Long-term risks: Researchers found that smoking in men appears to be associated with more rapid cognitive decline

Those searching for another reason to stick to their resolution to give up cigarettes need look no further. A new study has warned that men who smoke are more likely to suffer dementia in later life.

Researchers found that smoking in men appears to be associated with a greater and more rapid cognitive decline.

Smoking is increasingly recognised as a risk factor for dementia in the elderly. And the number of dementia cases worldwide – estimated at 36 million in 2010 – is rising and is projected to double every 20 years.

Doctor Severine Sabia, of University College London, and her colleagues used the Whitehall II cohort study, which is based on employees of the Civil Service.

They examined the association between smoking history and cognitive decline in the transition from midlife to old age.

Data was obtained from 5,099 men and 2,137 women in the Whitehall II study, with an average age of 56 at the first cognitive assessment.

In the study, researchers analysed data using six assessments of smoking status over 25 years and three cognitive assessments over 10 years. They made four key findings.

The results suggest smoking in men is associated with more rapid cognitive decline, and men who continued to smoke over the follow-up experienced greater decline in all cognitive tests.

In addition, men who quit smoking in the 10 years preceding the first cognitive measure were still at risk of greater cognitive decline, especially in executive function – an umbrella term for various complex cognitive processes involved in achieving a particular goal.

However, long-term ex-smokers did not show faster cognitive decline.

Dr Sabia said: ‘Finally, our results show that the association between smoking and cognition, particularly at older ages, is likely to be underestimated owing to higher risk of death and dropout among smokers.’

She added that the results show no association between smoking and cognitive decline in women, although the underlying reasons remain unclear.

One explanation for the difference they observed between men and women might be the greater quantity of tobacco smoked by men.

The findings were published online in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

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It has been proven to drastically decrease the chances of contracting HIV before one is even exposed to the virus: Truvada is considered a medical breakthrough by some, yet others fear the once-a-day prevention pill could spur a deadly AIDS epidemic.

The drug — a small, blue pill ingested orally — is currently awaiting FDA approval. Its manufacturer, Gilead, argues that Truvada would reduce the risk of risk of contracting HIV in as many as three-quarters of cases and has been proven so in tests already. AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein is weary of how people will use the pill, however, and warns, “I believe that this could be catastrophic in terms of HIV prevention.”

The argument against approving the pill, says Weinstein, is that it will encourage partners to engage in unprotected sex. While the pill is proven to work in many cases, it is not 100-percent guaranteed. The result, he says, could only make things worse for AIDS and HIV.

It’s a “fabulous drug – it’s one pill once a day, and it has a low side-effect burden,” says Weinstein. Unless the user is aware that the success rate of Truvada is limited and takes extra precautions such as traditional prophylactics though, that ignorance might trigger an AIDS epidemic that could destroy America.

When tested on gay men in four countries, the success rate for the drug was only around 44 percent. When tested by heterosexual couples in two African nations, Truvada proved to be 73 percent successful. Weinstein and other critics are concerned that unless users know the facts, they will learn to rely on the drug and only spread the virus.

“There’s a whole issue of people who aren’t educated on the biology of HIV, who will think that because they’d be taking the pill, they will not become infected,” Cynthia Davis of the College of Medicine and College of Science and Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles tells The Final Call.

“You will have groups of people who think, because they’re on this pill and it has this protective factor, that they don’t have to practice safer sex anymore … Because they’re on this medication, they’ll have this false sense of security,” Davis adds.

“Although some of the trial results have been very impressive, the protection with pre-exposure prophylaxis is unlikely to be 100 percent,” writes British medical journal The Lancet. “And making drugs available as prophylaxis could encourage high-risk sexual behavior among those who believe themselves to be protected.”

In America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that men and women might abstain from using condoms if taking Truvada, based on “the false belief that they are protected” by the pill. Currently all medical options in dealing with HIV are available only after contracting the virus. Truvada, on the other hand, is administered as a precautionary measure — what physicians consider a “pre-exposure prophylaxis.” While test trials have shown substantial success in the effectiveness of Truvada, there is still plenty of room for the pill to go awry.

In the test labs of the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s HIV Research clinic, Dr. Albert Liu is conducting studies of his own to see if high-risk behavior could emerge if people learn to rely on the pill’s only limited success. “We don’t know the answer, and that’s why it’s important to study it,” he tells Huffington Post.

Elsewhere the medical community has acknowledged that the development of the drug could be considered a breakthrough, but with a window of contracting HIV still better than one-out-of-two odds, it only does so much to stop the spread.

In California, where Weinstein’s AIDS Healthcare Foundation is based, nearly 42,000 residents were living with HIV as of June 2011. So concerning is the issue that the Los Angeles Council voted only this month to make condom use mandatory in most adult films. In LA, it is believed that 90 percent of the nation’s porn is produced. Nationally, the US saw around 50,000 new cases of HIV outbreaks in patients each year between 2007 and 2009.

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People take pictures of waves on a frozen sea in Constanta, 230 kilometres east from Bucharest, Romania on February 1, 2012

At least 223 people have died during a seven-day cold spell in eastern and central Europe where temperatures are expected to plummet even further over the weekend.

Most of the victims are from the European Union’s poorest countries, including Ukraine with as many as 101 people killed. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia have also suffered large casualties.

The villagers were found frozen to death on the side of the road or in their unheated homes as temperatures dropped to as much as -38.1 degrees in some parts of the continent.

While Eastern Europe struggles to cope with record low temperatures, the severe cold has claimed lives in other parts of the continent as well, including three people in Austria and Greece.

France recorded its first death after an 82-year-old man died of hypothermia.

Thousands of people are still trapped in snow-blocked mountain villages in countries like Serbia and Bosnia.

Italy is also witnessing snowfall not seen in over a decade, with many Venetian canals frozen and Roman tourist sites closed.

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A government biosecurity officer at Golden Duck Farms in Victoria after birds tested positive for avian influenza.

A national disease emergency plan has been activated to prevent an outbreak of deadly bird flu in Australia after the discovery of infected birds at two free-range duck farms north of Melbourne.

All 25,000 ducks on two Golden Duck Farms properties at Gisborne and Mickleham were being gassed to death last night and today using carbon dioxide, in a pre-emptive effort to protect the $2.4 billion national poultry industry.

Victoria’s chief veterinary officer Andrew Cameron said the discovery of the low pathogenic avian influenza virus on the duck farms posed little current risk to humans.

But he said the outbreak held the potential to become “a significant human health issue” because of the tendency of the virus, which can be passed between birds and humans, to mutate into highly virulent sub-strains.

“That is why we had to take this step to destroy all the ducks now because if it (the virus) got into chickens, it could soup up very rapidly and become highly pathogenic,” Dr Cameron said.

“And that is not just a threat to the poultry industry, which we want to be able to continue to say is avian influenza-free, but to humans because (a mutation) could cause disease in people.”

Government biosecurity officers in full protective clothing were at work on both farms last night, carrying chemical drums to the duck sheds where the birds were to be destroyed.

It is the first confirmed outbreak of the infectious avian influenza virus in Australia since 1997, and the first in a commercial duck flock.

It is not yet known how the virus infected the Victorian farm ducks, but wild ducks are considered a possible source.

The duck farm virus is of the H5 subtype. But Australia’s Chief Veterinary Officer, Mark Schipp, stressed it was not the high pathogenic H5N1 strain that has killed millions of poultry and 350 people worldwide since 2003, when its transmission from birds to humans first became evident.

In Australia, there have been no cases of H5N1 avian influenza found in either birds or humans.

An emergency meeting of the national Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Diseases last Friday approved a mass cull of all ducks on the two Golden Duck farms as the only option, after the positive disease tests for the virus were confirmed.

The Mickleham and Gisborne farms have been placed in strict quarantine isolation, forbidding movement of all birds, vehicles and people in and out of the properties unless under strict government supervision.

Dr Cameron said that according to the nationally agreed emergency animal disease response strategy for low and high pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks, all ducks were being destroyed, their bodies disposed of on-site, and the two farms disinfected and decontaminated.

All chickens or ducks on properties within the restricted zone on Melbourne’s semi-rural fringe are being urgently tested for avian influenza, including a commercial chicken-meat farm across the road from the New Gisborne duck farm. Test results so far have been negative, but Dr Cameron said it would be premature to declare the outbreak contained or the virus eradicated. He said it was heartbreaking for the duck farmer involved, since the ducks do not show any symptoms of the avian influenza virus.

“But the flock destruction has to be done, it is the nationally agreed approach for the good of the entire national poultry industry.”

Duck farmer Henning Skallebaek, who could not be contacted yesterday, will be compensated by the federal government and the poultry industry for the loss of his 25,000 ducks.

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In mountain permafrost in Mamontovaya, Yakutia (Siberia), Russian researchers discovered a previously unknown species of bacteria. Mice injected in the body with a solution containing these organisms, were healthier and lived longer than their counterparts. Have the scientists discovered the secrets of immortality?

The strange bacillus found in mammoth Mountain in the Siberian Republic of Yakutia is three million years old and appears to have special mechanisms which allow it to stay alive in the most inhospitable temperatures and conditions. It successfully shares at temperatures of five degrees Celsius above zero.

The Bacillus, Bacillus F, was injected into mice and increased life expectancy, having a positive impact upon the quality of life indicators of older specimens. The scientists involved in the study suspect that the Bacillus has properties which allow it to survive and create specific immune systems, according to the team leader, lead researcher of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine Academy of Sciences of Russia, Nadezhda Mironovoa.

In addition, the researchers examined mice that were injected with this Bacillius F, using MRI and found the existence of two types of mediators that were significantly higher: this is glutamate and taurine, and have properties of immune regulation and prolonging life expectancy the cell.

In this case, the first mediator is “responsible” for psychic stimulation, and second – by energetic processes. Thus, the metabolism of the vaccinated mice was accelerated, and if calculated according to age, in animals injected with bacteria, is 20-30% higher.

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An image grab taken from footage broadcast by Iran's state-run Arabic-language Al-Alam TV on August 20, 2010, shows an image from an undisclosed location of what Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said was the test firing of the Iranian surface-to-surface missile Qiam, entirely designed and built domestically and powered by liquid fuel, a day before Iran was due to launch its Russian-built first nuclear power plant

Iranian scientists have already managed to enrich enough radioactive material to successfully produce not just one, but four nuclear bombs, Israel’s military intelligence chief has announced.

General Aviv Kochavi broke the news at a security conference on Thursday. The intelligence chief says he believes Iran would need a year from the word go to actually producing a crude device, and another year or two to manufacture a nuclear warhead that can be installed on a ballistic missile.

Kochavi also claimed that “Iran is very actively pursuing its efforts to develop its nuclear capacities, and we have evidence that they are seeking nuclear weapons. “However, no actual evidence was produced or even referred to at the conference.

The Israeli Deputy PM added fuel to the fire, claiming that Iran has also succeeded in building a long-range missile capable of putting the US within its reach. Moshe Ya’alon, who had just returned from Washington where he discussed the Iran situation with President Obama’s administration, chose to echo Kochavi’s words of warning, saying “The Israeli government will stop Iran one way or another.”

These latest statements are very much in line with the position of Israel and its allies who are accusing Iran of using its nuclear industry to mask plans to develop nuclear arms, a charge official Tehran has frequently and vehemently denied.

Israel, backed by its key ally the United States, has long pushed for tougher sanctions against Iran. Top level officials in both Tel Aviv and Washington DC have recently said they do not rule out a military attack against the Islamic Republic.

As sparks continue to fly around the powder keg of Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions, the Middle Eastern state is not playing dead either. A defiant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Thursday that the country is planning to double its military spending over the next year; a sign that is being interpreted by many as “taking a stand” against pressure from the West.

The United States and their NATO allies are also flexing their muscles, with recent transfers of US fighter jets and other military planes to the region. Troops have also been reportedly arriving at various American military bases in the Persian Gulf, with another ten thousand soldiers recently transferred to Israel – allegedly to test the US anti-ballistic missile defense system.

On top of that, two US Navy aircraft carriers – the USS Abraham Lincoln and Carl Vinson – are on patrol in the Persian Gulf and are expected to be joined by the USS Enterprise in March. The USS Annapolis, a nuclear submarine, was earlier reported to have entered the Red Sea and is rumored to be heading towards the Gulf as well.

Together with the US military bases already established in the region – for example, the 5th Fleet, stationed in Bahrain – all of this is interpreted by many as nothing shy of intimidation, and some experts believe the US is trying to provoke Iran into making the first move.

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San Onofre nuclear plant, California

A leak at a Southern California nuclear facility that regularly provides power to roughly 1.4 million households has caused the plant to shut down a reactor.

Despite officials insisting that everything will be perfectly alright at the San Onofre nuclear site, this is not the first time as of late that power plants have raised serious questions about their safety in America.

A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power station was halted Tuesday afternoon after personnel at the plant identified a leak in a steam generator tube. Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, explains to Reuters that the reactor will remain offline for at least a couple of days.

“We don’t expect any impact on our customers tomorrow,” Alexander adds, yet notes that the reactor in question usually churns out around 1,100 megawatts of electricity to one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country.

The shutdown is forcing officials to halt operations in Unit 3 of the plant. Unit 2 of the station was already offline at the time of the incident, of which officials say was the result of routine maintenance and upgrades.

Speaking of the alleged minuteness of the leak, Alexander tells the Los Angeles times that “it wouldn’t even qualify as the least severe” infraction under guidelines set up by the United States’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Regardless, the plant, located south of San Clemente, California, reported the incident to them anyway.

As it would be, the regulations in place for American facilities are actually more lax than one would expect.

“While the NRC and the nuclear industry have been reassuring Americans that there is nothing to worry about – that we can do a better job dealing with a nuclear disaster like the one that just happened in Japan – it turns out that privately NRC senior analysts are not so sure,” Edwin Lyman, a Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear expert, explained to Reuters last year. Even after the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant in early 2011 raised questions internationally over safety regulations, the United States has done little to improve conditions since.

The reason, some say, is that the regulations in place don’t call for them. In a report conducted by the Associated Press last year, it was revealed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly weakened safety requirements for facilities, regularly allowing antiquated plants to continue operating by making it easier to pass tests in lieu of actually upgrading the facility. The AP found that of the 104 nuclear plants operating in America last year, 66 of them had been re-licensed for an additional 20 years of service. The vast majority of plants in the US, however, are already older than a quarter of a century.

San Onofre, located around 70 miles south of Los Angeles, is one of those.

“I think we need nuclear power, but we can’t compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants,” engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., formerly with General Electric Co, told the AP last year. Although one-fifth of the nation’s power comes from nuclear plants — and much of Southern California relies on the San Onofre, loosened regulations are repeatedly putting much of America and the world at risk.

The San Onofre facility was opened in the late 1960s and has been upgraded since then, although not without incident. Engineers at the Bechtel Group Inc. of San Francisco installed a 420-ton nuclear reactor vessel at the facility in 1977, only to be publically humiliated when it was realized that the plant was constructed backwards.

Authorities at San Onofre say that the leak has yet to spread outside of the plant, but should that happen the consequences could be catastrophic. The San Onofre facility is only a stone’s throw away from the Pacific Ocean.

The AP adds in their analysis that roughly 113 alerts at the nation’s nuclear facilities since 2005 can be blamed in part on aging. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission itself reported in 2008 that 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems stem from “degraded conditions.”

Within the last year, a nuclear plant outside of Washington, DC was shut-down after concern of damage to reactors. In August 2011, officials questioned authorities at Vermont’s Yankee nuclear plant after water samples in a nearby stream tested positive for a carcinogenic chemical.

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Seagulls fly over frozen sea as icicles covers a fence in the city of Constanta, 230 kilometers east of the Romanian capital Bucharest, on February 1, 2012.

Severe cold spell has killed at least 83 people in Europe as temperatures dropped to below minus 30C (minus 22F) in some eastern regions of the continent.

Ukrainian officials on Wednesday reported that the number of the deaths attributed to the cold weather had risen to 43, with 28 people having been found dead on the streets, eight dying in hospitals, and seven in their homes.

The country’s Emergency Situations Ministry said more than 720 Ukrainians had also been hospitalized with hypothermia and frostbite.

Extremely low temperatures also caused schools and colleges to be closed in the capital Kiev.

In Romania, where parts of the Black Sea froze near the coastline, the death toll from the cold weather has risen to 14. Officials with the country’s Health Ministry say hundreds more were hospitalized with hypothermia.

Four more people died from hypothermia in Bulgaria, where 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures in 100 years.

In Poland, five more people died because of cold snap, bringing the overall number to 20 since Friday.

German media reported that ice and sub-zero temperatures had led to the deaths of two women.

In Turkey, three crewmembers from a ship that sank during a storm in the Black Sea were saved near the northwestern port of Eregli, but eight people are still missing.

Many schools also remained closed across Hungary.

Other cold-weather-related deaths have been reported across the region, including in Russia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Despite Beijing’s outright refusal to join the EU and US-sponsored unilateral sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has arranged a visit to China to convince the country to reduce Iranian oil import.

A German government source told a news briefing on Tuesday that “It is in German interests that China does not raise its imports [from Iran]. It would be good if China would reduce its imports.”

According to the source, Merkel will begin her trip to China on Wednesday.

This comes while China has criticized the European Union’s new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic, considering them as blind pressure and unconstructive.

“To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches,” the Chinese foreign ministry said on January 26 in reaction to the measures adopted by the EU over Iran’s nuclear program.

US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Iran which seek to penalize other countries for importing Iran’s oil or doing transactions with the country’s central bank. The European Union also approved new sanctions against Iran’s oil and financial sectors on January 23, which will cut off crude oil imports from Iran on July 1.

The United States, Israel and their European allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to impose four rounds of international and a series of unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tehran is entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.

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Water leaks from 14 points at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s facilities have been found, leading the operator to suspend the cooling of the spent fuel pool at its No. 4 reactor for two hours, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) was quoted by local media as reporting on Monday.

The leakage is believed to have been caused by the freezing cold weather, and the leaked water included purified radioactively contaminated water, TEPCO said on Sunday, adding that the contamination level is low.

Water temperature in the pool remained almost stable at 21 degrees Celsius, it said.

TEPCO said around 40 liters of real water leaked from the pool- cooling system of the No. 4 reactor Sunday morning, while probably 600 liters of purified water were found to have leaked from another facility. But TEPCO said it is believed that the water did not flow into the ocean.

The temperature in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture where the nuclear power plant locates, fell to below minus 8 degrees Celsius recently.

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Flag-draped family at a rally at the Capitol in Washington, May 22, 2011

America’s frenzy over “diabolic” Iran has its roots not on the Potomac riverside, but rather on the banks of Tel Aviv’s Yarkon River: appeasing the US Jewish community has become an inevitable idiosyncrasy of the US presidential campaign.

­When America beats the drums of war over Iran, it may not always be driven by the Islamic state’s alleged nuclear intentions.

Would-be US presidential candidates aren’t shy when it comes to voicing their anti-Iran rhetoric in front of America’s influential Jewish community.

And America almost never misses an opportunity to praise its best ally.

“Our iron-clad commitment, and I mean iron-clad, to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries, in history,” announced US President Barack Obama from a rostrum in Washington.

And the American President did not forget to point a proverbial punch at Israel’s greatest adversary.

“Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal,” Barack Obama insisted.

However, for many American Jews and Israeli supporters, Obama’s war of words against Tehran doesn’t go far enough.

The President of the Zionist Organization of America Morton A. Klein shared with RT that “It’s not enough to simply state you’re committed to Israel’s security. You have to promote policies that show that you’re serious about the security of Israel.”

“Israel, through his actions, feels that Obama is not committed to doing everything in his power to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and Obama should be saying so publicly, that he will support Israel in any military action necessary,” laid down Klein.

Klein says an unprecedented number of American Jews and Israelis share his animosity, a feeling arguably underscored by the Israeli government. According to published reports, Tel Aviv would only give Washington 12-hours’ notice if deciding to strike Iran.

“I believe his [Barack Obama’s] policies are among the most hostile Israel has ever experienced out of any [American] president in my lifetime,” Morton A. Klein confessed.

Recently, it was the life of President Obama itself being threatened in a column written by the owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times.

In an article titled ‘What would you do?’ the newspaper’s publisher Andrew Adler listed the assassination of President Obama as one way to ensure Israel’s security.

“Give the go-ahead for US-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies,” he writes.

Mark Glenn, journalist of Theuglytruth.com shared with RT: “I think the threat made to Obama, either play along with us, or we are going to kill you politically or literally, I think that it is a serious threat we have to take seriously.”

“The American president depends on money in order to get re-elected along with all other members of Congress and AIPAC [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is the largest lobbying group in the United States. It is the king maker and the king breaker,” Glenn concludes.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee declined RT’s request for an interview. In the meantime, Obama finds himself facing another election and a slew of Republican opponents banging war drums against Iran – much louder than he does.

“With regards to Iran, which perhaps represents the greatest existential threat to Israel, we have to make it abundantly clear, it is unacceptable for Iran to become a nuclear nation,” proclaims Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon,” declared Romney. “And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”

“When Rick Santorum is president, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon because the world as we know it will be no more,” promises another Republican candidate, Rick Santorum.

The third Republican presidential aspirant, Newt Gingrich, said to CNN “I am a clear ally of Israel. I am very close to [Israeli President Benjamin] Netanyahu. I’ve said publicly, I would rather plan a joint operation conventionally, than push the Israelis to a point where they go nuclear.”

At a time when the US bears the burden of a broken economy, growing social unrest and ongoing military conflicts, many experts insist starting a war with Iran would not be in America’s best interest. But in order to keep a best friend, many believe President Obama will be forced to put Israel’s national security first.

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They still can’t sleep at night since the Costa Concordia put them through the ordeal of their lives. A Russian couple that made it ashore safe and sound believe every passenger could still be alive had the rescue operation been better organized.

­They are just two of the passengers from over 4,000 people onboard the massive cruise ship Costa Concordia. Denis Golovkin and Olga Gridneva still have trouble sleeping at night.

“I don’t understand how they couldn’t have rescued everyone considering the liner sank no further than half a kilometer from land, in warm weather,” says Olga.

Sixteen bodies have so far been recovered and 16 people are still missing after the 290-meter long cruise liner struck a rock near the Tuscan island of Giglio.

Olga and Denis got onboard only two and a half hours prior to the disaster at the port of Civitavecchia. For them it was just the beginning of their cruise, as the liner was picking up passengers along the way.

The couple had just had dinner – incidentally, to the tune of the Titanic theme song – and were back in their cabin when the ship hit the reef.

“Our glasses, laptops and cellphones flew off the table,” Olga recalls. “The boat went too close to the shoreline where it wasn’t supposed to be. And we certainly felt it, like a really strong crash or shaking…”

They grabbed their life vests and Denis suggested taking warm clothes, considering the temperature outside was 12 degrees Celsius.

“I thought that we might actually have to jump overboard,” Olga says, “nobody was supervising us, we spent an hour and a half on the deck, and the speakers were saying, “Don’t worry, everything is fine…” It was very scary. It was a large ship, the height of a multi-storey building. When a sensible individual starts thinking that they might have to jump overboard they assess their abilities and realize that they don’t feel like jumping from this height at all.”

There were hardly any crew members in sight helping people. This Thursday, Italy’s top-ranking Coast Guard official, Marco Brusco, said that the Concordia’s Captain Francesco Schettino lost “a precious hour,” which made evacuating the ship even more difficult. Had the order been given earlier, “the lifeboats could have been launched calmly, people could have been reassured,” Brusco said in Senate testimony.

Instead, the evacuation was chaotic. No one knew where to run, what to do and no instructions were given out so a lot of people couldn’t leave the ship for quite a while. Denis and Olga were lucky to get off in one of the first lifeboats. Olga says that passengers were totally misinformed about what was going on and that no one had a clear picture of the real state of affairs: “Nobody told us to go out on deck. We did that on our own, following our instincts and based on what we could see and understand.”

Hours later, safe but still tense, people recounted their stories to each other. Many said there wasn’t enough room in the boats, with the situation only worsened by the fact that it was difficult to get the boats down to the water from the upper decks, especially on the portside where it proved simply impossible. Denis, an experienced seafarer, says the crew wasn’t up to the task: “I saw a crew member climb into the boat. He could hardly start the engine. On top of it all, before mooring at the pier, we had been circling and circling for a long time. In other words, the boat was driven not by a specialist.”

There were also reports that rich Russians were buying seats in the lifeboats – but Olga dismissed them with conviction in her voice: “One should bear in mind that this cruise was mostly for economy-class passengers. There were no particularly rich Russians on this ship.”

Twice the size of the Titanic and three times the length of a football pitch, the cruise ship Costa Concordia would have been much worse off had the tragedy happened further away from the shore and in colder waters. So far, the tragedy on the Concordia has claimed 16 lives. However as divers continue to comb the submerged parts of the ship, neither Denis nor Olga can comprehend how there could have been any casualties at all: “In the heart of Europe. There must have been enough lifeboats for everyone had the rescue operation been at least somewhat organized, or had there been some instructions. If so, I believe we wouldn’t have lost anyone.”

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The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned that the Sumatran elephant could be extinct in less than 30 years as half of the species’ population has been lost in one generation.

According to a statement issued by WWF, an estimated number of 2,400 to 2,800 Sumatran elephants are alive that is down about 50 percent from a 1985 estimate.

“The Sumatran elephant joins a growing list of Indonesian species that are critically endangered, including the Sumatran orangutan, the Javan and Sumatran rhinos and the Sumatran tiger,” added Carlos Drews director of WWF’s Global Species Program in the statement.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently raised its listing of the Sumatran elephant subspecies from ‘endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’.

Experts say the major cause of the situation is the deforestation of the species’ habitat in order to use it for agriculture.

In central Sumatra’s Riau Province only, the rapid deforestation has cut the number of the elephants by 80 percent in less than 25 years.

The organization has called on the Indonesian government to ban any kind of deforestation in the elephants’ habitats until a conservation strategy is devised.

Source

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Radiation readings from the EnviroReporter have revealed high levels of HOT particles in Michigan, possibly from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Radiation levels after a storm in the area read 561% over normal background levels. Then, after a second storm, the levels were even higher, 6.5 times higher than normal accepted levels to be exact.

Michael Collins, the founder of EnviroReporter recently published a detailed article on the readings:

It was with no small amount of trepidation that we traveled to Michigan to be with our family. The thought that the cyrstalline white fluffy snows that make Michigan so charming during the holidays could be infused with cesium-137 and strontium-90 was horrifying.

What we found over our ten-day holiday confirmed that the Midwest was indeed getting pelted by high radiation but in ways we had not anticipated. Places that we thought would be impacted by fallout turned out to be rad-free while others were even hotter than we thought. Even with knowledge and experise, much gained through conducting over 1,500 radiation tests of rain, fog, food and drink since Radiation Station started March 15, we were still emotionally affected by testing hyper-hot rain falling on the family homestead.

*****

(On radiation levels on the plane ride to Michigan) – Our reading was 1,035 CPM which was over five times higher. Two hours later we took another ten-minute average approaching the Missouri River north of St. Charles, Missouri – 1,238 CPM or over 36 times the background in the jet at the terminal. Descending into Chicago the count was 586.2 CPM or 17.40 times previous background in the jet.

*****

The Dec. 30 storm’s first sample taken tested at 561% of normal. The second sample was even hotter coming it at 6.5 times background. Fukushima had arrived in earnest.

You can view the videos of the readings below:

Source

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After the arrest of the Canadian officer, who was suspected of espionage for Moscow, the Canadian authorities expelled four employees of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa.

According to CTV, Dmitry Fedorchatenko and Konstantin Kolpakov were sent back to Russia. The names of two other Russian citizens, who were involved in the story, have not been exposed. However, spokespeople for the Russian Embassy in Ottawa have not confirmed the information. They simply said that the diplomats returned to Russia because their missions expired.

It was reported this week that the Canadian authorities arrested naval officer Jeffrey Paul Delisle, whom the media nicknamed as the “Russian spy.” The charges against Delisle were filed within the scope of the law about the security of information, which was passed in Canada soon after the 9/11 attacks in the USA. The officer may spend a life in prison.

Prosecutors said that the officer had been delivering secret information to Moscow since July 2007. However, none of the suspicions against him have been officially confirmed yet.

Source

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