Community Bank Offers $5 Per Month To Open Accounts In Response To Fees

Community Bank To Pay Customers To Open Accounts In Response To BofA's Fees

While many banking giants are starting to charge fees for debit card use and other once-free services on checking accounts, one regional bank is doing exactly the opposite.



Southwest, Florida-based Community Bank is offering customers $5 per month to open a checking account, Bradenton.com reports. The payment is a direct response to big banks that have recently announced a slew of fees that they’ll be charging their customers.



“We needed to do something to help consumers who are under attack from behemoth national banks charging fees that just don’t make sense,” Katie Pembles, Community Bank president told Bradenton.com in an interview. “People have a choice of where to bank, and at Community Bank, we thought paying people $5 per month rather than charging them $5 per month was a good way to set us apart.”



Bank of America announced last month that it would charge customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards starting in 2012. Wells Fargo said in August that it would start testing a $3 debit card fee this fall and Citibank announced that they would start charging certain mid-level customers up to $20 per month for low account balances.



Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and other banking officials have said that the new fees are necessary for the banks to recoup revenue that they’ll lose as a result of the new Dodd-Frank regulations that cap the fees banks can charge merchants for debit card swipes, among other things.



President Barack Obama slammed the big banks for charging the fees, saying that customers are being “mistreated.”



If the outrage on Twitter following Bank of America’s announcement is any indication, Community Bank’s offer may convince consumers to open and account with them. Credit unions have already gotten a boost from the big bank fees; Navy Federal Credit Union said new account openings were more than 20 percent higher than normal the weekend after Bank of America announced the fees.

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Time To Take Out The Trash: Showdown looms between Wall St protesters and cops

Amplify’d from old.news.yahoo.com

Showdown looms between Wall St protesters and cops

AP – Lucas Brinson, 21, from Davis, Calif, takes on the role of a human microphone, relaying information throughout …

By VERENA DOBNIK and MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Verena Dobnik And Meghan Barr, Associated Press

NEW YORK – New York City officials ordered Wall Street protesters to clear out their sleeping bags and tarps, setting the stage for a showdown Friday between police and demonstrators who vowed to do all they could to stay put.

The owner of the private park where the demonstrators have camped out for nearly a month said it has become trashed and unsanitary. Brookfield Properties planned to begin a section-by-section power-washing of Zuccotti Park at 7 a.m.

"They're going to use the cleanup to get us out of here," said Justin Wedes, 25, a part-time public high school science teacher from Brooklyn. "It's a de facto eviction notice."

The demand that protesters clear out sets up a turning point in a movement that began Sept. 17 with a small group of activists and has swelled to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life. Their demands are amorphous but they are united in blaming Wall Street and corporate interests for the economic pain they say all but the wealthiest Americans have endured since the financial meltdown.

There was a frantic scramble of activity in the park Thursday. Hundreds of demonstrators scrubbed benches and mopped the park's stone flooring in a last-ditch attempt to get Brookfield to abandon its plan. A last-ditch protest was planned at midnight.

Protesters would be allowed to return after the cleaning, which was expected to take 12 hours, but Brookfield said it plans to start enforcing regulations that have been ignored.

No more tarps, no more sleeping bags, no more storing personal property on the ground. In other words, no more camping out for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who have been living at Zuccotti Park for weeks and triggered a movement against unequal distribution of wealth that has inspired similar demonstrations across the country and forced politicians in both parties to take notice.

Protesters say they only way they will leave is by force. Organizers sent out a mass email asking supporters to "defend the occupation from eviction."

"We are doubling up on our determination to stay here as a result of this," said 26-year-old Sophie Mascia of Queens, N.Y., who has been living in Zuccotti Park for three weeks and intends to sleep there Friday night. "I think this is only going to strengthen our movement."

Protesters have had some run-ins with police earlier, but mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and an incident in which some protesters were pepper-sprayed seemed to energize their movement.

The NYPD says it will make arrests if Brookfield requests it and laws are broken. Brookfield would not comment on how it will ensure that protesters do not try to set up camp again, only saying that the cleaning was necessary because conditions in the park had become unsanitary due to the occupation.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is a member of Brookfield's Board of Directors, said Brookfield has requested the city's assistance in maintaining the park.

"We will continue to defend and guarantee their free speech rights, but those rights do not include the ability to infringe on the rights of others," said Bloomberg's spokesman, Marc La Vorgna. "Which is why the rules governing the park will be enforced."

Bill Blasio, the city's public advocate, expressed concern over the city's actions as he inspected the park Thursday afternoon and listened to protesters' complaints.

"This has been a very peaceful movement by the people," he said. "I'm concerned about this new set of policies. At the very least, the city should slow down."

The city is provoking a confrontation by enforcing a planned cleanup, said Doug Forand, a spokesman for 99 New York, a coalition of community groups that support the protest.

"To us it's clear the whole guise of cleanup is just a smokescreen for the mayor's goal of shutting down the protest," Forand said. "They are very clearly set on using this as a means of silencing the voices of dissent that the mayor does not want to hear."

Forand said the coalition would stand in solidarity with the protesters early Friday.

Attorneys from the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild — who are representing an Occupy Wall Street sanitation working group — have written a letter to Brookfield saying the company's request to get police to help implement its cleanup plan threatens "fundamental constitutional rights."

"There is no basis in the law for your request for police intervention, nor have you cited any," the attorneys wrote in a letter Thursday to Brookfield CEO Richard B. Clark. "Such police action without a prior court order would be unconstitutional and unlawful."

The attorneys said the sanitation working group has "committed itself to carrying out a thorough and complete cleaning" and to negotiate with the park's owner in good faith.

The protest has led sympathetic groups in other cities to stage their own local rallies and demonstrations: Occupy Boston, Occupy Cincinnati, Occupy Houston, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Philadelphia, Occupy Providence, Occupy Salt Lake and Occupy Seattle, among them.

Several protests are planned this weekend across the U.S. and Canada, and European activists are also organizing.

As the hour neared for evacuation, Zuccotti Park had been cleared of about half of the protest's supplies. The self-organized sanitation team had hired a private garbage truck to pick up discarded curbside garbage, and belongings were accumulating at a storage area at one corner of the park.

Nicole Carty, a 23-year-old from Atlanta, hoped the last-minute cleaning effort would stave off any confrontation on Friday.

"We tell them, `Hey the park is clean, there's no need for you to be here,'" she said. "If they insist on coming in, we will continue to occupy the space."

Associated Press Writers Deepti Hajela, Colleen Long and Cristian Salazar contributed to this report. Read more at old.news.yahoo.com

 

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Pro-Homosexual Education in Kindergarten?

The Homosexual Agenda will soon victimize the next generation of LA school children.



Outrageous, but it's true.



The Los Angeles Unified School District has decided to impose a curriculum of pro-homosexual indoctrination.



This Homosexual Education will remake every classroom to be more "tolerant and open."



Students will be brainwashed into believing homosexual lifestyles are moral and correct.



History courses will be rewritten to force in Homosexual and even transgender "role models."



Even elementary school children will be forced to learn new "lessons" in favor of homosexuality -- all the way down to kindergarten.



Children that age should never be exposed to these disgusting sex acts.  They will be permanently scarred!



And as horrible as this all is, it gets worse.



Not only will students be subjected to Homosexual Education, but they will have to undergo "training."



In fact, parents, teachers and students are all going to be "trained" by the school district to buy into radical homosexual ideology!



They are attacking Pro-Family Americans in every corner of our country.



Students and teachers have already been targeted and bullied in Texas, Florida, and Georgia.



In many places teachers have already given in to the radical homosexual agenda and now mock and ridicule students who speak out in favor of Family values.



American children need a defender, but there are too few left willing to fight against the homosexual propaganda machine.



Public Advocate is the only organization fighting them every time, everywhere.



I will never rest while the Radical Homosexual Lobby tries to harm our children!



I hope you'll continue to stand with me.



For the Family,





Eugene Delgaudio

President, Public Advocate of the United States

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Chances are, if you can't read and write English; Your not eligible to vote in this Countries election anyway!

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Bilingual voting ballots ordered in 25 states

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Hope Yen, Associated Press

WASHINGTON – In the run-up to the 2012 elections, the federal government is ordering that 248 counties and other political jurisdictions provide bilingual ballots to Hispanics and other minorities who speak little or no English.

That number is down from a decade ago following the 2000 census, which covered 296 counties in 30 states. In all, more than 1 in 18 jurisdictions must now provide foreign-language assistance in pre-election publicity, voter registration, early voting and absentee applications as well as Election Day balloting.

The latest requirements, mandated under the Voting Rights Act, partly reflect second and third generations of racial and ethnic minorities who are now reporting higher levels of proficiency in English than their parents. Still, analysts cite a greater potential for resistance from localities that face tighter budgets, new laws requiring voter IDs at polls and increased anti-immigration sentiment.

Effective this week, Hispanics who don't speak English proficiently will be entitled to Spanish-language election material in urban areas of political battleground states including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah, as well as the entire states of California, Florida and Texas. For the first time, people from India will get election material in their native language, in voting precincts in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, due to their fast population growth.

More American Indian tribal languages will be made available in many parts of Alaska, Arizona and Mississippi, while Vietnamese and Taiwanese will get their own voting assistance in several new areas, including parts of Washington state, Texas, Massachusetts and California. Asian Bangladeshi must be provided for the first time in Hamtramck, Mich, which neighbors Detroit.

"We would like to be in a society where everyone has equal opportunities to vote, but that's not the reality we're living in today," said James Thomas Tucker, a former Justice Department attorney who is now a voting rights lawyer in Las Vegas. Tucker said the law has been key in the election of new Hispanic and Asian officials in many places, even as he noted that a vocal English-only language movement and new budget constraints on local governments could stir fresh tensions.

"Some jurisdictions will see pushback," he said.

The Voting Rights Act provision, first approved by Congress in 1975, requires states, counties and political subdivisions to supply versions of ballots and election materials in other languages if a Latino, Asian-American, American Indian or Alaskan minority group makes up more than 5 percent of the voting-age population or at least 10,000 citizens.

The minorities must be unable to speak or understand English well enough to vote in elections, a proficiency level determined by those who indicate in census surveys that they don't speak English "very well." The minority group also should have literacy rates ranking below the national average.

In all, 248 counties and other political divisions must provide election materials involving 68 covered languages in 25 states, according to the list released Wednesday by the Census Bureau. The agency puts together the list based on its review of survey data on minority population growth, educational attainment and English proficiency.

It was the first decline in the total number since the bureau began compiling the list with English-proficiency criteria in the 1980s.

Under a separate provision of the Voting Rights Act, some 200 other jurisdictions are already required to provide bilingual material, including the entire states of Alaska, Arizona and Texas. With the newest additions this week, the total number of counties or subdivisions with requirements is more than 1 in 18.

The language requirements already have drawn fire from some Republicans, who complain they are too burdensome on local governments.

In a letter in August, Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who chairs a Judiciary subcommittee, and Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who heads the House oversight panel on the census, asked the Census Bureau to delay release of the list to reexamine its criteria, given state and local budget crises they said will make it harder for localities to comply. They cited the case of Cuyahoga County in Ohio, which spent more than $100,000 on bilingual ballots in a light-turnout primary election last May.

Localities have struggled in the past with compliance, since they are left to figure out the best ways to provide bilingual materials at a reasonable cost. Shortly before the Voting Rights provisions were reauthorized in 2006, a Pew Center on the States study found that elected officials often would "ponder the impact of implementing — or in some cases sidestepping — the federal requirements."

It cited some confusion over how many bilingual ballots to print, or what types of election materials are covered. But Pew and separate government studies said compliance often could be achieved at lower cost by hiring bilingual poll workers who perform dual functions of translation and other Election Day tasks, as well as printing sample bilingual ballots that minorities could refer to.

The continuing demands for bilingual balloting come at a time when residents in the U.S. are increasingly likely to speak a language other than English at home, but who are also now more likely to have lived in the U.S. for at least a decade and be naturalized citizens who vote.

Eugene Lee, voting rights project director at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, noted the significant impact that language assistance has had on voting and the election of Asian-Americans in places such as California. In Los Angeles County, officials will now be required to offer materials in Cambodian and Asian Indian languages in addition to Spanish, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Associated Press writer Amy Taxin in Orange County, Calif., contributed to this report.

Online:

Copy of the census list:

http://www.census.gov/rdo/data/voting_rights_determination_file.html Read more at old.news.yahoo.com

 

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Good Decision!

Amplify’d from www.tampabay.com

Pinellas County Commission votes to stop putting fluoride in water supply

By David DeCamp, Times Staff Writer

CLEARWATER — Pinellas County will stop adding fluoride to its drinking water, ending a cavity-fighting effort that riled critics of Big Brother government despite decades of advocacy by dental and medical experts.

After three hours of polarizing debate, the County Commission voted 4-3 Tuesday to halt fluoridation to about 700,000 residents of the county and most Pinellas cities.

Residents in St. Petersburg, Gulfport, Dunedin and Belleair will not be affected.

Public notices will go out this fall, and the practice will end shortly afterward.

The vote came despite pleas from a dozen dentists and health officials who told commissioners that fluoride reduces dental illness while lowering costs to the county for dental care for the needy.

Fluoridation costs the county about $205,000 a year.

Pinellas County began adding fluoride to its water in 2004. Before that, it was the largest water supplier in the eastern United States that did not fluoridate its water.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls the practice, which dates to the 1940s, one of the greatest public health achievements of the century. Federal and global agencies and medical groups say it is healthy with the right dosage, despite recent red flags.

"Fluoride is safe, efficient and cost-effective," said dentist Christopher Beach of the Pinellas County Health Department.

But critics seized on recent concerns about too much fluoride having side effects on young children and tea party-style fears of forced government medicating. Some speakers Tuesday compared it to Soviet and Nazi practices and warned of cancer, reduced IQ and deteriorating bones.

"Fluoride is a toxic substance," said tea party activist Tony Caso of Palm Harbor. "This is all part of an agenda that's being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government and the world government to keep the people stupid so they don't realize what's going on."

He added: "This is the U.S. of A, not the Soviet Socialist Republic."

Commissioner Ken Welch said afterward that he was embarrassed by the decision, calling it "a big step backward for Pinellas County." Karen Seel and Susan Latvala voted with Welch in favor of fluoridation.

St. Petersburg fluoridates its water along with Gulfport's, and Belleair and Dunedin use their own system. Tampa and Hillsborough County utilities also put fluoride in drinking water.

Officials with those utilities said Tuesday that they have no plans to end fluoridation, though Dunedin recently debated it.

Pasco County utilities does not fluoridate its water, mostly because of health worries.

The decision in Pinellas will make the county the least fluoridated among major Florida counties, with only about 25 percent of the population getting fluoridated water, Welch said, citing state health statistics. Nearly 70 percent of the state population has fluoridated water, the Florida Department of Health says.

"I think it's an extremely unfortunate decision by Pinellas County," University of Florida dental college professor Scott Tomar, a public health dentist since 1984, said in an interview. He noted there's "no basis" for fears of severe illness and warned dental problems could rise.

But Commissioner John Morroni, who supported starting the practice in 2004, joined Norm Roche, Neil Brickfield and Nancy Bostock in voting to stop the program.

Roche spearheaded the effort, calling it a "social sort of program" that the county should avoid. A former utility worker who was elected to the commission last year, he has opposed fluoridation from the start.

Morroni compared the practice to the disputed federal health care reform law mandating that people buy health insurance. Ultimately, he said, public support has shifted since he and other commissioners approved the practice.

"I don't think the county government should be telling people they have to have fluoride in the water," Morroni said.

There have been cautions lately, too.

In January, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed reducing the recommended fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. The agency said it was based on recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and HHS scientific assessments to balance the benefits of preventing tooth decay while limiting unwanted health effects. The standard since 1962 has been a range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter. Pinellas uses 0.8, adding to a smaller level of naturally occurring fluoride.

Those moves came after a reported increase in spots on children's teeth, attributed to too much fluoride. The CDC has also put out a warning: While using fluoridated water is safe, infants that consume formula exclusively with fluoridated water have an increased chance of fluorosis — faint white spots on teeth. To lessen that chance, the agency recommends using bottled water sometimes.

Hillsborough lowered the fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter earlier this year.

"The public health officials advocate it," said Luke Mulford, Hillsborough's water quality engineer. "I defer to medical people on medical issues."

Pinellas dentists and officials said no study is yet available to document the effect of Pinellas' fluoride effort, though several dentists said tooth decay among young people is down.

"Over the last four years, it's been just an incredible change, an incredible change," said Palm Harbor dentist Oscar Menendez, president of the Upper Pinellas Dental Society.

Times staff writers Richard Danielson, Michael Van Sickler and Lee Logan contributed to this report. David DeCamp can be reached at ddecamp@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8779. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/decamptimes

Fluoridation in the Tampa Bay area Pinellas County: All cities have fluoridated water. Dunedin recently debated stopping it. Hillsborough County: Utilities in Tampa and unincorporated county areas add fluoride, recently lowering the level slightly to meet a federal recommendation. Pasco County: County utilities do not add fluoride. Hernando County: Large areas do not have fluoride added to the water, but Brooksville does. What is fluoride? Fluoride compounds are salts that form when the element fluorine combines with minerals in soil or rocks, according to the EPA. In the Tampa Bay area, it naturally occurs in water, utility officials said. They test for it. What are the health risks? Excessive consumption over a lifetime may lead to increased likelihood of bone fractures and pain. Children age 8 years and younger exposed to excessive amounts are at risk for pits and cosmetic damage. Why use fluoride in drinking water? In proper dosages, it fights bacteria and reduces the chance of dental illnesses and cavities, the Florida Department of Health says. Read more at www.tampabay.com

 

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Meet the flea party: Wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic

So far, the only major accomplishment of the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is that it has finally put an end to their previous initiative, "Occupy Our Mothers' Basements."

Amplify’d from www.wnd.com

Wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic: Meet the flea party!

So far, the only major accomplishment of the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is that it has finally put an end to their previous initiative, "Occupy Our Mothers' Basements."

Oddly enough for such a respectable-looking group – a mixture of adolescents looking for a cause, public sector union members, drug dealers, criminals, teenage runaways, people who have been at every protest since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, people 95 percent of whose hair is concentrated in their ponytails, Andrea Dworkin look-alikes and other average Democrats – they can't even explain what they're protesting.

The protesters either treat inquiries about their purpose as a trick question, or – worse – instantly rattle off a series of insane causes: "No. 1, abolish capitalism; No. 2, because 9/11 was an inside job; No. 3, because Mumia is innocent ..."

Curiously, the only point universally agreed upon by the protesters and their admirers in the Democratic Party and the mainstream media is that "Occupy Wall Street" should be compared to the tea party. Yes, that would be the same tea party that has been denounced and slandered by the Democratic Party and the mainstream media for the last three years.

As a refresher: The Democratic National Committee called the tea partiers "angry mobs" and "rabid right-wing extremists." ABC said they were a "mob." CNN accused them of "rabble rousing." Harry Reid called them "evil mongers." Nancy Pelosi said they were "un-American." CNN's Anderson Cooper and every single host on MSNBC called the tea partiers a name that referred to an obscure gay sex act.

But apparently liberals couldn't even convince themselves that tea partiers were an extremist group unworthy of emulation.

At least they're embarrassed about what the OWS protesters really are: wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic. This is the flea party, not the tea party.

Contrary to all the blather you always hear about how lawless street protests and civil disobedience are part of the American tradition – "what our troops are fighting for!" – they are not. We are an orderly people with democratic channels at our disposal to change our government.

The very reason we have a constitutional republic is because of a mob uprising. Soon after the American Revolution, Shays' Rebellion so terrified and angered Americans that they demanded a federal government capable of crushing such mobs.

For nearly 200 years, Americans understood that they lived in a country capable of producing bad politicians and bad policies, but that it was subject to change through peaceful, democratic means. There was no need to riot or storm buildings because we didn't have a king. We had a representative government.

Even when injustice existed, there were constitutional mechanisms to right wrongs. For nearly a century after the Civil War, congressional Republicans kept introducing bills that implemented the civil rights amendments – only to be blocked by segregationist Democrats. But then, attorney Thurgood Marshall came along and began winning cases before the Supreme Court, redeeming black Americans' constitutional rights through the judiciary.

As long as a Republican sat in the White House, those victories were enforced. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Ark., to walk black children to school in defiance of the segregationist, Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus – Bill Clinton's friend.

This is what our Constitution was designed for: to use the force of the federal government to uphold the law when the states couldn't (Shays' Rebellion) or wouldn't (segregationist Democrats).

If Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election instead of John F. Kennedy – as some say he did – there never would have been a need for Rosa Parks, the Freedom Rides and the rest of the civil disobedience of the civil rights movement.

But as soon as the Democrats got control of the White House, enforcement of the Supreme Court's civil rights rulings came to a crashing halt. Elected Democrats in the states were free to violate legitimate constitutional rulings without interference from Democratic presidents.

The ingenious system given to us by our Founding Fathers faltered on the morally corrupt obstructionism of elected Democrats. They simply refused to abide by the rules – with glee at the state level, and at the federal level, cowardice.

Here, finally, was an appropriate case for nonviolent protest. There hasn't been another justification for civil disobedience in this country until the Supreme Court invented a "right" to abortion in Roe v. Wade – another act of lawlessness by liberals.

(All this and more is detailed in the smash best-seller, "Demonic: How the Liberal Mobs Are Endangering America"!)

Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement – which was only necessary because of them. These "Occupy Wall Street" ignoramuses seem to imagine they are blacks living in 1963 Alabama under Democratic Gov. George Wallace.

To the contrary, the Wall Street protesters have no specific objections and no serious policy proposals in a country that is governed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "by the people." They protest because they enjoy creating mayhem, not because the law is being ignored or their rights violated without penalty by government officials.

They are not in the tradition of the tea partiers, much less our Founding Fathers. They are not in the tradition of the civil rights movement or Operation Rescue. They are in the tradition of Shays' Rebellion, the Weathermen and Charles Manson. Read more at www.wnd.com

 

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Sounds like HAARP to me!

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Japan Quake May Have Struck Atmosphere First

Charles Q. Choi, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor

View full size image

The devastating earthquake that struck Japan this year may have rattled the highest layer of the atmosphere even before it shook the Earth, a discovery that one day could be used to provide warnings of giant quakes, scientists find. The magnitude 9.0 quake that struck off the coast of Tohoku in Japan in March ushered in what might be the world's first complex megadisaster as it unleashed a catastrophic tsunami and set off microquakes and tremors around the globe. Scientists recently found the surface motions and tsunamis this earthquake generated also triggered waves in the sky. These waves reached all the way to the ionosphere, one of the highest layers of the Earth's atmosphere.

Now geodesist and geophysicist Kosuke Heki at Hokkaido University in Japan reports the Tohoku quake also may have generated ripples in the ionosphere before the quake struck.

Disruptions of the electrically charged particles in the ionosphere lead to anomalies in radio signals between global positioning system satellites and ground receivers, data that scientists can measure.

Heki analyzed data from more than 1,000 GPS receivers in Japan. He discovered a rise of approximately 8 percent in the total electron content in the ionosphere above the area hit by the earthquake about 40 minutes before the temblor. This increase was greatest about the epicenter and diminished with distance away from it.

"Before finding this phenomenon, I did not think earthquakes could be predicted at all," Heki told OurAmazingPlanet. "Now I think large earthquakes are predictable."

Analysis of GPS records from the magnitude 8.8 Chile earthquake in 2010 revealed a similar pattern, Heki said. These anomalies also may have occurred with the Sumatra magnitude 9.2 earthquake in 2004 and the magnitude 8.3 Hokkaido earthquake in 1994, he added.

If true, further research could lead to a new type of early-warning system for giant earthquakes.

The anomaly is currently seen before earthquakes only with magnitudes of about 8.5 or larger, Heki cautioned. Still, if researchers can detect what specifically causes this ionospheric phenomenon, it also might be possible to detect precursory phenomena for smaller earthquakes, he said.

Heki did caution that the ionosphere is highly variable — for instance, solar storms can trigger large changes in total electron content there. Before researchers could develop an early-warning system for earthquakes based on ionospheric anomalies, they would have to rule out non-earthquake causes.

Heki detailed his findings online Sept. 15 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

This story was provided by OurAmazingPlanet, sister site to SPACE.com

7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye Massive Japan Earthquake Altered Earth's Gravity Listen to Japan's Huge Earthquake

7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye Massive Japan Earthquake Altered Earth's Gravity Listen to Japan's Huge Earthquake Read more at www.space.com

 

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New Map of Saturn Moon Titan Reveals Surprisingly Earth-Like Features And Colors

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New Map of Saturn Moon Titan Reveals Surprisingly Earth-Like Features

Global mosaic of Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) images acquired during the nominal and equinox Cassini mission. Differences in composition translate into subtle differences of colors in this mosaic, revealing the diversity of terrains on Titan, such as the brownish equatorial dune fields or the bright, elevated terrains. CREDIT: JPL/NASA/Univ. of Arizona/CNRS/LPGNantes View full size image

After meticulously stitching together images that were gathered over six years by a NASA spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, astronomers have created a global map of the surface of Titan, the ringed planet's largest moon, and it features some surprisingly Earth-like geological features. An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Nantes in France, created the striking mosaic of Titan's surface using infrared images taken by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The global map and animations were presented Tuesday (Oct. 4) at the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Science in Nantes, France. [See global map and video of Titan's surface]

The researchers used images that were taken during the Cassini mission's first 70 flybys of Titan. But, piecing together the map was an intricate and painstaking project because scientists had to comb through the pictures on a pixel-by-pixel basis to adjust illumination differences and other distortions caused by Titan's thick and hazy atmosphere, said Stéphane Le Mouélic, of the University of Nantes.

"As Cassini is orbiting Saturn and not Titan, we can observe Titan only once a month on average," Le Mouélic said in a statement. "The surface of Titan is therefore revealed year after year, as pieces of the puzzle are progressively put together. Deriving a final map with no seams is challenging due to the effects of the atmosphere — clouds, mist etc. — and due to the changing geometries of observation between each flyby."

Lifting the veil on Saturn's largest moon

Titan is the only moon known to be cloaked in a dense atmosphere, which is composed mainly of nitrogen. It also has clouds of methane and ethane, and ongoing research has presented increasing evidence for methane rain on the large, frigid moon.

Since Titan is veiled in an opaque atmosphere, its surface is difficult to study with visible light cameras, and only a few specific infrared wavelengths can penetrate the haze. Cassini's infrared instruments and radar signals provide an intriguing glimpse down to the surface of the frozen body, which, as the new global map reveals, has some interesting Earth-like features.

"We have created the maps using low-resolution images as a background with the high-resolution data on top," Le Mouélic said. "In the few opportunities where we have VIMS imagery from the closest approach, we can show details as low as 500 meters [1,640 feet] per pixel. An example of this is from the 47th flyby, which allowed the observation of the site where the Huygens descent module landed. This observation is a key one as it might help us to bridge the gap between the ground truth provided by Huygens, and ongoing global mapping from orbit, which will continue up to 2017." [Amazing Titan Photos: Saturn's Largest Moon]

Cassini arrived in orbit around the ringed planet in July 2004, and has since made 78 flybys of Titan, the planet's largest moon. Currently, 48 more flybys are planned from now until the year 2017.

Observations of the northern seas of Titan by Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, or VIMS, (left and center) and by RADAR (right). CREDIT: JPL/NASA/Univ. of Arizona/CNRS/LPGNantes View full size image

More details coming to light

On all of Cassini's flybys so far, the spacecraft's VIMS instrument has had only a few opportunities to observe Titan with high-spatial resolution. As a result, the global map of the moon shows some areas with more clarity and detail than others, the researchers said.

Putting together future maps of Titan will also allow scientists to observe seasonal changes on the surface of Titan and in the moon's atmosphere. For instance, as the northern hemisphere of Saturn and its moons shift into spring, some regions of the icy moon are only now coming into view, Le Mouélic explained.

"Lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere were first discovered by the RADAR instrument in 2006, appearing as completely smooth areas," Le Mouélic said. "However, we had to wait up to June 2010 to obtain the first infrared images of the northern lakes, emerging progressively from the northern winter darkness. The infrared observations provide the additional opportunity to investigate the composition of the liquids within the lakes area. Liquid ethane has already been identified by this means."

Cassini was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. Last year, the spacecraft received a seven-year mission extension that will keep it operational through 2017.

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Titan's Surprisingly Earth-like Surface Revealed - in Color Read more at www.space.com

 

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