August 16, 2017

Sky-High Solar Eclipse? Here's What You Might See from an Airplane

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | August 15, 2017 11:24am ET

- click for image -

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No matter where you are in the contiguous United States on Aug. 21, if skies are clear, you'll see something that hasn't been glimpsed since 1918 — a solar eclipse visible across the country from coast to coast.

But what if you're not on the ground? What if you happen to be in midair on an airplane during the total solar eclipse?

Unfortunately, the outlook for seeing the disk of the sun directly isn't good if you're traveling on a commercial flight, experts told Live Science. However, with a little calculation, you can figure out whether the effects of the eclipse will be visible on the clouds around you or on the ground below. And some lucky flyers may find that they're crossing the eclipse's path at just the right moment to experience the dark shadow of totality (when the moon's shadow completely covers the sun), experts said. [NASA's Total Solar Eclipse Maps (Photos)]

Only those in the path of totality — where approximately 12 million people live, though many will be traveling there to view the celestial event — will experience the dramatic daytime darkness of a total eclipse. In other parts of the country, daylight could fade to a near-twilight dimness, depending on how much of the sun is blocked by the moon.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/60138-watch-solar-eclipse-from-airplane.html?utm_source=notification

August 12, 2017

Chile: Six charged in murder of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva

Source: Deutsche Welle


A Chilean judge has charged six people for the assassination of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982. Court documents show the murder was instigated by the right wing regime of Augusto Pinochet.

Date 12.08.2017

Judge Alejandro Madrid on Friday once again moved to resolve the unresolved murder of former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who governed Chile from 1964 to 1970 and was assassinated in 1982.

Madrid charged six people - four doctors, two intelligence agents and Frei's chauffeur - of carrying out or abetting in the former president's murder.

Court documents also showed that the assassination had been instigated by Augusto Pinochet's dictatorial regime, Madrid said.

The judge had originally brought the charges against the same six men in 2009, but the charges were later dismissed.

Read more: http://www.dw.com/en/chile-six-charged-in-murder-of-former-president-eduardo-frei-montalva/a-40064034

August 11, 2017

Bogotas deputy police chief arrested for homicide of senators cousin

written by Adriaan Alsema August 10, 2017




The deputy commander of Bogota‘s police force and 11 other policemen were arrested for the 2013 assassination of a cousin of a prominent leftist senator. One police suspect is still fugitive.

Colonel William Sanchez and 12 of his men will have to respond to charges of first degree homicide and manipulating a crime scene after a judge considered there was enough evidence to try the officials for the murder of Javiar Ocampo Cepeda, the cousin of one of the country’s most prominent senators, Ivan Cepeda.

Bogota’s police department has long claimed that Cepeda was a “criminal” who on August 4, 2013 opened fire at policemen after being stopped for a search.

The prosecution, however, arrested the policemen claiming one of them murdered the victim while the others manipulated the crime scene to fit the official version of events.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/bogotas-deputy-police-commander-arrested-homicide-senators-cousin/


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FYUvhrtZN9o/Uk7qSGBlIuI/AAAAAAAAHF0/mFMmY1iy-pY/s1600/2+meses+de+impunidad.jpg

Homenaje Al Profesor Francisco Javier Ocampo Cepeda



Profe Pacho


~ ~ ~

Ivan Cepeda
written by Piotr Wojciak April 1, 2017




Ivan Cepeda is a Colombian senator, victim representative and one of the country’s most influential moral authorities on the left. His almost personal opposition to former President Alvaro Uribe has made him one of the country’s most polemic political figures.

Cepeda, born in 1962, is the son of Manuel Cepeda Vargas, a congressman of the Patriotic Union who was assassinated in 1994, and Yira Castro, leader of the movements for the rights to housing in the slums of Colombia’s capital Bogota.

The two prominent leftists met in the Communist Youth (JUCO) and worked together for the Marxist magazine “Voz.” Both were vociferous supporters of the Cuban revolution and opponents of liberal dictator Gustavo Rojas who ruled Colombia from 1953 to 1957.

When Ivan was three years-old, his family was forced into exile for openly criticizing the government. They emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1965. Three years later, following the Prague Spring and the military invasion by the Soviet Union, the Cepedas moved again, this time to Havana, before returning to Colombia in 1970.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/ivan-cepeda-castro/

~ ~ ~

Colombian Human Rights Defender Ivan Cepeda Faces Criminal Charges for Speaking Out on Government-Paramilitary Ties
STORY

AUGUST 03, 2007

One of the Colombia’s leading human rights defenders, Ivan Cepeda, has been charged with slander and libel for publicly calling for the mayor of San Onofre to resign for alleged ties to paramilitary groups. Cepeda is the director of the National Movement for Victims of State Crimes, an umbrella organization for more than 200 Colombian human right organizations. In 1996, government forces assassinated his father, Manuel Cepeda, a leading leftist senator in Colombia. Ever since then Ivan Cepeda has worked to expose death squads in Colombia. [includes rush transcript]

More:
https://www.democracynow.org/2007/8/3/colombian_human_rights_defender_ivan_cepeda

August 9, 2017

Venezuela Regime Change Project Revealed

OpEdNews Op Eds 8/3/2017 at 14:22:49

By David William Pear


When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980's), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless.

In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight. The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public. Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker.

The mainstream media spreads the propaganda that President Nicolas Maduro is a dictator. That Maduro is repressive and killing his own people of peacefull demonstrators. That the Venezuelan Supreme Court judges are his cronies and exceeded their constitutional powers. That the Constituent Referendum called by Maduro was illegal. That the elections have been a fraud. That the opposition are patriots who are demanding democracy. That Maduro has singlehandedly destroyed Venezuela's economy. That the press and television media is censored by Maduro. That the reason President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Venezuela is because it is a national security threat to the U.S. That President Trump has imposed additional sanction because he is upset about democracy, freedom and the rule of law in Venezuela.

None of the above is true. Yet the main stream media keeps repeating it: New York Times , Washington Post , Guardian , Fox News , CNBC , and CNN . Members of Congress keep repeating these lies, a word I rarely use. Not since the mainstream media was a co-conspirator for the Bush-Cheney administration's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 has the mainstream media fallen so low and been so guilty of collusion to spread false propaganda supporting illegal U.S. foreign policy aggression. Anyone who still has illusions that the U.S. mainstream media is free and independent should be dispelled of that belief by what it is misinforming us about Venezuela today.

More:
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Venezuela-Regime-Change-Pr-by-David-William-Pear-Hegemony_Media_Project-For-The-New-American-Century_Referendum-170803-359.html

August 7, 2017

In Earths hottest place, life has been found in pure acid

For the first time, scientists have found living microbes in the blistering hot springs of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression.

By Jasmin Fox-Skelly
4 August 2017



In a surreal landscape of colours, dominated by luminescent ponds of yellows and greens, boiling hot water bubbles up like a cauldron, whilst poisonous chlorine and sulphur gases choke the air.

Known as the “gateway to hell”, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is scorchingly hot and one of the most alien places on Earth. Yet a recent expedition to the region has found it is teeming with life.

In the heart of the Horn of Africa, the Danakil Depression is one of the most remote, inhospitable and least-studied locations in the world. It lies over 330ft (100m) below sea level in a volcanic area in north-west Ethiopia, close to the border with Eritrea, aptly named “Afar”. It is part of the East African Rift System, a place where the Earth’s internal forces are currently tearing apart three continental plates, creating new land.

The violent landscape is arguably the hottest place on the planet, and one of the driest. The temperature regularly reaches 45C (113F). It rarely rains, but seas of molten magma ooze just beneath the crust’s surface. There are two highly active volcanoes: one of them, Erta Ale, is one of only a handful of volcanoes to have an active, bubbling lava lake at its summit. The area is also littered with acid ponds and geysers, and features a deep crater called Dallol.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170803-in-earths-hottest-place-life-has-been-found-in-pure-acid
















More images:

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August 4, 2017

Hubble Telescope Detects Stratosphere on Huge Alien Planet

By Tereza Pultarova, Space.com Contributor | August 3, 2017 07:28am ET


A huge, superhot alien planet has a stratrosphere, like Earth does, a new study suggests.

"This result is exciting because it shows that a common trait of most of the atmospheres in our solar system — a warm stratosphere — also can be found in exoplanet atmospheres," study co-author Mark Marley, of NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, said in a statement.

"We can now compare processes in exoplanet atmospheres with the same processes that happen under different sets of conditions in our own solar system," Marley added. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The research team, led by Thomas Evans of the University of Exeter in England, detected spectral signatures of water molecules in the atmosphere of WASP-121b, a gas giant that lies about 880 light-years from Earth. These signatures indicate that the temperature of the upper layer of the planet's atmosphere increases with the distance from the planet's surface. In the bottom layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, the temperature decreases with altitude, study team members said.

More:
https://www.space.com/37705-exoplanet-stratosphere-detected-wasp-121b.html?utm_source=notification

August 3, 2017

Is this stunning bracelet made by Paleolithic man for his favourite woman really 70,000 years old?

By The Siberian Times reporter02 August 2017

Startling new scientific evidence is to be reviewed by international experts which - if true - would transform our knowledge of the skills and sophistication of early man.






It is already known as the oldest stone bracelet in the world, believed to have been made not by ancient Homo sapiens but the extinct Denisovan species of early humans, and previously dated as being between 40,000 - 50,000 years old.

The bracelet was found in 2008 in so-called Stratum 11 of world famous Denisova cave in the Altai region of Siberia.

New findings suggest it could be 65,000 to 70,000 years old, long before ancient people were believed to capable of making such remarkable objects.

Maksim Kozlikin, a researcher form the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Novosibirsk, indicated Australian specialists were among those to obtain exceptional results on the bracelet's age.

More:
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/could-this-stunning-bracelet-be-65000-to-70000-years-old/

August 2, 2017

Buenos Aires Herald to close after more than 140 years of publication

The English-language newspaper in Latin America announced closure less than a year after switching from daily to weekly print edition

Reuters in Buenos Aires
Tuesday 1 August 2017 12.19 EDT


The Buenos Aires Herald, a storied English-language newspaper lauded for its coverage of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, will close after more than 140 years of publication, the newspaper has announced.

“Herald’s staff have been informed that the newspaper is closing,” the paper said in a Twitter message on Monday night, along with a photo of the front page of its 140th anniversary edition from last September.

The move comes less than a year after the paper, which once called itself the only English-language daily in Latin America, switched to a weekly print edition, blaming tough economic conditions and a broad shift among readers to digital media.

The Buenos Aires Herald, closely associated with Argentina’s British and, in later years, US community, won praise for its coverage of the “disappeared” – people who were forcibly abducted, tortured and murdered by the state during the dictatorship – when much of the country’s media stayed silent.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/01/buenos-aires-herald-to-close-after-140-years-argentina

LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141835788