bananas
bananas's JournalIran President Chooses New Nuclear Chief Negotiator
Source: Arutz Sheva
Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani has chosen a new nuclear chief negotiator to represent Iran at talks with the international community, although any nuclear policy is determined strictly by the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mohammed Forouzandeh currently heads a powerful state charitable foundation and serves as a member of the Supreme National Security Council.
He is also former member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, a history that would serve him well as the head of the Supreme National Security Council – the other role he will take as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.
<snip>
Rouhani was himself once Iran's leading negotiator with the European Union over the country's secretive nuclear weapons program. A report in 2006 by The Telegraph revealed how the man now hailed by many western commentators as a "moderate" boasted of manipulating European observers during his tenure.
Read more: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/170373#.UfakMY3VArU
Weedkillers tied to depression in farmers
Weedkillers tied to depression in farmers
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Farmers who used weedkillers were more than twice as likely to be treated for depression than farmers who didn't use the chemicals in a new study from France.
Whether the weedkillers are causing depression "is not clear," said Marc Weisskopf, the study's lead author and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "But (the result) suggests we should not be ignoring herbicides just because they're targeting plants."
<snip>
There was no difference in the risk of having depression among the farmers who had used fungicides or insecticides, compared to those who hadn't used any pesticide.
<snip>
Furthermore, farmers who had greater exposure - either more hours or longer years using herbicides - also had a greater chance of having depression than farmers who had used weedkillers less.
<snip>
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1dXuiro American Journal of Epidemiology, online July 12, 2013.
The Y-12 break-in: One year later
The Y-12 break-in: One year later
For decades, the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant relished its nickname, the Fort Knox of Uranium. The self-anointed moniker helped define the type of work that takes place there and underscored the government facility’s top-security image.
Overnight, however, Fort Knox became a laughingstock.
<snip>
Instead of being compared to the nation’s gold standard, Y-12 security was suddenly “Second to Nun” and the butt of other jokes and slogans.
<snip>
According to Laura Herzog, the senator’s communications director, Corker was told Y-12 officials understood the seriousness of the matter and were taking appropriate corrective actions. “Since then, another incident has occurred, suggesting that the Department of Energy still does not have proper security measures in place at our nuclear weapons facilities,” she said.
Herzog was making reference to a June 6 security breakdown in which a lost and apparently confused driver was waved into the plant at the main entrance, even though she had no security credentials and no business at the weapons plant. Two months before that, a bike rider was arrested on a Y-12 patrol road — not far from where the Plowshares protesters initially broke into the plant — after traversing most of the plant’s northside boundary.
<snip>
Asked if she wanted to shut down production of nuclear weapons at Y-12, Rice said, “With all my heart.”
The 83-year-old nun said her only regret was that she waited 70 years to do what she knew was the right thing to do all along.
<snip>
Rowhani 'halted nuclear weapon programme': ex-ambassador
Source: Agence France-Presse
Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani personally stopped the development of a clandestine nuclear weapon in 2003, a former ambassador to the country said Saturday.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, Francois Nicoullaud, France's ambassador to Iran from 2001 to 2005, said he believed Rowhani was the "main actor" in persuading the country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to halt the secret programme.
<snip>
"Based on conversations that I had at the time, as French ambassador to Tehran, with high Iranian officials close to the matter, I firmly believe that Rowhani was the main actor in the process," Nicoullaud wrote. "Of course, Iranians could not admit to a foreigner that such a program ever existed, and I cannot name the officials I spoke to."
<snip>
"Uranium enrichment was the visible part of it but there was a hidden section, the manufacture of a nuclear device --once they had produced enriched uranium, how to put it on the head of a missile and how to deliver it to 'friends' in the region --that's the programme Rowhani stopped," the former ambassador said.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/27/rowhani-halted-nuclear-weapon-programme-ex-ambassador/
Feds Warn NJ Nuclear Plant Operator Over Firing
Source: Associated Press
Federal regulators are worried that a security manager's firing from a job at a nuclear plant could deter employees and contractors from questioning safety at one of the nation's largest nuclear power stations.
A federal jury in Camden last month concluded that the 2009 firing of Robert Scull was in retaliation for the manager's plan to tell the NRC about his safety concerns at the adjoining Hope Creek and Salem nuclear plants in Lower Alloways Creek Township, south of Wilmington, Del.
Scull said he did not have enough assistants to maintain security of the plants, the second-largest nuclear generating facility in the U.S. He was awarded $400,000 and has since made court filings asking for his old job back.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to plant operator PSEG Nuclear on Friday asking it to detail what actions the company was taking to ensure the firing doesn't have a chilling effect on other would-be whistleblowers.
<snip>
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/feds-warn-nj-nuclear-plant-operator-firing-19783997
Fishermen lambaste TEPCO over radioactive water leaks
Source: Asahi Shimbun
Representatives of Japan's national fishermen's federation visited Tokyo Electric Power Co. headquarters on July 25 to hand in a letter of protest over the recent leakage of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant into the sea.
"We are exasperated at the development, which is an act of treason to all fishing industry workers and to all members of the public in Japan," read part of the letter addressed to Naomi Hirose, the corporate president.
<snip>
Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, also attended the meeting.
Nozaki told reporters the latest development was the biggest scandal since the onset of the nuclear disaster, which was triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
<snip>
Read more: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201307260041
Via http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=10746
Japan utility says reluctance to worry public delayed disclosure of nuclear plant’s leaks
Source: Associated Press
The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant said Friday that it delayed acknowledging that the plant was leaking contaminated water into the sea because it did not want to worry the public until it was certain there was a problem.
<snip>
TEPCO President Naomi Hirose said Friday that the company delayed acknowledging contaminated water was leaking into the sea even though obvious signs of leaks were detected in May because officials were waiting until they were certain there was a problem before making such a “major announcement.”
<snip>
TEPCO’s quarterly meeting of its reform monitoring committee, which comprises four outside experts, was dominated Friday by discussion of the water leaks.
<snip>
“These actions indicate that you do not know what you’re doing, and that you do not have a plan, and you’re not doing all you can to protect the environment and people,” Klein, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said at the meeting.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-utility-says-reluctance-to-worry-public-delayed-disclosure-of-nuke-plants-leaks/2013/07/26/9364c412-f5d4-11e2-81fa-8e83b3864c36_story.html
This is bullshit - they did this to help the right-wing pro-nuclear LDP win elections.
This is criminal and they belong in jail.
Exclusive: Gabrielle Anwar's Burn Notice Follow-up: A Vagina Documentary
Exclusive: Gabrielle Anwar's Burn Notice Follow-up: A Vagina Documentary
Jul 23, 2013 07:04 PM ET
by Bruce Fretts
Gabrielle Anwar just started shooting the final episode of USA Network's long-running hit Burn Notice in Miami today, but she's already booked her next project. She'll be co-producing and co-directing as well as appearing in a documentary about an unquestionably hot topic: the vagina.
"In my opinion, the vagina is just a delicious, delightful, very serious and incredibly funny part of the body," says Anwar, who'll make the film along with ex-Dynasty vixen Catherine Oxenberg. "We'll be shooting it in the fall, and my father (Tariq Anwar) will be cutting it. He's a very sophisticated film editor (The King's Speech, American Beauty), but I'm not sure how he's going to handle this subject matter. I guess we'll find out."
Wait, there's more: "We'll also be launching an educational website so people can learn these techniques we're trying to teach women and men in order for women to fulfill their greatest power potential and feel their deepest bliss," says Anwar. "It's going to be an all-consuming - excuse the pun - fabulous time."
Anwar and Oxenberg will interview 30 to 40 experts in the fields of gynecology, Taoism, shamanism and tantra. "I don't know if we're going to get Sting, although he is a friend of my father, so maybe I can wangle my way in," she says. "But we might get his wife, Trudie Styler, and we're definitely interviewing their tantric instructor."
<snip>
Advisory board opposes SRS as nuclear waste dump
Advisory board opposes SRS as nuclear waste venue
By Rob Pavey
Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:05 PM
Last updated Wednesday, July 24, 2013 8:31 AM
Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board adopted a position paper Tuesday opposing SRS’ future use as a storage site for spent nuclear fuel.
“Future generations of South Carolinians and Georgians will not be well served by having the Savannah River Site become an interim storage site for commercial nuclear waste, and for what will be an undetermined length of time,” the position paper stated.
<snip>
The advisory board’s position paper, however, stated that there are no data supporting an assumption that a repository superior to Yucca Mountain will ever be identified.
“In addition, the $13 billion … already spent to build the Yucca Mountain facility will be totally lost if a different site is selected,” the group said. “Considering the current national debt and budget deficit, it is unlikely that adequate funding will be available.”
Clements said the advisory board’s position is politically important, in part because a proposed law that would create a federal Nuclear Waste Administration calls for “consent-based siting” in which communities affected by waste storage would have a high level of influence.
Scientists discover what triggers allergic reactions to cats
Source: The Independent
Scientists have discovered the trigger for allergic reactions to cats, paving the way for developing preventative treatments.
A team at the University of Cambridge looked at the immune system's extreme reaction to cat allergens and discovered that the most common cause of severe allergic reactions are because of the Fel d 1 protein found in particles of cat skin, know as cat dander.
In a study published in the Journal of Immunology, researchers found that cat allergens activate a pathway in the body when in the presence of a common environmental bacterial toxin know as LPS.
Now, new treatments could be developed that attempt to block this pathway and inhibit allergic reactions.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-discover-what-triggers-allergic-reactions-to-cats-8731181.html
Via http://www.democraticunderground.com/122821153
Profile Information
Member since: Wed Nov 10, 2004, 12:55 AMNumber of posts: 27,509
