the 1700 quake written from a Western perspective.
“There’s quite a detective story of how we know all that. It’s fantastic,” Steele said.
First, a quick explanation of what happened from the online encyclopedia HistoryLink: Read more…
PATRIOT Act extension would add judicial oversight
Bill would shift next extension away from election year
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced legislation to the Senate Wednesday that would extend expiring provisions of the controversial PATRIOT Act.
“Congress now faces a deadline to take action on the expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act,” Sen. Leahy said in a statement. “The USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011 will preserve law enforcement and intelligence techniques that are set to expire on February 28, 2011, and extend them to December 2013.”
The legislation, titled “The USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011,” would extend the roving wiretap provisions, the “lone wolf” measure and the “library records” provision. The provisions allow authorities to conduct surveillance without identifying the person or location to be wiretapped, permits surveillance of “non-US” persons who are not affiliated with a terrorist group, and lets the government gain access to “any tangible thing” during investigations, respectively.
The bill also increases judicial oversight of government surveillance powers, such as requiring authorities to list the facts that justify obtaining a court order and raising the standards for gaining permission to conduct wiretaps.
“While this bill makes important changes to the Patriot Act to increase oversight of its powers, it unfortunately allows many dangerous provisions to continue,” Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel, said. Read more…
STRANGE LIGHT KILLS THOUSANDS OF FISH IN COLOMBIA
Yet more animals deaths. This time accompanied by a strange light in the sky and a humming sound. Some residents claiming that the fish were burned. What could it be? Could it be HAARP or could it be something else…
California Residents Hit With Government Ban On Paying By Cash
District officials want to find out who “uncommonly antagonistic” individuals are by tracing requests for public records, while federal government paints cash users as potential terrorists
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Jan 27, 2011
Residents of Discovery Bay, California will be the first in the country to be officially denied the right to use cash to pay for public services, in a move that echoes the Department of Homeland Security’s drive to depict those who use physical money as potential terrorists.
As reported by the Contra Costa Times recently, from May onwards, residents will no long be allowed to pay water bills or purchase park permits after the Discovery Bay Community Services District board voted to ban cash transactions for all services.
Anyone paying for such public services must do so with a credit/debit card, a check or money order.
The declaration on all US money bills that “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” will no longer apply in Discovery Bay when it comes to paying the government.
One former director on the District Board told the Times that he believes the move has come in response to a small amount of anonymous requests for copies of public records, which were then paid for in cash, a perfectly legal right.
Residents of the town have been described as “uncommonly antagonistic toward local government”, and former director David Piepho believes some are attempting to use public records “to be like snipers and take shots.”
He believes that by banning cash payments, the local government will be able to identify who these individuals are or prevent them from requesting further public information.
However, district representatives have denied those claims, instead suggesting that the ban is being put in place because handling cash puts city officials under threat from potential thieves. Read more…
Asteroid impact caused huge scar on Jupiter
A massive scar that appeared in Jupiter’s atmosphere last summer was caused by an asteroid ‘the size of the Titanic’, says NASA.
By examining the signatures of the gases and dark debris produced by the impact shockwaves, the team deduced that the object was more likely a rocky asteroid than an icy comet.
“Both the fact that the impact itself happened at all and the implication that it may well have been an asteroid rather than a comet shows us that the outer solar system is a complex, violent and dynamic place, and that many surprises may be out there waiting for us,” said NASA astronomer Glenn Orton. “There is still a lot to sort out in the outer solar system.”
Before this collision, scientists had thought that the only objects that hit Jupiter were icy comets whose unstable orbits took them close enough to be sucked in by gravitational attraction. It was believed that Jupiter had already cleared most other objects, such as asteroids, from its sphere of influence.
The July 19, 2009 object likely hit Jupiter between 9 am and 11 am UTC.
As it fell through Jupiter’s atmosphere, the object created a Read more…
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