Huge 'Frankenfish' hooked in Virginia sets a World Record -

Huge 'Frankenfish' hooked in Virginia sets a World Record - 



A Virginia man who caught a fish known as "Frankenfish" has set a world record.
Caleb Newton hooked the 17-pound, 6-ounce northern snakehead in a creek in northern Virginia during a fishing tournament June 1. The "Frankenfish" gets its nickname because of its appearance and adaptability. The invasive species native to Asia is able to breathe air and survive in very shallow waters or mud.
The Free Lance-Star reports the International Game Fish Association confirmed the record catch. It beat a snakehead caught in Japan in 2004 by 2 ounces.
Newton is a 27-year-old plumber in Spotsylvania County. He has said it only took him about a minute to get it into the boat, and the 3-foot long fish barely fit into his cooler.


Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/07/huge-frankenfish-hooked-in-virginia-sets-world-record/?test=latestnews

Anyone Can Track Your Driving Patterns in Seattle. Here’s Proof -

Anyone Can Track Your Driving Patterns in Seattle. Here’s Proof - 



Kurt gets out of prison, and begins looking for the ex-wife who sent him there. She’s changed her address, changed her phone number, and doesn’t work in the same place anymore. Partnered with the restraining order she’s taken out against him, this would usually be enough to slow his search considerably.

That is, unless he knows her license plate number. Using a public disclosure request, the Seattle Police Department would then give Kurt her exact vehicle movements over a 90 day period – where it was and when, what direction it was going at the time (or if it was parked), and even pictures of the car itself.

This anecdote is hypothetical, but the laws it describes are not. Every day, Seattle police use small, sophisticated cameras mounted on their cars to collect enormous amounts of data on the city’s drivers. These devices, known as automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), map the location of roughly 150,000 cars a week in Seattle. In just a few months, they capture more scans in Seattle than there are cars registered in King County.

From the mayor to your co-workers, the history of any driver in Seattle is publicly accessible. Anyone can obtain a single license plate’s records, or the entire database, simply by making a public disclosure request with the Seattle Police –instructions on making one can be found online here.

Earlier this year, a request for the city’s ALPR data was answered in roughly eight weeks, yielding gigabytes of data and photographs. The data consisted of 1.7 million plate scans the Seattle Police had collected over three months, more than triple the amount of cars registered in Seattle (roughly 530,000). In one case, a single car had been scanned 81 times, capturing their daily habits with enormous specificity. Using a separate request, scans were also attained on specific license plates.

ALPRs are meant to fight crime, and can be extremely effective in that respect. Every day police cruisers have a “watch list” loaded into their computers, detailing stolen cars and those involved in criminal activity. According to SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb, when an ALPR-equipped cruiser passes a listed vehicle, they are “identified instantaneously. “

They pass the car, there’s a beep, and they’ve got them,” Whitcomb says. “For it to be efficient it has to be quick.” The cameras are also useful in cracking down on parking ticket scofflaws.

But if recognition of these vehicles is instantaneous, why is data kept for months, or indefinitely, on the 99 percent of cars not on the list? That’s the question among civil liberty and privacy advocates.

Last week the Washington State ACLU presented a draft bill to Washington legislators that would establish statewide regulations around ALPRs. Once prohibitively expensive, ALPRs are becoming common across Washington, due to decreasing costs and increased funding by federal grants, which paid for Seattle’s devices.

However, while more ALPRs are installed every year, laws aren’t keeping up with their rapid spread. Regulations on their use currently differ between cities and agencies. The Washington State Police keeps their scans for two months. Auburn keeps its data a year. Some departments could keep it indefinitely.

In Seattle, police say ALRP data is kept 90 days. However, Whitcomb said these rules only “probably” exist in writing. The state ACLU contends no such policy is formally established, and the section in SPD’s manual on ALRPs does not mention any such timeframe.

“As of 2012, we were able to obtain 3-plus years of data from the SPD when we did our public records request, meaning that they were retaining all data indefinitely,” said Jamela Debelak, technology and liberty director for the Washington State ACLU. “We heard that after our request that they were going to be purging data after 90 days, but there is no written policy and we have no other evidence that deletion is now happening regularly.

Read  more - 

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/948188-129/data-seattle-police-washington-cars-alprs

Spiders Delay 5 Flights At Kansas City International Airport -

Spiders Delay 5 Flights At Kansas City International Airport - 



The FAA believes that 5 flights at Kansas City International Airport were delayed on Saturday after an infestation of spiders descended upon air traffic controllers.
Three employees were reportedly bitten last week at the Air Traffic Control Center in Olathe, which controls the air space around Kansas City. Subsequently, the air traffic controllers were evacuated and moved to another area of the building. 
Exterminators were brought in and found that a spider's nest egg had likely hatched. 
"You're talking in some spider cases up to 400 and in large breeds, you're talking thousands from one mom,” CJ Workman with Schendel Pest Control said.
The FAA did not disclose what kind of spiders were behind the delay but maintained that passengers were in no danger. 

Read more - 

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/08/07/Spiders-Delay-5-Flights-At-Kansas-City-International-Airport

1.4km wall of ice to surround the building that holds Fukushima Reactors 1 to 4 -

1.4km wall of ice to surround the building that holds Fukushima Reactors 1 to 4 - 



Ripped from the pages of Marvel Comics, Japanese Anime, or Game of Thrones; the latest cunning solution to what the Japanese admit is an ongoing emergency in Fukushima is, well, creative... Now that TEPCO has been shown to be inept, Abe and his government have sanctioned the funding of a 1.4km wall of ice to surround the building that holds Reactors 1 to 4. No this is not Pacific Rim; as Kyodo reports, chemical refrigerants will keep the underground wall frozen to stop the 400 tons of ground water being pumped into the reactors to cool them from leaking further into the sea water surrounding the catastrophe. This must be a positive for GDP, if 'broken windows' can help the Keynesians (and digging and refilling holes) then why not build a giant ice wall that will require unending energy to refrigerate what is a constantly melting-down core of nuclear awfulness. We wish them luck.

...leaked an estimated 300 tons of water per day from the damaged nuclear plant into the ocean, said a representative of the Ministry of Industry on Wednesday

The countermeasures of the operating company Tepco are obviously insufficient . The energy company has "dry walls" claims to be injected into the soil, which should be there to harden a lock. However, as the company announced on Tuesday , the water flows around the wall into the sea.


To further penetration of water into the damaged nuclear plant to prevent, is now an underground wall to be built from the ground is frozen to the reactor building, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported on. To this end pipes with chemical refrigerants to promote the building of reactors 1 to 4 are laid in the ground. The thus created barrier was expected to have a length of 1.4 kilometers.


Thanks to the already heavily burdened financially operator TEPCO Group the necessary funding will not be able to apply for the state to step in as a government spokesman said on Wednesday. The construction of a protective wall of such proportions was unprecedented in the world. In order to build such a thing, the state must help the spokesman was quoted as saying.

Read more - 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-07/abe-sanctions-government-funding-freeze-fukushima-giant-ice-wall

Sun’s magnetic field is expected to flip in the next 3 to 4 months - could lead to bad weather and radio disruption -

Sun’s magnetic field is expected to flip in the next 3 to 4 months - could lead to bad weather and radio disruption - 



The sun’s magnetic field is expected to flip in the next three to four months and it could lead to changes in our climate, storms and disruption to satellites. 
This solar event only happens once every 11 years and signals what physicists call the Solar Maximum - a time when the Sun's solar activity is at its highest. 
During this peak in activity the outbursts of solar energy can increase the amount of cosmic and UV rays coming towards Earth and this can interfere with radio communications, cause solar bursts of light - known as flares - and can affect the planet's temperature.

‘It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal,’ solar physicist Dr Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University told Nasa Science.
‘This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.’

The sun’s magnetic field reverses around every 11 years at the peak of each solar cycle.
The last peak, or Solar Maximum, was in 2000 and Nasa initially predicted the next flip would take place between 2011 and 2012. 
Physicists also warned at the time that the next Solar Maximum could be the strongest yet. 
Scientists at Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory have been studying the sun’s magnetic field since 1976, during which time they have witnessed three reversals.
In 1859 a solar storm known as the 1859 Solar Superstorm, or Carrington Event after Richard C Carrington who recorded the event, saw numerous solar flares appear all over Earth. 
It was so strong that the Northern Lights - a natural light display that appears predominantly in that Arctic and Antarctic regions and is caused by the collision of energetic charged particles in the magnetosphere and solar wind - were said to be have been visible as far south as Rome.


Read more: -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2385401/A-storm-coming-Suns-magnetic-field-set-FLIP-lead-bad-weather-radio-disruption.html

Man saves dog from sinking yacht -- then goes back for wife! -

Man saves dog from sinking yacht -- then goes back for wife! - 



A SOUTH African man has saved his pet dog before his wife when their yacht was shipwrecked.

Graham and Sheryl Anley and their Jack Russell terrier Rosie ran aground off one of South Africa’s most dangerous stretches of ocean, at Cebe on the Transkei coast. They battled waves of up to seven metres and were swept onto a reef.

National Sea Rescue Institute North London station commander Georff McGregor said all three were wearing life jackets. The dog Rosie was wearing a specially tailored dog life-jacket with an emergency strobe light.

"As the incident happened Graham sent a Mayday radio distress call and activated the EPIRB (Global Positioning Distress beacon) but they were immediately forced to abandon ship," said Mr McGregor.

"He first swam Rosie ashore safely before returning for his wife, whose safety line had snagged on the steering gear," said Mr McGregor.

Once all three were safely on shore, Mr Anley - who is also a sea rescue volunteer - used his mobile phone to raise the alarm. Rosie and Sheryl Anley were airlifted to the East London sea rescue base, IOL News reports.

Read more - 

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/home-garden/shipwrecked-man-graham-anley-saves-dog-rosie-before-wife-sheryl-off-coast-of-south-africa/story-fni0dm3h-1226692445625

London finds bus-sized 'fatburg' in sewer... -

London finds bus-sized 'fatburg' in sewer... - 



It may look like an iceberg, but there's nothing cool about it.

Utility company Thames Water says it has discovered what it calls the biggest "fatberg" ever recorded in Britain - a 15-ton blob of congealed fat and baby wipes the size of a bus lodged in a sewer drain. Thames Water says the mound of "wrongly flushed festering food fat mixed with wet wipes" was found under a road in the London suburb of Kingston.

Thames Water deals with fatbergs all the time. But the company said Tuesday it was sharing news of the massive lard lump in hopes that customers will think twice about what they dump down the drain.

The company says untreated fatbergs cause flooding and backups.

Read  more - 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_BLOB_OF_FAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-06-06-31-05

'INTERESTING TREND' Va. Sees Drop in Gun Crime As Firearm Sales Soar -

'INTERESTING TREND'  Va. Sees Drop in Gun Crime As Firearm Sales Soar - 



Amid calls nationwide for stricter gun control laws, Virginia is experiencing a unique trend: the state's gun-related crime is declining but firearms sales are increasing. 
Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.
"This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don't necessarily lead to more crime," said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.
"It's a quite interesting trend given the current rhetoric about strengthening gun laws and the presumed effect it would have on violent crimes," Baker told the newspaper. "While you can't conclude from this that tougher laws wouldn't reduce crime even more, it really makes you question if making it harder for law-abiding people to buy a gun would have any effect on crime."


Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/04/virginia-gun-crime-drops-as-firearms-sales-soar/

Canada Is Part Of U.S. 'Homeland' On NSA Map -

Canada Is Part Of U.S. 'Homeland' On NSA Map - 



Just when you thought the NSA surveillance programs couldn't get any scarier, the spy agency goes ahead and makes Canada part of the U.S. "homeland."

That's how Canada — as well as Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean — was labeled on an NSA map presented at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Wednesday.

The map appeared during a presentation by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, an outspoken supporter of the NSA's surveillance activities, on how many terror "events" (don't confuse this with plots, the numbers are different) the agency has disrupted.

The map showed all of North and Central America shaded in light blue and labeled "HOMELAND." Manifest destiny writ large.

One might think this is simply a mistake by the NSA, but The Atlantic's Philip Bump, who first spotted the map, isn't so sure:

"This being the NSA, we're not inclined to offer that benefit of the doubt. Is this a way of blending in Canadian and Mexican terror activity disruptions (which, we'll remind you, is different from actual plots interrupted) to give a larger sense of the NSA's success at halting terrorism within our borders?"

Twitter, predictably, freaked out about the conquest-cartography, but there was bigger news in the widening surveillance scandal this week.

The map gaffe (please let this be a gaffe) came on the same day as new revelations about the scope of the NSA's surveillance activities.

Read more -
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/08/02/us-homeland-canada-mexico-map-nsa_n_3697189.html

Record 21 Million 'Young Adults' Now Live With Their Parents -

Record 21 Million 'Young Adults' Now Live With Their Parents - 



Just about a year ago we questioned the "demographic demand" thesis for why the US housing 'recovery' would become self-sustaining and lead to yet another fiscal and monetary 'nirvana'. However, while the 'household formation' meme remains front-and-center among bloviating Fed apologists; the sad facts are that not only is household formation actually still falling but, as a recent Pew Research study finds, a record 21 million young adults are now living at home with their parents.

Since 2007, young adults have grown increasingly likely to live at home. This is a new trend with a stunning 45-year high 36% (21 million) of 18-31 year-olds back with mom-and-pop. By way of corollary, with one-third of all Italian adults living at home (and 61% of young-adults), it would seem arguing that a housing renaissance in the US is around the corner on the basis of demographics is risible at best.

Read more - 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-02/all-time-high-21-million-young-adults-now-live-their-parents