Get used to high food costs, water shortages

Shocked by rising food prices? Get used to it -- and be ready for water shortages, too, says a sweeping new scientific report rounding up likely effects of climate change on the United States' land, water and farms over the next half-century.

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Computer trained to "read" mind images of words

A computer has been trained to "read" people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said on Thursday.

They hope their study, published in the journal Science, might lead to better understanding of how and where the brain stores information.

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Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.

The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.

Check out the pictures here.

Read the rest here.

U.S. Cites Big Gains Against Al-Qaeda

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

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Fossil reveals oldest live birth

A fossil fish uncovered in Australia is the oldest-known example of a mother giving birth to live young, scientists have reported in the journal Nature.

The 380 million-year-old specimen has been preserved with an embryo still attached by its umbilical cord.

The find, reported in Nature, pushes back the emergence of this reproductive strategy by some 200 million years.

Until now, scientists thought creatures from these times were only able to develop their young inside eggs.

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Monkeys control a robot arm with their thoughts

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a
mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab
food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when
necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

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Energy drinks linked to risky behavior among teenagers

Health researchers have identified a surprising new predictor for risky behavior among teenagers and young adults: the energy drink.

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The finding doesn't mean the drinks cause bad behavior. But the data suggest that regular consumption of energy drinks may be a red flag for parents that their children are more likely to take risks with their health and safety. "It appears the kids who are heavily into drinking energy drinks are more likely to be the ones who are inclined toward taking risks," Miller said.

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Ex-Bush spokesman: President used 'propaganda' to push war

The spokesman who defended President Bush's policies through Hurricane Katrina and the early years of the Iraq war is now blasting his former employers, saying the Bush administration became mired in propaganda and political spin and at times played loose with the truth.

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The coming Electoral College crisis

But few have focused on a much more realistic possibility -- that Obama will get more popular votes than the Republican John McCain, in the fall and still lose in the Electoral College.

I think that would be a catastrophe that engender even more cynicism about our politics and our government than ever -- if that's possible at this point -- and after an uptick in voter interest in the 2000s would drive millions of Americans away from the process for good. Whether they would turn toward apathy or rebellion or something else would be anyone's guess.

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Bush Claims More Powers Than King George III

Adler said, Bush has “claimed the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention, to terminate treaties, to seize American citizens from the streets to detain them indefinitely without benefit of legal counseling, without benefit of judicial review. He has ordered a domestic surveillance program which violates the statutory law of the United States as well as the Fourth Amendment.”

Adler said the authors of the U.S. Constitution wrote that the president “shall take care to faithfully execute the laws of the land” because “the king of England possessed a suspending power” to set aside laws with which he disagreed, “the very same kind of power that the Bush Administration has claimed.”

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Weather warfare

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

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Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’

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YouTube suit called threat to online communication

A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.

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Charity: Aid workers raping, abusing children

Humanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in war-ravaged countries, a leading European charity has said.

Children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday.

After interviewing hundreds of children, the charity said it found instances of rape, child prostitution, pornography, indecent sexual assault and trafficking of children for sex.

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Save the Children says almost as shocking as the abuse itself, is the "chronic under-reporting" of the abuses. It believes that thousands more children around the world could be suffering in silence.

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Spin

"Spin" by Brian Springer

One of the most important films of the last 25 years

Take an hour To watch this film.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator.

Check out the picture and read the rest.

Spirit the robot finds signs of Martian life

“What we can say is that this was once a habitable environment where liquid water and the energy needed for life were present.”

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Shell CEO says record oil not due to shortage

Oil prices at a record high above $135 a barrel are rising due to market sentiment rather than a shortage of supply, Royal Dutch Shell's chief executive said on Thursday.

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"This has to do with psychology in the markets and you cannot forecast psychology."

His view that there are no shortages chimes with that of other oil producers, such as members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Others, such as the U.S. government, say supply is tight.

Hmmmm. Who to believe...

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Frightening food for thought

You may know Monsanto for its role in those old chestnuts PCB, dioxin and Agent Orange, poisons so pervasive and so stubborn they have spread their toxic stain from pole to pole.

But did you know the 100-year-old company is a major player in the GMO revolution? Under the plausible guise of eradicating world hunger with genetically modified seeds resistant to Round-Up, a best-selling herbicide it also developed, Monsanto has launched an insidious campaign to achieve worldwide market supremacy, regardless of the social cost to small farmers and rural economies.

It's all laid out in previously classified documents, and confirmed by scientists, politicians and victims. What the evidence suggests is that Monsanto has long waged a dirty war of pressure campaigns, corruption, collusion with government and prevarication, also known as big fat lies.

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It's not scary. It's terrifying. Like a Kurt Vonnegut Ice Nine effect, Monsanto's GMO market penetration looks to turn the world to mono-culture and potential environmental catastrophe. Rather than feed the planet, says Robin in this essential wake-up call, Monsanto is well on the road to ruining it.

Read the rest. And if you know nothing about Monsanto, then do some research and learn a little bit. More than likely, you will not like what you discover.

Most Americans do not even think about getting information from alternative news sources

Fox News, a part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, engaged in one-sided advocacy of the stance of the current US administration, instead of providing all-round objective reports of election campaigns. Economists proved that George Bush would have never won the 2000 election but for the support from Fox News. The TV channel definitely backs up right-wing Republicans, Cuthbert considers. “Fox is rather the advocate of Bush’s government than a news TV channel. Now the political ship is sinking, and so is Fox.”

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Working classes are less intelligent, says evolution expert

Bruce Charlton, an evolutionary psychiatrist at Newcastle University, has written a paper asserting the reason why fewer students from poor families are admitted to Oxford or Cambridge is not because of social prejudice, but lack of ability.

He suggests that low numbers of working-class students at elite universities is the "natural outcome" of "substantial" IQ differences between classes.

He told The Scotsman yesterday, in an interview conducted by e-mail at his insistence: "Poor people have lower average IQ than wealthier people... and this means that a much smaller percentage of working-class people than professional-class people will be able to reach the normal entrance requirements of the most selective universities."

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