Photo: Soyuz TMA-03M Docks WIth the International Space Station

• Source: NASA HQ
• Posted Saturday, December 31, 2011

With the three Expedition 30/31 crew members aboard, the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft (left) eases toward its docking with the Russian-built Mini-Research Module 1 (MRM-1), also known as Rassvet, Russian for "dawn." The docking, which once more enables six astronauts and cosmonauts to work together aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, took place at 9:19 a.m. (CST) on Dec. 23, 2011. ISS030-E-015605 (23 Dec. 2011) --- high res (1.1 M) low res (72 K)

 By Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, December 31, 2011

President Barack Obama signed on New Year’s Eve a bill that gives the military authority to detain American citizens indefinitely and without criminal charge, breaking with the stroke of a pen one of his many campaign promises, even as he pledged that the new powers the bill grants will not be applied to U.S. citizens.

The provision was just one part of a massive $662 billion defense spending authorization that funds the military, penalizes Iran’s central bank and freezes military aid to Pakistan, among other things.

The president’s opponents in Congress, including some Democrats, attached the indefinite detention provision to force the administration to either accept a much heavier load of terrorism suspects, many who would be heading to the Guantanamo Bay military prison, or veto the bill and stand accused of opposing funds for the troops.

President Obama issued a veto threat after a provision was added that required all terrorism suspects be automatically rendered into military custody — a fundamental change to the criminal justice system that members of the administration warned could stymie other agencies or put investigations at risk.

Obama agreed to sign it after language was left in the bill that allows the administration to dedicate terror prisoners to civilian courts instead of military custody. In its final form, the bill stipulates that all terrorism suspects are to be handled by the military unless the administration decides otherwise and explains its reasoning to Congress.

“My administration will not authorize the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens,” President Obama said in a signing statement, a tactic presidents occasionally use to clarify how they interpret laws. “Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.”

Obama went on to explain that as he understands the indefinite detention provision, his administration is being given “broad authority to determine how best to implement it,” which he said would be used to ensure American citizens are exempt.

“I reject any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat,” Obama wrote.

“As my Administration has made clear, the only responsible way to combat the threat al-Qa’ida poses is to remain relentlessly practical, guided by the factual and legal complexities of each case and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each system. Otherwise, investigations could be compromised, our authorities to hold dangerous individuals could be jeopardized, and intelligence could be lost. I will not tolerate that result, and under no circumstances will my Administration accept or adhere to a rigid across-the-board requirement for military detention.”

The signing statement, while likely a relief to some of the president’s more liberal allies, will not assuage all criticism. As one writer for the progressive blog FireDogLake pointed out, future administrations may interpret the law differently, applying a wholly new standard of who should or should not be held in military custody.

“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, explained in a media advisory. “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.  The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.”

“We are incredibly disappointed that President Obama signed this new law even though his administration had already claimed overly broad detention authority in court,” he added. “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today.”

Stephen C. Webster   Stephen C. Webster is the senior editor of Raw Story, and is based out of Austin, Texas. He previously worked as the associate editor of The Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford, Texas, where he covered state politics and the peace movement’s resurgence at the start of the Iraq war. Webster has also contributed to publications such as True/Slant, Austin Monthly, The Dallas Business Journal, The Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Weekly, The News Connection and others. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenCWebster.

 http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/31/obama-pledges-to-exempt-americans-from-indefinite-detention-law/

Here we go again, and again we start in China where a man has died of the highly virulent strain of H5N1 Bird Flu

Authorities in Hong Kong culled 17,000 chickens earlier this month, after three birds tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Informant  News editorials in blue: Authorities "culled" 17,000 chickens. Who are the next chickens to be culled many are wondering in this day and age of new virulent disease.

 By Diane Sweet
occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:24 CST

The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative along with Amnesty International are asking the U.S. to step up its efforts to address the foreclosure crisis, including by giving serious consideration to the growing call for a foreclosure moratorium and other forms of relief for those at risk, and establishing a housing finance system that fulfills human rights obligations. 

New government census reports have revealed disturbing information that details the cold, hard numbers of Americans who have been deeply affected by the state of our economy, and bank foreclosure practices:

In the last few days, the U.S. government census figures have revealed that 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty or are struggling to live on low incomes. And we know that the financial hardships faced by our neighbors, colleagues, and others in our communities will be all the more acutely felt over the holiday season. 

Along with poverty and low incomes, the foreclosure rate has created its own crisis situation as the number of families removed from their homes has skyrocketed. 

Since 2007, banks have foreclosed around eight million homes. It is estimated that another eight to ten million homes will be foreclosed before the financial crisis is over. This approach to resolving one part of the financial crisis means many, many families are living without adequate and secure housing. In addition, approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country. 

The stark realities that persist mean that millions of families will be facing the holidays in temporary homes, or homes under threat, and far too many children will be wishing for an end to the uncertainty and distress their family is facing rather than an Xbox or Barbie doll. 

Housing is a basic human need and a fundamental human right. Yet every day in the United States, banks are foreclosing on more than 10,000 mortgages and ordering evictions of individuals and families residing in foreclosed homes. The U.S. government's steps to address the foreclosure crisis to date have been partial at best. 

The depth and severity of the foreclosure crisis is a clear illustration of the urgent need for the U.S. government to put in place a system that respects, protects and fulfills human rights, including the right to housing. This includes implementing real protections to ensure that other actors, such as financial institutions, do not undermine or abuse human rights.

There is a link available at the Amnesty International website for anyone who is interested and would like to join the call on the Obama administration and Congress to urgently step up efforts to address the foreclosure crisis, including by seriously considering the growing call for a foreclosure moratorium and other forms of relief, and establishing a housing finance system that fulfills human rights obligations. 

[Via Amnesty International]

 telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8983929/China-declares-plans-for-mission-to-the-moon.html

 Even people who think caviar is to die for might lose their appetite when it's stored in a hospital morgue.

But that's where St Petersburg police found a huge stash of the delicacy this week - 175 kilograms stored in the refrigerated space where cadavers are kept.

A morgue employee and a businessman were arrested after the Wednesday discovery, but police said today the matter is still being investigated and it is unclear if the men will be charged.

The arrested men said the caviar, or salted fish eggs, was to be a treat for hospital employees at a New Year's party.

Most of the red caviar was from salmon, but 38 kilograms of the stash was black caviar from sturgeon, an endangered fish. Amid heavy restrictions on sturgeon fishing, black caviar is increasingly produced and sold illegally.

In the run-up to New Year's, one of Russia's most lavishly festive holidays, police have made a series of other seizures of caviar.

A day after the morgue discovery, St Petersburg police said they seized an additional 100 kilograms intended for illegal sale at local markets.

On Friday, the Interfax news agency reported that border guards in the eastern Ukraine city of Kharkiv confiscated 249 cans of caviar worth almost US$22,000 (NZ$45,000) that was allegedly being smuggled from Russia to Ukraine.

In the far eastern region of Khabarovsk, a vehicle inspection turned up 500 kilograms of caviar, leading police on a weeklong investigation, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. They raided a village home on Friday and found another 26 kilograms.

At two different spots along the Amur River basin, police found 47 sturgeon carcasses and 2.5 tons of live sturgeon. Sturgeon fishing in the Amur basin is prohibited.

Harvard Study says Marijuana Cures Cancer

Researchers at Harvard tested the chemical THC in both lab and mouse studies. They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound, THC actually activates naturally produced receptors to fight off lung cancer. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

Although a medical substitute of THC, known as Marinol, has been used as an appetite stimulant for cancer patients and other similar treatments, few studies have shown that THC might have anti-tumor activity.

*HERE IS THE INTERESTING PART* The only clinical trial testing THC as a treatment against cancer growth was a recently completed British pilot study. For three weeks, researchers injected standard doses of THC into mice that had been implanted with human lung cancer cells, and found that tumors were reduced in size and weight by about 50 percent in treated animals compared to a control group. There was also about a 60 percent reduction in cancer lesions on the lungs in these mice as well as a significant reduction in protein markers associated with cancer progression.

 http://www.endalldisease.com/?p=4915

Image is composite from google images

Massive solar storm 'could knock out radio signals' over next three days, warn scientists

By TED THORNHILL

Skywatchers will be hoping for clear skies from today because particles from a recent solar storm will slam into Earth and produce amazing Northern Lights, or auroras.

On the downside, experts expect radio blackouts for a few days, caused by the radiation from the flare – or coronal mass ejection (CME) – causing magnetic storms.

The flare is part of a larger increase in activity in the Sun, which runs in 11-year cycles. It is expected to peak around 2013.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

It's coming this way: The CME, seen by Nasa's STEREO-B spacecraft, can be seen blasting out from the Sun on the right-hand side (circled)

Stunning Northern Lights are expected in the next few days from radiation produced by a huge solar flare

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center wrote: ‘Category G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storms are expected 28 and 29 December due to multiple coronal mass ejection arrivals. R1 (Minor) radio blackouts are expected until 31 December.’

Devices that depend on radio waves include GPS systems, radios and mobile phones. 

A coronal mass ejection contains billions of tons of gases bursting with X-rays and ultraviolet radiation that are flung into space at around 5million mph.

They are mind-bogglingly hot – around 100,000,000C.

The Earth is occasionally hosed by these ejections, leading to amazing shimmering light shows.

Heat is on: Solar flares spray gases out at 5million mph and at 100,000,000C. Pictured is a flare that erupted in June this year

 

They are caused by the ionised solar particles becoming imprisoned by Earth’s magnetic field, exciting the gases in the atmosphere and emitting bursts of energy in the form of light.

However, these particles can also cause magnetic storms, which in extreme cases have been known to disrupt satellites and electricity grids.

In 1989, a CME was held responsible for leaving six million people in Quebec, Canada, without power.

Last month one of the largest storms our star can produce was detected.

Known as an X1.9 flare, it was one of the biggest seen in years.

The flare was so powerful that it disrupted communications systems on earth a short time later.

Another gigantic flare occurred in August - shown in the video below - but because it took place on the side of the Sun not facing Earth, there was no disruption to communications or power.

Devices could help doctors with stored medical information

The Avenue of Sphinxes on Luxor’s east bank is to be partly opened in March

During an inspection tour of Luxor’s archaeological sites, the Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim announced that the Avenue of Sphinxes will be partly opened to public by mid March. “We have chosen a date that coincides with the opening of the Berlin International Tourism Market on 13 March 2011,” Ibrahim told Ahram Online.

He explained that a 150 metre long section out of the 2,700 meters of the avenue will be ready for the public after restoration, promising to solve all technical and financial problems in order to resume restoration work in the rest of the avenue.
The Avenue of Sphinxes was built during the reign of Pharaoh Nectanebo I of the 30th Dynasty. It replaced another built in the 18th Dynasty by Queen Hatshepsut (1502-1482 BC), as she recorded on the walls of her red chapel in Karnak Temple.

According to this record, Hatshepsut built six chapels dedicated to the god Amun-Re on the route of the avenue during her reign, indicating that  it had long been a place of religious significance.
However, over the span of history the avenue was lost, with some of its sphinxes destroyed and whole stretches buried in sand and build on.

Five years ago, in the framework of the Ministry of Culture, a programme to restore ancient Egyptian monuments with a view to developing the entire Luxor governorate into an open-air museum, a project was planned to recover lost elements of the avenue, restore the sphinxes and bring the place back to its original aspect.

During his tour with Luxor Governor Ezat Saad, Ibrahim visited American Research Centre excavation and restoration sites in Khonsu temple as well as monuments of the 18th and 19th dynasties at Karnak temple.

 (Reuters) - The number of U.S. police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2011 rose 13 percent from 2010, marking another annual increase in law enforcement fatalities in recent years.

 MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's Foreign Ministry has attacked America's human rights record in its first report on injustice elsewhere in the world, offering examples such as the Guantanamo Bay prison and wrongful death row convictions to paint the U.S. as hypocritical for lecturing other nations on the subject of rights.

 Popular Archaeology

A small-sized find in an ancient megalithic temple stirs the imagination.

Excavations among what many scholars consider to be the world's oldest monumental buildings on the island of Malta continue to unveil surprises and raise new questions about the significance of these megalithic structures and the people who built them. Not least is the latest find - a small but rare, crescent-moon shaped agate stone featuring a 13th-century B.C.E. cuneiform inscription, the likes of which would normally be found much farther east in Mesopotamia. 

Led by palaeontology professor Alberto Cazzella of the University of Rome "La Sapienza", the archaeological team found the inscribed stone in the sancturary site of Tas-Silg, a megalithic temple built during the late Neolithic period, and which has been used for various religious and ceremonial purposes by the ancients from the third millennium BC to the Byzantine era. The inscription was translated as a dedication to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, the father of Ninurta who, for centuries, was the main deity worshiped far to the east in the city of Nippur in Mesopotamia. Nippur was considered a holy city and a pilgrimage site with a scribal school that generated literary texts. 

The location of the find makes it the farthest west the ancient script has ever been discovered, raising questions about how it ended up in the remote location. Some scholars theorize that the inscribed stone was likely looted from the temple of Nippur during military conflict and then transported westward through an exchange of hands by Cypriot or Mycenaean merchants, thought to have had trading relations with the central Mediterranean at the time. 

Moreover, because cuneiform-inscribed agate would have been considered highly valued during the late Bronze Age, its presence within the Tas-Silg sanctuary, according to some scholars, suggests that the sanctuary had a much wider significance than for those who lived on Malta at this time. The sanctuary is already known to have been an important place of worship in the Mediterranean during the Phoenician and Roman eras.

December 27, 2011

Sears Holding Corp. said it would close 100 to 120 Kmart and Sears stores nationwide after all-important holiday sales at the chains proved to be disappointing.

Quarterly sales through Christmas were down 5.2% due to steep declines in apparel purchases and layaway sales at Kmart, home appliance performance at Sears and consumer electronics transactions at both. All this even after many of the stores offered special deals and extended operating hours for the holidays.

At this rate, Sears Holding expects its adjusted fourth-quarter earnings, to be announced in late February, to be less than half the $933 million it reported during the same period in 2010. The company’s stock was down nearly 24% to about $35 midway through the trading day.

The store closures will generate up to $170 million in cash, along with extra funds from selling or leasing the real estate, according to Sears Holding. The company has yet to announce the affected locations. The company operates more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada, including dozens in Southern California.

Sears Holding also said it would abandon its past policy of trying to boost “marginally performing stores” and would instead focus on the cash cows.

The Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company said it planned to further improve its situation by lowering expenses, reducing and better managing inventory and offering more targeted pricing and promotions.

"Given our performance and the difficult economic environment, especially for big-ticket items, we intend to implement a series of actions to reduce ongoing expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model," Chief Executive Lou D'Ambrosio said in a statement.

Link

 By Alicia Chang

AP

updated 12/26/2011 1:35:14 PM ETLOS ANGELES