Wikileaks Founder: Our Enemy is China
Wikileaks may have targeted the US with its ongoing releases of sensitive State Department documents, but China is its real “technological enemy,” according to founder Julian Assange.
In an interview with the left-leaning British weekly magazine the New Statesman, Assange called China the “worst offender” for its censorship of information online.
- Associated Press
- Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.
“China has aggressive and sophisticated technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China,” Assange told the magazine. “We’ve been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through.”
The controversial head of Wikileaks is being held in the UK and is awaiting a verdict in extradition hearings over whether he will be turned over to Swedish authorities where he is wanted for questioning over accusations of rape and sexual assault.
The Australian-born hacker has said he is worried that the US may retaliate against him for publishing a series of State Department documents on the Wikileaks site. Since late November 2010 the organization has released Read more…
US banks foreclosed on record 1 million homes in 2010
US banks repossessed a record one million homes in 2010, and are predicted to surpass that number in 2011. RealtyTrac said about five million homeowners were at least two months behind on their mortgage payments. Among the worst hit states were Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California. Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate for the fourth year in a row, with one in 11 homes receiving a foreclosure notice. RealtyTrac said more than half the nation’s foreclosures occurred in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan. 2.9 million US households were subject to a foreclosure filing last year, up 1.6% from 2009. RealtyTrac’s senior vice-president Rick Sharga said: “2011 is going to be the peak.” Foreclosures slowed toward the end of 2010 amid revelations banks had improperly documented them, but the pace is expected to pick up in the first quarter of 2011.
Source
Mount Etna blasts lava, ash into the sky
Mount Etna, the famous Sicilian volcano, turned on the fireworks Wednesday as it shot lava hundreds of feet into the air.
Volcanic tremors at Mount Etna, on the Italian island, were detected around 4 p.m. EST on Tuesday. The tremors peaked the next morning and lava began erupting at the Southeast Crater, about 4,500 feet high. The crater pit overflowed with lava and ash plumes spewed into the air, which forced a local airport to halt service. The ash plumes had stopped after nearly 12 hours today, according to the Italian Institute of Vocanology, citing surveillance cameras observing Etna.
But more eruptions could be on the way.
“This eruption is very similar to more than 200 episodes of lava fountaining at the summit craters of Mount Etna — including 66 from the Southeast Crater in the year 2000,” said Boris Behncke, a volcanologist and expert on Mount Etna. “The same vent that erupted last night already produced nearly identical — though longer-lasting — episodes in September and November 2007 and most recently on May 10, 2008.”
Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and one of the world’s most well-known. While 2010 was an exceptionally calm year for Etna, it is nearly constantly active and there is rarely a full year that passes without some eruptive activity on Etna, Behncke told OurAmazingPlanet.
“We expected Etna to return to activity in this period,” Behncke said. “There had been lots of premonitory signals.” Read more…
Sri Lanka flooding forces more than 300,000 to flee homes
Mudslides bring death toll to 21 as government says more than 1 million people affected by rains
Sri Lankan rescuers evacuate residents of the eastern district of Batticaloa by boat as floodwaters rise. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesMore than 300,000 people have been forced out of their homes by flooding in Sri Lanka, with no sign of a let-up in the torrential rain on the island nation’s east coast.
Three more people were killed by mudslides today, bringing the death toll to 21, officials said.
The government’s Disaster Management Centre said more than 1 million people had been affected by the rains, with 325,000 made homeless.
Many villages remain cut off from supplies despite a huge relief effort i Read more…
Devastating fungus ravages common banana crops
WASHINGTON — A fungus scientists have dubbed “the HIV of banana plantations” has ravaged huge crops of the cavendish variety — the only kind of banana available in American grocery stores.
The spread of the soil-borne fungus Tropical Race IV has ruined crops across China, the Philippines and Australia, and is expected to spread next to Central America, where American distributors get the fruit.
Two teams of scientists are trying to genetically engineer cavendish bananas that are resistant to the fungus.
There are thousands of kinds of bananas worldwide, but the Cavendish, discovered in a Chinese household garden by a nineteenth-century British Explorer, represents 99 percent of the international market, according to a New Yorker report.
Most other exported varieties won’t withstand the international trip or ripen too quickly.
The New Yorker reports in 2008 Americans ate 7.6 billion pounds of Cavendish bananas, which at 60 cents a pound are also very cheap.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-06/can-fruit-be-saved
2010 hottest year in Canada on record
National temperatures exceeded average values by 3 C in 2010, the warmest since record-keeping began in Canada in 1948.
Photograph by: Michael Aporius, Edmonton Journal
Environment Canada has quietly released its climate report for 2010, confirming that it was the hottest year on Canadian record books.
National temperatures exceeded average values by a whopping 3 C, the warmest since record-keeping began in 1948, says the report, posted on the department’s website Monday.
“All of the country was above normal, with most of Nunavut and northern Quebec at least 4 C above normal,” says the report, that highlights 2010’s northern heat wave on its map in red.
“An area over southern Alberta and Saskatchewan was the only part of Canada Read more…
Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause devastation
Solar Maximum is happening now between 2011 and 2013 as part of Solar Cycle 24. My question is, why is this not being reported in the major newspapers and news outlets in the United States?
National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.
Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.
Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for Read more…
Get your Non Hybird Seeds While You Can
S. 510 was introduced in the 111th Congress, which has adjourned.
It has not yet been reintroduced…yet
S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.
“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower
It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.
Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.
History
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) purportedly to Read more…
Solar Wind to Reach Earth In Few Days, Spark Auroral Activity
A dark coronal hole at the Sun center was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) solar dynamics observatory on Jan. 10.
NASA
A dark coronoal hole at the Sun center was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) solar dynamics observatory. As the Sun continues to rotate, the high speed solar wind particles blowing from this hole will likely reach Earth in a few days and may spark some auroral activity.
Coronal holes are areas of the Sun’s surface that are the source of open magnetic field lines that head way out into space. They are also the source regions of the fast solar wind, which is characterized by a relatively steady speed of about 800 kilometers per second.
As the Sun continues to rotate, the high speed solar wind particles blowing from this hole will likely reach Earth in a few days and may spark some auroral activity, according to NASA.
Here, the solar dynamics observatory detected a giant solar filament that became unstable and erupted from the far side of the Sun. A filament is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface, often in a loop shape. Some filaments break apart and give rise to coronal mass ejections.
Prediction: Read more…
Report: heavy growth in biometrics
The research firm MarketsandMarkets has released a new study of the biometrics marketplace that projects a heavy growth rate over the next four years. Advances in Biometric Technologies and Market Analysis breaks down the various modes of biometrics such as fingerprint, iris and facial and by regions such as North America, Asia and Europe.
Specifically, the report projects a compound annual growth rate of 21.6% between 2010 and 2015 which would result in a marketplace worth over $11 billion.
While the mode projected to have the largest share of the marketplace in 2015 is still fingerprint biometrics with a 19% growth rate, iris, vein and facial biometrics are expected to close their respective gaps with growth rates of 27.5%, 25.4% and 24.2%. Majority of the reasoning the authors are using for the expected booms in the marketplace are due to growing concerns for national security and the need for ID programs to deal with such concerns
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