The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”
Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says
Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.
Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
NYC prosecutor clears 3 ACORN workers of wrongdoing in prostitute advice video
A New York prosecutor's office says it has found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of three ACORN employees caught on video advising a couple posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office said Monday that its five-month inquiry is over and that no criminal activity was found. The videos were made by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, who used a hidden camera on visits to offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Americans Prefer Online News After TV, Report Find
New insight into how Americans get news shows most of us are not loyal to one news organization and consume information from a myriad of platforms, be it TV, the Internet, local newspapers, radio, and national newspapers. According to the authors of the study, Pew Research Center's Pew Internet & American Life Project, the Internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news.
"People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news," the Pew report says. A full 75 percent of online news consumers get news stories delivered via e-mail or social networking, and 52 percent of those people will share news stories with others online.
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged
What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.
That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
The Road to Armageddon
Prior to 9/11 the American neoconservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in the Middle East required "a new Pearl Harbor."For their own good and that of the wider world, Americans need to pay attention to the growing body of experts who are telling them that the government’s account of 9/11 fails their investigation. 9/11 launched the neoconservative plan for U.S. world hegemony. As I write the U.S. government is purchasing the agreement of foreign governments that border Russia to accept U.S. missile interceptor bases. The U.S. intends to ring Russia with U.S. missile bases from Poland through central Europe and Kosovo to Georgia, Azerbaijan and central Asia. [See Impending Explosion: U.S. Intensifies Threats To Russia And Iran, by Rick Rozoff, Global Research, February 19, 2010] U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke declared on February 20 that al Qaida is moving into former central Asian constituent parts of the Soviet Union, such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Holbrooke is soliciting U.S. bases in these former Soviet republics under the guise of the ever-expanding "war on terror."
Military suicides are causing civilian casualties, too
Last month, the Defense Department reported that there were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides in 2009, up from 140 in 2008. Of these, 114 have been confirmed, while the cause of death in the remaining 46 has yet to be determined.
While the military's suicide rate is comparable to civilian rates, the increase is alarming because the armed services traditionally had lower suicide rates than the general population. The increase in military suicides includes men between the ages of 18-30, mid-career officers and, increasingly, women. The numbers don't tell the whole story.
Some Iraq, Afghanistan war veterans criticize movie 'Hurt Locker' as inaccurate
Critics adore the film and it has been nominated for nine Oscars -- a feat matched only by "Avatar," the top-grossing movie of all time -- but Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says that's "nine more Oscar nominations than it deserves. I don't know why critics love this silly, inaccurate film so much," he wrote on his Facebook page.
"[I]f this movie was based on a war that never existed, I would have nothing to comment about. This movie is not based on a true story, but on a true war, a war in which I have seen my friends killed, a war in which I witnessed my ranger buddy get both his legs blown off. So for Hollywood to glorify this crap is a huge slap in the face to every soldier who's been on the front line."
Europe wary of following Dubai killers' trail
European countries' reluctance to investigate may have something to do with the widely held belief that the killing of al-Mabhouh was carried out by a friendly country's intelligence agency - Israel's Mossad. The Jewish state has previously identified him as the point man for smuggling weapons to the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers.
Experts say arresting Israeli agents - or even digging up further evidence that Israel was involved - could be politically costly. "I would guess that it's in the political interest of certain countries not to get proactive in this case," said Victor Mauer, deputy director of the Center for Security Studies at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology.
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