Category Archives: National

VA Health care roll out problem: The ID.

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ABC Action News in Florida reported November 6th that the new Veteran identification cards have a bar code that can be read by bar code scanner aps on “smart phones” revealing social security numbers. Use of these aps can lead to identity theft of veterans.

Although the the web site for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs has a warning about the problem, veterans were not told when receiving their card about the anomaly.

VA says that the problem will be fixed in the next generation of cards expected to be issued this year.

Facebook Is About to Lose 80% of Its Users, Study Says

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Mark Zuckerberg during a Facebook press event to introduce 'Home' a Facebook app suite that integrates with Android in Menlo ParkFacebook’s growth will eventually come to a quick end, much like an infectious disease that spreads rapidly and suddenly dies, say Princeton researchers who are using diseases to model the life cycles of social media.

Disease models can be used to understand the mass adoption and subsequent flight from online social networks, researchers at Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering say in a study released Jan. 17. The study has not been peer-reviewed.

See more at Time

The President Inhales

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He ought to change federal drug law rather than refuse to enforce it.

300px-Obama_Portrait_2006To the delight of dorm rooms everywhere, President Obama has all but endorsed marijuana legalization. “We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,” he told the New Yorker magazine. Let’s try to see through this political haze.

Mr. Obama also muses to an admiring David Remnick that while pot is “a bad habit and a vice” and not something he would encourage his daughters to try, “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” He called the Colorado and Washington legalization experiments “important for society,” while offering no comment on the federal Controlled Substances Act that he has an obligation to enforce equally across the country.

Marijuana remains a Schedule I substance under that 1970 law, meaning that it has a high risk of abuse. “No more dangerous than alcohol” is still dangerous, given the destructiveness of alcohol-related disease and social ills like drunk driving. There’s an industry related to mitigating alcohol problems, after all.

We tolerate drinking because most adults use alcohol responsibly, and by all means let’s have a debate about cannabis given how much of the country has already legalized it under the false flag of “medical” marijuana. But an honest debate would not whitewash pot’s risks.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

3 Bodies Found at Fort Hood (2 Children)

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wpid-Flickr_-_The_U.S._Army_-_Ambulances_outside_Fort_Hoods_Soldier_Readiness_Processing_CenterMark Hastings; Universal Free Press
(CNN)—The bodies of three people, two of them children, were discovered at an on-base residence in Fort Hood, Texas, the Army said in a news release.

The bodies — one man and two children — were found about 8:15 a.m. ET, and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command has launched a probe, according to the release.

No further details were available, and the identifications of the deceased won’t be released until the next of kin is notified, the Army said.

Chris Grey, spokesman for the criminal investigation command, could not provide further details but said, “We do not believe there is any further threat to the community at this time.”

2 arrested at Texas border linked to Target breach, credit card fraud

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illegals-arrested
McALLEN, Texas—Police in South Texas arrested two people trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico who may be connected to the massive data breach at Target.

27-year-old Mary Carmen Garcia and 28-year-old Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, both of Monterrey, Mexico, were arrested Sunday at the Anzalduas International Bridge on fraud charges. The duo had 96 fraudulent credit cards with them when they tried to re-enter the U.S., according to officials.

Police said the cards the two possessed bore the names of Mexican banks, but the numbers matched account information of South Texas residents affected by the Target data breach. Police said many of the cards had been used to buy tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise from national retail outlets in the area, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us.

Investigators are working to determine whether Garcia and Dominguez are involved in organized crime in Mexico, but McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez let slip that they appeared to have been dealing directly with the hackers and that the stolen account information appears to have been divvied up and sold off regionally — right down to the ZIP code.

KMSP-TV

More at KMSP Fox 9

Obama Urges Marijuana Legalization While American Support at an All-time High

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obama-weedNEW YORK (MainStreet) — Admitting that he “smoked pot as a kid,” in an interview with the New Yorker magazine published this weekend, President Barack Obama urged the legalization of marijuana.

“I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama said. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

With recreational retail sales of marijuana already allowed in Colorado – and soon in Washington state – public favor for legalization is growing.

In October, a Gallup survey reported a majority of Americans (58%) favored legalization of grass, while more than one-third (38%) admitted having tried it.

“With Americans’ support for legalization quadrupling since 1969, and localities on the East Coast such as Portland, Maine, considering a symbolic referendum to legalize marijuana, it is clear that interest in this drug and these issues will remain elevated in the foreseeable future,” the Gallup report said.

Read more at Rolladailynews.com

See Also: Obama: Pot is not more dangerous than alcohol (Boston.com)

Enticement, harassment charges dropped against foreign military officers

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Two foreign military officers who were training at Fort Leonard Wood and charged in October of last year with enticement of a child and harassment had their charges dropped, Pulaski County Prosecuting attorney Kevin Hillman said Friday.

WAYNESVILLE, Mo.—Two foreign military officers who were training at Fort Leonard Wood and charged in October of last year with enticement of a child and harassment had their charges dropped, Pulaski County Prosecuting attorney Kevin Hillman said Friday.

“The victim’s family and I discussed the situation, and they did not want her to go through the further traumatization of two trials,” Hillman said.

The two foreign officers charged were Mohammed Mahmoud Omar Mefleh, of Jordan, and Antoine Chela, of Lebanon.

Hillman said the pair had the charges dropped as part of an agreement which required them to remain in jail for 90 days and pay for their incarceration costs, which were over $3,000 each.

“Right after the charges were dropped, the men were taken by Fort Leonard Wood officials and have to leave the country within 10 days. I expect them to be gone by Monday,” Hillman said.

“They can have no contact with minors and will not be allowed back in the country. The Department of Homeland Security will be tracking and monitoring the men until they leave the country.”

Read more at TheRollaDailyNews.com

See Also:
1. Grand Jury indicts two foreign military officers for attempted child abduction
2. Foreign military officers plead not guilty in attempted child abduction case
3. Two men arrested for attempted child abduction

Is mainstream media keeping you from the “real” story?

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alg-conan-reaction-jpgBenghazi. NSA spying. IRS targeting. Fast and Furious. Now Bridgegate.

For years “conspiracy theorists” have warned that the media has been pumping out stories in an effort to draw your attention away from other stories that we should be paying attention to?

Could that be true?

Late night investigator Conan O’Brien takes a look at several unrehearsed and unscripted news reports on a story that might have escaped your attention.

Comedians Tend to Have Psychotic Personality Traits

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Creative types tend to be a little crazy, right? Psychologists have now found that comedians actually demonstrate a lot of the same characteristics as people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

As one of the researchers on the study, Gordon Claridge, told the Guardian,

“The creative elements needed to produce humour are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis – both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

Study participants included more than 500 comedians, 350 actors (a career considered creative but not necessarily funny), and 800 non-creative types, as a control. They came from the U.K., Australia, and the U.S.

Each participant filled out a survey [doc] asking about various feelings and experiences he or she had had. The questions were designed to identify psychotic traits in people who don’t have mental illness: traits such as anti-social behavior, belief in telepathy, and difficulty in organizing one’s thoughts.

Read more at Discover

Female Sea Snails No Longer Growing Penises Thanks to Ban on Toxic Chemical

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whelksShips in the 1960s were often coated in a chemical called TBT to prevent sea critters like snails from clinging to the hull. After researchers found that the toxic chemical caused female sea snails to grow penises (alongside equally frightening effects in other species) the stuff was banned in 2008. Now, six years later, things are starting to look up for the snails.
Fed Up With Fouling

Ship builders have long struggled with the problem of fouling, whereby mollusks and barnacles hitch onto a hull, causing boat damage and creating drag that drives up fuel costs. Starting in the 1960s, a chemical called tributyltin (TBT) was painted on ships to keep them free from aquatic hitchhikers. It was toxic and therefore did the trick, as described in a 2002 report [pdf] from the International Maritime Organization:

As a biocide in anti-fouling paint, it proved extremely effective at keeping smooth and clean the hulls of ships and boats. And when it was introduced into anti-fouling paints, it was considered less harmful than biocides used in anti-fouling systems at the time: such as DDT and arsenic.

But as the chemical began to leach off the ships and accumulate in marine environments, especially around shipping ports, scientists started seeing negative effects on aquatic plants and animals.

Shellfish and sea snail populations were hit especially hard. Female whelks, for example, started growing penises and vas deferens (the tubes that directs sperm from the testes). This left the snails sterile—a condition called “imposex.” In Australia in 2004, for example, between 43 and 100 percent of snails studied were found to be imposex.

Read more at Discover