XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 08/03/11

Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Multi-agency armed raid hits Rawesome Foods, Healthy Family Farms for selling raw milk and cheese -

This is a NaturalNews exclusive breaking new report. Please credit NaturalNews.com. A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

This story is now being followed and widely reported on InfoWars (www.InfoWars.com) and the Drudge Report (www.DrudgeReport.com). See updates below...

Rawesome Foods, a private buying club offering wholesome, natural raw milk and raw cheese products (among other wholesome foods) is founded by James Stewart, a pioneer in bringing wholesome raw foods directly to consumers through a buying club. James was followed from his private residence by law enforcement, and when he entered his store, the raid was launched.

Law enforcement demanded that all customers (members) of the store vacate the premises, then they demanded to know how much cash James had at the store. When James explained the amount of cash he had at the store -- which is used to purchase product for selling there -- agents demanded to know why he had such an amount of cash and where it came from.

James was handcuffed, wasneverread his rights and was stuffed into anunmarkedcar. While agents said they would leave behind a warrant, no one has yet had any opportunity to even see if such a warrant exists or if it is a complete warrant.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/033220_Rawesome_Foods_armed_raids.html#ixzz1U0wBkjhu

DARPA to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as weapons in future confiicts -

The Pentagon is developing plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as both a resource and a weapon in future conflicts. Its research and development agency is offering $42 million in funding to anyone who can help.
Social media will change the nature of warfare just as surely as the telegraph, the radio and the telephone did, and the Pentagon is fearful of being caught short. Some of its goals were laid out in a document being circulated among potential researchers and is to be presented at a briefing on Tuesday in Arlington, Va., at the offices of the military contractor System Planning Corporation.
As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the military wants systems to be able to detect and track the spread of ideas both quickly and on a broad scale. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative proposals to help build what would be, at its most basic level, an Internet meme tracker.
It would be useful to know, for instance, whether signs of widespread rebellion were authentic or whether they were being created by a fringe group with little real support. Among the tools the successful seeker of government funding might choose to employ: linguistic cues, patterns of information flow, topic trend analysis, sentiment detection and opinion mining.
Social networks can allow the military not only to follow but also to shape the action. In its 37-page solicitation, Darpa described how a would-be high-technology lynching was foiled: “Rumors about the location of a certain individual began to spread in social media space and calls for storming the rumored location reached a fever pitch. By chance, responsible authorities were monitoring the social media, detected the crisis building, sent out effective messaging to dispel the rumors and averted a physical attack on the rumored location.”
(Is this a reference to Osama bin Laden or someone much more obscure? Were the “responsible authorities” trying to put off an attack because the individual was not at the location, or because he was? Darpa officials did not return e-mails requesting comment.)
The crisis was formed, observed, understood and diffused entirely within social media, the solicitation noted. But the success of the authorities was a fluke, the result of “luck and unsophisticated manual methods.”
All the more urgent, then, is the need to analyze what is happening and to fight back by countermessaging. A successful program would influence attitudes through methods including automatically generating content, formerly known as spam, and “inducing identities,” which might be whipping up fake combatants.
All of this cyberwarfare will, of course, make it even less clear what is real and what is synthetic on the Internet, but that is not the military’s problem and was possibly inevitable anyway. As Admiral Nimitz of the United States Navy wrote in 1948, “Technology in warfare, as in all else, has simplified some details but greatly complicated the aggregate.”
Interested participants will have to hurry. Preliminary proposals are due in the coming weeks. Darpa warned that projects that were merely evolutionary would be nonstarters.

Read more -
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/pentagon-seeks-social-networking-experts/?smid=tw-nytimesbits&seid=auto

6 Creepy New Weapons the Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People -

From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control.

The US is at the forefront of an international arms development effort that includes a remarkable assortment of technologies, which look and sound like they belong in a Hollywood science fiction thriller. From microwave energy blasters and blinding laser beams, to chemical agents and deafening sonic blasters, these weapons are at the cutting edge of crowd control.

The Pentagon's approved term for these weapons is "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" and they are intended for use against the unarmed. Designed to control crowds, clear streets, subdue and restrain individuals and secure borders, they are the 21st century's version of the police baton, pepper spray and tear gas. As journalist Ando Arike puts it, "The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population."
The demand for non-lethal weapons (NLW) is rooted in the rise of television. In the 1960s and '70s the medium let everyday Americans witness the violent tactics used to suppress the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Today’s rapid advancements in media and telecommunications technologies allow people to record and publicize images and video of undue force more than ever before. Authorities are well aware of how images of violence play out publicly. In 1997, a joint report from the Pentagon and the Justice Department warned:

"A further consideration that affects how the military and law enforcement apply force is the greater presence of members of the media or other civilians who are observing, if not recording, the situation. Even the lawful application of force can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public. More than ever, the police and the military must be highly discreet when applying force."

The global economic collapse coupled with the unpredictable and increasingly catastrophic consequences of climate change and resource scarcity, along with a new era of austerity defined by rising unemployment and glaring inequality have already led to massive protests in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and even Madison, Wisconsin. From the progressive era to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, Americans have a rich history of taking to the streets to demand greater equality.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars have been invested in the research and development of more media-friendly weapons for everyday policing and crowd control. This has lead to a trade-in of old school weapons for more exotic and controversial technologies. The following are six of the most outrageous "non-lethal" weapons that will define the future of crowd control.
1. The Invisible Pain Ray: The 'Holy Grail of Crowd Control'

Source: Pasadena Star News

It sounds like a weapon out of Star Wars. The Active Denial System, or ADS, works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets to 130 degrees. This creates an intolerable burning sensation forcing those in its path to instinctively flee (a response the Air Force dubs the "goodbye effect").
The Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) says, "This capability will add to the ability to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary, providing an alternative to lethal force." Although ADS is described as non-lethal, a 2008 report by physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann suggests otherwise:
" ... the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening – due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection – and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. "
The weapon was initially tested in Afghanistan, but later recalled due to a combination of technical difficulties and political concerns, including the fear that ADS would be used as a torture tool making it "not politically tenable," according to a Defense Science Board report. The tens of millions of dollars spent to develop the ADS did not necessarily go to waste, however.
While the weapon may be too controversial for use on the battlefield, it appears that nothing is too sadistic for use on US prisoners, so the ADS has since been modified into a smaller version by Raytheon, for use in law enforcement. Last year, the renamed Assault Intervention System (AIS) was installed at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correction Facility at the behest of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD). Former LASD Commander, Charles “Sid” Heal had been lobbying for the pain ray for years, calling it the "Holy Grail of Crowd Control," due to its ability to make people scatter almost instantly.
The device is operated by a jail officer with a joystick, and is intended to break up prison riots, inmate brawls and prevent assaults on officers. Sheriff Lee Baca added that it would allow officers to quickly intervene without having to physically enter the area to incapacitate prisoners.
The ACLU claims that use of such a device on American prisoners is "tantamount to torture." The organization even sent a letter to the sheriff in charge, demanding he never use the energy weapon against inmates. “The idea that a military weapon designed to cause intolerable pain should be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “Unnecessarily inflicting severe pain and taking such unnecessary risks with people’s lives is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment and due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The pain ray’s use in the Pitchess Detention Center is a pilot program. If successful, the weapon could find its way into other prisons around the country. The National Institute of Justice has also expressed interest in a hand-held, rifle-sized, short-range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials.
2. The Laser Blinding 'Dazzler'

Source: Air Force Fact Sheet

The Personal Halting and Stimulation Response rifle, or PHaSR, is a massive laser shooter. PHaSR technology is being co-funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and is being developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. While JNLWP is interested in the technology for military applications, NIJ is focusing on its law enforcement use.
So what is the purpose of this light-shooting toy? Well, it won't kill you, but it will temporarily blind you — or as the NIJ prefers to say, it will "dazzle" you into disorientation — by shooting you with two low-power diode-pumped lasers.
Protocol IV, the Blinding Laser Protocol of the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, states that, "The use of laser weapons that are specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision is prohibited."
After the US agreed to the Blinding Laser Protocol in 1995 under President Clinton, the Pentagon was forced to cancel several blinding laser weapon programs that were in the works. But the PHaSR rifle can skirt this regulation because the blinding effect is apparently temporary due to its low-intensity laser.
According to a U.S. Air Force fact sheet, "The laser light from PHaSR temporarily impairs aggressors by dazzling them with one wavelength. The second wavelength causes a repel effect that discourages advancing aggressors.” The JNLWP website says that a significant amount of research and experimentation is still required to gain a full understanding of the safety, military effectiveness, and limitations of these future capabilities.
3. The Taser on Steroids

Source: Taser website

The Albuquerque Police Department now has Taser shotguns in its arsenal. Most of us are familiar with hand-held Tasers and understand that they only work if the police are standing pretty close to you (about 20 feet).
But Taser has developed the Taser X12, a 12-gauge shotgun that instead of firing lethal bullet rounds, is designed to fire Taser projectile rounds. Known as Extended Range Electronic Projectiles (XREP), the XREP cartridge is a self-contained, wireless projectile that delivers the same neuro-muscular incapacitation bio-effect (a fancy way of saying electric shock) as the handheld Taser, but up to 100 feet.
According to a July 21 press release, Taser International has taken the XREP to the next level, teaming up with the Australian electronic gun company Metal Storm to enhance the 12-gauge Multi-Shot Accessory Under-Barrel Launcher (MAUL).
The two companies will combine Metal Storm's MAUL stacked projectile technology to "provide semi-automatic fire as fast as the operator can squeeze the trigger," which boasts a full weapon reload of up to five rounds in less than two seconds. Picture five rounds of Taser XREP cartridges flying out in less than two seconds up to 30 yards away -- that is the plan.
In September 2010 Raw Story reported that the rate of Taser-related deaths were on the rise. The story cited an Amnesty International report from 2008 that found 351 Taser-related deaths in the US between June 2001 and August 2008, a rate of just slightly above four deaths per month. About 90 percent of the victims were unarmed and did not appear to pose any serious threat, according to an article in the Boston Review. The Amnesty report points out that Tasers are “inherently open to abuse as they are easy to carry and easy to use and they can inflict severe pain at the push of a button without leaving substantial marks.“ In Amnesty's US 2010 report, the Taser-related death toll had increased to 390. If the MAUL-Taser combined shooter find its way into police departments around the country, it may not bode well for the rate of Taser-related deaths.
Another project of Taser International, which was unveiled in 2009, is the Shockwave Area-Denial System, which blankets a large area with electrified darts, and a wireless Taser projectile with a 100-meter range, helpful for picking off “ringleaders” in unruly crowds. In 2007, Taser's French distributor announced plans for a stun-gun-equipped flying saucer that fires stun darts at criminal suspects or rioters; however, it has yet to be unveiled. Clearly there is no limit to Taser International’s capacity for creativity.
4. Calmative Agents for Riot Control
Calmatives are chemical or biological agents with sedative, sleep-inducing or similar psychoactive effects. Although the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the use of riot control agents in warfare, JNWLP and NIJ have long considered calmatives for both military and law enforcement applications, such as dispersing a crowd, controlling a riot or calming a noncompliant offender.
The most well-known and widely used riot-control agents are tear gas (CS) and chloroacetophenone (CN), also known as mace. A few ways that more advanced non-lethal calmatives might be administered, depending on the law enforcement environment, would include a topical or transdermal skin application, an aerosol spray, an intramuscular dart, or a rubber bullet filled with an inhalable agent.
In the March 2010 issue of Harper's magazine, Ando Arike gives an extensive overview of riot control technology in his article "The Soft Kill: New Frontiers in Pain Compliance." He wrote:

Pentagon interest in “advanced riot-control agents” has long been an open secret, but just how close we are to seeing these agents in action was revealed in 2002, when the Sunshine Project, an arms-control group based in Austin, Texas, posted on the Internet a trove of Pentagon documents uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act. Among these was a fifty-page study titled “The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique,” conducted by Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, home of the JNLWD-sponsored Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies.
Penn State’s College of Medicine researchers agreed, contrary to accepted principles of medical ethics, that “the development and use of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable,” and identified a large number of promising drug candidates, including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and carfentanyl, the last commonly used by veterinarians to sedate large animals. The only problems they saw were in developing effective delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.
Little more was heard about the Pentagon’s “advanced riot-control agent” program until July 2008, when the Army announced that production was scheduled for its XM1063 “non-lethal personal suppression projectile,” an artillery shell that bursts in midair over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-square-foot area, each dispersing a chemical agent as it parachutes down. There are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the intended payload—a literal opiate of the masses.

5. Screaming Microwaves That Pierce the Skull

Source: Wired

Researchers are in the process of developing the Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio or MEDUSA (that's right, from Greek mythology), which uses a beam of microwaves to induce uncomfortable auditory sensations in the skull. The device exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. MEDUSA’s audio effect is loud enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. It may also cause a little brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse.
MEDUSA's intended purpose is deterring crowds from entering a protected perimeter, like a nuclear site, and temporarily incapacitating unruly individuals. So far the weapon remains in development and is funded by the Navy.
6. Ear-Splitting Siren

Source: Associated Press

The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, built by American Technology Corporation, focuses and broadcasts sound over ranges of up to hundreds of yards. LRAD has been around for years, but Americans first took notice when police used it in Pittsburgh to ward off protesters at the 2009 G-20 summit. It is generally used in two ways: as a megaphone to order protesters to disperse; or, if they disobey, as an “ear-splitting siren” to drive them away. While LRAD may not be deadly, it can permanently damage hearing, depending on how it’s used.
Similar sonic blasters have proven deadly. One is the Thunder Generator, an Israeli-developed shock wave cannon used by farmers to scare away crop-threatening bird. According to a Defense News report last year, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has licensed a firm called ArmyTec to market the Thunder Generator for military and security applications.
It works using gas from a cylinder of domestic liquid petroleum, which is mixed with air and then detonated, producing a series of high-intensity blasts. Patented “pulse detonation” technology ensures high-decibel blasts. With an effective range of up to 50 meters, the makers say it is extremely loud but will not do any lasting damage. They warn, however, that within 10 meters the Thunder Generator could cause permanent damage or even death.
The Impact
The application of pain to control or coerce people into submission helps achieve the desired aims of perception management, while sheltering the public from the brutality of such devices.
Perhaps these less-lethal tactics for crowd control do result in fewer injuries. But they also severely weaken our capacity to enact political change. Authorities have ever more creative ways to manage dissent, at a time when the need for change by popular demand is vital to the future of our society and the planet.

Read more -
http://www.alternet.org/world/151864/6_creepy_new_weapons_the_police_and_military_use_to_subdue_unarmed_people/?page=entire

Husband of Ex-Playboy Chief Accused of Insider Trading -

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued the husband of Christie Hefner, accusing him of insider trading in Playboy Enterprises stock.

William A. Marovitz, the husband of Ms. Hefner, the former chief executive of Playboy, was accused of gaining $100,000 by trading on confidential information gleaned from his wife, according to a complaint filed Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Chicago.

Mr. Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator, has agreed to pay $168,000 in penalties, disgorgement and interest to settle the civil case. His lawyer, James Streicker, did not return calls for comment.

“Despite instructions from his wife that he should not trade in shares of Playboy and a warning from the general counsel of Playboy about his buying or selling Playboy stock, Marovitz bought and sold shares of Playboy in his own brokerage accounts between 2004 and 2009 ahead of public news announcements,” said the complaint.

Among the news Mr. Marovitz traded on, according to the S.E.C.: Playboy’s negative earnings announcements, a stock offering and Playboy’s potential acquisition by the Iconix Brand Group.

Read more -
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/husband-of-playboy-executive-accused-of-insider-trading/?emc=eta1

Lost Alfred Hitchcock film found in New Zealand - his earliest surviving movie has been found languishing in a vault -

All copies of The White Shadow, a silent feature film released by Hollywood in 1924, had been thought lost to posterity, and cinema historians have described the discovery as "priceless".

Three dusty reels containing the first half of the film – about 30 minutes of footage – had been stored deep in the bowels of the New Zealand Film Archive, where the search is continuing for the other three reels.

The acclaimed director was 24 when he worked on what was billed as a "wild, atmospheric melodrama" starring actress Betty Compson as twin sisters, one angelic and the other "without a soul". He was credited as assistant director and also wrote the scenario, designed the sets and edited the footage.

At the time silent Hollywood films were distributed worldwide and, while many prints were discarded and lost in the US, others survived abroad where they were kept after runs in cinemas had finished.

The White Shadow owes its survival to Jack Murtagh, a projectionist in the provincial New Zealand town of Hastings, who was regarded as an eccentric collector of films, cigarette cards, stamps and coins.

Search is on for missing 'floating island' - giant inflatable £9,000 helium-filled sculpture from a music festival -

'Is Land' was a £9,000 helium-filled sculpture of a desert island which floated above the heads of revellers at the Secret Garden Party festival recently.

However, the art project drifted off somewhere without anyone seeing it and may now be floating in the troposphere, the lowest portion of Earth's atmosphere.

Sarah Cockings and Laurence Symonds, Royal College of Art graduates, who created the seven-metre wide airborne islet have asked that any sightings be reported via the website is-land.co.uk.

'Is Land' is made of durable polyurethane with foliage décor and was built over six months.

It was last seen at approximately 3am on Sunday 24 July hanging over a lake at the Cambridgeshire festival by security guards who witnessed two unidentified youths in a dinghy cutting all five of its tether ropes, releasing the island into the sky.

Now you can do more than just drive a Nissan LEAF, you can also use it to power your house -

Nissan is taking the all-electric car to new heights. Now you can do more than just drive a NissanLEAF, you can also use it to power your house.

On Tuesday Nissan revealed a way to supply electricity to your home using the lithium-ion batteries inside of the LEAF. It’s part of their campaign to lead the world into a zero emission society.

This futuristic initiative was displayed at Kan-kan-kyo, which is a house Nissan built in front of their global headquarters. They said they are committed to the continued development of the “Leaf to Home” system and that they will research how it can be adapted to connect to modern power grids.

The Japanese-based corporation has been working with a group of interested parties on its viability and sales, they want to commercialize it for the market during this fiscal year.

The system makes it possible to take electricity stored inside of the Nissan LEAF and feed it into a house by hooking the car up to the house’s electric panel. This is done with a connector attached to the LEAF’s charging port.

Read more -
http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-brief/57660-nissan-our-electric-car-can-power-your-home

Google+ Fastest Ever to Reach 25 Million users in less than one month, making it the fastest-growing Web site ever -

Can Google+ emerge as the new social media champion?

While a clear-cut answer to this question is not possible right now, one thing that that is certain is that Google+ is still growing at an impressive rate -- especially given that it's still in the field-testing phase.

A latest report released by comScore showed that Google+ has attracted 25 million users in less than one month, making it the fastest-growing Web site ever. But does it mean that Google+ is a long-term success?

According to the comScore report, Google+, which was launched by the Internet search engine giant on June 28, has attracted 25 million unique visitors as of July 24, and is growing at a rate of roughly one million visitors per day.

By comparison, Facebook, which has more than 750 million members, took more than three years (37 months) to draw 25 million visitors, while Twitter reached that mark in 33 months.

"Obviously, this is a very strong growth trajectory," said Andrew Lipsman, vice president for industry analysis at comScore. But despite Google's latest attempt at breaking into social networking has started strongly, the question still remains on whether Google+ can turn out to be a long-term success.

As per the data, Google+ had more than 6 million unique visitors from the United States and more than 3.6 million fromIndia. Canada and UK contributed with around 1 million unique visitors each. Germanyand Brazil had 920,000 and 780,000 unique visitors respectively, while France and Taiwan had around 500,000 each.

Dieting forces brain to eat itself, scientists claim -

Dieters struggle to lose weight because a lack of nutrition forces their brain cells to eat themselves, making the feeling of hunger even stronger, scientists claim.

Like other parts of the body, brain cells begin to eat themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation, a study found.

The body responds by producing fatty acids, which turn up the hunger signal in the brain and increase our impulse to eat.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York said the findings could lead to new scientifically proven weight loss treatments.

Tests on mice found that stopping the brain cells from eating themselves – a process known as autophagy – prevented levels of hunger from rising in response to starvation.

The chemical change in their brains caused the mice to become lighter and slimmer after a period of fasting, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Man who fed birds in backyard faces jail... -

A Bloomington man is facing possible jail time, accused of breaking a city ordinance that prohibits residents from feeding wild animals.

In Bloomington, it is legal to use bird feeders — as long as they are 5 feet off the ground. Neighbors and the charges allege that Craig Brown was throwing feed onto the ground, which is illegal.

For years, Brown said he tried to make his backyard a haven for birds.

Now, birds rarely visit Brown’s backyard. Months ago, Brown removed all his bird feeders after he said those feeders landed him in trouble with the law.

“I am nervous,” said Brown. “They have the right to send me to jail.”

A video taken by a neighbor in December showed the Bloomington City Attorney just how popular Brown’s yard was for animals. In the video, dozens of birds are seen eating from the ground.

Neighbors said the food didn’t just bring birds, it also brought rodents, which then chewed on their property.

“You have an impact on your neighbors. Your backyard and what you do in it can damage the livability of neighbors’ house,” said Sandra Johnson, the Bloomington City Attorney.

Brown claimed his bird feeding fell in line with the city ordinance.

“I was still putting the feed in feeders. I was doing it legally, but I was getting these ducks in here. What do I do?” said Brown.

According to the criminal complaint, however, Brown admitted to deliberately throwing food on the ground. He claimed the seeds on the ground came from the hanging feeders.

“In this case, I believe the resident was initially warned, but he continued to feed on the ground,” said Johnson.

As Brown prepares to fight for a hobby he can no longer enjoy, he also realizes a not guilty verdict is not necessarily a win.

GM sold … 125 Chevy Volts last month! -

GM sold … 125 Chevy Volts last month! -
Obama Volt

The July sales numbers are out and the Chevy Volt continues to electrify (get it?) the country. GM sold … 125 Volts last month!

Way back in March I made fun of the Volt for selling 281 units in February. Turns out, February was a goodmonth. But wait, there’s more! GM says they’re going toincrease production to 5,000 Volts per month in order to keep up with demand. You see, they claim that the reason the Volt isn’t selling is that they can’t keep enough cars on the lot. A GM spokeswoman recently claimed that they are “virtually sold out.” Which is virtually true. Mark Modica called around his local Chevy dealers and found plenty of Volts waiting for an environmentally conscious driver to bring them home.

All told, GM has sold close to 2,700 Volts. (Funny aside: There’s a Volt in my neighborhood and a Volt that parks in my garage at work. So I see almost 0.1 percent of all the Volts in America on a daily basis.) But hey, the EV future is just around the corner.

This Is What the Moon Looks Like From Space - from aboard the International Space Station -

On Sunday, July 31, 2011, when Expedition 28 astronaut Ron Garan aboard the International Space Station looked out his window, this is what he saw: the moon. And, he saw it 16 times. Said Garan, "We had simultaneous sunsets and moonsets." For Garan and the rest of the station crew, this extraordinary event is a daily occurrence. Since the station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, each day the crew experiences this about 16 times a day.

British attempt to set a new world record for the longest chain of brassieres - to hook together 100 miles of bras -

British attempt to set a new world record for the longest chain of brassieres -
to hook together 100 miles of bras -

A British attempt to set a new world record for the longest chain of brassieres was called off after volunteers got the lingerie in a twist. Campaigners at "Bra Chain" hoped to hook together over 100 miles of bras in Worcester, a city in the English West Midlands, to raise money for women's charities and beat the current world record of 166,000 linked brassieres, held by Australia.

Volunteers, or "hookers," aimed to connect 200,000 bras, but were forced to quit at half that number when the undergarments became tangled in the boxes.

"We underestimated the time it would take to get the bras out of their boxes and hooked together - there were bras all over the place," said Launa Walker at Bra Chain.

"It does take a lot of time to assemble bras into a chain and after about nine hours of hooking them up we decided to call it a day," Walker told Reuters.

The organizers say they will attempt another world record bid in the future and are still accepting donations of unwanted bras.

"We are going to try it again -- we've learnt a few tricks of the trade, now all that remains is to set a date," said Walker.

The event was organized in aid of UK women's charities Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the Worcester breast cancer unit and Women's Aid, which supports victims of domestic violence.

Fear is driving a silent bank run in Greece -

In one of the biggest banks in the centre of Athens a clerk is explaining how his savers have been thronging to pull out their cash.

Wary of giving his name, he glances around the marble-floored, wood-panelled foyer before pulling out a slim A4-sized folder. It is about the size of a small safety-deposit box – and those, ever since the financial crisis hit Greece 18 months ago, have become the most sought-after financial products in the country. Worried about whether the banks will stay in business, Greeks have been taking their life savings out of accounts and sticking them in metal slits in basement vaults.

The boxes are so popular that the bank has doubled the rent on them in the past year – and still every day between five and 10 customers request one. This bank ran out of spares months ago. The clerk leans over: "I've been working in a bank for 31 years, and I've never seen a panic like this."

Official figures back him up. In May alone, almost €5bn (£4.4bn) was pulled out of Greek deposits, as part of what analysts describe as a "silent bank run". This version is also disorderly and jittery, just not as obvious. Customers do not form long queues outside branches, they simply squirrel out as much as they can. Some of that money will have been used to pay debts or supplement incomes, of course, but bankers put the sheer volume of withdrawals down to a general fear about the outlook for Greece, one that runs all the way from the humble rainy-day saver to the really big money.

Rat has developed the ability to defend itself from predators by smearing its body with a poison it makes itself -

The African Crested Rat, Lophiomys imhausi, gnaws on the highly toxic Poison-arrow tree and then slathers poisonous spit onto special absorbent hairs on its flanks.

While the poison is used by human hunters and can kill an elephant, the rat appears to be immune.

"At between 40 and 50 centimeters long, the Crested Rat looks quite innocuous as it clambers about in rocky, wooded valleys in Kenya and the Horn of Africa," says Jonathan Kingdon of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology.

"But once disturbed or attacked, the long fur on its flanks parts to expose a vivid black and white pattern around a leaf-shaped tract of peculiarly specialised hair, almost as if it is ‘daring’ a predator to take a bite of these poisoned hairs."

While the poisoned hairs are very close to the rat’s head, neck and thorax, these areas are protected with shields of bone, a reinforced backbone, and extra-tough skin.

"We observed the rat gnawing Poison-arrow tree bark directly from the plant, chewing it and then deliberately slathering the resulting mixture onto its specialised flank hairs," says Kingdom.

The hairs rapidly absorb the poisonous mixture, acting like a lamp wick.

The scientists have noi idea how the rat has come to be immune to the poison, ouabain - which has been used for centuries in tiny quantities to stimulate weak hearts. They hope that finding out more about the chemistry involved and the rat's genetics could lead to new medicines.