Global Warming Theory Foiled Again: Antarctic Ice Shelf Melt ‘lowest EVER recorded’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf’s melt does not result from human-driven global warming.

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and its associated sea ice shelf is closely watched: this is because unlike most of the sea ice around the austral continent, its melt rate has seemed to be accelerating quickly since scientists first began seriously studying it in the 1990s.

Many researchers had suggested that this was due to human-driven global warming, which appeared to be taking place rapidly at that time (though it has since gone on hold for 15 years or so, a circumstance which science is still assimilating).

However back in 2009 the British Antarctic Survey sent its Autosub robot probe under the shelf (famously powered by some 5,000 ordinary alkaline D-cell batteries on each trip beneath the ice, getting through no less than four tonnes of them during the research). The Autosub survey revealed that a previously unknown marine ridge lay below the shelf, over which the icepack had for millennia been forced to grind its way en route to the ocean. However in relatively recent times the ice had finally so ground down the ridge that the sea could flow in between shelf and ridge, freeing the ice to move much faster and warming it too…

Now, the latest BAS research has revealed that rather than accelerating, “oceanic melting of the ice shelf into which the glacier flows decreased by 50 per cent between 2010 and 2012”.

Read more from this story about the Antarctic ice shelf HERE.

It Begins: Colorado Toddler Tests Positive for Marijuana (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBS

Photo Credit: CBS

Police in Longmont are trying to figure out how a toddler got her hands on marijuana that made her sick.

Two year old Evelyn tested positive for pot and ended up in the hospital but her mother doesn’t know how the child came into contact with the now-legal drug.

Evelyn’s mother, Aida Hernandez, believes the child ate part of a cookie she found on the ground in the grass outside of their apartment.

“It was brown, like a chocolate chip cookie,” said Hernandez.

Read more from this story HERE.

Egyptian Puppet Allegedly Sending Coded Instructions to Islamist Terrorists (+video)

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Photo Credit: New York Times

Photo Credit: New York Times

Egypt’s crackdown on support for the Muslim Brotherhood turned surreal this week as prosecutors agreed to investigate the allegation that a puppet that babbles nonsensically in an advertisement for a multinational phone company was in fact sending coded instructions to Islamist terrorists.

Prosecutors said in a statement that officials from Vodafone Egypt, the local branch of a phone company based in Britain, were summoned to respond to a complaint about the ad filed by a counterrevolutionary video-blogger and singer who calls himself Ahmed Spider. In an appearance on Egyptian television on Tuesday, the little-known blogger spent nearly an hour dissecting what he called the secret codes embedded in the ad, in which a puppet widow named Abla Fahita tries to reactivate the phone line used by her late husband.

The ad shows the Muppet-like Abla Fahita babbling to a friend on the phone while her daughter, Karkoura, looks for her dead father’s SIM card. The company explained in a statement that the ad, first broadcast and posted on YouTube last week, was part of a marketing campaign “aiming at explaining how to reactivate a Vodafone SIM card.” The blogger’s reading, the company said, was “irrational” and based on “mere imagination.”

Read more from this story HERE.

China: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un Fed His Uncle to a Pack of 120 Hungry Dogs

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Photo Credit: Martyn Williams/Rodong

Photo Credit: Martyn Williams/Rodong

By Michael Kelley.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un fed his once-powerful uncle to 120 hungry dogs, according to a detailed report in a newspaper with close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party and reported by the Straits Times.

The report is impossible to verify, but can’t be completely discounted.

China lost an important link to North Korea’s leadership with the purge of Jang Song Thaek, and may have published the account in Wen Wei Po to express its displeasure.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Kim Jong Un ‘fed uncle to pack of 120 ravenous dogs’

By Sean Piccoli and Post Wire Report.

The uncle of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was ripped to pieces by a pack of starving dogs in a slow, barbaric execution that Kim himself watched, an official Chinese newspaper reported.

Jang Song Thaek, the 67-year-old family member once considered Kim’s right-hand man, died horribly with five other condemned officials in a capital punishment ritual called “quan jue”— execution by dogs, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po, a mouthpiece for China’s government.

The ghastly account of Jeng’s execution could not be independently verified, but its publication in an official Chinese daily signaled Beijing’s growing disgust with Kim, according to a Singapore daily, the Straits Times, which suggested the Chinese might have leaked the gory tale to further embarrass and marginalize Pyongyang’s reigning madman.

Read more from this story HERE.

Residents Leap from Windows to Escape Minneapolis Apartment Fire

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Photo Credit: McKenna Ewen / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Photo Credit: McKenna Ewen / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

By Matt Pearce.

Fourteen people were hurt, at least three critically, when an explosion and fire rocked a three-story apartment building in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, forcing residents to jump from windows and flee into subzero temperatures.

The explosion in the largely Somali American neighborhood was first reported at 8:16 a.m. By the time firefighters arrived, smoke and 20-foot flames were pouring out of the second and third stories of the building, officials said.

“People are jumping out of the windows now,” one fire official radioed. Another added, “We’ve got injured civilians out in the street.”

Minneapolis Fire Department officials said in a statement that they were “unable to determine [whether] everyone made it out of the building and is accounted for.”

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Everyone accounted for after Minneapolis fire, officials say

By Allie Shah and Matt McKinney.

There was a loud boom, and suddenly the walls of Abdi Qobey’s apartment flew apart as he sat watching television on New Year’s Day.

He ran through what used to be his front door to find the hall filled with flames. He could hear someone shouting for help.

Wearing just a jacket, jeans and a pair of shoes, Qobey went to the blown-out window of his second-story apartment.

“I did not hesitate,” he recalled Friday. “Outside is life. I jumped.”

From his hospital bed at Hennepin County Medical Center, Qobey, 59, described what happened at 8:16 a.m. Wednesday as an explosion and fire destroyed a Somali grocery and 10-unit apartment building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

Read more from this story HERE.

Getting Down to Business: New York’s Newly-Minted Mayor Offers Up a Strip Tease (+video)

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Photo Credit: nowthisnews.com

Photo Credit: nowthisnews.com

Mayor Bill de Blasio sure knows how to make reporters pay attention to his winter snowstorm briefings.

At the very end of a detailed press update this morning at a sanitation garage in Queens, the newly-minted mayor was asked how many layers he was wearing by CBS radio reporter Rich Lamb.

Dressed in a mayor’s office wind breaker, button-down shirt and dad jeans, Mr. de Blasio jokingly pretended to strip, dramatically unzipping his jacket to show off his shirt.

“Do you want me to go farther, Rich?” he offered suggestively with a smile. “I have an undershirt also.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans Spent $7.45B in 3 Years Helping Other Countries Deal with ‘Climate Change’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/POLFOTO, Claus Bjorn Larsen

Photo Credit: AP Photo/POLFOTO, Claus Bjorn Larsen

American taxpayers spent $7.45 billion to help developing countries cope with climate change in fiscal years 2010 through 2012, according to a federal government report submitted to the United Nations on a subject that Secretary of State John Kerry described as “a truly life-and-death challenge.”

That sum of $7.45 billion, which reached more than 120 countries through bilateral and multilateral channels, met President Obama’s “commitment to provide our fair share” of a collective pledge by developed nations to provide a total of nearly $30 billion in “fast start finance” (FSF), the report stated.

The pledge was made at a Dec. 2009 U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, and the FSF funding aims to support developing countries adapt to and cope with phenomena blamed on climate change, such as droughts and rising sea levels.

“International assistance for climate change continues to be a major priority for the United States,” the administration said in its “Climate Action Report,” submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on Wednesday.

Read more from this story about what Americans spent on climate change HERE.

Alaska Banks Scramble Target Security Breach

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Photo Credit: kevin dooley/flickr

Photo Credit: kevin dooley/flickr

Financial institutions in Alaska are scrambling to reissue debit and credit cards to thousands of customers affected by a massive data breach that hit retailer Target.

On Dec. 19, Target confirmed that data connected to about 40 million debit and credit card accounts nationwide was stolen. Last week, the retailer said the stolen data included pin numbers for debit cards.

Three Target stores operate in Alaska, two in Anchorage and one in Wasilla. No statewide numbers of affected cardholders are available, but the Anchorage Daily News (https://is.gd/8G7G4X) contacted individual financial institutions for information.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judicial Watch: Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians of 2013

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Not only are eight members of the Obama Administration named, starting with Obama himself, but also GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner and GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss.

As the release states, “President Barack Obama actually tops this ‘Top Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians’ list for 2013 as the driving force behind so many of the misdeeds… He is a master at catch-me-if-you-can, corrupt politics.”

Judicial Watch notes Obama’s penchant for ignoring Congress and rewriting federal law himself, including rewriting the Obamacare law 14 times by executive fiat; his “continual lies” that Americans could keep their own health care under Obamacare, despite his knowledge that “more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them;” and his disavowal of responsibility for targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups by the IRS, though he had made remarks warning about the dangers of conservative groups since 2010.

Moreover, Judicial Watch referred to the latest Obama deceit:

The latest Obama fix came on December 20, when he suddenly moved to allow hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their insurance due to Obamacare to sign up for bare-bone “catastrophic” plans. As National Review observed, “Of course, like every other exemption from Obamacare the latest fix is supposed to last only a year, raising the prospect that people will be kicked off their catastrophic coverage as soon as the 2014 election is safely in the political rear-view mirror.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: NSA Developing Computer to Break Encryption Programs

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Photo Credit: Reuters/NSA

Photo Credit: Reuters/NSA

The U.S. National Security Agency is trying to develop a computer that could ultimately break most encryption programs, whether they are used to protect other nations’ spying programs or consumers’ bank accounts, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The report, which the newspaper said was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, comes amid continuing controversy over the spy agency’s program to collect the phone records Internet communications of private citizens.

In its report on Thursday, The Washington Post said that the NSA is trying to develop a so-called “quantum computer” that could be used to break encryption codes used to cloak sensitive information.

Read more from this story HERE.