Category Archives: Profiteering

Five mutations could send bird flu virus airborne : Study | Metro

While some critics argue these studies should not be done at all, Osterholm doesn’t take that view. But he insists that making this kind of information readily available makes it possible for scientists anywhere — even those working in laboratories which don’t meet the highest standards of biosafety and biosecurity — to make dangerous viruses.

“We now have intentionally lowered the bar to the point … where we have made it possible for laboratories around the world to do this work,” said Osterholm, who is the director of the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“I think what remains very problematic is just the enabling information it provides. There are a lot of laboratories around the world that are not funded by the U.S. government, do not have specific restrictions or limitations on what they can do relative to biosafety.”

via Five mutations could send bird flu virus airborne : Study | Metro.

Text of H.R. 4419: AKA: Kill wild horses and burros bill and sell off National Forests to developers bill – To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to require periodic review of listings … (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us

H.R. 4419: To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to require periodic review of listings of endangered species and

via Text of H.R. 4419: To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to require periodic review of listings … (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us.

News from The Associated Press – Heartbleed 99% Spin

If hackers had been taking advantage of it for two years – we’d all be broke now and three guys – instead of the 10 guys – would have all the money in the world. Beware of cyber-security experts trying to sell you stuff you don’t need and of news outlets using scare headlines to sell their services!

Security researchers who uncovered the threat, known as “Heartbleed,” are particularly worried about the vulnerability because it went undetected for more than two years. They fear the possibility that computer hackers may have been secretly exploiting the problem before its discovery.

via News from The Associated Press.

 

If hackers had been taking advantage of it for two years – we’d all be broke now and three guys – instead of the 10 guys – would have all the money in the world. Beware of cyber-security experts trying to sell you stuff you don’t need and of news outlets using scare headlines to sell their services!

Congressman Busted on First Base Asks for FBI Review of Video – The Wire

No shame and wannabe Teflon Religious Representative has similar supporters and one of the no-shamers is a local minister!

To help McAllister try to change focus from his indiscretion to the identity of the leaker, a local pastor came forward to the News-Star to say that he knows who the leaker was: McAllister’s current office manager. Christian Life Church pastor Danny Chance also claimed that there’s a “conspiracy” to remove McAllister from office:

“I’m not taking up for the congressman; what he did was wrong…But I just feel like there is a conspiracy to bring Vance down and destroy him. For someone on his staff to do that is wrong.”

Although the staffer in question didn’t speak to the paper, Terry did tell the News-Star that he was aware of the allegation and has spoken to the staffer. She denied involvement, he added, and she remained employed by the congressman as of Tuesday.

via Congressman Busted on First Base Asks for FBI Review of Video – The Wire.

OKR: Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt : Facts and Perceptions across People, Time, and Space

pdf

This book joins four papers prepared in the framework of the Egypt inequality study financed by the World Bank. The first paper prepared by Sherine Al-Shawarby reviews the studies on inequality in Egypt since the 1950s with the double objective of illustrating the importance attributed to inequality through time and of presenting and compare the main published statistics on inequality. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a comprehensive review is carried. The second paper prepared by Branko Milanovic turns to the global and spatial dimensions of inequality. The objective here is to put Egypt inequality in the global context and better understand the origin and size of spatial inequalities within Egypt using different forms of measurement across regions and urban and rural areas. The Egyptian society remains deeply divided across space and in terms of welfare and this study unveils some of the hidden features of this inequality. The third paper prepared by Paolo Verme studies facts and perceptions of inequality during the period 2000-2009, the period that preceded the Egyptian revolution. The objective of this part is to provide some initial elements that could explain the apparent mismatch between inequality measured with household surveys and inequality aversion measured by values surveys. No such study has been carried out before in the Middle-East and North-Africa (MENA) region and this seemed a particular important and timely topic to address in the light of the unfolding developments in the Arab region. The fourth paper prepared by Sahar El Tawila, May Gadallah and Enas Ali A. El-Majeed assesses the state of poverty and inequality among the poorest villages of Egypt. The paper attempts to explain the level of inequality in an effort to disentangle those factors that derive from household abilities from those factors that derive from local opportunities. This is the first time that such study is conducted in Egypt. The book should be of interest to any observer of the political and economic evolution of the Arab region in the past few years and to poverty and inequality specialists that wish to have a deeper understanding of the distribution of incomes in Egypt and other countries in the MENA region.

via OKR: Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt : Facts and Perceptions across People, Time, and Space.

CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land

A new push by U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., to

terminate a portion of the Wind River Reservation should appall and worry Native

American people everywhere, Northern Arapaho leaders said Tuesday.

Draft legislation by Enzi, and supported by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., would eliminate

the reservation status of a significant portion of Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone

homeland in central Wyoming.

“It’s chilling to see this kind of attack on Indian Country in 2014,” said Northern Arapaho

Business Council Chairman Darrell O’Neal.

The bill is a response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to treat the

Wind River tribes as a state under the Clean Air Act. A detailed legal analysis in the EPA

decision concluded that the town of Riverton is part of the Wind River Reservation, a

position the tribes have always held.

via CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land.

Canada: Monsanto fund supports the future of agriculture

Pretty cheap pass-go free and greenwashing fee for academic pats of back???

$210,000 grant, the Monsanto Fund is supporting the recruitment of future agri-food leaders into programs at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC). The grant will support OAC’s Student Liaison Program over the next three years to engage and excite high school students by showing them the educational and career opportunities in agriculture, food and the environment.

via Canada: Monsanto fund supports the future of agriculture.

Hobby Lobby Invested In Numerous Abortion And Contraception Products While Claiming Religious Objection

According to the Green family, interfering with an already fertilized egg is tantamount to abortion—an act unacceptable to the family and one they refuse to participate in no matter what the Affordable Care Act may require .

However, it turns out that the owners of Hobby Lobby do not appear to have any problem with profiting from the companies that manufacture the very products that so grievously offend their religious principles.

The following is a summation of the companies manufacturing these products that are held by the Hobby Lobby employee retirement plan, as set forth by Ms. Redden’s remarkable reporting:

These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis ACT +1.64%, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer PFE -0.53%, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer , which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca AZN +0.77%, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna AET +0.11% and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.

via Hobby Lobby Invested In Numerous Abortion And Contraception Products While Claiming Religious Objection.

H5N1: Garrett on Ebola: Humans spark the outbreaks

When distressed by such environmental changes, animals are more likely to venture near human habitation in search of food, and come down from the upper tiers of forests into tree levels filled with predatory monkeys and chimps. 

Once in Nzara, McCormick found the rafters of a Sudanese textile warehouse filled with bats. South African virologist Robert Swanepoel found swarms of bats in trees inside Kikwit town, and traces of Ebola in their blood. Even bats found in a cave in Spain carried Ebola.

The bats play a vital role in the survival of rain forests: The solution is not elimination of the animals, but of human contact with them.

via H5N1: Garrett on Ebola: Don’t kiss the cadaver.

Bank of America to pay $9.3B to settle Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac claims – San Francisco Business Times

If you stole $900 from a corner store, you could do 5 or more years in prison. If you steal more than $9 billion, no jail just a negotiated fine…

What a day for BofA.

Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp. Wednesday afternoon announced it will pay $9.3 billion in cash penalties plus mortgage bond repurchases to settle all outstanding mortgage-backed-securities claims brought by federal housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

via Bank of America to pay $9.3B to settle Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac claims – San Francisco Business Times.