Obama Pledges $3B to Aid . . . Climate Change (P.S. It will be spent by the United Nations)

/23 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

The United States will give $3 billion to a U.N.-established fund to help poorer vulnerable countries prepare for a changing climate and develop cleaner energy, President Barack Obama announced Saturday.

The United Nations is trying to raise at least $10 billion for its Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adjust to rising seas, warmer temperatures and more extreme weather. It also would help the nations come up with energy sources that limit or reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil and gas.

Obama said the money would help farmers plant more resilient crops, governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions and communities to develop better defenses against storm surges and other climate-related changes.

But Obama said combatting climate change cannot be the work of government alone. “Citizens— especially young people like you — have to keep raising your voices, because you deserve to live your lives in a world that is cleaner and healthier,” he said while announcing the pledge during a speech at a university in Brisbane, Australia.

The American pledge would be the biggest to date and would double contributions to $6 billion, according to international environmental groups.

Read more from this story HERE.

China and the United States Are Preparing for War

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: FP

Photo Credit: FP

At a Nov. 12 news conference in Beijing, General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to notify the other side before major military activities, and to develop a set of rules of behavior for sea and air encounters, in order to avoid military confrontations in Asia. “It’s incredibly important that we avoid inadvertent escalation,” Ben Rhodes, a U.S. deputy national security advisor, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying. An “accidental circumstance,” he said, could “lead into something that could precipitate conflict.”

Should we really be worried about war between the United States and China? Yes. Over the last four decades of studying China, I have spoken with hundreds of members of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and read countless Chinese military journals and strategy articles. Chinese military and political leaders believe that their country is at the center of American war planning. In other words, Beijing believes that the United States is readying itself for the possibility of a conflict with China — and that it must prepare for that eventuality.

Tensions are high not just because of Beijing’s rapidly expanding military budget, or because the United States continues to commit an increasingly high percentage of its military assets to the Pacific as part of its “rebalance” strategy. Rather, the biggest problem is Chinese opacity. While it’s heartening to hear Xi agree to instruct the PLA to be more open with regard to the United States, it is doubtful this will lead to any real changes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dengue Fever Researchers in Military Weigh Infecting Volunteers

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Associated Press

Photo Credit: Associated Press

Scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are considering resurrecting a research program that would infect healthy people with dengue fever, the potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease that has no specific drug treatment.

The tests raise ethical issues, but advocates say they are offset by the need to halt the dramatic growth in the disease. As many as 50 million people a year are infected with dengue, a 30-fold increase in the last 50 years. The disease causes 22,000 deaths each year, mainly among children, the World Health Organization says.

“Here you’re way out on the end of the risk-benefit spectrum,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “It’s ethical to do it, but you have to go in with your eyes wide, wide open.”

The purpose of such a study, known as the “human infection” or “human challenge” model, is to see which viral strains cause mild dengue illness in people. The strains that make people sick are used to test potential vaccines and drugs, possibly leading to prevention and treatment of the disease.

The human-infection model is commonly used by researchers and drug and vaccine makers to study other diseases, like malaria, flu and infectious diarrhea. But the stakes are higher with dengue because there is no antiviral medication available to treat it.

Read more from this story HERE.

ISISALQAIDA Make it Official

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Militant leaders from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida gathered at a farm house in northern Syria last week and agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander have told The Associated Press.

Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington’s strategy against the IS group. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming “moderate” rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together.

IS – the group that has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a campaign of brutality and beheadings this year – and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, have fought each other bitterly for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Associated Press reported late last month on signs that the two groups appear to have curtailed their feud with informal local truces. Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both IS and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rosetta Mission’s Probe Makes Historic Comet Landing

/0 Comments/in , /by

A robotic probe has landed on a comet, in an unprecedented moment for space exploration that could provide a trove of insights into what comets are made of and how they behave.

Photo Credit: ESA/NASA - SOHO/LASCO

Photo Credit: ESA/NASA – SOHO/LASCO

Rocket scientists at the European Space Agency’s mission control here erupted in cheers, as they received the first signal that the probe that was released from the Rosetta spacecraft had touched down more than 300 million miles away from earth on the forbidding landscape of a small comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

There were even more cheers, hugs and handshakes when other signals suggested it had done so safely.

Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

Photo Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

The landing, first envisaged more than 20 years ago, marks the crowning moment of Rosetta’s decadelong cruise through the solar system to get up close and personal with a comet. During its 4 billion mile journey on a track to meet the comet, Rosetta bounced around the inner solar system like a cosmic billiard ball, circling the sun almost four times.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pregnant US Teen Wounded in Mexico Police Shooting

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AFP / Horacio Lopez

Photo Credit: AFP / Horacio Lopez

Mexican police wounded a pregnant US teenager when they opened fire on a vehicle that ignored orders to stop, authorities said Monday, in the latest episode of violence involving Mexico’s security forces.

Both the girl and the baby are out of danger, said prosecutors in the violence-plagued northeastern state of Tamaulipas, which borders the United States.

The girl and a friend were leaving a convenience store Sunday night near a bridge that links the Mexican border city of Reynosa and Pharr, Texas, when state police officers ordered their truck to stop.

Instead the driver sped away and police shot at the tires, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

When police reached the truck, the driver had disappeared and the girl was found with a stomach wound. The officers took her to a hospital.

Read more from this story HERE.

'Population Control?' Kenyan Bishops Accuse WHO and UNICEF of Implementing Program

/4 Comments/in , /by

Needle3201Some potentially disturbing news out of Kenya: A statement signed by the 27 bishops of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops alleges that the World Health Organization and UNICEF are injecting Kenyan women with a tetanus vaccine that has been laced with a hormone that causes miscarriages and renders some women sterile.

The bishops make it clear in their statement that they are not opposed to vaccines, but are instead troubled that there are several inconsistencies with this vaccination program (such as batch numbers and administration protocol), and that testing results have shown the presence of Beta-HCG hormone, which is not normally present in tetanus vaccines.

Dear Kenyans, due to the direction the debate on the ongoing Tetanus Vaccine campaign in Kenya is taking, We, the Catholic Bishops, in fulfilling our prophetic role, wish to restate our position as follows:

1. The Catholic Church is NOT opposed to regular vaccines administered in Kenya, both in our own Church health facilities and in public health institutions.

2. However, during the second phase of the Tetanus vaccination campaign in March 2014, that is sponsored by WHO/UNICEF, the Catholic Church questioned the secrecy of the exercise. We raised questions on whether the tetanus vaccine was linked to a population control program that has been reported in some countries, where a similar vaccine was laced with Beta- HCG hormone which causes infertility and multiple miscarriages in women.

Read more from this story HERE.

Iraqi Officials Say ISIS Leader Wounded in Airstrike

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP / Militant video

Photo Credit: AP / Militant video

Iraqi officials said Sunday that the head of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was wounded in an airstrike in western Anbar province. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such an attack or on the militant leader being injured.

Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries both issued statements saying al-Baghdadi had been wounded, without elaborating, and the news was broadcast on state-run television Sunday night.

The reports came at a time when President Barack Obama said the U.S.-led coalition was in a position to start going on the offensive against the Islamic State militants.

Al-Baghdadi, believed to be in his early 40s, has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Since taking the reins of the group in 2010, he has transformed it from a local branch of al-Qaida into an independent transnational military force.

He has positioned himself as perhaps the pre-eminent figure in the global jihadi community. His forces have seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, killed thousands of people, beheaded Westerners and drawn the U.S. troops and warplanes back into the region, where Washington is leading a campaign of airstrikes by a multinational coalition.

Read more from this story HERE.

Observers Decry Muslim Silence Over Murder of Christian Couple in Pakistan

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Rufin Anthony, the bishop of Islamabad, has denounced the culpable silence of Muslim leaders who have failed to forcefully condemn what is being called “the worst religiously motivated hate crime in Pakistan’s history”—the recent murder of a Christian couple in Pakistan.

Summary executions of religious minorities accused of blasphemy in Pakistan has met with complacency and even approval, says Anthony. “In the past,” he said, when vigilantes have taken the law into their own hands, “religious leaders have carefully refrained from expressing words of condemnation. In fact, they have practically encouraged personal vendettas.”

Anthony said that the blame for current problems falls to those who have countenanced it earlier. “If appropriate measures had been taken in the past,” he said, “this barbarism could have been averted.”

On November 4, Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama Bibia, the parents of four children, were stoned and then burned alive at a brick kiln in Pakistan. The two victims were killed by an angry mob of hundreds of people stirred up by a local religious leader for allegedly burning pages of the Qur’an.

Many have begun asking how a blasphemy law that justifies killing in the name of religion can exist in today’s world.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Day a Holocaust Survivor Got Revenge on His Tormentor

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

He survived the savagery of the Holocaust, made it to America with barely a penny and became a world-famous tailor in Brooklyn, dressing celebrities and presidents. In his new memoir, “Measure of a Man,” Martin Greenfield tells the story of his extraordinary life. In this excerpt, he explains how the concentration camps nearly stripped him of his humanity at age 16 — and the day he got it back.

While at Buchenwald, the SS assigned me to work in the munitions factory. But early one morning after roll call, a soldier placed me on a 12-prisoner team to perform repairs outside the camp in nearby Weimar.

Working in the city was a welcome distraction from camp life. Sometimes you got lucky and spotted a potato in a field or smuggled a trinket to trade for food. Either way, it was a chance to see the sky, escape the stench of rotting corpses, and confirm that there was still a world beyond the barbed wire.

We loaded our gear and marched the few miles to Weimar. The soldiers stopped us in front of a bombed-out mansion, home to the mayor of Weimar. A big black Mercedes sat out front. The soldiers commanded us to sift the rubble, clear the debris, and begin repairs on the mansion.

I walked alone to the back of the estate to assess the damage. Dusty piles of broken bricks lay scattered across the yard. Seeing the cellar door ajar, I slowly opened it. A shaft of sunlight filled the dank cellar. On one side of the space sat a wooden cage wrapped in chicken wire. I walked closer and noticed two quivering rabbits inside the cage.

Read more from this story HERE.