“At least seven U.S. state attorney generals are investigating whether Monsanto Company has abused its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices on seed,” the Organic Consumers Association reports.
This adds to the increasing pressures on the agricultural biotech giant.
April 26, 2010 CNN
It’s the geeky, Silicon Valley version of “COPS.” Sadly, however, to our inappropriate amusement, no Tasers were used.
The drama deepened yesterday when Gizmodo reported that its editor’s house was recently raided by California authorities investigating the case of the missing 4th generation iPhone.
In case you’ve been unplugged for the past week, Gizmodo was approached by a dude who claimed he may or may not have had a missing iPhone prototype. So Gizmodo decided to pay him $5,000 to see if what he had was indeed an iPhone prototype.
After taking the phone apart and writing numerous posts about it, Gizmodo returned the phone to Apple. All along the tech blog has claimed it didn’t know it was Apple’s until they pretty much confirmed it was, and then promptly made moves to return it.
That’s Gizmodo’s story and I’m sure they’ll be sticking to it. Everyone’s watching this case and wondering if Gizmodo and its owner, Gawker Media, will successfully protect themselves under the journalist shield law. But John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, puts it succinctly when he says the state of California’s argument might be: “Hey, you committed a felony.”
Now, some have raised questions about the validity of the search of the editor’s home. Wired has a story that points out journalists must be subpoenaed, and that they’re not subject to unannounced searches.
Keene, New Hampshire politician leans in favor of the right to be outside a controversial new jail. Even if you *are* holding signs and singing (gasp).
Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.
In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.
But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.
Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.
He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
Ripped from their mothers on the day they’re born, veal calves spend the rest of their lives in crates too small to turn around.
“I would like the firing squad, please.”
So said Ronnie Lee Gardner to a Utah judge on Friday, words that seemed from another time, uttered 25 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a man during an escape attempt.
Mr. Gardner, 49, had a quarter century to ponder a choice that exists in no other state: whether to die by lethal injection or by a team of five anonymous officers firing bullets into his heart.
With Mr. Gardner’s appeals apparently exhausted, Judge Robin Reese of the 3rd district signed a warrant of execution Friday and officials tentatively scheduled it for June 18.
An out of control passenger who threatened to blow up a plane, still in flight, forced an emergency landing in Albuquerque.
I had the misfortune of listening to CNBC the other day while visiting my mother. The talking heads on the tube were discussing the surge in stock prices and the lifting of the DOW Industrials above the eleven thousand mark. They went on and on about how much of a psychological barrier the eleven thousand mark was and how that meant that the “recovery” wasn’t just some fluke and everything was going to be hunky dory and rosy from now on. They then began asking the question when the “retailer investor” (that’s you and me in Wall Street lingo) was going to get back into the market and really start cranking it up. They thought that all of us little, ordinary people with no money wouldn’t want to miss the investment boat. All I remember thinking was “How stupid do these people think I am?” Indeed, how stupid do the Wall Street moguls think we are? READ MORE »
LONDON, April 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Lloyd’s List – the leading news and information service for the global shipping industry – has learned that the UK Department for Transport is allowing Dover ferry operators to carry passengers in numbers that would normally be illegal under rules against overloading, in a bid to repatriate travellers stranded by the aviation crisis.
French authorities are understood to have made similar provisions for French concerns.
SeaFrance confirmed that it had taken advantage of the one-off bilateral derogation, which expires at the end of the week, although P&O Ferries said yesterday that it would not do so, largely because of constraints on the availability of seafarers with the right skills in the off-peak period.
“The UK move suspends whole chunks of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, introduced after the Titanic disaster of 1912, so that vessels can take 10% more people than the maximum shown on the passenger certificate,” says David Osler, reporter for Lloyd’s List.
“Ratios enforcing the provision of lifeboats for 30% of those on board and additional liferafts for 25% of those on board have also been lifted for the time being. Both moves are unprecedented, at least in recent times,” continued Osler.
But a spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency denied that the radical step put the public at risk, despite the huge annual death toll from overloaded ferries in the third world.
Under the deal, all voyages must be completed in daylight and in favourable weather and must take on additional crew if needed for passenger control, he stressed. Moreover, modern vessels typically have lifeboat capacity above the permissible minimum.
The decision was made necessary by last week’s eruption of a volcano in Iceland, forcing the cancellation of the vast majority of airline flights across Europe because it is unsafe to allow jet engines to take in the resultant dust.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish an advisory council on science,
technology, and innovation, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Establishment. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is hereby established. The PCAST shall be composed of not more than 21 members, one of whom shall be the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (the “Science Advisor”), and 20 of whom shall include distinguished individuals and representatives from sectors outside of the Federal Government appointed by the President. These nonfederal members shall have diverse perspectives and expertise in science, technology, and innovation. The Science Advisor shall serve as a Co-Chair of the PCAST. The President shall also designate at least one, but not more than two, of the nonfederal members to serve as a Co-Chair of the PCAST with the Science Advisor.
Sec. 2. Functions. (a) The PCAST shall advise the President, directly at its meetings with the President and also through the Science Advisor, on matters involving science, technology, and innovation policy. This advice shall include, but not be limited to, policy that affects science, technology, and innovation, as well as scientific and technical information that is needed to inform public policy relating to the economy, energy, environment, public health, national and homeland security, and other topics. The PCAST shall meet regularly and shall:
(i) respond to requests from the President or the Science Advisor for information, analysis, evaluation, or advice;
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Written by 
Hatred, Intolerance, Violence and the Southern Poverty Law Center
2010 Leave a Comment
szandorblestman.com
“Haven’t you heard, it’s a battle of words
the poster bearer cried.
Listen son, said the man with the gun
there’s room for you inside.”
From the Pink Floyd song “Us and Them”
There is a change occurring in the modern world, a fluctuation of ideas. Students of history who look beyond the official sanctioned accounts of the “winners” to a more objective view on all sides of conflict are likely to understand that these fluctuations have been going on for a long time now, perhaps since the beginning of written history. The fluctuations have at times resulted in conflict, sometimes quite violent. They cause a struggle between ideologies that can be labeled in many different ways, big government versus small government, communism or fascism versus free market, tyranny versus freedom, or my favorite, collectivism versus individualism. READ MORE »