http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/feb/13/cell-tracker-nondisclosure/

Cell-tracking 'Stingray' device was kept secret

Records show extent of FBI, manufacturer, police effort to conceal program

By Greg Moran | 8 a.m. Feb. 13, 2016

The City of San Diego has paid at least $365,000 to purchase the Stingray, a powerful and controversial surveillance tool that can locate and track cell phones, according to city documents that were recently released as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

The purchase included software and other equipment for the device, which law enforcement officials have gone to some lengths to keep secret. The documents were released to the First Amendment Coalition, which last year sued the city under the California Public Records Act, demanding more information on how the powerful technology is used.

Many of the documents are either partially or completely redacted, but they shed more light on the city’s purchase and use of the device that has previously not been released.

Two state laws that went into effect this year, which required more disclosure about when the device is used, have lifted some of the mystery surrounding the Stingray. But the documents show the breadth of secrecy the city was operating under after it purchased the device in approximately 2010.

The released documents include non-disclosure agreements signed with manufacturer Harris Corp. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The documents prohibit police from disclosing information about the device and how to operate it in search warrants, affidavits, grand jury hearings, “in response to court ordered disclosure” or any part of a civil or criminal trial — without written approval by the FBI.

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The documents include a “model” search warrant that San Diego police used when they wanted to deploy the Stingray to find cell phones and track incoming and outgoing calls — but that does not disclose to the judge that the police will use the device.

Instead it refers only to using pre-cellphone era technologies such as a pen register and trap-and-trace orders, which capture data from phone companies. The Stingray allows police to capture that information directly over the air.

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http://www.7x7.com/culture/northern-california-clinics-now-serving-ketamine-aka-special-k-treat-severe-depression

Northern California Clinics Now Serving Ketamine (aka Special K) to Treat Severe Depression
By 7x7 Editors on February 10, 2016 1:30 PM

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Despite the fact that the drug is not yet FDA approved for use in depression treatment, Kaiser Permanente in Northern California—along with several other facilities in the state—has already begun offering ketamine treatments for those battling severe depression.

“This is the next big thing in psychiatry,” said L. Alison McInnes, a San Francisco psychiatrist who has enrolled 58 severely depressed patients in Kaiser’s San Francisco clinic over the past year. She's seen a long-term success rate of 60 percent for people with treatment-resistant depression who try the drug, which has persuaded Kaiser to expand treatment to two other clinics in the Bay Area.

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http://www.newswise.com/articles/restricting-ketamine-would-have-dire-consequences-for-surgery-in-low-resource-countries-anesthesiologists-warn



Restricting Ketamine Would Have 'Dire Consequences' for Surgery in Low-Resource Countries, Anesthesiologists Warn

Released: 8-Feb-2016 11:30 AM EST
Source Newsroom: International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS)

Newswise — February 8, 2016 – Proposals to restrict access to ketamine by making it a "Schedule I" drug would have a major impact on the availability of anesthesia and surgery in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs)—where ketamine is often the only general anesthetic drug available, according to a series of commentaries in Anesthesia & Analgesia.

Drs. Girish P. Joshi of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, and Bisola Onajin-Obembe of University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State, Nigeria, highlight the critical importance of ketamine for anesthesia in low-resource healthcare settings. "If ketamine is placed on the Schedule I list, it will not be available in the LMICs, resulting in dire consequences" for surgery in those countries, the authors write.

Commentaries Highlight Ketamine's Importance in Developing World

Used for more than 50 years, ketamine is a potent anesthetic and analgesic drug that has some major advantages for use in resource-poor environments. Ketamine can be given by several different routes of injection and used in a wide range of surgical procedures. "It is inexpensive and easily available, and unlike modern anesthetic techniques such as inhaled anesthesia, it requires minimal equipment and training," Drs. Joshi and Onajin-Obembe write.

Ketamine can be used in settings where modern anesthesia machines and equipment are rate or nonexistent. "Therefore, in many LMICs, ketamine is the sole anesthetic," according to the authors. They note that ketamine is also an important option in responding to crisis and disaster situations.

So why are efforts being made to restrict access? Ketamine is also used recreationally as a "party drug." Sometimes called "Special K" by users, recreational ketamine has a number of potentially serious harmful effects and the potential for physical dependence. Illegal ketamine use is a major problem in China, which in 2014 called for ketamine to be classified as a Schedule I medication.

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http://news.rutgers.edu/research-news/exercise-and-meditation-%E2%80%93-together-%E2%80%93-help-beat-depression-rutgers-study-finds/20160209

Exercise and Meditation – Together – Help Beat Depression, Rutgers Study Finds

Scientists say learning new cognitive skills can help reduce overwhelming negative thoughts

Wednesday, February 10, 2016
By Robin Lally

Meditation and aerobic exercise done together helps reduce depression, according to a new Rutgers study.

The study, published in Translational Psychiatry this month, found that the mind and body combination – done twice a week for only two months – reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent.

“We are excited by the findings because we saw such a meaningful improvement in both clinically depressed and non-depressed students,” says Brandon Alderman, lead author of the research study. “It is the first time that both of these two behavioral therapies have been looked at together for dealing with depression.”

Alderman, assistant professor in the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Studies, and Tracey Shors, professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, both in the School of Arts and Sciences, discovered that a combination of mental and physical training (MAP) enabled students with major depressive disorder not to let problems or negative thoughts overwhelm them.

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http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Noam-Chomsky-Warns-Nuclear-War-Is-More-Possible-Today-20160207-0035.html

Noam Chomsky: Nuclear War More Likely Today Than During Cold War

Published 7 February 2016

The threat of a nuclear war, Chomksy said, is greater today than during the Cold War.


U.S. linguist, analyst, intellectual and writer Noam Chomsky warned that a nuclear war is more imminent today than during the Cold War as the Pentagon expands its 800 bases around the globe in an attempt to dominate the world.

Chomsky said he believes a nuclear war would be something highly irrational, but could happen due to an accident or a human error.

“The threat of a nuclear war is greater today than during the Cold War,” he said in an interview published by La Jornada on Sunday. “The risk of a nuclear war is concentrated in the proliferation of incidents involving armed forces of nuclear powers.”

He continued saying, “Russia is the main pebble in the shoe of the Pentagon's world domination because it has an enormous military system.”

The linguist argued that the “problem is that both Russia and the United States are increasing their military systems acting as if war were possible, which is part of a collective madness.”

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http://thebulletin.org/west-lake-story-underground-fire-radioactive-waste-and-governmental-failure9160

11 February 2016

West Lake story: An underground fire, radioactive waste, and governmental failure

Robert Alvarez

On July 16, 1973, 28 years to the day after the first nuclear weapon was exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico, a line of dump trucks containing the detritus from the uranium used to make plutonium for the test bomb showed up at the West Lake landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri. Assuming the trucks were loaded with clean fill, the landfill superintendent waved them through without charging a dumping fee. A truck driver said later that he and others used the black stuff in their home gardens. By October several thousand shipments were illegally dumped at the landfill in north St. Louis County, in violation of federal standards; they contained an estimated 43,000 tons of radioactive uranium processing wastes and contaminated soil.

Now under the national news media spotlight, a landfill adjoined to the West Lake dump has experienced a growing underground fire for the past five years. The fire is estimated to be about 1,000 feet from the radioactive material. Consultants for Missouri Attorney General Kris Koster indicated in November 2015 that, in the worst case, the fire could reach the radioactive material in a matter of a few months. An official for the Republic Corporation, which owns the landfill, contends the fire is moving away from the wastes.

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Emergency responders in the neighboring state of Illinois are being warned to prepare to deal with potentially contaminated evacuees. Children in four school districts near the landfill have brought letters home advising parents that children would either be evacuated or sheltered in place, should the fire reach the radioactive wastes.

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The Mallinckrodt wastes don't just pose the potential danger of the spread of radioactivity by fire; chronic low-level exposure of nearby residents to radioactivity is also of concern. After two years of collecting and analyzing hundreds of soil and dust samples over a 75-square-mile area, my colleagues—environmental scientist Marco Kaltofen at Worchester Polytechnic Institute and researcher Lucas Hixson—and I recently reported in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity that contamination from the wastes has likely migrated off site.

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No strangers to advanced statistical tools, within two years, Wright, an accountant, and Schanzenbach, an economics professor at Northwestern University, documented 700 cases of cancers and immune system diseases within a four-square-mile area. Some of these cancers have a one-in-a-million chance of occurring. In a 2014 epidemiological survey of residents living near Cold Water Creek, the Missouri Department of Health found statistically significant higher rates of leukemia and several other cancers known to be related to radiation exposure. Other potentially radiogenic cancers were found to be lower than expected. The authors cited “the lack of information on potential public exposures” as an important factor requiring further investigation. Wright and Schanzenbach updated their survey and reported in August 2015 that the number of diseases, including rare cancers, had increased to 2,725 cases. More recently, the US Centers for Disease Control has begun to visit the area, for another study

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It’s not far-fetched to conclude that there are parallels between the West Lake waste problem—created and exacerbated by decades of negligence and denial by the US nuclear weapons program and the agencies responsible for protecting people from its harmful legacy—and the disaster in Flint, Michigan, where citizens have been poisoned by lead-laced drinking water, and their public officials have been slow to respond. In fact, on January 27, the editorial board of the St. Louis Post Dispatch explicitly pointed out those parallels, concluding that “too often, people without power and clout don’t count with government officials. A parallel situation exists here with Bridgeton’s West Lake landfill... After seeing what happened in Flint, it comes as no surprise that they doubt government’s will to find a permanent solution.”

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