There are 11 sunspot clusters and massive 2042 is too large to even distibuish everything that is going on in there. The solar wind is a blistering 642 km/sec. Earth is approaching a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid Meteor Shower. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. Forecasters expect this year's peak, however strong it may be, to occur on April 22nd. In order to study the effects of today's geomagnetic storm on Earth's upper atmosphere, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a double balloon mission to the stratosphere: The two balloons carried two experiments. One is the group's Rapid Response Space Weather Payload, which measures high energy radiation. The other carried a colony of extreme-loving halobacteria. The purpose of their flight is to discover if they can live in the extreme environment of the stratosphere. Oh, and in honor of Easter, the students sent a team of peeponauts as well.

The Greed for Speed

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether high-speed trading firms are engaging in insider trading by taking advantage of fast-moving market information unavailable to other investors.

The investigation, launched about a year ago, involves a range of trading activities and is still in its early stages, according to a senior FBI official and an agency spokesman. Among the activities being probed is whether high-speed firms are trading ahead of other investors based on information that other market participants can't see.

Among the types of trading under scrutiny is the practice of placing a group of trades and then canceling them to create the false appearance of market activity. Such activity could be considered potential market manipulation by encouraging others to trade based on false orders.

Another form of activity under scrutiny involves using high-speed trading to place orders to conceal that the transactions are based on an illegal tip.

"There are many people in government who are very focused on this and who are concerned about it and who think it breaks the law," an FBI spokesman said. "There is a big concern that high-frequency traders are getting material nonpublic information ahead of others and trading on it."

Ultimately, federal prosecutors would have to decide whether the facts of a specific case warrant bringing charges, the FBI official said.

The probe, which has picked up steam in recent months, comes amid heightened scrutiny of computerized trading. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether high-speed trading firms have gained advantages that aren't available to regular investors, such as access to superfast data feeds.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into ties between high-speed traders and major exchanges, examining whether the firms are

getting preferential treatment that puts other investors at a disadvantage, said people familiar with the probes.

Since the beginning of the investigation, the FBI, working with the SEC, has developed fact patterns of potentially illegal trading and run them by prosecutors to determine if they could be used in a criminal case.

For the FBI, the investigation marks a new and unusual phase of its focus on insider trading. Because high-speed trades are executed by computer programs, it is often more difficult to detect nefarious activity and to prove that it was executed intentionally.

FBI officials said they are looking for patterns in the market that can reveal whether any trading activities in question violate the law. They would then have to be able to prove that those trades were made with fraudulent intent.

Related

High-Speed Trading Firm Tries Charm Offensive

The FBI said it has dedicated a large number of agents to the investigation. FBI officials are looking into whether some brokers trade on information about client orders before executing them, and whether brokers use information about after-hours trading to beat the market when it opens the next morning.

Among those being probed are proprietary-trading outfits, which trade strictly for their own account, as well as fast-moving broker operations that buy and sell orders on behalf of clients, such as mutual funds and pension plans.

The push comes after a long-running focus on more traditional insider trading by federal prosecutors and the FBI in New York.

Speed in the Spotlight

Scrutiny has been growing on fraction-of-a-second differences in access to information. Recent highlights:

Second Firm to Stop Direct Feeds to High-Speed Traders (March 19, 2014) Speedy Traders Face New U.S. Scrutiny (March 18, 2014) N.Y. Probes Traders' Access to Data (March 18, 2014) Firm Stops Giving High-Speed Traders Direct Access to Releases (Feb. 20, 2014) Traders Turn to Laser Beams to Zip Data (Feb. 11, 2014) Trade Tactics: Slow vs. Speed (Feb. 10, 2014) High-Speed Traders Unite to Press Case (Jan. 5, 2014) Action Urged on High-Speed Traders' Early Access to Data (Sept. 24, 2013) Traders Pay for Early Peek at Key Data (June 12, 2013) High-Speed Traders Exploit Loophole (May 1, 2013) For Superfast Traders, a Way to Jump Line (Sept. 19, 2012)

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan has charged 90 people with insider trading using confidential information about earnings reports, mergers and other market-moving news since October 2009. So far, 79 of those people have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial and none have been acquitted.

The Justice Department said it is working with other regulators on the probe, including the SEC, CFTC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees broker-dealers. The investigation, which the FBI calls the High-Speed Trading Initiative, is also focusing on whether the waves of orders that flood the market from high-frequency firms are being used to manipulate prices to their benefit.

Investigators are also seeking leads from traders or others who may have participated in illegal activity. "People will benefit to varying degrees by calling us at an early stage," he said.

Market regulators have been investigating whether high-frequency traders have unfair advantages over other investors for several years. SEC enforcement officials continue to probe whether high-speed firms were using so-called order types—directions traders use to tell an exchange how to handle their orders—to jump ahead of less savvy investors. In a page-one article in September 2012, The Wall Street Journal reported that a former high-frequency trader, Haim Bodek, blew the whistle to the SEC on how certain order types could hurt other investors.

CFTC investigators are probing whether high-frequency firms are routinely distorting futures markets by acting as buyer and seller in the same transactions, illegal trading activity known as wash trades. Such trades are banned by U.S. law because they can feed false information into the market and manipulate prices.

Write to Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com and Michael Rothfeld at michael.rothfeld@wsj.com

Report: EPA tested deadly pollutants on humans to push Obama admin’s agenda11:53 AM 04/02/2014

Michael Bastasch

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The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting dangerous experiments on humans over the past few years in order to justify more onerous clean air regulations.

The agency conducted tests on people with health issues and the elderly, exposing them to high levels of potentially lethal pollutants, without disclosing the risks of cancer and death, according to a newly released government report.

These experiments exposed people, including those with asthma and heart problems, to dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants, including diesel fumes, reads a EPA inspector general report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The EPA also exposed people with health issues to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the agency says is safe for humans.

The EPA conducted five experiments in 2010 and 2011 to look at the health effects of particulate matter, or PM, and diesel exhaust on humans. The IG’s report found that the EPA did get consent forms from 81 people in five studies. But the IG also found that “exposure risks were not always consistently represented.”

“Further, the EPA did not include information on long-term cancer risks in its diesel exhaust studies’ consent forms,” the IG’s report noted. “An EPA manager considered these long-term risks minimal for short-term study exposures” but “human subjects were not informed of this risk in the consent form.”

According to the IG’s report, “only one of five studies’ consent forms provided the subject with information on the upper range of the pollutant” they would be exposed to, but even more alarming is that only “two of five alerted study subjects to the risk of death for older individuals with cardiovascular disease.”

Three of the studies exposed people to high levels of PM and two of the studies exposed people to high levels of diesel exhaust and ozone. Diesel exhaust contains 40 toxic air contaminants, including 19 that are known carcinogens and PM. The EPA has publicly warned of the dangers of PM, but seemed to downplay them in their scientific studies on humans.

“This lack of warning about PM,” the IG’s report notes, “is also different from the EPA’s public image about PM.”

The EPA has been operating under the assumption that PM is deadly for years now. The IG’s report points to a 2003 EPA document that says short-term exposure to PM can result in heart attacks and arrhythmias for people with heart disease — and long-term exposure can result in reduced lung function and even death. A 2006 review by the EPA presents even further links between short-term PM exposure and “mortality and morbidity.”

“Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should,” former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told Congress on Sept. 22, 2011.

“If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country,” Jackson added.

PM is a “mixture of harmful solid and liquid particles” that the EPA regulates. PM that is 2.5 microns or less is known as PM2.5, which is about “1/30th the thickness of a human hair.” These small particles can get into people’s respiratory system and can harm human health and even lead to death after just short-term exposure.

The EPA set PM2.5 primary standards at 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air on an annual average basis, but the agency exposed test subjects to PM levels of 600 micrograms per cubic meter — 40 times what the EPA sets as an acceptable outdoor air standard.

But in five of the studies, people were subject to levels higher than what they signed on for. The EPA IG found that one person was hit with “pollutant concentrations that reached 751 [micrograms per cubic meter], which exceeded the IRB-approved concentration target of 600 [micrograms per cubic meter].”

The EPA says that when PM2.5 levels are between about 250 and 500 micrograms per cubic meter “[e]veryone should avoid any outdoor exertion. People with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly and children should remain indoors.”

No one was killed during the test, but a source close to the issue says that one test subject — a 58-year-old obese woman with medical problems and a family history of heart disease — was ordered to go to the hospital by the EPA after being exposed to “ambient air pollution particles” in October 2010.

Other test subjects also experienced health problems during their testing. One subject developed a persistent cough after being exposed to ozone for 15 minutes in April 2011 and two other subjects suffered from “cardiac arrhythmias” during testing in 2010 after being exposed to “clean air.”

Regulatory implications

The EPA has been trying to justify setting stricter PM2.5 standards in its upcoming national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). But the agency’s public statements on PM don’t square with its lax attitude about testing the air pollutant on humans.

“Maybe the biggest reason to slow down the new rule is that the EPA is talking out of both sides of their mouth,” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said last year. “On one side exposure to it is deadly, and on the other they say human exposure studies are not harmful.”

The EPA has said for many years now that PM is a deadly air pollutant that can cause death even after short-term exposure, but it did not disclose the mortality risks in some of its human tests, despite exposing people to high levels of PM.

One manager overseeing EPA human testing told the IG’s office that “the exposure risk for healthy individuals is minimal” and that a person breathing 420 micrograms per cubic meter for two hours “would inhale the same concentration as they would breathing 35 [micrograms per cubic meter]” which is the EPA’s 24-hour regulatory standard for outdoor PM2.5 levels.

The manager also said “that PM risk is focused on susceptible populations and that the risk is small for those with no overt disease.”

This alarmed Republicans who said that either the EPA was misrepresenting the science around PM2.5 to advance its own regulatory agenda or it was exposing people to deadly pollutants for little scientific gain.

“It’s alarming how the EPA is purposefully and blatantly ignoring an ongoing investigation of the legality and therefore scientific legitimacy of the use of human testing,” Vitter said. “This is another example of the EPA continuing to pick and choose scientific ‘facts’ to support their overreaching agenda.”

“It is a concern that EPA would assert in the rulemaking process that PM2.5 exposure is deadly while simultaneously asserting in the waivers signed by participants in EPA human exposure studies that these exposures are not harmful,” Republicans wrote to the EPA in February 2013. “Furthermore, there are valid questions about the quality or usefulness of the exposure studies actually relied upon by EPA.”

The agency actually proceeded in its PM2.5 rulemaking while the EPA IG’s office was conducting a review of its human testing procedures.

“EPA policy decisions must be based on sound science,” Lek Kadeli, acting administrator for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD), said in response to the EPA IG’s report. “While there is a critical need for studies involving human subjects, ORD also understands that the research must be conducted in an ethical and vigilant manner.”

“As documented in the OIG’s report, EPA has established guidelines for conducting this type of research that are far in excess of what is normally required by universities, industry, and other government agencies conducting human studies research,” Kadeli said.

The Vegetarian Farce

TLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) – Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts.

A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index. But the vegetarian diet — characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products — carries elevated risks of cancer, allergies and mental health disorders.

Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50 percent increase in incidences of cancer.

The cross-sectional study from Austrian Health Interview Survey data and published in PLos One examined participants dietary habits, demographic characteristics and general lifestyle differences.

The most significant dietary habit difference between meat-eaters and vegetarians concerned their BMI and alcohol consumption – with both being higher for those who consume meat.

Many past studies have instead put an emphasis on the health risks associated with red meat and carnivorous diets, but this study points the other dietary direction. However, the researchers do caution that continuing studies will be needed to substantiate some of the rather broad dietary distinctions, associations presented in this current research.

Overall, vegetarians were found to be in a poorer state of health compared to other dietary groups. Vegetarians reported higher levels of impairment from disorders, chronic diseases, and “suffer significantly more often from anxiety/depression.”

Subjects who consumed lower amounts of animal fat were also linked to poor health care practices, such as avoidance of vaccinations and a lack of preventive care.

Chronic problems associated with vegetarians and people eating carnivorous diets rich in fruits and vegetables were linked to more frequent visits to doctors, which the study authors suggest requires public health programs to reduce the health risk due to their nutritional factors.

The researchers conclude: “Our study has shown that Austrian adults who consume a vegetarian diet are less healthy (in terms of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), have a lower quality of life, and also require more medical treatment.”

“Therefore, a continued strong public health program for Austria is required in order to reduce the health risk due to nutritional factors.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that healthy diets rich in fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases for all dietary groups. A 2009 study from the CDC found that about 1 in 200 young Americans, or 367,000 US children, are vegetarians.

Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say

By Michael S. Rosenwald, Sunday, April 6, 8:34 PM

Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to.

“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.

But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.

“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”

To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.”

If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture. Time spent online — on desktop and mobile devices — was expected to top five hours per day in 2013 for U.S. adults, according to eMarketer, which tracks digital behavior. That’s up from three hours in 2010.

Word lovers and scientists have called for a “slow reading” movement, taking a branding cue from the “slow food” movement. They are battling not just cursory sentence galloping but the constant social network and e-mail temptations that lurk on our gadgets — the bings and dings that interrupt “Call me Ishmael.”

Researchers are working to get a clearer sense of the differences between online and print reading — comprehension, for starters, seems better with paper — and are grappling with what these differences could mean not only for enjoying the latest Pat Conroy novel but for understanding difficult material at work and school. There is concern that young children’s affinity and often mastery of their parents’ devices could stunt the development of deep reading skills.

The brain is the innocent bystander in this new world. It just reflects how we live.

“The brain is plastic its whole life span,” Wolf said. “The brain is constantly adapting.”

Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game.”

“I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words,

organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.”

Adapting to read

The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.

Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said. We’d know a protagonist died on the page with the two long paragraphs after the page with all that dialogue.

The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.

“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”

Brandon Ambrose, a 31-year-old Navy financial analyst who lives in Alexandria, knows of those consequences.

His book club recently read “The Interestings,” a best-seller by Meg Wolitzer. When the club met, he realized he had missed a number of the book’s key plot points. It hit him that he had been scanning for information about one particular aspect of the book, just as he might scan for one particular fact on his computer screen, where he spends much of his day.

“When you try to read a novel,” he said, “it’s almost like we’re not built to read them anymore, as bad as that sounds.”

Ramesh Kurup noticed something even more troubling. Working his way recently through a number of classic authors — George Eliot, Marcel Proust, that crowd — Kurup, 47, discovered that he was having trouble reading long sentences with multiple, winding clauses full of background information. Online sentences tend to be shorter, and the ones containing complicated information tend to link to helpful background material.

“In a book, there are no graphics or links to keep you on track,” Kurup said.

It’s easier to follow links, he thinks, than to keep track of so many clauses in page after page of long paragraphs.

Kurup’s observation might sound far-fetched, but told about it, Wolf did not scoff. She offered more evidence: Several English department chairs from around the country have e-mailed her to say their students are having trouble reading the classics.

“They cannot read ‘Middlemarch.’ They cannot read William James or Henry James,” Wolf said. “I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about this phenomenon. The students no longer will or are perhaps incapable of dealing with the convoluted syntax and construction of George Eliot and Henry James.”

Wolf points out that she’s no Luddite. She sends e-mails from her iPhone as often as one of her students. She’s involved with programs to send tablets to developing countries to help children learn to read. But just look, she said, at Twitter and its brisk 140-character declarative sentences.

“How much syntax is lost, and what is syntax but the reflection of our convoluted thoughts?” she said. “My worry is we will lose the ability to express or read this convoluted prose. Will we become Twitter brains?”

Bi-literate brains?

Wolf’s next book will look at what the digital world is doing to the brain, including looking at brain-scan data as people read both online and in print. She is particularly interested in comprehension results in screen vs. print reading.

Already, there is some intriguing research that looks at that question. A 2012 Israeli study of engineering students — who grew up in the world of screens — looked at their comprehension while reading the same text on screen and in print when under time pressure to complete the task.

The students believed they did better on screen. They were wrong. Their comprehension and learning was better on paper.

Researchers say that the differences between text and screen reading should be studied more thoroughly and that the differences should be dealt with in education, particularly with school-aged children. There are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate brain.

“We can’t turn back,” Wolf said. “We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It’s both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?”

Wolf is training her own brain to be bi-literate. She went back to the Hesse novel the next night, giving herself distance, both in time and space, from her screens.

“I put everything aside. I said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’ ” she said. “It was really hard the second night. It was really hard the third night. It took me two weeks, but by the end of the second week I had pretty much recovered myself so I could enjoy and finish the book.”

Then she read it again.

“I wanted to enjoy this form of reading again,” Wolf said. “When I found myself, it was like I recovered. I found my ability again to slow down, savor and think.”

"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Is About Obama's Terror-Suspect Kill List, Say the Film's Directors

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Apr. 4, 2014 7:23 AM PDT

Marvel Studios

There are currently no plans to screen Captain America: The Winter Soldier at the White House, as far as the film's directors have heard. But if it makes it to the White House family theater, President Obama would be watching one big-budget, action-packed, and Scarlett Johansson-starring critique of his controversial terror-suspect "kill list."

This isn't me reading things into a mainstream comic-book movie. It's what the directors themselves will tell you.

"[Marvel] said they wanted to make a political thriller," Joe Russo, who directed the film with his brother Anthony, tells Mother Jones. "So we said if you want to make a political thriller, all the great political thrillers have very current issues in them that reflect the anxiety of the audience...That gives it an immediacy, it makes it relevant. So [Anthony] and I just looked at the issues that were causing anxiety for us, because we read a lot and are politically inclined. And a lot of that stuff had to do with civil liberties issues, drone strikes, the president's kill list, preemptive technology"—all themes they worked into the film, working closely with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

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In The Winter Soldier, Captain America and the rest of the heroes (played by Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, and so on) confront the government program Project Insight, which involves three Helicarriers (gigantic autonomous killer drones, basically) that are fed large amounts of data and intel. The Helicarriers process the data to identify and preemptively eliminate potential threats to national and global security. And though the film's topical parts were all crafted prior to the NSA revelations, the directors say it's no accident that data mining is a key element of the plot: "It was all leading up to Snowden," Joe says. "It was all in the ether [already], it was all part of the zeitgeist. The Snowden stuff actually happened while we were shooting."

"If there are 100 people we can kill to make us safer, do we do it? What if we find out there's 1,000?...What if it's a million?"

The politics of The Winter Soldier fit comfortably into the Russo brothers' oeuvre, which has included plenty of political satire and commentary. Prior to The Winter Soldier, the duo was best known for directing episodes of Arrested Development, which produced some of the finest satire of the Bush era and Iraq War, and Community, which is also peppered with solid political humor and jabs. (As for their go-to sources for news and politics, Anthony's top two are the the New York Times and NPR, while Joe's are Digg and Reddit.) The day I interviewed them, they happened to be in Washington, DC, to meet with the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus.

According to Joe, the brothers pushed to make their Captain America political thriller even more political and topical than it initially was. "There were already things in the script that just needed to be pulled out to make it more [relevant]," he recalls. One of the film's stars, Robert Redford, was approached for the role in large part because he starred in the 1975 political thriller Three Days of the Condor.

"[That film] was a big influence on this movie," Joe says. "You could really call this movie 'Three Days of Captain America,' if you wanted to. The structure is so similar...We felt like we had a decent shot at getting [Redford] because the script had a political component to it and we thought that might motivate him."

But don't take any of this to mean the film is a stern lecture on American foreign policy. It's thrilling as hell, and also the best to emerge in the recent string of Marvel movies. "We're action fetishists," Joe says. "And we love '70s thrillers." The brothers drew on the influence of some of their favorite action-flick moments: The famous bank heist and shootout in Michael Mann's Heat. William Friedkin's The French Connection. John Schlesinger's Marathon Man. John McTiernan's Predator. Gareth Evans' The Raid: Redemption. (And for the Washington, DC-set car chase in The Winter Soldier, the brothers consulted YouTube, searching for videos of actual car chases. One video—wherein two escaped convicts in Brazil get stuck in traffic and plow through cars as police pursue them on foot—was especially helpful.) "Choreographing action, it's like choreographing a Broadway show," Anthony says.

But at the heart of the explosion and melee -filled film are the political themes, including targeted killing. "The question is where do you stop?" Joe says. "If there are 100 people we can kill to make us safer, do we do it? What if we find out there's 1,000? What if we find out there's 10,000? What if it's a million? At what point do you stop?"

Meditation

Why is mindfulness so popular?It appeals to people seeking an antidote to life in work-obsessed, tech-saturated, frantically busy Western culture. There is growing scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation has genuine health benefits — and can even alter the structure of the brain, so the technique is drawing some unlikely devotees. Pentagon leaders are experimenting with mindfulness to make soldiers more resilient, while General Mills has installed a meditation room in every building of its Minneapolis campus. Even tech-obsessed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are using it as a way to unplug from their hyperconnected lives. "Meditation always had bad branding for this culture," says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. "But to me, it's a way to think more clearly and to not feel so swept up."

What is mindfulness, exactly?It's a meditation practice central to the Buddha's teachings, which has now been adapted by Western teachers into a secular self-help technique. One of the pioneers in the field is Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-educated molecular biologist who began teaching mindfulness in the 1970s to people suffering from chronic pain and disease. The core of mindfulness is quieting the mind's constant chattering — thoughts, anxieties, and regrets. Practitioners are taught to keep their attention focused on whatever they're doing at the present moment, whether it's eating, exercising, or even working. The most basic mindfulness practice is sitting meditation: You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus your awareness on your breath and other bodily sensations. When thoughts come, you gently let them go without judgment and return to the focus on the breath. Over time, this practice helps people connect with a deeper, calmer part of themselves, and retrain their brains not to get stuck in pointless, neurotic ruminations about the past and future that leave them constantly stressed, anxious, or depressed.

Does it work?Scientific research has shown that mindfulness appears to make people both happier and healthier. Regular meditation can lower a person's blood pressure and their levels of cortisol, a

stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland and closely associated with anxiety. Meditation can also increase the body's immune response, improve a person's emotional stability and sleep quality, and even enhance creativity. When combining mindfulness with traditional forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, patients in one study saw a 10 to 20 percent improvement in the mild symptoms of their depression — the same progress produced by antidepressants. Other studies have found that up to 80 percent of trauma survivors and veterans with PTSD see a significant reduction in troubling symptoms. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is also teaching mindfulness as a form of treatment for patients with substance abuse problems.

Why does it work?MRI scans have shown that mindfulness can alter meditators' brain waves — and even cause lasting changes to the physical structure of their brains (see below). Meditation reduces electrical activity and blood flow in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in strong, primal emotions such as fear and anxiety, while boosting activity regions responsible for planning, decision-making, and empathy. These findings have helped attract the more skeptical-minded. "There is a swath of our culture who is not going to listen to someone in monk's robes," says Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "but they are paying attention to scientific evidence."

Who are these converted skeptics?Ironically enough, Silicon Valley's tech geeks are leading the way. "It seems counterintuitive, since technology is perhaps the biggest driver of mindlessness and distraction," says Ann Mack, a director at marketing communications brand JWT Worldwide. Google now has an in-house mindfulness program called "Search Inside Yourself," and the company has even installed a labyrinth at its Mountain View complex so employees can practice walking meditation. Tech leaders flock annually to the Wisdom 2.0 conference, and there are now countless smartphone apps devoted to the subject. But these developments have led to a growing concern that mindfulness is being co-opted and corrupted.

Why is that?Long-term adherents of mindfulness worry that what is fundamentally a spiritual practice is being appropriated by new age entrepreneurs seeking to profit off it. Others are concerned that Fortune 500 executives are pushing meditation so that overworked employees can be even more productive without melting down. But Westerners clearly need some sort of strategy to cope with a world now filled with the inescapable distractions of technology. The average American now consumes 63 gigabytes of content, or more than 150,000 words, over 13.6 hours of media use every single day — and all indications are that those numbers will keep climbing. For Janice Marturano, founder of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, mindfulness is not just a way of coping with the deluge of input; it's a way of confronting the modern world head-on. "There is no life-work balance," says Marturano. "We have one life. What's most important is that you be awake for it."

Rewiring the brainUntil recently, neurologists believed that a person's brain stopped physically developing when they were 25 to 35 years old. From that point onward, the hardware was set. But a growing body of research points to the possibility of lifelong "neuroplasticity" — the ability of the brain to

adapt to new input — and a 2011 Massachusetts General Hospital study found that those who meditate regularly for as little as eight weeks changed the very structure of their brains. MRI scans showed that by meditating daily for an average of 27 minutes, participants increased the density of the gray matter (which holds most of our brain cells) in an area that is essential for focus, memory, and compassion. Previous research had already shown that monks who had spent more than 10,000 hours in meditation had extraordinary growth and activity in this part of the brain. But it's now clear that even relative beginners at mindfulness can quickly rewire their brains in a positive way.

Light from Mars

A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be artificial light emanating outward from the planet's surface.

The photo, beamed millions of miles from Mars to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was taken last week, apparently by one of two NASA rovers on the red planet.

Although the space agency hasn't issued any official statement yet about the phenomenon, bloggers and NASA enthusiasts have started chiming in.  

RELATED: The biggest hoaxes ever exposed

Scott C. Waring, who maintains the website UFO Sightings Daily, posted the photo April 6.

Waring noted that the light shines upward, as if from the ground, and is very flat across the bottom.

"This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do," Waring wrote on his website. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process."

On Tuesday, Slate.com's Bad Astronomy blog suggested that a UFO conspiracy site might not be the best source of information for exploring serious planetary phenomena. A more serious source of this light, said blogger Phil Plait, is that "a subatomic particle smacked into the camera, leaving behind its trail of energy."

HoustonChronicle.com: Vast ocean found on Saturn – could it sustain life?

Earlier this month, NASA announced that on April 2, the Curiosity rover drove the last 98 feet needed to arrive at "the Kimberley," a spot where it can study rock clues about ancient environments that might have been favorable for life, according to a news release.

The Kimberley, where four different types of rock intersect, is named for a region of western Australia. The rover's stay there has been planned since early last year, the release said.

"This is the spot on the map we've been headed for, on a little rise that gives us a great view for context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley," Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said in the release.

Rice is the scientist in charge of planning several weeks of observations, sample-drilling and on-site laboratory analysis of the area's rocks.

Arrival at this location means Curiosity has driven 3.8 miles since August 2012, when it landed inside Mars' Gale Crater.

HoustonChronicle.com: Space station sidesteps space junk again

The Kimberley investigations are to be the most extensive since Curiosity spent the first half of 2013 in an area called Yellowknife Bay, the release said.

At Yellowknife Bay, the one-ton rover examined the first samples ever drilled from rocks on Mars. These samples showed signs of an ancient lakebed environment that provided the chemical ingredients and energy necessary for life, the release said.

At the Kimberley and, later, at outcrops on the slope of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, researchers plan to use Curiosity's science instruments to learn more about habitable past conditions and environmental changes.

The Article 5 Convention

The most important political development in 200 years was triggered last week, when the state legislature of Michigan became the 34 th state to demand a “Constitutional Convention” in the United States. Under Article 5 of the US Constitution, if 2/3rds of the states call for such a convention, (meaning 34 states) it MUST take place. During such a convention, the ENTIRE Constitution can be changed; nothing is off-limits. This would even allow the States to dismantle the federal government without its consent, and repudiate the debt which that government has incurred! When it voted for the convention last week, Michigan became the 34 th state, thus meeting the requirement.

A goal has been reached behind what would be an unprecedented effort to amend the U.S. Constitution, through a little-known provision that gives states rather than Congress the power to initiate changes. This is the most significant political development in the entire world in the last 200 years.

Breaking: Sen. Harry Reid Behind BLM Land Grab of Bundy Ranch

 

BLM attempted cover-up of Sen. Reid/Chinese gov’t takeover of ranch for solar farm

Kit DanielsInfowars.comApril 11, 2014

The Bureau of Land Management, whose director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser, has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wants Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations.

Corrupt Democratic Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) working with the Chinese gov’t to take land from hard-working Americans.

Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.”

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.

The first segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

Another BLM report entitled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone” (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.

The second segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area (Click to enlarge.)

“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”

Back in 2012, the New American reported that Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land in Laughlin, Nevada.

And journalist Marcus Stern with Reuters also reported that Sen. Reid was heavily involved in the deal as well.

“[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert,” he wrote. “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada.”

“His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”

Although these reports are in plain view, the mainstream media has so far ignored this link.

The BLM’s official reason for encircling the Bundy family with sniper teams and helicopters was to protect the endangered desert tortoise, which the agency has previously been killing in mass due to “budget constraints.”

“A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher; they want his land,” journalist Dana Loesch wrote. “The tortoise wasn’t of concern when [U.S. Senator] Harry Reid worked with BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore.”

“Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over 84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests,” she added. “BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. Clearly these developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasi-homesteading grazing area.”

“If only Cliven Bundy were a big Reid donor.”

Update: The Drudge Report, the #1 news aggregate site in the world, has now picked up this story. Unfortunately for the BLM, the documents they wanted to delete are now exposed for the world to see.

Update #2: ENN Energy Group describes itself as a “privately-owned clean energy distributor in China.” However, as the People’s Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, all large companies in China, one way or the other, are either controlled or are heavily influenced by the Chinese government.

Range Wars

We have been telling you for weeks on this program that the only thing preventing the complete tyrannical takeover of the United States is the armed American. I told you about my survey of numerous gun stores in multiple states where they reported sales so strong that they did not have enough registers in the store to ring up the orders. Several online clearing houses have emerged allowing people to buy guns online. Gun ranges have three-hour waiting lines as tens of thousands of Americans are training every

available hour for war. They are practicing to kill. They are not shooting round targets. They are shooting human forms. They are focused and determined and they are very very good with a gun.

In an epic standoff between armed Federal mercenaries and supporters of Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy more than 200 armed civilians sat quietly on horseback while the mercs stood behind shields and vehicles waiting for orders to fire at will. Several cowboys walked up to the metal barricade and went nose to nose with the camouflage-clad soldier with a small beard.

“You need to turn around and back away,” the soldier stated coldly.

“The cowboy in a white western shirt and a black hat raised his right finger and pointed to the soldier’s nose and quickly responded, “You need to leave.”

No one was backing off. Hundreds of cowboys sat with their holsters open to 45-caliber revolvers loaded and ready just a few yards behind the ones doing the negotiating. The cowboy drew a slowly knife and cut the zip ties holding the DO NOT TRESPASS sign off the barricade. He turned around an faced his cowboys on foot and on horseback, raised the sign over his head, and loudly proclaimed something like, “It is time for them to go.”

The entire line of horses began moving forward, while the lead cowboy walked calmly past the four pairs of sun glasses with out-gunned soldiers behind them. They kept walking until the horses then walked majestically past the front defense line, while the bullhorn scratched that they would open fire if they continued to advance. Not a cowboy was seen blinking this day.

With Waco burned into their memories, the cowboys moved resolutely toward the armored vehicles, staring down the barrels of automatic weapons trained on those saddles. At least a dozen cell phones were sending the video out live during the entire confrontation. Someone at the highest levels was watching, and calculating.

As though they had seen an army of angels descending upon them, the mercenaries lowered their weapons, put their vehicles in reverse, and pulled back out of the news cameras, and out of the history books of tyranny…for now.

RENO, Nev. (MyNews4.com & KRNV) -- Senate majority leader Harry Reid hasn't been very vocal about the cattle battle showdown in recent days, but says "it's not over."

Reid tells News4's Samantha Boatman his take on the so-called cattle battle in southern Las Vegas. "Well, it's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over," Reid said.

It cannot be overstated how much of a gargantuan victory this represents for the American people in their battle against big government tyranny.

“The people have the power when they unite,” Ammon Bundy told the Las Vegas Review Journal. “The war has just begun.

China Liberty

The Communist Party’s time in power is running out, one of China’s leading civil rights activists warned on Friday after a court rejected his attempt to overturn a four year jail term that supporters, activists and diplomats claim was based on trumped-up charges.

In a remarkable courtroom attack on Beijing’s attempts to silence its opponents, Xu Zhiyong, the 41-year-old founder of a civil-rights group called the New Citizens’ Movement, warned the Party its ongoing crackdown on activists was destined to fail.

“This ridiculous judgment cannot hold back the tide of human progress. The dark clouds of the Communist dictatorship will one day clear,” Dr Xu said, according to Zhang Qingfang, his lawyer, who was present.

“The light of freedom, fairness, justice and love will eventually fill China,” added Dr Xu, a legal scholar whose imprisonment came during a year-long campaign by China’s new president Xi Jinping against dissenters.

Dr Xu was speaking after Beijing’s high court rejected an appeal to overturn his earlier conviction for “gathering crowds to disturb public order”.

The academic, who was sentenced to four years imprisonment in January, is one of dozens of activists caught up in what has been described as the most severe attack on government critics since the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

Members of the movement marked Dr Xu’s failed appeal by publishing a withering critique of the Communist Party’s attempts to force their group into extinction.

Beijing’s “systematic persecution” of its enemies would fail to destroy a growing popular demand for major political and social change, argued a combative essay on the movement’s newly launched website.

“This is a movement that cannot be stopped,” wrote Chen Min a journalist and activist better known by the pen name Xiao Shu.

“Any attempt to hold [it] back is destined to fail, like beating back water with a sword,” Mr Chen added, according to a translation by the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “False charges, persecution and forced suppression will not avail but in fact will only steel our resolve.”

Teng Biao, a lawyer and co-founder of the New Citizens’ Movement, said Beijing’s politically motivated campaign would backfire.

“We will not stop,” Teng Biao told The Telegraph shortly after his friend’s appeal was rejected. “We will let the whole world know that this crackdown cannot stop us. We will keep following

Dr Xu’s example. We believe that what we are doing and what we have done is legal and useful and important for society.”

Dr Xu and others conceived the New Citizens’ Movement in mid-2012 as a China-wide network of lawyers, academics, petitioners and liberal thinkers who were united by their desire for social change.

Its members, said by some to number in the thousands, hold informal dinner gatherings where they discuss the future of the world’s second largest economy and highlight issues including government corruption and transparency.

China’s leaders apparently feared the movement might grow into a “political threat”, said Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Beijing responded with force, detaining or arresting dozens of activists since last year in order to send a message that “organised advocating for change is not acceptable”.

A spokesperson for the US embassy in Beijing said: “We call on Chinese authorities to release Xu and other political prisoners immediately, remove restrictions on their freedom of movement and guarantee them the protections and freedoms to which they are entitled under China's international human rights commitments.”

A Foreign Office report issued on the eve of the appeal said 2014 had seen “ongoing restrictions on civil and political freedoms in China”.

Teng Biao said attempts to kill off the New Citizens’ Movement by jailing members would only make it stronger.

“I know that many citizens around China continue their activities, their dinner gatherings, their activities demanding the disclosure of officials’ assets,” he said.

“This kind of crackdown cannot prevent the New Citizens’ Movement from growing stronger. We have seen more and more people standing up and fighting for liberty and human rights.”

Mr Zhang, Dr Xu’s lawyer, said Friday’s verdict, while not unexpected, was “outrageous”.

“I believe the government has made a grave mistake,” he said. By criminalising “sensible and peaceful” citizens with legitimate complaints, the Communist Party risked creating “radical and violent opposition.”

“The government will come to regret this,” he said.

Beijing’s internet censors appeared to have blocked the New Citizens’ Movement new website by Friday afternoon, just hours after its launch. However, internet users who managed to scale the “Great Firewall of China” found a defiant message from the group.

“Repression will not end the New Citizens’ Movement,” it said. “This is the road to a free China. It is the road to a better China. We are duty bound to forge ahead.

Electile Dysfunction

You and I know the most important thing in politics is to keep getting elected. We slap ourselves in the forehead with disbelief when people like Nancy Pelosi, formerly Miss Lube Rack 1955, gets elected over and over again every 2 years. Or we stare like someone who just saw a two-year old throw a 110 mile an hour baseball when we see John McCain or Sheila Jackson Lee, or God save us all Harry Reid get reelected yet another time. The dynasty of corruption and greed has swallowed all reason and defecated a stinking, rotting plutocracy in place of our beloved constitution.

The question on everyone’s mind from time to time is, “Who is going to be the first to attack the capital?” No, I am serious. Have you been to Washington DC in the last 8 years? This is a city on a war footing. They have implanted impregnable steel barricades that can pop up like built in bulldozer blades at nearly every key intersection. When deployed, they prevent any traffic from doing anything but sitting there in the killing zone. There is no escape. If they want to gun you down in broad daylight, they will do it.

Just ask the family of Miriam Carey was the 34 year-old single mother who drove with her one year-old daughter, Erica, 270 miles from her home in Stamford, Connecticut, to the White House and claimed Obama was trying to communicate with her. The official story has Miriam “ramming a barricade” at the first White House checkpoint then speeding off to ram another barricade outside the Capitol; then, after being pursued by law enforcement and crashing near a guardhouse, Miriam was shot by Capitol Police and the Secret Service. 12 bullets penetrated her body, ending her life and disfiguring her to such an extent that her family did not identify her remains except from photos. Luckily, Baby Erica was not hit by gunfire, nor was anyone in law enforcement.

The problem with this version of events offered by authorities and faithfully reported by the mainstream media is that none of the details stand up to scrutiny. If you still have faith in the mainstream media, please read this tale, click through on all the links to evaluate the information yourself, then go back and see what was reported by Fox and CNN. You will see the true nature of these outlets as vehicles of persuasion not information.

Here is the information and disinformation in the Miriam Carey case, point by point:

MIRIAM TRIED TO GAIN ENTRANCE TO THE WHITE HOUSE BY RAMMING THE BARRICADE. As an eyewitness and the police report lay out, Miriam was trying to leave the White House gate and the Secret Service there were trying to detain her by quickly putting a bike rack in front of her car as she was attempting to exit. Miriam did not stop for the bike rack, drove through it and in so doing knocked over the Secret Service agent who was trying to put the barrier in front of her car. For some reason, Miriam did not want to be detained. Presumably that reason was fear – a fear that later events justified

A truly fascinating theory by blogger American Everyman about the Miriam Carey case offers a possible explanation for this action. He speculates that perhaps the baby was not an innocent

bystander, but is the center of the story. Perhaps the decontamination was to destroy Baby Erica’s DNA. Subsequent events seem to support the theory that the baby is the center of the story, as you will find below. This theory would also explain why Miriam took the baby to DC in the first place. Miriam allegedly claimed that Obama was trying to communicate with her. Perhaps he or his agents were trying to communicate with her, either on Obama’s behalf or on behalf of someone close to him, especially if the paternity of the baby is at the heart of this story.

Obama first met Ms Carey on 18 May 2011 when he traveled to New London, Connecticut to address the graduating class of the US Coast Guard Academy.

The US press, at that time, blamed Obama’s “substantial delay” for making this address on bad weather, but according to GRU sources the American President was, instead, having a “significant” problem after having lodged a portion of a pistachio nut (one of his favorite snack foods) shell into one of his back molars.

Prior to Air Force One arriving in Connecticut, this report continues, Obama’s Secret Service (SS) detail contacted an “approved” local dentist to meet the President upon his planes landing for the purpose of alleviating his then present condition.

As Obama’s personal White House physician at the time was US Navy Captain Jeffrey Kuhlman, MD, this report says, the “approved” dentist selected was Dr. Brian Evans of Advanced Periodontics located in Hamden, Connecticut, whom Captain Kuhlman was long associated with through their shared US Navy service.

Dr. Evans had served on active duty in the United States Navy as a staff periodontist in Norfolk, Virginia. While in the Navy, Dr. Evans was, also, the periodontics mentor for the Navy’s Advanced Education for General Dentistry program and held top-secret security clearances. Dr. Evans was further awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for meritorious service.

Dr. Evans’ licensed dental assistant while treating the President on Air Force One on 18 May 2011 was Ms Carey, whom GRU assests in this report state “struck up an almost immediate friendship with Obama.”

Important to note, this report says, is that after Ms Carey was assassinated, Dr. Evans was quoted in the US press as stating that she was fired from her job at his office about a year ago but wouldn't say why. Dr. Evans further stated that Ms Carey had been away from the job for a period after falling down a staircase and suffering a head injury and it was a few weeks after she returned to work that she was fired.

GRU analysts in this report, however, state that Ms Carey’s absence from work was “directly related” to an affair she had begun with Obama in 2011 and which culminated in a girl child being born in August 2012, and which it appears the President attempted to have her abort, but which Ms Carey refused to do because of her Christian beliefs.

Critical to note, this report says, are that GRU signal intelligence analysts (SIGNIT) who were monitoring CIA-NSA-FBI encrypted electronic communication traffic in Washington D.C. on 3 October observed the exact same “encrypted electronic signature” used by the elite hit squad that attacked the US Navy Yard on 16 September, had assassinated the award winning American journalist Michael Hastings on 18 June, and on 25 June attacked the Los Angeles Police detectives investigation Hastings assassination.

From the tracing of this unique “encrypted electronic signature” as it pertained to Ms Carey’s actions on 3 October, this report continues, it suggests that she was “lured” to Washington D.C. under the pretext that Obama wanted to see for the first time his new baby daughter.

Obama’s concerns about Ms Carey, the GRU says, was related to her reporting to local Connecticut police authorities late last year her fears that she was being followed and secretly recorded by US intelligence agents and her belief that her life was in danger.

These same local police authorities, however, state that Ms Carey told them in December that she was a prophet, that Obama would place the city of Stamford under a “lockdown” and that he had her and her residence under electronic surveillance.

Upon Ms Carey arriving at the White House on 3 October, this report says, she became “aware” of the trap she had driven into, and in her attempting to flee to safety was viciously tracked by multiple US intelligence agencies and ultimately assassinated by a point-black gunshot to the left side of her head.

Even though Ms Carey’s sister Amy Carey-Jones said there were no indications that her sister was unstable, and that her sister “seemed OK” the last time they spoke more than a week ago, and a second sister, Valarie Carey, who is a retired New York City police officer, said there was “no need for a gun to be used,” the propaganda US media continues to paint this young mother as nothing more than a lunatic.

The same, however, cannot be said of one of Obama’s longest mistresses, Vera Baker, who aside from raising millions for his Senate and Presidential campaigns, fled to the Caribbean island of Martinique when her affair with the American President was discovered and remains in hiding to this day.

As to why Obama would engage himself in dangerous affairs in the first place, this report bizarrely concludes, is the growing evidence that his wife, and First Lady, Michelle Obama, was born Michael LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago, Illinois on 17 January 1964. He was the second son born to Fraser Robinson III, a well known cocaine dealer and union thug for Crime Lord-Mayor Richard J. Daley, and Marian Shields Robinson, a transient street prostitute who was diagnosed with the HIV virus in 1998.

After a successful sex-change surgery, this report says, Michelle met Obama, married and have since adopted two daughters, Malia and Sasha. And even though she is said to have a “watch list” of women that were to be kept away from her President husband, most unfortunately it did not include Miriam Carey.

When a Despot is put into a Corner, he will do anything to remain in power.

President Obama has been making comments lately about his fear that someone is about to set off a nuke in the eastern US. “The president was not discussing intelligence when he said, ‘I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan,’” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mailed response to a question.

Obama’s comment came at the closing a multinational Nuclear Security Summit at The Hague yesterday. At a news conference, he was downplaying the power that Russia holds over his national security agenda in its annexation of Crimea, and trying to highlight the importance of the summit and its goal of monitoring and controlling nuclear weapons material so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of terrorists.

I was wondering if the government had deigned to share with us citizens any tips for, you know, surviving something their own intelligence points to as the likeliest unlikely Black Swan event.

Well, no. And yes.

No — very few people in Washington, D.C., who work for the government have any idea what they would do if a 10-kiloton nuclear device exploded at the intersection of 16th and K streets.

You can always look to movies to figure this stuff out, right? And in movies, since nuclear radiation is BAD, the thing to do is to get away from it as quickly as possible. In the movies, electronics are fried, too, the response is chaotic, and hundreds of thousands of people die.

Interestingly enough, though, the government has done quite a bit of work to figure out what exactly would happen if a suitcase nuke — which, I know, doesn't really exist, but, for the sake of this example, bear with me — actually did explode a few blocks from the White House.

And curiously, and perhaps hearteningly, it turns out that there is quite a lot that you or I can do if we get stuck in Washington when something like that happens. Choices we make could very well make the difference between our imminent death and a relatively full and happy life, assuming the bomb is a one-off.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory released a report in 2011 that spells all this out. It hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves.

It's called the "National Capital Region Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism" and it makes for fascinating reading.

Did you know, for example, that:

1. The WORST thing for someone to try to do, in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion that they survive, is to get in a car and drive away.

2. Unless you're within about a third to a half a mile radius of ground zero and the shelter options are poor, the BEST thing for someone to do is to find a stable location inside a well-built apartment or office building — the majority of which will remain standing outside that half mile radius — and stay there for 24 hours.

And if you were very close to ground zero and you did survive — and a lot of folks will — the best thing for you to do is to:

A. Take immediate shelter somewhere, because fallout will rain down on you if you don't.

B. Wait an hour.

C. Then, walk about a half-dozen blocks laterally until you find intact large buildings to shelter you.

3. The electromagnetic pulse from a ground burst will NOT, in fact, knock out all types of communication. Some? Maybe.

4. If you live in a single-family house with thin walls, your chances of surviving in the immediate aftermath of a blast and not getting cancer later are exponentially higher than if you seek shelter in a bigger building, even one that might literally be next door.

5. Rescuers should NOT put on radiation protection gear if it will slow them down. So long as the fallout has stopped falling, they're best advised to turn out in their normal gear.

6. Though thousands of people will die from the blast effects, almost all — about 96 percent — of the other potential casualties could be avoided if people understood the basics of what to do in the event of mass radiation exposure.

7. Did I mention that the worst place to be in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear blast is in a car trying to get away? The so-called DFZ — the Dangerous Fallout Zone — will extend out as much as 20 miles, but it is likely to be extremely narrow. (If it's not, that means the concentration of radioactive particles will be lower.) The vector and location of this zone depends on the wind. And its size will shrink with every passing hour.

8. Penetrating trauma from broken glass is probably the largest treatable cadre of blast injuries.

I admit that I don't know what forum the president or anyone else could use to educate people in major cities about this stuff. Government never wants to alarm people. But maybe a little bit of alarmism is worth it, if it turns out that a terrorist's nuclear blast is a lot more survivable than we might think, if only we do certain things.

The Texas Hacker that tried to Save the Day: See Something, Say Nothing.

27-year-old Fidel Salinas of Dona, Texas is accused of illegally attempting to access several Internet servers to include government assets. He is thought to be affiliated with the notorious online hacking group dubbed “Anonymous.” 

According to court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas, Salinas is facing 14 hacking charges for trying to access websites belonging to the La Joya School District, Hidalgo County, and The McAllen Monitor newspaper. Each charge carries potential jail time of up to ten years.  

A criminal complaint states that Salinas tried to hack the Hidalgo County's management page thousands of times on January 5, 2012.

The complaint stated, "During the early morning, Salinas made over 14,000 attempts to log into their website server...The intrusion attempts were severe enough to prevent the administrators from accessing their website for at least half a day; subsequently, this prevented employees from managing their own website."

It allegedly cost the county $10,620.32 to repair the damages caused by Salinas' hacking attempts. 

Investigators were ultimately able to track down Salinas using his IP address, according to the complaint. When confronted, Salinas said he hacked the county website "after he saw a flaw." He claimed that he was going to relay any errors he found to Hidalgo County officials as a "courtesy." Officers subsequently confiscated multiple computers and hard drives from the residence. 

Upon further investigation, officials claim to have found Salinas' chat logs relating to Anonymous. More specifically, he was conversing with members of the group's “Operation Anti-Security section.” 

When questioned, Salinas admitted to posting the following on his Facebook page on January 22, 2012: 

"F**k you corrupt officials and politicians. When someone tries to give you advice that your servers aren't secure and said person doesn't modify, access, or download 'restricted' information. I believe you say thank you instead of being afraid of what you don't know by getting an invalid warrant, arresting, and wrongfully jacking all his electronics.  -We do not forgive, we do not forget, divide by zero we fall, EXPECT US!

GMO UpdateJust when we think we are making progress, the Agency government steps in and seizes control of State’s rights.

Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2014

By U.S. Congress Organic Consumers Association, April 10, 2014 113TH CONGRESS2D  SESSION

To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to food produced from, containing, or consisting of a bioengineered organism, the labeling of natural foods, and for other purposes. 

PROHIBITION    AGAINST    MANDATORY    LABEL-15    ING.—Section 403A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cos-16    metic Act (21 U.S.C. 343–1) is amended by adding at the17    end the following:

18    ‘‘(c) PROHIBITIONS AGAINST MANDATORY LABELING19    OF FOOD DEVELOPED USING BIOENGINEERING.—Except20    for claims under subsection (a)(1) or (b)(1) of section 425,21    no State or political subdivision of a State may directly22    or indirectly establish under any authority or continue in23    effect as to any food in interstate commerce any require-24    ment for the labeling of a food by virtue of its having been25    developed using bioengineering, including any require- 1    ments for claims that a food is or contains an ingredient2    that was developed using bioengineering.’’.

3    TITLE II—NATURAL FOODS

4    SEC. 201. LABELING OF NATURAL FOODS.5    Section 403 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic6    Act (21 U.S.C. 343), as amended by section 103 of this7    Act, is further amended by adding at the end the fol-8    lowing:9    ‘‘(aa)(1) If its labeling contains an express or implied10    claim that the food is ‘natural’ unless the claim is made11    in accordance with subparagraph (2).

12    ‘‘(2) A claim described in subparagraph (1) may be13    made only if the claim uses terms that have been defined14    by, and the food meets the requirements that have been15    established in, regulations promulgated to carry out this16    paragraph.17    ‘‘(3) Notwithstanding subparagraph (2), prior to the18    finalization of regulations to carry out this paragraph, the19    use of any claim that a food is ‘natural’ shall be allowed20    if consistent with the Secretary’s existing policy for such21    claims.22    ‘‘(4) In promulgating regulations to carry out this23    paragraph, the Secretary shall differentiate between food24    for human consumption and food intended for consump-25    tion by animals other than humans. 1    ‘‘(5) For purposes of subparagraph (1), a natural2    claim includes the use of—3    ‘‘(A) the terms ‘natural’, ‘100% natural’, ‘natu-4    rally grown’, ‘all natural’, and ‘made with natural5    ingredients’; and6    ‘‘(B)  any  other  terms  specified  by  the  Secretary.

Conservation Efforts are Working as Planned

(CNSNews.com) - The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013.

The relative price of electricity in the United States tends to rise in spring, peak in summer, and decline in fall. Last year, after the price of a KWH averaged 12.8 cents in March, it rose to an all-time high of 13.7 cents in June, July, August and September.

If the prevailing trend holds, the average price of a KWH would hit a new record this summer.

The BLS’s seasonally adjusted electricity price index rose to 209.341 this March, the highest it has ever been, up 10.537 points—or 5.3 percent--from 198.804 in March 2013.

In its press release on the Consumer Price Index, BLS noted that the overall energy index declined in March, driven by declining gasoline and fuel oil indexes, despite increases in natural gas and electricity.

”The energy index fell 0.1 percent in March after a 0.5 percent decline in February,” said BLS. “The gasoline index declined 1.7 percent in March, the same decline as in February. (Before seasonal adjustment, gasoline prices rose 5.1 percent in March).

“The fuel oil index also declined, falling 2.9 percent after rising 4.1 percent the previous month,” said BLS. “In contrast, the index for natural gas rose sharply, increasing 7.5 percent, its largest one-month increase since October 2005. It has increased 15.3 percent over the last three months.

“The electricity index also increased, rising 1.1 percent,” said BLS. ”Over the last 12 months, the energy index has increased 0.4 percent, with the natural gas index rising 16.4 percent, the electricity index increasing 5.3 percent, and the fuel oil index advancing 2.1 percent. These increases more than offset a 4.7 percent decline in the gasoline index.”

Historically, rising electricity prices have not been inevitable in the United States. The BLS’s annual electricity price index—which goes back a century—shows that electricity prices generally declined in the United States between 1913 and the end of World War II.  They then held relatively steady for about two decades before beginning to escalate in the late 1960s