Drilling for Certainty: The Latest in Fracking Health Studies

Naveena Sadasivam,  Pro Publica

For years, environmentalists and the gas drilling industry have been in a pitched battle over the possible health implications of hydro fracking. But to a great extent, the debate — as well as the emerging lawsuits and the various proposed regulations in numerous states — has been hampered by a shortage of science.

In 2011, when Pro Publica first reported on the different health problems afflicting people living near gas drilling operations, only a handful of health studies had been published.  Three years later, the science is far from settled, but there is a growing body of research to consider.

Zero Accountability: Japanese prosecutors drop nuclear meltdown charges against TEPCO and government

NATURALNEWS BUZZ

After the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, an independent investigative committee set up by the government concluded that the massive release of radiation from reactor meltdowns was a “man-made disaster” that resulted from issues in the country’s corporate culture.

Tens of thousands of Japanese people are unable to return to their homes due to radioactive contamination; there lives have basically been destroyed. Seeking compensation, assistance and someone to take responsibility for the disaster, many have filed lawsuits against TEPCO and the Japanese government for negligence regarding the safety and operation of the nuclear plant.

High Court Extends Whistleblower Protections

Nina Totenberg,  npr

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a federal whistleblower law, enacted after the collapse of Enron Corporation, protects not just the employees of a public company, but also company contractors like lawyers, accountants, and investment funds.

Writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that in enacting the Sarbanes-Oxley law in 2002, Congress provided protection from retaliation for employees and contractors alike to ensure that they would not be intimidated into silence when they knew of corporate wrongdoing.

The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics

Mariah Blake,  Mother Jones

Each night at dinnertime, a familiar ritual played out in Michael Green’s home: He’d slide a stainless steel sippy cup across the table to his two-year-old daughter, Juliette, and she’d howl for the pink plastic one. Often, Green gave in. But he had a nagging feeling. As an environmental-health advocate, he had fought to rid sippy cups and baby bottles of the common plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA), which mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a long list of serious health problems. Juliette’s sippy cup was made from a new generation of BPA-free plastics, but Green, who runs the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, had come across research suggesting some of these contained synthetic estrogens, too.

Fumbled Fortunes: Meet The Ex-Billionaires Who Lost Their Riches

Dan Alexander,  Forbes

Eike Batista was the world’s seventh-richest man in 2012, worth an estimated $30 billion and proclaiming to be on his way to becoming the world’s richest. Instead he lost nearly all of it in just two years. Batista and the 99 others who dropped off our billionaires list this year are proof that even the most successful businessmen can make spectacularly bad bets.

Batista, now worth less than $300 million, had his money on Brazilian natural resource companies that eventually tanked. His net worth dropped to $10.6 billion in March 2013, making him the 100th richest person in the world. Much of the rest of his fortune disappeared over the past year. His oil company OGX declared bankruptcy in October in the largest corporate default in Latin American history. Massive debt payments sucked up his cash as his stock in OGX and other publicly traded companies plummeted.

EFF Fights Back Against Oakland’s Disturbing Domain Awareness Center

Nadia Kayyali,  ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

After an encouraging debate at the Oakland City Council meeting on February 18, EFF has submitted another  letter  opposing Oakland’sDomain Awareness Center  (DAC). The DAC is a potent surveillance system that could enable ubiquitous privacy and civil liberties violations against Oakland residents. The city appeared set to approve a resolution that would have handed the City Administrator authority to sign a contract for completion of the project. However, after strenuous discussion, Councilmember Desley Brooks made a motion to delay the vote for two weeks in order to get more information about the potential civil liberties and financial impacts of the DAC. The council passed the motion with 6 yes votes and 2 abstentions.

Zeus Retrieves Attack Info Hidden in Sunset and Cat Pictures

Zeljka Zorz,  Digital Forensic Investigator

Malware peddlers employing a new Zeus banking Trojan variant have resorted to hiding the malware’s configuration file into innocuous-looking sunset and cat photos, warns Trend Micro. The practice has been also spotted  by Malwarebytes researchers in mid-February. Analyst Jerome Segura has then analyzed the malicious sunset photos and compared it with an unmodified one he found on the Internet.

Obama budget’s military cuts could be rude awakening for veterans

Mark Strassmann,  CBS NEWS

President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.9 trillion budget for next year. It includes tax increases on the wealthy and spending on things like roads and job training. Little of it will pass the Republican House. The budget would also shrink the armed forces. This could mean tens of thousands of service members will join the civilian workforce. Jim Reed retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2011. After 27 years and nine combat deployments, he went looking for a job as a civilian. Reed says he thought he was well-positioned. “I’m a nurse anesthetist, so an easily transferable skill — something hospitals can use every day throughout the country,” Reed says.

Still, he had a tough time. He has worked at three hospitals in three years, and he’s been laid off twice. “It was very difficult to deal with, and it kind of made me question myself a little bit, the first time in a long time that I had to do that,” he says. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recommends reducing Army to pre-WWII levels. The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans is 7.9 percent, higher than the national civilian average of 7 percent.

Warren Buffet disses global warming extreme weather fear-mongering

Thomas Lifson,  American Thinker

In the wake of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s outburst telling global warming skeptics to sell their shares in his company, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet has publicly stated that warmists’ predictions of an increase in catastrophic weather have not come true. Sean Long of CNS News reports:

Buffett told CNBC March 3, that extreme weather events haven’t increased due to climate change, saying that weather events are consistent with how they were 30-50 years ago. Buffett, who is heavily invested in various insurance markets, said that climate change alarmism has simply made hurricane insurance more profitable, driving up premiums without increasing risk.

MDMA for PTSD: How Ecstasy Is Helping People with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [VIDEO]

Paul Feine & Alex Manning,  reason.com

“If this is in fact something that can help a lot of people and we’re at this stage of the research, which is at least 20 years behind where it would be if it had been guided only by science and not by politics and fears and other forces, that’s really, actually, a travesty,” says Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist and MDMA researcher.

Commonly known as ecstasy, MDMA is an empathogenic drug that was first synthesized in 1912 by Merck. The drug was mostly ignored until 1970, when people started using it recreationally. Alexander Shulgin, then at the University of California, Berkeley, became curious about the drug and synthesized his own MDMA in 1976. Over the next decade, psychotherapists in the U.S. and Europe used MDMA as a therapeutic aid. During that same period, MDMA became a popular recreational drug.