Group Of Experts Call For Full Inquest Into Death Of Government Weapons Inspector David Kelly

A group of experts including a coroner and a professor of medicine are demanding a full inquest into the death of government weapons inspector David Kelly.

They have described the official cause of death - that Dr Kelly bled to death after slashing his wrist - as "extremely unlikely" in the light of evidence since made public.

The call for an inquest comes in a letter to The Times signed by eight senior figures including a former coroner, Michael Powers.

The scientist was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home in 2003 after he was exposed as the source for a BBC story claiming an intelligence dossier about Iraq's weapons capabilities had been "sexed up".

Full story on Sky News

France defend policy on Roma after rise in 'racism'

France on Thursday sought to fend off sharp criticism from the UN's anti-racism panel after members highlighted a "resurgence" in racism and xenophobia in one of Europe's biggest nations.
French officials underlined the legal grounds for measures being taken against travelling Roma from central Europe as the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination wrapped up its hearing on France's application of international standards. More on France24

A new report by the European Roma Rights Centre finds that France's Gypsy and Romani population lives in a pervasive climate of racism and discrimination.

Hard on the heels of the riots in France, the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) has published a detailed report on the human rights situation of Gypsies, Travellers and Romani migrants in France. Entitled Always somewhere else: Anti-Gypsyism in France, the report sums up the findings of the ERRC's relevant research and monitoring activities since 2003. See EurActive for more

Also see: Race issue gives Sarkozy an easy route to boost support – The Independent

The Wilhelm Scream Compilation

A Brief History of the Wilhelm Scream here

Anderson Cooper Apologizes For Media Complicity In Tillman Cover-Up

Interview with Pat Tillman’s father about new documentary exposing how the government with help from the media used Pat Tillman’s death to promote the war.

Source: CNN

Double Vendetta

How long can we allow the maniacs who are driving us to the brink of World War Three to stay in power? We'd better do something soon, or we will all be done for.

alawson911 YouTube Channel

Iran Propaganda debunked in minutes

Antiwar Radio

Fears Russian wildfires could drive radioactive Chernobyl waste towards Moscow

Forest wardens today stepped up patrols in the Chernobyl fallout zone as a leading ecologist warned that fires could send radioactive particles as far as Moscow. Around 160,000 emergency personnel are battling 600 wildfires across Russia, 290 of which ignited in the last 24 hours.

Greenpeace said at least 20 fires – three of them in a highly contaminated forest area – had broken out in the Bryansk region, bordering northern Ukraine, in recent days.

Bryansk was part of the zone sprayed with a plume of radioactive isotopes caesium-137 and strontium-90 when the Chernobyl power plant's fourth reactor exploded in 1986.

Alexei Yablokov, a member of the Academy of Sciences, warned that winds could spread contaminants embedded in trees and plants as they succumbed to the inferno. "Radionuclides may reach places at distances of hundreds of kilometres, depending on the weather," he said. "If the Bryansk region is in flames, they can reach the Novgorod region, Moscow and, in some conditions, eastern Europe."

More on The Guardian

Ricky Gervais and the Bible

9 out of 10 Russian Prisoners Are Sick

More than 90 percent of inmates in Russian prisons suffer from diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis or are infected with HIV, the Prosecutor General’s Office said. Russian penal institutions last year registered 1.2 million cases of illness, 400,000 of which were new conditions, the prosecutors said on their website today.

Only 24 percent of the necessary financing for prison medical care will be available this year, the prosecutors said, leading to a lack of doctors, modern equipment and proper conditions. More than 4,000 prisoners died in Russia last year from various causes, state broadcaster Rossiya-24 reported today.

There were 847,300 inmates in Russian prisons and penal colonies as of July 1, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service. Russia has the second-highest per capita prison population after the U.S., according to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

Bloomberg

Read more about Russian prisons and Gulags here

New 'superbug' found in UK hospitals

A new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics has entered UK hospitals, experts warn.

They say bacteria that make an enzyme called NDM-1 have travelled back with NHS patients who went abroad to countries like India and Pakistan for treatments such as cosmetic surgery.

Although there have only been about 50 cases identified in the UK so far, scientists fear it will go global.

Tight surveillance and new drugs are needed says Lancet Infectious Diseases.

NDM-1 can exist inside different bacteria, like E.coli, and it makes them resistant to one of the most powerful groups of antibiotics - carbapenems

More on BBC News

Stephen Hawking: Abandon the Earth

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has some advice for the people of Earth - it's time to get off. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking said.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."

The physicist called humankind's survival "a question of touch and go" and referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 as one time people narrowly avoided extinction. He also referred to the 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons, including 7,770 still operational, scattered around the planet.

myfoxnepa.com

Girls Begin Puberty at Age 7, 8

Scientists have proved for the first time that a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.

Fructose, a sweetener derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease. It has increasingly been used as a substitute for more expensive types of sugar in yoghurts, cakes, salad dressing and cereals. Even some fruit drinks that sound healthy contain fructose.

Experts believe that the sweetener — which is found naturally in small quantities in fruit — could be a factor in the emergence of diabetes among children. This week, a new report is expected to claim that about one in 10 children in England will be obese by 2015. Previous studies of the potentially adverse impact of fructose have focused on rats, but the first experiment involving humans has now revealed serious health concerns.

from cryptogon.com

BP Cover up: A Tale of Two Wells

Chinese circus animals: this barbaric cruelty must stop

The video -  showing circus animals in China –  is narrated by Terry Waite, who tells us that his own experiences in captivity allow him to relate to the isolation and desperation of the animals that are featured. It isn’t a video for the faint-hearted: it shows scenes of circus animals carrying out humiliating and dangerous tricks in a style not seen in Europe for many decades. Tiger tamers put their heads and hands into the mouths of big cats who’ve had their teeth and claws brutally removed. Lions jump through hoops of fire, because they know that if they don’t, they’ll be subjected to even more pain and fear. Bears jump through a skipping rope and over hurdles because they’re forced to do so. Elephants are prodded with electric shocks to train them to contort themselves in bizarre ways that some humans seem to find amusing.

More on Telegraph Blogs

Israel murdered Hariri

In a much-anticipated televised speech, Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah on Monday night presented what he called proof that Israel was behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
The Foreign Ministry dismissed Nasrallah's comments as "ridiculous lies" in a statement Tuesday.
“Since September 13, 1993, the date of the signing of the Oslo accords, Israel made up stories to convince former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri that Hizbullah planned to kill him,” Nasrallah said, according to a Walla news report of his speech.

Nasrallah said he spoke to Syrian President Bashar Assad a couple of weeks before Hariri’s assassination, and that Assad told him – according to Western sources – that the world wanted to see Syrian troops leave Lebanon. “That is the reason Israel killed Hariri,” Nasrallah said. “Israel wanted to get Syria out of Lebanon.”
As proof of his theory, Nasrallah produced a tape of a man named Ahmed Nasrallah, who had been arrested in 1996 for allegedly spying for Israel. “I met someone who worked with Rafik Hariri and I told him that Hizbullah wants to kill him (Hariri),” the man was heard saying in the tape, referring to an apparent attempt to turn Hariri against Hizbullah.

More on The Jerusalem Post

'Muppet Show' bandleader dies

British jazz drummer Jack Parnell, who served as bandleader on "The Muppet Show," has died aged 87, his family said Monday. The family said Parnell died at his home in Southwold, eastern England, on Sunday following a yearlong battle with cancer.

Parnell was born in 1923, the son of a showbiz family — his father was a music hall performer and his uncle ran a string of theaters — and began drumming professionally as a teenager. During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force and performed in a band at the headquarters of Bomber Command.

In 1976, ATV began producing "The Muppet Show," a musical variety show with a cast of Jim Henson puppets and celebrity human guest stars.

Parnell conducted the orchestra for the whole of the series' five-year run, although the ostensible bandleader was the pop-eyed Muppet conductor, Nigel.

Parnell retired from ATV in 1982 but continued to perform with bands near his home well into his 80s.

The Associated Press: 'Muppet Show' bandleader Jack Parnell dies at 87

UFO footage from NASA's archives

This compilation includes many NASA UFO encounters and sightings that have been archived over the years. All of these examples (with the exception of the second-to-last one) were captured on film by NASA astronauts or Russian Cosmonauts over the past half-century - showing many amazing examples from different eras - Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project, Skylab, STS, the ISS, plus a couple Russian-source additions from their unmanned Zond and Mir Space Station programs as well thrown in to round things out. More on YouTube

Youngest Gitmo prisoner arrives in courtroom for trial

More armed guards were visible early Monday morning near where two war crimes proceedings were set to begin for two terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

But apart from the boost in security, there was little outward sign that the first full Military Commission of the Obama administration was almost under way.

Canadian-born terrorism suspect Omar Khadr, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old, arrived in the courtroom early Monday morning, according to Joe DellaVedova of the Office of the Military Commission.

The appearance of Khadr, now 23, ended speculation that he might refuse to attend the session. It is still unclear whether he will actively participate in his defense. Khadr is the youngest detainee at the U.S. detention facility.

More on CNN

Naomi Campbell said Taylor sent diamond says Mia Farrow

Actress Mia Farrow has testified that model Naomi Campbell said she got a "huge diamond" from men sent by ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Ms Farrow's testimony directly contradicts Ms Campbell's account that she received two or three stones and did not know who sent them.

Linking Mr Taylor to illegal "blood diamonds" is key to the prosecution's case at his war crimes trial in The Hague.

Mr Taylor denies all 11 charges.

He is accused of war crimes during Sierra Leone's civil war, including using the diamonds to fund rebels.

More on BBC News

Smoking parents are child abusers

Britain’s most senior GP has attacked the nation's reckless attitude to smoking, boozing and overeating. Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said it leads to early deaths for parents and their children. He warned adults that they even risk outliving their own kids if they continue to neglect both generations' health.

The leading doctor said adults smoking in cars carrying youngsters are guilty of a form of "child abuse". Professor Field, who represents 42,000 British GPs, added: "I suppose the same people also smoke at home in front of their children. Mr Lansley said: "We need a new public health movement, owned by everyone, for everyone's benefit. A movement that transforms the way in which public health is improved but also revolutionises the way we think about it.

The Sun

Gasland

Watch the full episode. See more NOW on PBS.

CIA doctors ‘gave green light to torture’

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that physicians with the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS) played an even greater role in facilitating the torture of detainees than was previously recognized.

As described in the (subscription required) study, "In 2003, partially in response to a CIA Inspector General investigation that questioned the use of enhanced interrogation methods and criticized the agency’s failure to consult with OMS about the risks to detainees of waterboarding, OMS physicians assumed another role, providing opinions to the agency and lawyers whether the techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture."

This advisory function came in addition to the physicians' previous involvement in the torture of detainees through performing medical evaluations before and after interrogation, monitoring waterboarding sessions, and collecting information on the effectiveness and risks of various techniques.

More on The Raw Story

Prince of Darkness & Delusions of Godlike Status: Prince Charles and His Royal Global Terrorists

In another example of what has become the norm from pseudo intellectual inbred royal families, Prince Charles again showed an example of his utter buffoonery and idiocy when he claimed to be on the planet to save us all from ourselves.

"My duty is to save the world: Prince Charles believes he was born for a purpose" - Mail Online

Nowhere does he mention the devastation and slaughter his family and his inbred brethren across the world have wrought on humanity all across the planet for centuries and are still doing so today with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and next Iran, still killing millions of innocent human beings which this clown claims to care about. Nowhere does he mention that it is his mother’s army that’s carrying out genocidal slaughter. Nowhere does he talk about the atrocities being perpetrated on innocent women and children using horrendous weapons and experimental technology to kill people for the hell of it while they test their new killing machines to see how efficient they are.

For those who’re struggling with mortgages, illness, money worries etc I beg you, stop looking up to these murdering imbeciles because if you carry on deifying these idiots they obviously believe they’re Gods to be worshipped by the masses whose very lives they hold in the palms of their hands to quash whenever they feel the bloodlust come on.

These are far from normal human beings. They are no better than you or I but are definitely a whole lot worse!

Sovereign Independent

The Trial

A Complete Analysis of Pink Floyd's "The Wall"

Full The Wall Video here

Eddie Izzard vs. Creationism