Medical Marijuana Strain Has Hundreds Of Parents Flocking To Colorado

There’s a medical marijuana plant that has parents moving to Colorado to help their children.

The strain of marijuana is called “Charlotte’s Web,” and it’s named after a young girl in Colorado previously reported on by CBS4. The strain, converted into oil, has drastically changed Charlotte Figi’s life for the better. Now advocates claim hundreds of families are moving to Colorado in a last ditch effort to help their suffering children.

“We felt in our hearts it’s what we needed to do,” Marie Jay said.

The Jay family hails from Minnesota, but they have now been Coloradans for about two weeks. It was a move solely to help their daughter Jenna.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/01/23/medical-marijuana-strain-has-hundreds-of-parents-flocking-to-colorado/

FDA to review safety of chemical found in some soft drinks

Source: LA TIMES

The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the safety of caramel colorings used in a variety of foods, including colas and other dark soft drinks, to determine whether the agency should act to limit consumers' exposure to a chemical created during the manufacturing process.

The agency's announcement Thursday came in response to a Consumer Report investigation that prompted the watchdog group Consumers Union to call for limits on 4-methyliminazole, or 4-Mel, an impurity produced in the production of some caramel colorings, as well as for labeling of products containing caramel coloring.

Consumer Reports on Thursday released a report for which it purchased and conducted lab analyses on 12 different soft drinks purchased multiple times in California and New York over a nine-month period. In two products - Pepsi One and Malta Goya - Consumer Reports said it found levels of 4-Mel that may expose consumers to amounts of the chemical which, under California's Proposition 65 law, should bear a warning label.

Dr. Urvashi Rangan, a toxicologist and lead author of the Consumer Reports investigation, said "there is no need for consumers to be exposed to this avoidable and unnecessary risk." His investigation found levels of 4-Mel to be very low in Coca-Cola products - evidence, he said, that the manufacturing byproduct is avoidable. The chemical byproduct 4-methyliminazole has been found to be a "possible human carcinogen" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-fda-chemical-soft-drinks-20140123,0,7647002.story#ixzz2rIGNqYPg

Large Blast Hits Cairo

Source: Wall Street Journal

Egyptian state TV says there has been a large explosion near police headquarters in downtown Cairo.

The report says the blast early Friday sent smoke rising above the Egyptian capital and that a large number of ambulances were on the way to the scene.

It says there was gunfire in the area immediately after the blast, which was heard in several parts of the city.

The report comes on the eve of the anniversary of the start of the 2011 uprising that toppled Egypt's longtime autocratic ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303448204579339771973342470?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303448204579339771973342470.html

HRC Co-Hosts Historic Breakfast at the World Economic Forum in Davos

Today, HRC co-hosted a historic breakfast alongside Credit Suisse, The Huffington Post, Microsoft, the Paul E. Singer Foundation, the Third Point Foundation, and TimeWarner at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The panels highlighted the global fight for LGBT equality and marked the first time in World Economic Forum history that LGBT rights were up for discussion. UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay gave opening remarks and highlighted the 2011 UN resolution classifying LGBT rights as human rights and their two recent UN studies on violence and discrimination against individuals around the world based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Discussions like this (at Davos) feed into important decisions that will be made during the March session [at the United Nations],” Pillay remarked to a packed audience.

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-co-hosts-historic-breakfast-at-the-world-economic-forum-in-davos?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Earlier: HRC and the vulture fund: Making Third World poverty pay for LGBT rights

Singer, who runs a hedge fund called Elliott Management, and Daniel S. Loeb, who runs another called Third Point LLC. They’re both conservatives and huge donors to the Republican Party. Singer underwrote last year’s GOP National Convention with $1 million of largesse. One operative called him “the big power broker in the Republican financial world.”

Davos Makes Inequality Its Business as Political Backlash Seen - Bloomberg

Reducing inequality is usually the business of protesters at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This year, it’s the buzzword for the business elite worried about their bottom lines.

As widening income disparity becomes a dominant theme at the annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort, business and financial leaders are making the case that a reversal of that multi-decade trend is needed as much for business and economic interests as for social and moral reasons.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-23/davos-makes-inequality-its-business-as-political-backlash-seen.html

The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income in 2012 than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution earned at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show.

The U.S. isn’t alone among rich nations. A study by UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, found last month that Gini coefficients, a popular measure of inequality, had also increased in the U.K., Japan and France since 2005.

The Geneva-based World Economic Forum set up the debate last week by identifying income inequality as the most likely of 31 potential risks to threaten global prosperity in the coming decade. The disparity risks fomenting poverty and social disorder, it said.

Davos: Kofi Annan Urges 'Rising Up' Against Drug Prohibition

A high-profile panel featuring Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, discussed drug decriminalization Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Annan and Santos, joined by Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, condemned drug prohibition as unsuccessful and insisted on a new approach.

"I believe that drugs have destroyed many people, but wrong governmental policies have destroyed many more," Annan said. "When we realized (alcohol) prohibition wasn't working we had the courage to change it."

A major aspect of Annan's condemnation of drug laws is their impact on young people given jail sentences and criminal records.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/23/davos-kofi-annan-urges-rising-up-against-drug-prohibition

Times are a changing...

Gov. Rick Perry for decriminalization of pot

Source: My San Antonio

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday that he's for the decriminalization of marijuana use — not legalization, but the softening of punishment for marijuana users in the border state.

Perry made the comment during an international panel on drug legalization while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

His spokesman confirmed that Perry is staunchly opposed to legalization of marijuana because of medical issues, but is committed to policies to lower the punishment for its use in order to keep smokers out of jail.

“As governor, I have begun to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization" by introducing alternative “drug courts” that provide treatment and softer penalties for minor offenses, Perry said.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Gov-Rick-Perry-for-decriminalization-of-pot-5168667.php

Tenn. senate bill would prohibit state from cooperating with NSA

Tennessee State Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, introduced a bill today that would prohibit the state from supporting the "federal collection of electronic data or metadata without a warrant," Examiner has learned.
Campfield told Examiner that his goal is to "stop an out of control NSA from warrant less wire tapping with TN support."

SB 1849, better known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, would prohibit the state from having anything to do with the "collection of electronic data or metadata of any person" without a warrant. And Campfield isn't talking about those FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) warrants that encompass everyone, but instead, a warrant that "particularly describes the person, place and thing to be searched or seized," according to the bill.

The bill states that any agent or employee of Tennessee who violates the law "shall be deemed to have resigned the public commission or employment which the person may possess, the person's office shall be deemed vacant, and the person shall be forever thereafter ineligible to any public office of trust or honor under the laws of this state."

The bill would not only apply to the government, but to certain businesses as well:

Any person or business that provides services to or on behalf of this state
found to violate the prohibitions of Section 4 of this act shall not have any current
contract renewed and shall not be eligible to enter into any future contract to act on
behalf of, or provide services to, this state or any political subdivision of this state.

USS Pueblo: LBJ Considered Nuclear Weapons, Naval Blockade, Ground Attacks in Response to 1968 North Korean Seizure of Navy Vessel Documents Show

Forty-six years ago today - well before Edward Snowden was born - the National Security Agency suffered what may still rank as the most significant compromise ever of its code secrets when the American spy ship USS Pueblo was captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea on January 23, 1968. The U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship was on a mission to intercept radio and electronic transmissions, and apparently sailing in international waters, when North Korean naval units opened fire, then boarded the vessel and took its crew hostage for almost a year, sparking a major international crisis.

Beyond the dramatic political ramifications of the seizure and hostage-taking for the Lyndon Johnson administration and U.S. world standing, the incident resulted in the capture of a dozen top secret encryption devices, maintenance manuals, and other code materials. Because it involved actual encryption equipment rather than just papers and briefing materials, the Pueblo affair may have produced a much greater loss than the recent disclosures of former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden.

Recently declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive describe tense U.S. internal reactions to the Pueblo seizure, and include previously withheld high-level political and military deliberations over how to respond to the episode in an atmosphere fraught with the dangers of a superpower conflict. Military contingency plans, which President Lyndon Johnson eventually rejected, included a naval blockade, major air strikes and even use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.

Among the main disclosures in these documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research, are the following....

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB453/

Why is The Sun Going Quiet?

The sun is our nearest star and the source of all our light and heat on Earth but recent reports have highlighted an ongoing steep decline in solar activity.

This story is a reminder that our sun is a variable star whose dynamic production of magnetism, activity and winds have implications for our planet.

Solar magnetic fields power solar activity, including sunspots, explosive events known as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and an outward-flowing solar wind.

http://www.space.com/24378-why-is-the-sun-going-quiet.html

The current rate and extent at which solar activity is falling has been interpreted as the beginning of another grand minimum, and raises the issue of what it means for Earth’s climate.