CHICAGO (Reuters) – Scientists in Brazil have uncovered a new brain disorder associated with Zika infections in adults: an autoimmune syndrome called acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM, that attacks the brain and spinal cord.
Zika has already been linked with the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome, which attacks peripheral nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis that can in some cases require patients to rely on respirators for breathing.
The new discovery now shows Zika may provoke an immune attack on the central nervous system as well.
The findings add to the growing list of neurological damage associated with Zika.
According to the World Health Organization, there is a strong scientific consensus that, in addition to Guillain-Barre, Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly, though conclusive proof may take months or years. Microcephaly is defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems.
Brazil said it has confirmed more than 940 cases to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating nearly 4,300 additional suspected cases of microcephaly.
In addition to autoimmune disease, some researchers also have reported patients with Zika infections developing encephalitis and myelitis – nerve disorders typically caused by direct infections in nerve cells.
From 1483 to 1498, Tomás de Torquemada presided over the Spanish Inquisition, the notorious Catholic tribunal used to try heretics and nonbelievers. In order to force their confession, these victims were subjected to gruesome punishments including strangulation or being stretched on the rack. Others were waterboarded or put through strappado, a grueling torture in whichsubjects were hanged by their wrists until their arms dislocated.
By Michael Bielawski / April 6, 2016
RICO 20: Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, Vt., is one of 20 environmentalists calling on the Obama administration to use RICO laws to investigate corporate opponents of climate change regulations.
By Michael Bielawski and Bruce Parker | Vermont Watchdog
As more than a dozen states investigate energy companies over an alleged global warming coverup, Vermont “RICO 20” professor Alan Betts says backers aren’t engaged in an anti-free-speech witch-hunt.
Last week, top attorneys led by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore announced a collective effort to investigate Exxon Mobil over environmentalist claims that the company misled the public about its role in climate change.
Among those present was Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, who said his office may join the investigation.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt blasted the investigation as a “publicity stunt,” and touted a 27-state lawsuit to fight the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, appearing on the Inside Shale Weekly radio program, responded, “You cannot use the power of the office of the attorney general to silence your critics.”
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The actions are backed by the “RICO 20,” a group of 20 climate scientists that urged President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against fossil fuel companies, especially Exxon Mobil. Jagadish Shukla, a climate dynamics professor at George Mason University, and leader of the RICO 20, has been investigated by Congress for possible abuse of $1.5 million in taxpayer grants.
Alan Betts, a climate scientist from Pittsford, says the professors aren’t attacking free speech.
“It wasn’t about freedom of speech; it was all about Exxon and their deception back in the 1980s,” Betts told Vermont Watchdog.
“(Critics said) we were attacking scientists and things like that, but that was completely untrue. It was about trying to hold Exxon responsible for their deceit over the years, which has led to a great delay in taking action on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
That “deception” and “deceit” refers to reports authored by Columbia Journalism School fellows — and run in the Los Angeles Times — that accused Exxon of expressing climate change doubts while internal company research supported global warming claims. While Exxon has attributed conflicting research to a lack of consensus on what to do about climate change, the New York Post reported that the Columbia Journalism School project was organized by anti-Exxon activist Steve Coll and funded by a host of anti-fossil-fuel foundations.
Despite telltale signs of environmental advocacy behind claims against Exxon, Betts maintains that Exxon’s actions are akin to tobacco companies defending cigarette marketing while knowing the dangers of smoking. That claim could allow states and the global warming industry to reap a financial windfall on par with the $206 billion attained through the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. That settlement involved attorneys general of 46 states and four leading tobacco companies in the United States.
Walter Olson, a RICO expert and senior fellow at the CATO Center for Constitutional Studies, told Vermont Watchdog claims by the RICO 20 lack merit.
“This does remind me of the old days in which the authorities would decide they need to convict someone and now let’s find a crime,” he said. “… It does rather look as if they’ve decided they want to convict someone of something, and now the question is what remote area of law can they turn to in hopes finding guilt.”
According to Olson, companies — especially ones with tens of thousands of employees like Exxon Mobil — hire experts to pursue “what-if scenarios,” such as a global warming doomsday situation. He said the companies are not legally bound to promote the views of certain individuals or groups within the company. He added that the effort could have a chilling effect on free speech and open inquiry.
“They are attempting to attach legal punishment to businesses that speak their mind on controversial public issues — that is something that should frighten everyone in the business community,” Olson said. “Everyone sometimes has problems with government and wants to be free to speak out without punishment based on the fact that some people think the opinions are wrong.”
Betts denied that environmentalists could be heading for a scandal of their own making, as when leaked emails from East Anglia University in 2009 revealed climate scientists manipulated data to hide information that did not support the theory of global warming — a scandal popularly known as “Climategate.”
“Those allegations were created by the various organizations,” Betts said. “… Somebody hacked into their databases and proceeded to edit their databases and selectively manipulate their emails to try and make a case.”
Olson said fossil-fuel companies can’t be convicted of fraud in this instance because companies aren’t responsible for endorsing any particular internal opinion within a company.
“There is no single unified brain in a company. … There isn’t a requirement that there be a single person knowing everything that everyone knows in the company and then deciding who’s right,” he said.
He added that companies often keep employees with divergent views to gain the best insights, and that no single researcher represents the company more than another.
New footage of ritual behaviour by chimpanzees, taken and analysed by researchers, shows they may be engaging in spiritual practices – and could even believe in God.
West African chimpanzees have been captured on camera throwing rocks into holes in trees and engaging in other bizarre behaviour, where the objects they use are not being used as tools but as part of a perhaps ritualistic practice.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog Point: Manmade climate change is a real phenomenon.
Counterpoint: No, it’s not. Climate has been changing since before humankind existed.
And so the conversation has circled for decades. But what if there was an alternative way of understanding what’s happening to our planet?
For scientist William Goodenough, we are wasting resources barking up the wrong tree. He agrees the planet is in a natural warming cycle, but suggests a shift in Earth’s magnetic poles is a primary cause of climate change.
“Our politicians are diverting $22 billion in annual research that tries to connect climate change to our use of carbon,” says Goodenough, author of “The Three Concepts of Climate Change: Is AGW Politics or Science?” (www.whyclimatechange.net).
“That research proves inconclusive year after year. Many people suggest completely reorganizing our economy to meet a radical energy policy, to the tune of an unquantifiable amount of money and a great economic burden on the average American.”
Here’s how Goodenough explains key concepts of his alternative theory.
• No scientific instrument connects human activity to climate change. If there was direct evidence tying humanity’s activity to climate change, we would have heard of it by now. Nonetheless, the message in the media has continuously reinforced the connection. Advocates for manmade climate change have successfully linked the issue to environmental problems associated with humans, including air pollution. The result has been public confusion. • How the magnetic poles come into play. Earth’s magnetic poles are relocating by 3,000 miles. This shift is having a significant impact onrealized in computerized aircraft-control navigational systems, and that’s a clue it’s likely affecting Earth’s climate, too. The magnetic pole alters the direction of the enormous current flow through the Earth, causing magnetic chaos in our planet’s core. This weakens the magnetic shield that protects the planet from damaging solar particles. Pole shifting changes the direction of the interaction between the geophysical and the magnetic North Poles by moving the coldest area of the Arctic toward Asia, thereby significantly altering the climate while not changing total Earth temperature. • A multi-disciplined approach to understanding climate change is necessary. “AGW climate science” is a gross oversimplification of terms. The issue includes perpetual changes in total Earth temperature, the direction of the sun’s activity, and the planet’s distance and orientation to the sun during orbit. Also in need of consideration is how the sun’s activity, Earth’s core and magnetic forcing interact with Earth’s atmosphere. In most of today’s climate research, all necessary fields of study aren’t taken into account, including meteorology, climatology, geophysics, geomagnetism, archaeology, paleoclimatology and history.
“If you respect sufficient evidence,” Goodenough says, “you aren’t satisfied with mainstream theories on this problem and should be open to compelling new data.”
About William Goodenough
William Goodenough is author of “The Three Concepts of Climate Change: Is AGW Politics or Science?” (www.whyclimatechange.net). He is a technical analyst with decades of experience in scientific analysis of computer systems, control systems, pneumatic systems, power distributions systems, automated processes, hydraulic systems and fuel systems related to aerospace certification.
WASHINGTON — While the Justice Department wages a public fight withApple over access to a locked iPhone, government officials are privately debating how to resolve a prolonged standoff with another technology company, WhatsApp, over access to its popular instant messaging application, officials and others involved in the case said.
No decision has been made, but a court fight with WhatsApp, the world’s largest mobile messaging service, would open a new front in the Obama administration’s dispute with Silicon Valley over encryption, security and privacy.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, allows customers to send messages and make phone calls over the Internet. In the last year, the company has been adding encryption to those conversations, making it impossible for the Justice Department to read or eavesdrop, even with a judge’s wiretap order.
GENEVA (AP) — Sexual transmission of the Zika virus is more common than previously thought, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, citing reports from several countries.
After a meeting of its emergency committee on Tuesday, the U.N. health agency also said there is increasing evidence that a spike in disturbing birth defects and neurological problems are caused by Zika, which is mostly spread by mosquito bites. When WHO declared the explosive outbreak in the Americas to be a global emergency last month, it said that the evidence that Zika was responsible was only circumstantial.
In their “hottest year ever” press briefing, NOAA included this graph, which stated that they have a 58 year long radiosonde temperature record. But they only showed the last 37 years in the graph.
The paper’s perceived references to intelligent design have provoked anger and calls for a boycott of the journal
Doug Bolton
A recent scientific paper on the movement of the human hand has faced strong criticism for referring to a ‘Creator’ throughout.
The paper, titled: ‘Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living’ was written by a team of four researchers, three from Huazhong University in China, and one from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
Published in the PLOS ONE journal, the fairly conventional study looked at the mechanics of how we grasp things, and involved the measurement of the hand movements of 30 participants.
‘Creationism taught at’ free school facing closure
However, members of the scientific community have demanded the paper be retracted, for its several perceived references to the pseudoscientific theory of intelligent design and a possibly divine ‘Creator’.
In the opening sentences of the study, it claims the link between muscles and hand movements is the product of “proper design by the Creator.”
Later, it says human hand coordination “should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention,” and concludes by again claiming the mechanical architecture of the hand is the result of “proper design by the Creator.
Analysts and lawmakers warn FBI that ramifications over its demand that Apple unlock San Bernardino killer’s iPhone ‘could snowball around the world’
Authoritarian governments including Russia and China will demand greater access to mobile data should Apple lose a watershed encryption case brought by the FBI, leading technology analysts, privacy experts and legislators have warned.
Apple challenges ‘chilling’ demand to decrypt San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone
Apple’s decision to resist a court order to unlock a password-protected iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino killers has created a worldwide privacy shockwave, with campaigners around the world expecting the struggle to carry major implications for the future of mobile and internet security. They warned that Barack Obama’s criticism of a similar Chinese measure last year now risked ringing hollow.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a leading legislator on privacy and tech issues, warned the FBI to step back from the brink or risk setting a precedent for authoritarian countries.
“This move by the FBI could snowball around the world. Why in the world would our government want to give repressive regimes in Russia and China a blueprint for forcing American companies to create a backdoor?” Wyden told the Guardian.
“Companies should comply with warrants to the extent they are able to do so, but no company should be forced to deliberately weaken its products. In the long run, the real losers will be Americans’ online safety and security.”
Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said the FBI was using an “unprecedented reading of a nearly 230-year old law” that put “at risk the foundations of strong security for our people and privacy in the digital age.
“If upheld, this decision could force US technology companies to actually build hacking tools for government against their will, while weakening cybersecurity for millions of Americans in the process,” Wyden said.
Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.
According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.
Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.
Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.
For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.
However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple said on Wednesday that it would oppose and challenge a federal court order to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.
On Tuesday, in a significant victory for the government, Magistrate JudgeSheri Pym of the Federal District Court for the District of Central Californiaordered Apple to bypass security functions on an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who was killed by the police along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, after they attacked Mr. Farook’s co-workers at a holiday gathering.
Judge Pym ordered Apple to build special software that would essentially act as a skeleton key capable of unlocking the phone.
But hours later, in a statement by its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, Apple announced its refusal to comply. The move sets up a legal showdown between the company, which says it is eager to protect the privacy of its customers, and the law enforcement authorities, who say that new encryption technologies hamper their ability to prevent and solve crime.
Spring is coming early this year, according to the nation’s most famous groundhogs.
Staten Island Chuck didn’t see his shadow Tuesday morning, meaning winter will end early — a prediction matching that of Punxsutawney Phil.
Chuck only emerged from his enclosure at the Staten Island Zoo when a handler took him out to greet some city officials, excluding Mayor Bill de Blasio, who skipped the ceremony this year to campaign in Iowa.
“The Staten Island Zoo was so determined that it won’t become a crime scene today that they invited the DA,” joked the borough’s deputy president, Edward Burke.
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Data overages can lead to big phone bills.
One family, however, was shocked when they got a bill for more than two thousand dollars. The big bill was because of a new feature on Apple iPhones that you may not be aware of.
Like many teens Ashton Feingold didn’t think much about the text message from AT&T which warned that he was nearing his date limit.
“It just said maybe 65 percent of your data has been used,” said Feingold.
Then the bill came.
“I thought my dad was going to kill me,” he said.
“It’s usually $250 a month and this was $2,000!” said Ashton’s father Jeff.
The difference? A new feature on Ashton’s iPhone called “WiFi Assist” which is standard with the new iOS 9.1 operating system.
“I had no idea what that was,” said Jeff Feingold.
It’s intended to make sure the user always has a good signal by automatically switching to cellular data when a WiFi signal is weak.
Like in Ashton’s bedroom. He thought he was still connected to WiFi while streamed and surfed the web. Instead, his phone was gobbling up date – more than 144-thousand megabytes.
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new guidelines 18 months ago regarding the radiation risk from cellphones, it used unusually bold language on the topic for the American health agency: “We recommend caution in cellphone use.”
The agency’s website previously had said that any risks “likely are comparable to other lifestyle choices we make every day.”
Within weeks, though, the C.D.C. reversed course. It no longer recommended caution, and deleted a passage specifically addressing potential risks for children.
Mainstream scientific consensus holds that there is little to no evidence that cellphone signals raise the risk of brain cancer or other health problems; rather, behaviors like texting while driving are seen as the real health concerns. Nevertheless, more than 500 pages of internal records obtained by The New York Times, along with interviews with former agency officials, reveal a debate and some disagreement among scientists and health agencies about what guidance to give as the use of mobile devices skyrockets.
Although the initial C.D.C. changes, which were released in June 2014, had been three years in the making, officials quickly realized they had taken a step they were not prepared for. Health officials and advocates began asking if the new language represented a policy change. One state official raised the question of potential liabilities for allowing cellphones in schools.
