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hue's JournalThe Hunt For Higgs - Documentary
Published on Feb 17, 2014
The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle initially theorised in 1964, whose discovery was announced at CERN on 4 July 2012. The discovery has been called "monumental" because it appears to confirm the existence of the Higgs field, which is pivotal to the Standard Model and other theories within particle physics. It would explain why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force...
President Sends 80 US troops to Chad Seeking Abducted Girls
Source: TPM NEWS WASHINGTON (AP)
Updated 11:22 AM EDT, Thu May 22 2014
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has deployed 80 military personnel to Chad to help locate the nearly 300 girls kidnapped in Nigeria last month, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.
Obama, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and the Senate, notified lawmakers about the latest steps underway to assist in the return of the abducted girls.
Obama said the service members will help with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft for missions over northern Nigeria and the nearby region. He says the force will stay in Chad until its support is no longer necessary.
Chad shares a portion of its western border with northeastern Nigeria.
According to Lt. Col. Myles Caggins, the 80 U.S. military personnel will help expand drone searches of the region. About 40 of the troops make up the launch and recovering teams for the drone being deployed there and the other 40 make up the security force for the team. Caggins said this latest deployment will not involve ground searches by the troops.
A senior U.S. official said the drone is a Predator, and will be in addition to the unarmed Global Hawks already being used. The new flights will be based out of Chad and allow the military to expand its search to that country. Initially the flights were largely over Nigeria.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/president-sends-80-us-troops-to-chad-seeking-abducted-girls?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29&utm_content=Netvibes
Police chief, rabbi among 71 nabbed in child porn bust
Source: USA TODAY
A police chief, a rabbi and a Boy Scout leader are among at least 70 men and one woman arrested on charges of trading in child pornography in what officials say is one of the largest-ever roundups in the New York City area.
The arrests were part of a five-week federal investigation that resulted in the seizure of nearly 600 desktop and laptop computers, tablets, smartphones and other devices containing a total of 175 terabytes of storage, federal officials said.
Investigators from Immigration Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations planned to announce the arrests at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Officials said the defendants chatted online and shared images using peer-to-peer file sharing programs. One defendant led to another who led to others.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/21/child-porn-nyc-internet/9367471/
L.A. developer drops plans for Caledonia business park
http://journaltimes.com/business/local/976cf1ce-e07a-11e3-b08c-0019bb2963f4.htmlCALEDONIA — A developer has abandoned plans to create a business park here that could have housed up to 750,000 square feet of commercial space.
Top Village officials say the plug has been pulled on a 60-acre business park that the Village and Racine County Economic Development Corp. announced on March 13. The park was to be established on the south side of Highway K, slightly east of Highway V.
That is where a manufacturer had been courted to set up an operation, Village President Bob Bradley said at the time.
RCEDC Executive Director Jenny Trick said then the company would have taken only about one-third of the land, leaving much of it available for other tenants. She said the prospect — which was pursued in an effort code-named Project Beer — was considering multiple potential sites.
After “extensive consideration,” Trick said via email Tuesday, the unnamed manufacturer did not select the Caledonia site.
The Los Angeles-based developer, Majestic Realty Co., has since dropped plans to proceed.
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More potential job losses for WI...
Mama Bear Pulls Cub Off Highway To Safety
Published on May 20, 2014
Driving through British Columbia's Kootenay National Park we stopped to capture a shot of a baby bear on the highway only to get much more of a show. While watching the cub we saw the mama bear stick it's head over the barrier to save it's young from its dangerous predicament. A very amazing sight to see.
Waukesha Seeks Federal Subsidy For Great Lakes Water Diversion Scheme
http://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/2014/05/waukesha-seeks-federal-subsidy-for.htmlWherein conservative, Scott Walker-friendly Waukesha - - where federal government bashing is boiler plate politics - - kisses the hand it usually bites.
From Milw Journal Sentinel:
Waukesha officials will be in Washington, D.C., this week to remind the state's congressional delegation of the city's desire for $50 million in federal grants to help pay for a proposed switch to a Lake Michigan water supply.
Mayor Shawn Reilly will accompany Water Utility General Manager Dan Duchniak to meetings Thursday with U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), as well as Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).
Waukesha is asking Wisconsin and the other seven Great Lakes states to approve a diversion of up to an average of 10.1 million gallons a day of lake water by mid-century. Oak Creek has agreed to supply lake water to Waukesha if the diversion request is approved by each of the eight states.
Duchniak's fundraising goal is to obtain sufficient federal grants — primarily from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — to pay 25% of construction costs.
Cost of building pipes and pumping stations needed to carry the water to Waukesha and return most of it to the lake in the form of treated wastewater is estimated at $206 million, Duchniak said.
Van Hollen fails on Internet sex predator cases (by Jon Richards)
http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20140517/APC06/305170091/Van-Hollen-fails-Internet-sex-predator-cases?nclick_check=1When Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen ran for re-election in 2010, he said, “Let it be known to Internet predators ... law enforcement, along with the people of Wisconsin, has no tolerance for your actions.”
He was right. Wisconsin has no tolerance for the monsters who prey on our children.
That’s why I, along with thousands of Wisconsin parents, are horrified by the Department of Justice’s mishandling of countless child pornography and Internet sex predator cases. There’s a crisis in leadership on this issue and an unwillingness to be forthright about the mistakes made and how to address them.
News outlets statewide have reported the Department of Justice let tips coming into Van Hollen’s task force languish, sometimes for more than a year. In one case, one sex predator who wasn’t brought to justice went on to molest a child. Another became a counselor for teenagers without having to register as a sex offender.
This is unacceptable, and the same attorney general who said Wisconsin “has no tolerance for (these) actions” is now stonewalling questions about his agency’s failures and scapegoating a few unfortunate employees who are speaking out about the systemic problems in his department.
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Jon Richards has my vote!!!
UN says forced labor, trafficking, 'modern slavery' generate profits of $150 billion a year
Source: U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT
GENEVA (AP) — The United Nation's labor agency says trafficking, forced labor and modern slavery is big business, generating profits of $150 billion a year.
The International Labor Organization says two thirds of the profits come from sexual exploitation and one third is the result of "forced economic exploitation" that includes domestic and agricultural workers.
ILO Director Guy Ryder said his agency's report Tuesday calls attention to the need "to eradicate this fundamentally evil, but hugely profitable practice as soon as possible."
The report is based on estimates that 21 million people worldwide are victims of the practice.
It says 55 percent of the victims are women and girls, primarily in commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work, while men and boys were primarily in forced economic exploitation in agriculture, construction and mining.
Read more: http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/05/20/un-says-forced-labor-150-billion-a-year-business
Romney calls on police commissioner to resign
Source: 10NEWS TAMPA BAY SARASOTA
NEW YORK (AP) — Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is calling for the resignation of a New Hampshire police commissioner who used a racial slur in describing President Barack Obama.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, joins some political leaders and residents in the New Hampshire town of Wolfeboro in calling for the resignation of Robert Copeland. Romney owns a home in the town.
He says in a statement, "The vile epithet used and confirmed by the commissioner has no place in our community: He should apologize and resign."
Read more: http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/2014/05/19/romney-police-commissioner-resign-racial-slur/9275395/
America dumbs down
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?
South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.
And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.
What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.
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