Source: Wall Street Journal

The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency's controversial collection of Americans' phone records—an unintended consequence of lawsuits seeking to stop the surveillance program, according to officials.

A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records, according to people familiar with the discussions. As a result, the government would expand the database beyond its original intent, at least while the lawsuits are active.

No final decision has been made to preserve the data, officials said, and one official said that even if a decision is made to retain the information, it would be held only for the purpose of litigation and not be subject to searches. The government currently collects phone records on millions of Americans in a vast database that it can mine for links to terror suspects. The database includes records of who called whom, when they called and for how long.

President Barack Obama has ordered senior officials to end the government storage of such data and find another place to store the records—possibly with the phone companies who log the calls. Under the goals outlined by Mr. Obama last month, the government would still be able to search the call logs with a court order, but would no longer possess and control them.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579393413176249186

---

NSA trying to expand their surveillance because they're being sued. How quaint.

Fuck Alexander and his boss Crapper.

American STASI SCUM.

The Day of Remembrance is a day commemorating the Japanese American internment during World War II.

Executive Order 9066 is a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones. Eventually, EO 9066 cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. The executive order was spurred by a combination of war hysteria and reactions to the Niihau Incident.

Source: LA Times

A team of researchers from the City of Hope in Duarte has developed a speedy way to identify drugs and chemicals that can disrupt the balance of sex hormones in human beings and influence the development and progress of diseases such as breast cancer.

In a trial screening of 446 drugs in wide circulation, the new assay singled out the popular antidepressant paroxetine (better known by its commercial name, Paxil) as having a weak estrogenic effect that could promote the development and growth of breast tumors in women.

This is important because as many as a quarter of women being treated for breast cancer suffer from depression -- a condition most commonly treated with antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), including Paxil, which has been on the market since 1992. Almost a quarter of American women in their 40s and 50s are taking an antidepressant, mostly SSRIs.

Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration approved the marketing of a low dose of paroxetine -- repackaged under the commercial name Brisdelle -- as a nonhormonal treatment for hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-antidepressant-paxil-breast-cancer-20140218,0,3273056.story

Source: Forbes

Last night the Washington House of Representatives approved a bill that would abolish medical marijuana dispensaries, a.k.a. “collective gardens,” and impose new restrictions on patients who use cannabis for symptom relief. H.B. 2149, which passed by a vote of 67 to 29, would thereby eliminate some of the unregulated competition for the state-licensed pot stores that are expected to start opening this summer under I-502, the legalization initiative that Washington voters approved in November 2012. Supporters of the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Eileen Cody (D-West Seattle), hope that banning dispensaries will help maximize tax revenue and mollify the feds.

The bill requires patients to buy their cannabis from the same stores that serve recreational customers, which would be the only legal sellers of medical marijuana as of May 1, 2015, when the provision allowing collective gardens would be repealed. Patients could continue to grow marijuana for their own use, but the maximum number of plants would be reduced from 15 to six (three of them flowering). The ceiling on possession by patients would be cut from 24 ounces to three. The bill instructs the state Department of Health, together with the Washington State Liquor Control Board (which is charged with regulating marijuana growers, processors, and retailers), to produce a report by November 15, 2019, on the question of whether it is appropriate to continue allowing home cultivation.

Cody’s legislation would create a “patient recognition” system that would allow cardholders to buy up to three ounces at a time (as opposed to one ounce for recreational customers), avoid paying sales taxes (a privilege addressed in a separate bill), and claim immunity from arrest for possession or cultivation within the limits set by law. Currently there is no central record of qualified patients. Patients with doctor’s recommendations have an affirmative defense against marijuana charges, meaning they can still be arrested, although not convicted. H.B. 2149 would eliminate that affirmative defense, effectively requiring qualified patients to register with the state if they want to be recognized as such.

“I think that we can satisfy some of the patients,” Cody said after the vote. “I don’t think that all of the medical marijuana community will be happy.”

That might be an understatement. “Our cowardly legislators voted to effectively end medical cannabis here,” says Steve Sarich, executive director of the Cannabis Action Network, who opposed I-502 partly because of the impact he expected it to have on medical consumers. “Patients are in shock. If the Senate votes to pass this bill, Washington will be the first state to end medical cannabis.” All but three of the 29 votes against Cody’s bill came from Republicans. “The Democrats, who supported I-502, were behind this, along with the governor,” Sarich says. “Who would have thought it would be the Republicans trying to protect the rights of patients?”


Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/02/18/washington-house-overwhelmingly-approves-ban-on-medical-marijuana-dispensaries/ to source

---

Source: AFP

One of two US naval ships sent to the Black Sea as a security precaution for the Sochi Olympic games ran aground at a Turkish port, officials said Tuesday.

The frigate USS Taylor briefly ran ground last Wednesday as it was preparing to moor at Samsun, where it was due to refuel, Navy officials said.

"There were no reported injuries, and the incident is currently under investigation," the Navy said in a statement.

The ship was able to dock at the port and an initial inspection indicated the ship's propeller blades suffered some damage, but there was no damage to the hull, officials said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-naval-ship-runs-aground-black-sea-pentagon-200547722--oly.html

---

A widening probe of the foreign-exchange market is roiling an industry already under pressure to reduce costs as computer platforms displace human traders.

Electronic dealing, which accounted for 66 percent of all currency transactions in 2013 and 20 percent in 2001, will increase to 76 percent within five years, according to Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that reviewed Bank for International Settlements data. About 81 percent of spot trading -- the buying and selling of currency for immediate delivery -- will be electronic by 2018, Aite said.

“Foreign-exchange traders are much like stock floor traders: a rapidly dying breed,” said Charles Geisst, author of “Wall Street: A History” and a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. “Once the banks realize they are costing them money, the positions will dwindle quickly.”

At least a dozen regulators are investigating allegations first reported by Bloomberg News in June that traders colluded to rig benchmarks in the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market. That scrutiny may give banks an opportunity to cull more staff, say analysts including Christopher Wheeler of Mediobanca SpA in London. It’s also boosting demand from clients for greater transparency in pricing and transaction charges, accelerating a longer-term shift in trading onto electronic platforms.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/fx-traders-facing-extinction-as-computers-replace-humans.html

If you won’t trust your doctors on vaccinating your kids, will you ever really trust them at all?
If there is an issue more controversial and fraught with anger and frustration for pediatricians than the question of vaccine safety, I can’t think of it.

Few topics are more apt to send my blood pressure skyrocketing than this. When the United Kingdom looks like sub-Saharan Africa in terms of wholly preventable disease outbreaks, something has gone terribly, tragically wrong.

No contemporary phenomenon confounds and confuses me more than seemingly sensible people turning down one of the most unambiguously helpful interventions in the history of modern medicine.

Yet they do.

When parents of prospective patients come to visit my office to meet our providers and to decide if we’re the right practice for them, there are lots of things I make sure they know. I talk about the hospitals we’re affiliated with. I tell them when we’re open and how after-hours calls are handled. On my end, I like to know a bit about the child’s medical history, or if there are special concerns that expecting parents might have.

And then this: I always ask if the children are vaccinated, or if the parents intend to vaccinate once the child is born. If the answer is no, I politely and respectfully tell them we won’t be the right fit. We don’t accept patients whose parents won’t vaccinate them.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/the-real-reason-pediatricians-want-you-to-vaccinate-your-kids.html

In the last two decades, dozens of scientific papers have been published on the biological origins of homosexuality - another announcement was made last week. It's becoming scientific orthodoxy. But how does it fit with Darwin's theory of evolution?

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's hit song Same Love, which has become an unofficial anthem of the pro-gay marriage campaign in the US, reflects how many gay people feel about their sexuality.

It mocks those who "think it's a decision, and you can be cured with some treatment and religion - man-made rewiring of a predisposition". A minority of gay people disagree, maintaining that sexuality is a social construct, and they have made a conscious, proud choice to take same-sex partners.

But scientific opinion is with Macklemore. Since the early 1990s, researchers have shown that homosexuality is more common in brothers and relatives on the same maternal line, and a genetic factor is taken to be the cause. Also relevant - although in no way proof - is research identifying physical differences in the brains of adult straight and gay people, and a dizzying array of homosexual behaviour in animals.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26089486

If you are pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving, the police officer is likely to ask you to complete three tasks: Follow a pen with your eyes while the officer moves it back and forth; get out of the car and walk nine steps, heel to toe, turn on one foot and go back; and stand on one leg for 30 seconds.

Score well on all three of these Olympic events, and there’s a very good chance that you are not drunk. This so-called standard field sobriety test has been shown to catch 88 percent of drivers under the influence of alcohol.

But it is nowhere near as good at spotting a stoned driver.

In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, only 30 percent of people under the influence of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, failed the field test. And its ability to identify a stoned driver seems to depend heavily on whether the driver is accustomed to being stoned.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/health/driving-under-the-influence-of-marijuana.html

Gerardo Uribe is described by business associates as honest and professional, a "gentle soul" who methodically built a medical marijuana empire in Colorado. While he struggled at times to get financing, the 33-year-old Uribe made a point of emphasizing following the rules, aware his Colombian heritage might invite suspicion, one business partner said.

In a recent court filing, federal prosecutors describe Uribe in different terms — as the head of an organization targeted in a long-term investigation into the alleged illegal production and distribution of marijuana, money laundering and other offenses.

On Nov. 21, federal agents executed search warrants on 14 businesses and two homes in the largest raid ever on Colorado's medical marijuana industry, rousting a part-time manager as he got his children ready for school in Nederland and busting down doors in Denver.

Sources told The Denver Post that the raids were chasing possible connections to Colombian drug cartels, although investigators haven't publicly accused any of the businesses of wrongdoing. The raids gutted grow warehouses, cost businesses millions in inventory, and forced owners to close stores and lay off employees, although many of the businesses have since reopened.

The government has identified a dozen people in the ongoing investigation. All but one is connected to a chain of five medical marijuana dispensaries and about a half-dozen marijuana grows controlled by Uribe, his relatives or associates, records show.

Read More: http://www.denverpost.com/marijuana/ci_25154625/new-details-emerge-colorado-marijuana-operators-raided-by