The Senate on Thursday passed legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, moving the GOP-controlled Congress one step closer to a showdown with President Obama over the long-stalled project.
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Saturday 31 January 2015
Senate Passes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill
The Senate on Thursday passed legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, moving the GOP-controlled Congress one step closer to a showdown with President Obama over the long-stalled project.
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AirAsia captain left seat before jet lost control
The captain of the AirAsia jet that crashed into the sea in December was out of his seat conducting an unusual procedure when his co-pilot apparently lost control, and by the time he returned it was too late to save the plane, two people familiar with the investigation said. Details emerging of the final moments of Flight QZ8501 are likely to focus attention partly on maintenance, procedures and training, though Indonesian officials have not ruled out any cause and stress it is too...
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Shanghai Maglev - World's Fastest Train
This is the Shanghai Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) train, the world's fastest train, with a top operating speed of 431kph (268mph) - Enjoy the Ride! The train has actually exceeded 500kph in testing. It does the 19 mile journey to Pudong airport in 7 minutes!
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Attorney General Nominee: NSA Surveillance is "Constitutional and Effective"
On Capitol Hill, attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch will return today for day two of her confirmation hearing. If confirmed, Lynch will become the first African-American woman to serve as attorney general. During Wednesday’s hearing, Lynch described the National Security Agency’s spying programs as "constitutional and effective" and defended the government’s surveillance operations.
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Russians Say They Fear Hunger, Unemployment and Nuclear War
A recent state poll asking Russians about their fears has laid bare a telling change in attitudes: more than double the number of respondents said they feared a nuclear war compared to two years ago. Russia's deteriorating relations with the West and the economic turmoil that followed sanctions imposed on Moscow for its meddling in Ukraine have had a significant impact on Russians' view on the likelihood of nuclear war or going hungry, the poll published Thursday by state-run...
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U.S., Russian make record-breaking balloon flight across Pacific
Two men made a record-breaking voyage from Japan to Mexico using a helium balloon.
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When Chocolate Was Medicine
Chocolate has not always been the common confectionary we experience today. When it first arrived from the Americas into Europe in the 17th century it was a rare and mysterious substance, thought more of as a drug than as a food — pleasant-tasting, with recommended dosages prescribed by pharmacists and physicians, and dangerous when self-administered.
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Marshawn Lynch Delivers Eloquent 45-Minute Address On Privacy In The Modern Age
Explaining his position on the sociological issue during a Tuesday press conference at Super Bowl Media Day, Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch reportedly delivered an incredibly thoughtful and eloquent 45-minute address on the topic of privacy in the 21st century. “While increasingly exhaustive access to media has delivered many benefits to the American way of life, this same heightened scrutiny has simultaneously imposed progressively greater obstacles to our personal privacy...
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Researchers grow human lungs in lab for first time
In a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize transplant medicine, researchers have successfully grown human lungs in a lab for the first time, Medical News Today reported. Using portions of lungs from two deceased children, researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston created a scaffold-like structure by stripping one set of lungs down to just collagen and elastin – the main components in connective tissue.
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China says no room for 'western values' in university education
China’s education minister has vowed to ban university textbooks which promote “western values”, state media said, in the latest sign of ideological tightening under President Xi Jinping. “Never let textbooks promoting western values appear in our classes,” minister Yuan Guiren said, according to a report late Thursday by China’s official Xinhua news agency. “Remarks that slander the leadership of the Communist Party of China” and “smear socialism” must never appear in college...
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Legislation would raise smoking age in California from 18 to 21
Alarmed by the prevalence of tobacco use among teenagers, state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) introduced legislation Thursday that would raise the legal minimum smoking age in California from 18 to 21. Hernandez, who is an optometrist, has support for the bill from health groups including the California Medical Assn., the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Assn., but the legislation is likely to face strong opposition from the tobacco industry.
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Afghan Taliban not a terrorist organisation
The US does not consider Afghan Taliban as a terrorist outfit, but conceded the tactics adopted by them similar to terrorism. "They (the Taliban) do carry out tactics that are akin to terrorism. They do pursue terror attacks in an effort to try to advance their agenda," the White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday. The United States, he noted has designating the Taliban in such a way so as to put in place some financial sanctions against the leaders...
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NYC pot arrests drop dramatically in wake of policy change
New York City’s pledge to stop making so many marijuana arrests is playing out on the streets, where arrests and summonses for small-time pot possession have plummeted since the policy change this fall. After a mid-November turn toward violations and summonses instead of misdemeanor arrests for carrying modest amounts of pot, such arrests plunged by 75 percent in December compared to the year before, from about 1,820 to 460, according to state Division of Criminal Justice...
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Indian Woman Sues Uber in U.S. Over Alleged Rape
Uber has been the subject of controversy all around the globe. An Indian woman who says she was raped by an Uber driver while she was traveling in his cab in December is suing the San Francisco–based online firm in a U.S. federal court in California, claiming it failed to put in place basic safety procedures while running its car service in India.
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Person scattering human body parts across three blocks of downtown San Francisco may have been caught on camera
A person who may have scattered body parts across three blocks of downtown San Francisco on Wednesday was seen on surveillance video, police said. Though authorities have yet to release a detailed description of the person, officers detained two men and a woman in connection with the incident Wednesday, said Officer Grace Gatpandan. All three were released when detectives determined they were not involved.
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A Moscow Library Containing Rare UN Documents, Ancient Slavic Texts, and 14 Million books, Burns
The Moscow library known as INION—the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences—went up in flames on the evening of Jan. 29.
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One Detective's Quest to Identify A Serial Killer's Lost Victims
Thirty-five years after Chicago’s infamous “killer clown” was convicted for murdering 33 men, eight of John Wayne Gacy’s victims remained unidentified. Jason Moran, Cook County’s one-man cold case unit, has made it his mission to find those names, exposing what has been called our criminal justice system’s “silent mass disaster.”
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Seattle police pepper sprayed a teacher who was walking and talking to his mom
A Seattle-area high school teacher who was pepper-sprayed by police at a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. day has filed an intent to sue the city and its police force for $500,000. Jesse Hagopian, a well-known social justice advocate who teaches at Garfield High School, a public school in Seattle, Washington, filed the notice of tort claim against the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department over the incident, which was captured on camera and shared on YouTube this week.
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Will NFL and NHL lose tax exemption? White House reviewing the idea
The White House says it's reviewing a Republican-backed bill to eliminate the tax exemption for top sports organizations with high revenues
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Tesla Model S P85D revolutionised driving
You put your Tesla Model S in the garage last night. Before you went to sleep it did an already insane 0-100 km/h in 3.4 seconds, but when you wake up it does that speed in 3.3 seconds without you doing a thing. Huh? This morning Tesla Motors issued a software update to their Model S P85D model that will make the car even faster. Being able to make your car meaningfully faster through an over-the-air update, much like something you would get on your phone is something that...
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Faxpapers: A Lost 1930s Technology That Delivered Newspapers via Radio
One of the greatest media experiments of the 1930s and 40s was the faxpaper. Almost entirely forgotten today, it was a technology that could deliver newspapers over the radio waves, then print them instantly right in your home.
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Friday 30 January 2015
Feds make terrible friends: How the FBI encourages people to act their worst
Something all humans share is the capacity to make terrible decisions, particularly when young and impressionable and trying to find meaning in a life that so often fails to meet our expectations. One can of course be victimized by circumstance, of societal and economic forces out of a mere individual’s control, and of course many people are, but every day we are also confronted with questions that, depending on how we respond, can profoundly change our lives.
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Suge Knight Arrested for Murder After Hit-and-Run
Marion "Suge" Knight was charged with murder and held on $2 million bail after the controversial founder of Death Row Records was involved in a fatal hit-and-run Thursday afternoon, according to CBS Los Angeles.
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My favorite photobook of 2014 By Little Brown Mushroom
DIE MAUER IST WEG! by Mark Power is my favorite book of 2014. The book has an incredible story, brilliant design, excellent printing and killer pictures.
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EU extends sanctions against Russia
EU foreign ministers have agreed to extend existing sanctions against Russia until September. At an extraordinary meeting in Brussels, they also agreed to discuss names to add to the list of individuals targeted for EU travel bans and asset freezes. However, they did not agree on imposing new economic sanctions against Russia. The ministers met as fighting raged in eastern Ukraine. Moscow denies any involvement in the conflict.
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Why Can't Public Transit Be Free?
About 500 subway riders in Stockholm have an ingenious scheme to avoid paying fares. The group calls itself Planka.nu (rough translation: "dodge the fare now"), and they’ve banded together because getting caught free-riding comes with a steep $120 penalty. Here's how it works: Each member pays about $12 in monthly dues—which beats paying for a $35 weekly pass—and the resulting pool of cash more than covers any fines members incur.
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Anti-vaccine Parents Dropped by Some U.S Doctors
With California gripped by a measles outbreak, Dr. Charles Goodman posted a clear notice in his waiting room and on Facebook: His practice will no longer see children whose parents won't get them vaccinated.
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Nigeria's escalating Boko Haram nightmare
Ali Yusuf has slept rough for days now. He had stayed in the military barracks in Baga, a northeastern Nigerian town near the retreating shores of Lake Chad, when gunfire woke him in the early hours of January 3. "All I could hear was gunshots," he said over the telephone. "Those Boko Haram people came plenty."
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China Further Tightens Its Grip on the Internet
The Chinese authorities are no longer tolerating the workarounds used by millions of people who rely heavily on less-fettered access to the Internet.
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The Surprising History of Hippy Crack
People have been having fun with nitrous oxide – even in the name of science – virtually since its discovery more than 240 years ago.
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50 Culinary Hacks to Make You a Kitchen Master
Cooking can be fun, sensual and rewarding, but it can also be an inconvenience in the busy lives of modern go-getters. Luckily, this infographic compiles ways to trim cooking time down and increase efficiency. How many have you tried?
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'The Great Raid' of 1945
It's been 70 years since a daring raid freed 500 captured Americans. Val Lauder remembers the day.
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Video shows girl pull knife on Texas police before they shoot her
Chilling surveillance video released a week after the police shooting of a 17-year-old girl in North Texas shows her entering the police department lobby, pulling a knife and facing off against three officers before she is tased and shot. The Texas Rangers, part of the state Department of Public Safety, are investigating the fatal shooting of Kristiana Coignard on Jan. 22 in Longview, about 130 miles east of Dallas...
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Here’s why 76 beavers were forced to skydive into the Idaho wilderness in 1948
Some time in the late 1940s, a very patient, elderly beaver called Geronimo was put in a box, flown to an altitude of between 150 and 200 metres, and tossed out the side of an aeroplane. Over and over and over again. He didn’t know it at the time – because beavers – but each time Geronimo survived the trip back down to that little flying field in Idaho, he was bringing one of the nuttiest solutions to wildlife relocation ever dreamed up closer to reality.
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Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments
In 1961, Yale University psychology professor Stanley Milgram placed an advertisement in the New Haven Register. “We will pay you $4 for one hour of your time,” it read, asking for “500 New Haven men to help us complete a scientific study of memory and learning.” Only part of that was true. Over the next two years, hundreds of people showed up at Milgram’s lab for a learning and memory study that quickly turned into something else entirely.
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$13.5M-winning lottery ticket bought 7 seconds late invalid, top court decides
A Quebec man who bought a winning lottery ticket seven seconds too late has lost his Supreme Court of Canada bid to appeal a decision that has denied him half of the $27-million prize. "I'm going to be very very honest with you … I'm very disappointed in this decision," said Joel Ifergan of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, from Montreal's West Island.
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$242 Billion High-Speed Beijing-Moscow Rail Link Approved
A social media post, published by Beijing’s municipal government yesterday, finally confirmed that China are to go ahead with plans to build a multi-billion dollar high-speed rail link between Beijing and Moscow. The line aims will provide super fast transport across Central Asia and will compete with the Trans-Siberian Railway, cutting travel time between the two countries from six days to two, according to the government’s post on...
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Meet Dawn Hudson, the woman trying to clean up the NFL's image
Dawn Hudson was working in her home office in Bronxville, N.Y., last August when her cell phone rang and up popped the name of a man she hadn’t heard from in five years: Roger Goodell. Not one for small talk, the NFL Commissioner surprised Hudson with a big-league offer: to be the NFL’s new chief marketing officer.
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Rare and beautiful portraits of young Frida Kahlo, taken by her father Guillermo Kahlo from the 1910s to early 1930s.
Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) was a Mexican painter who is best known for her self-portraits. Kahlo's work is remembered for its "pain and passion", and its intense, vibrant colors. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
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Thursday 29 January 2015
Quit-smoking drug suspected in 30 suicides in Canada
Champix is suspected of playing a major role in the deaths of 44 patients — 30 of them by suicide — since the popular stop-smoking drug was approved in Canada in 2007, a Vancouver Sun investigation has found. The Pfizer drug has also been linked to more than 1,300 incidents of suicide attempts or thoughts, depression, and aggression/anger across the country in the past seven years.
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Russian Jets 'Disrupted UK Aviation'
Russian military planes flying near UK airspace caused "disruption to civil aviation" on Wednesday, the Foreign Office has said.
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Malaysia Airlines MH370 Declared an 'Accident', Search for Survivors Ends
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been officially declared an "accident" and the search for survivors has been called off, authorities said Thursday. A statement released by Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation said that all 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 were now presumed dead.
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Men must prove a woman said 'Yes' under tough new rape rules
New guidance will be issued to all police forces and prosecutors as part of a 'toolkit' to move rape investigations into the 21st century.
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"US must return Guantanamo for normal relations" - Raul Castro
Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations. Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but "if these problems aren't resolved...
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ISIS To Obama: 'We Will Cut Off Your Head In The White House'
ISIS militants have threatened to behead Obama in the White House in a video released on Jan. 26. The video shows ISIS militants standing in the streets of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, following an artillery barrage on the city by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. In front of the militants is seated a Kurdish soldier who is executed at the end of the video. Prior to the Kurdish soldiers execution, the ISIS executioner delivered a message in Kurdish which was subtitled into Arabic in the video.
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"CSE tracks millions of downloads daily" claim Snowden documents
Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned. Details of the Communications Security Establishment project dubbed "Levitation" are revealed in a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and recently released to CBC News.
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Boom: Inside a British Bank-Bombing Spree
No American ATM has ever been robbed with explosive gas. The same was true in Britain — until 2013. Now there have been more than 90. Inside the birth of a bomb spree. Along the western coast of England, under a half-moon hidden by clouds, a dark Audi sports car with fabricated plates followed an empty road toward a Barclays bank. Inside were five men, dressed all in black, and their gear: crowbars, power tools, coils of flexible...
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'Justified's' Graham Yost and Noah Wyle Developing Pre-WWII Limited Series at FX
“Justified” creator/showrunner Graham Yost has teamed with actor Noah Wyle for a limited series at FX examining the political battles in the U.S. over the decision to enter World War II. “Those Angry Days,” from Sony Pictures TV and FX Prods., will focus on the period between 1937 and 1941, as war spread across Europe while isolationist forces in Congress and elsewhere railed against the prospect of America coming to Britain’s aid in the fight against Hitler.
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