Tuesday, 2 July 2013

'Incredible strain' in relations between Ecuador and Julian Assange over his involvement in Edward Snowden affair

[...]Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa was furious with his own diplomat Fidel Narvaez, who - in conjunction with Mr Assange - organised the handing of a safe passage letter to Mr Snowden. He called the move, which was apparently made without consulting the central government, a “serious error”, for which the consul was likely to be punished. And WikiLeaks’ involvement in the debacle also angered Quito...

Prosecution wrapping up in WikiLeaks trial

Al-Qaida leaders reveled in WikiLeaks' publication of reams of classified U.S. documents, urging members to study them before devising ways to attack the United States, according to evidence presented by the prosecution Monday in the court-martial of an Army private who leaked the material...

Another picture of a kid's mouth before their baby teeth fall out

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First-ever human head transplant is now possible, says neuroscientist

“The greatest technical hurdle to [a head transplant] is of course the reconnection of the donor’s (D)’s and recipients (R)’s spinal cords. It is my contention that the technology only now exists for such linkage… [S]everal up to now hopeless medical connections might benefit from such a procedure.”

Stand With Wendy

Photo

Sean would be SO proud

Congratulations to Phoebe Oliver on the birth of her son Roland
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Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate

Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.
A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the last two years of what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that "once confident of swift victory, the opposition's foreign allies shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality"...

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America, terrorists and Nelson Mandela

Woe betide the organization or individual who lands on America’s terrorist list. The consequences are dire and it’s easier to get on the list than off it even if you turn to peaceful politics. Just ask Nelson Mandela.
One of the great statesmen of our time, Mandela stayed on the American terrorist blacklist for 15 years after winning the Nobel Prize prior to becoming South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president...

HA!

'You made us sick. We miss Egypt'

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Egypt in turmoil as defiant Morsi stands firm against coup threat

NSA Surveillance and the Failure of Intelligence Oversight

Recent disclosures of NSA collection of records of US telephone and email traffic have some unfortunate parallels and precedents in the early history of the Agency that were thought to have been repudiated forever.
“After World War II, the National Security Agency (NSA) established and directed three programs that deliberately targeted American citizens’ private communications,” wrote Army signals intelligence officer Major Dave Owen in a paper published late last year in an Army intelligence journal...

Don’t shun 3D printers - they might save your life one day

One of the very few non-gun-related 3D printing stories to make the mass media this year was about Australian researchers who developed a technique which may lead to the production of human tissues, and even organs.
A 3D printer can create a scaffold from implantable biomaterials that degrade safely in the body, allowing new tissues to grow.
New developments also allow printing of living cells or tiny pieces of tissue harvested from a patient biopsy and grown in the laboratory to engineer new functional tissues. Because in the ideal situation this tissue originates from the patient’s own cells, the chance of rejection is almost nil. And the technique is not limited to a specific tissue – it is a generic approach...