Sounds like HAARP to me!

Amplify’d from www.space.com

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

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1eh21

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

Amplify’d from www.space.com

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.

The Rings and Moons of Saturn Titan's Surprisingly Earth-like Surface Revealed - in Color Our Solar System: A Photo Tour of the Planets

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

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1egzw

Election 2012

Who will they serve? Us, or Them? 

http://amplify.com/u/a1egby

(VIDEO) Glenn Beck Defends Gruesome Occupy Wall Street Warnings: 'These People Are Dangerous'

Katherine Fung



On Tuesday, Glenn Beck defended his controversial remarks that Occupy Wall Street protesters would "kill" the wealthy.



He had given a stark warning about the Occupy Wall Street movement on Monday, painting protesters as "Marxist radicals" who would "drag you into the streets and kill you." Rachel Maddow, among others, has mocked Beck for his gruesome warning.



On Tuesday, Beck reiterated that he stands by his controversial remarks. He said that some of the protesters were very well "Marxist revolutionaries" and that his warning pertained to the protests spiraling out of control. "These people are dangerous," he warned, adding that political leaders do not have the foresight to see the storm coming.



He then ticked off what he said were the crimes committed by Marxist revolutionaries, including Che Guevara, Mao and Stalin. Echoing his earlier warning about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, he said, "Do you know why people starved to death in the Ukraine? You know why socialism never works? Because they kill all the people who know how to make things. They kill all the industrialists. They kill them all. They drag them in the streets and kill them."



Coming back to the protests in New York, he said, "It ends in violence with Marxists every single time the same way" and alleged that demonstrations of Marxism were "wrapped in hate." He then went on to say that unlike the protests, his criticism of President Obama was never "personal" and alleged that President Obama is "a die-hard Marxist."



WATCH:







RELATED:









See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1egb1

FBI Monitoring News Talk Radio for Investigations

Amplify’d from wmal.com

FBI Monitoring News Talk Radio for Investigations

Mark Weaver

WASHINGTON -- If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI. The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence. "This doesn't give us any enhanced capability, prying into or any 'big brother' concerns because this is information that's being put out on the airwaves," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told WMAL.com.   "Its very important to our investigators to know what's being reported."  Bresson cites as an example of the case of the Times Square bomber.  "It's ideal for cases like that because we can extract information that's already been reported and help our investigators make better decisions." Read more at wmal.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1eg5u

The Greatest Blasphemy Ever Told

Coalition Of Advocates Demand End To Employment Credit Checks

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Civil Rights, Labor Advocates Demand End To Employment Credit Checks

WASHINGTON -- A coalition of 25 civil rights and labor advocacy groups petitioned one of the nation's largest credit-monitoring firms on Tuesday to quit selling consumer credit info to employers.

Using credit histories to screen job applicants, the groups said, can trap the jobless and disproportionately burden black and Latino candidates. They want TransUnion, one of the Big Three credit companies alongside Equifax and Experian, to stop making credit reports available.

"As the only privately-held company of the big three, TransUnion has the ability to stop this practice overnight without worrying about stockholder reaction," said UniteHere spokeswoman Anne Marie Strassel.

Roughly 60 percent of companies factor credit information into hiring decisions, according to a 2010 survey by the Society of Human Resource Management, which supports the practice. The rate of employment credit checks increased from 35 percent in 2003 and 19 percent in 1996.

"Employers understand that individuals, who have been unemployed as a result of these difficult times, may have also had difficulty keeping up with their financial obligations," TransUnion spokeswoman Colleen Tunney-Ryan said in a statement. "What employers are interested in, is whether an individual acted prudently while he or she was employed. A pre-employment report is one tool to help them assess that."

There is no data reflecting how frequently job applicants are passed over because of bad credit.

HuffPost readers: Turned down for a job or a promotion because of crappy credit? Tell us about it -- email arthur@huffingtonpost.com. Please include your phone number if you're willing to do an interview.

On Monday, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill banning most businesses in the state from using credit checks to screen potential workers, making California the seventh state to restrict the practice. TransUnion has lobbied against state efforts to curtail its business.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is currently suing two companies for reasons related to credit checks, held hearings on the practice last year. "The EEOC is concerned that not hiring people with poor credit may exclude qualified job seekers and some minority groups, and therefore may be discriminatory under civil rights law," EEOC spokeswoman Christine Nazer said in a statement to HuffPost.

"Employers need to show that the use of credit records is job-related and consistent with business necessity," Nazer said. "Moreover, credit history screening is an area where job seekers may not even know why they didn't get a job, and we are interested in looking closely at whether there may be possible discrimination because of a disparate impact on certain protected groups."

The coalition of groups opposed to employment credit checks says credit scores for black and Latino workers are 5 to 35 percent lower than scores for white workers. They also say credit checks are an unfair criteria for the unemployed because people without jobs to pay the bills are more likely to have negative items on their credit reports. (Some employers simply won't consider jobless applicants at all, a form of discrimination President Obama wants to ban.)

"We believe these barriers are a contributing factor to the drastic unemployment numbers we see for people of color," said Barbara Arnwine, director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "These credit checks are often used as disguises for other kinds of racial bias."

The businesses surveyed by SHRM said they were most likely to check credit histories for potential employees whose jobs would include financial responsibilities. Outstanding liens and judgments were the credit problems most likely to cause an applicant to be turned away. A business can't run an applicant's credit history without his or her permission. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1efas

NYT Sues The Feds: New York Times Sues U.S. To Reveal Use Of PATRIOT Act

The Huffington Post Katherine Fung

The New York Times has sued the federal government for refusing to divulge how exactly it uses the PATRIOT Act.

The suit comes after Times reporter Charlie Savage filed several Freedom of Information requests for a classified report about the government's authority to collect intelligence under the PATRIOT Act, and was refused. He made the requests after two senators charged that Americans would be deeply disturbed by the government's use of the law.

The section of the act in question allows the government to order the production of "any tangible things” on “reasonable grounds" related to an international terrorism or counterintelligence investigation. The lawsuit demands the release of at least a redacted version of the report to explain what that allows.

Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been alleging for months that the government is misleading the public about its secret interpretation of the law. In May, Senator Wyden said that the American people would be "stunned" and "angry" when they find out how the government is using the act.

The act has been hotly debated in recent months leading up to a vote that extended the government's controversial post-9/11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps.

Around the Web:

USA Patriot Act News - The New York Times

of Twisting Patriot Act - New York Times

Sales in NY Times: Patriot Act a Vital Weapon - George Mason Law

New York Times Sues Federal Government For Keeping Secret ...

Senators: Justice Department Misleading Americans About Patriot Act

FOIA and the Question of Secret Law

Greening Disadvantaged Populations In The Name Of Environmental Justice

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Environmental Justice Strategy Aims To Address Inequities Among Low-Income, Minority And Tribal Groups

New Orleans children play in aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thirty years after the Midnite Mine was closed, clean-up of the 33 million tons of radioactive remains at the site -- located within the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington -- will finally begin. The new agreement to deal with the waste, reached between the federal government and one of the world's largest mining companies, comes after decades of ongoing concern over the inactive uranium mine's threats to tribal and environmental health.

The decision also reflects a growing recognition of the widespread and persistent disparities in the burden of toxic exposures.

Last Tuesday, at the inaugural SXSW Eco conference in Austin, Texas, Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, chief medical officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the release of the 2012 HHS Draft Environmental Justice Strategy. The strategy, Gracia told HuffPost, "recognizes that Indian tribes are a target population with unique issues that we need to work with." The plan also addresses environmental health inequities among low-income and minority populations, and highlights everything from air pollution and unhealthy housing, to hazardous work conditions, environmental disasters and lack of access to nutritious foods or recreational opportunities. (Members of the public can submit comments on the draft until December 3. A final version will be released in February 2012.)

"Sometimes when we speak of the environment, there's little mention of health," said Gracia. "The issue of environmental justice provides one of the clearest examples of the relationship between the environment and health."

Bob Perciasepe, deputy administrator for the EPA, also emphasized the importance of this link and the need to protect all Americans from environmental health risks, especially those who are least able to help themselves. During a Wednesday panel at SXSW Eco, he told attendees that the "uneven distribution of exposures to pollutants" kept him up at night.

Other speakers pointed to model cases of environmental injustice including toxic exposures among agricultural workers and communities struck by the Gulf oil spill. Dr. Howard K. Koh, assistant secretary for health at HHS, referred to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as a "tragic example of a terrible natural disaster striking a population that was very vulnerable to begin with, particularly minorities."

This is not the first time the federal government has recognized the environmental hazards disadvantaged communities face. The environmental justice movement began in earnest after reports in the 1980s found that hazardous waste facilities were more likely to be located in low-income and minority communities, prompting an executive order by President Clinton in 1994. The first environmental justice strategy was devised a year later.

The reinvigorated 2012 version of the strategic plan aims to further ensure that environmental justice factors into the federal decision-making process. The EPA, for example, recently released its own plan to integrate environmental justice into the agency's programs, policies and activities.

Among other revisions, Gracia noted the new strategy's enhanced focus on assisting states and tribes in identifying vulnerable populations, as well as improving weather surveillance and other public health preparations to help communities better respond to disasters. The plan now also formally addresses the effects of climate change -- from sea level rise and extreme weather events to exacerbated air pollution. Poor and minority populations may bear the brunt of these changes, suggest some experts.

Further, the new plan encourages the meaningful involvement of those affected. "One of the big changes is recognizing that environmental justice really is not just about protecting communities from these hazards, but is actually about building healthy communities and giving them capacity to do so," Gracia told HuffPost.

Mando Rayo, vice president of engagement for Cultural Strategies, noted in a Tuesday panel that minorities tend to welcome an opportunity to help protect the environment. "They are the ones seeing the issues related to a lot of these environmental problems," he said. Recent surveys, Rayo pointed out, also suggest that minorities are more concerned about pollution and global warming than the general American population.

Green building is a powerful place to start addressing environmental injustice while opening up new opportunities for employment, according to Elizabeth Galante, director of the non-profit group Global Green USA's New Orleans office. "If you want to do environmental work in Louisiana, you have to focus on economic equity," she said during a Thursday panel. "There are ways to use the built environment to create opportunities to inspire, teach and to lift communities out of poverty."

Galante helps lead an effort called Build It Back Green. Over the last three years, the team has visited every New Orleans neighborhood, bringing in construction experts to show residents how to perform weatherization and other green improvements to their homes. If a resident lacks the resources to pay a contractor to do the work, she said, the program will often cover the costs.

She told the story of one woman helped by the program. For three years prior to her upgrades, the woman had relied on an oxygen tank to breathe in her polluted home. Shortly after the upgrades, she sent the tank back. "It's not just about the energy bills," said Galante. "It's about health and quality of life."

Dana Bourland, vice president of Green Initiatives at Enterprise Community Partners, agreed that living in an energy inefficient house can be a "huge liability" -- likely resulting in energy costs four times as high as those residents of modern homes rack up.

"No more than two percent in total development costs is needed to achieve our energy and water standards," said Bourland. This comes out to about $1,900, while the payback is far greater: about $4,800 in energy and water savings, not to mention the health benefits, she said.

However, providing housing alone is not enough, Bourland said on Thursday's panel.

"As a country, we spend about $17 billion a year on gas just to sit in congestion," she said, noting that low-income households are often disproportionately affected; about 70 percent of their income is spent on housing and transportation. "At the end of the day, they may have roughly 800 dollars a month left for other things," added Bourland.

Given the built environment's powerful influence on a person's day-to-day healthy (or unhealthy) choices, she suggested the importance of locating housing in areas that are walkable and in close proximity to grocery stores and parks.

Across the country, an estimated $226 billion could be saved if communities were better designed to limit costly congestion and energy waste, as well as to cut the high medical costs associated with asthma, obesity and other health consequences, Bourland said.

Still, the more immediate concern for many victims is simply how to get out of their current situation and into a wealthier and healthier one. With unemployment at 55 percent for tribal members living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, according to the Seattle Times, people are eager for jobs cleaning up the radioactive and toxic chemicals that have leaked for decades into the reservation's streams, soil, plants and animals -- a $193 million project that is expected to take a decade.

"How the cleanup will occur is important," Deb Abrahamson, founder of the SHAWL Society and tribal activist, told the Times, suggesting that tribal workers should know the risks and how to protect themselves, or "we're going to have another generation facing occupational exposure to toxins."

Correction: Dr. J. Nadine Gracia announced the HHS Environmental Justice Strategy, not Lisa Garcia as the story previously reported. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ef7f

Impossible to Hide the Decline

Amplify’d from robomonkey.wordpress.com

Impossible to Hide the Decline

Yid with Lid — …Great Britain, which just went through two record cold winters is in store for some more. Scientists are predicting that Britain may be facing a mini-ice age that may last for decades. It’s partly the fault of the La Nina weather pattern… The real cause for this prediction is the Sun. It has been emitting few ultra violet rays (not that you would know by looking at Snooki). …the news about the arctic ice cap may be just as depressing. So far it has been very cold in the arctic this fall, in fact it has been coldest autumn the arctic has seen in over a decade. Because of this cold the arctic has added a Manhattan-sized chunk of ice to the ice cap every 30 seconds for the last 30 days… As our President, the EPA and many other progressives work to slow down the economy with crippling regulations to reduce “greenhouse gasses,” it seems that mother earth does not want to cooperate. … Read more at robomonkey.wordpress.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ef5h

They Have No Hope, But Change Would Be Nice

Amplify’d from robomonkey.wordpress.com

They Have No Hope, But Change Would Be Nice

See more at robomonkey.wordpress.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ef5e

Bill Gates talking about killing of 0.9 billion people with health care ...

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Most Wall Street Workers Say They Expect Same Or Higher Bonus As Last Year: Survey

More than 60 percent of financial professionals believe they'll get the same or a larger bonus than last year, a survey found.

Jillian Berman

While most Americans aren’t expecting their incomes to rise with the cost of living in the near future, more than 60 percent of Wall Street professionals say they anticipate their bonuses will be higher or the same as the bonus they earned in 2010, according to a recent survey.

Sixty-two percent of Wall Street workers said they’re expecting a bonus that’s in line with last year’s or higher, according to a survey from eFinancialCareers.com. And while still a firm majority, that’s down from last year, when 71 percent of survey respondents said they expected the same or higher bonus than what they received in 2009.

The decline in expectations is likely due to a drop in confidence in big bank employees. The survey found that 38 percent of big bank employees anticipate a drop in their bonuses from last year, compared with 36 percent that are expecting an increase.

Big bank employees may be skittish because of a rash of recent layoff announcements. Bank of America plans to layoff 30,000 employees in an effort to trim about $5 billion per year the company announced last month. Barclays announced in August that it would slash about 3,000 jobs this year, while UBS said it plans to axe 5,000 jobs.

Bonus plans likely won’t be announced until January, but if last year is any indication Wall Street workers should expect their bonuses to fall. The average Wall Street bonus was down 9 percent in 2010 as the reforms in those Dodd-Frank Act aimed at curbing bonuses pushed in fact base salaries and deferred compensation up.

More than half of the survey respondents said they believed that the financial reforms played a large role in big banks’ decisions to downsize. Bank of America President Brian Moynihan and other banking industry officials have also cited the Dodd-Frank act as causing revenue declines that pushed the companies into charging consumers more fees for various checking account services.

Still there are some that think the reforms haven’t gone far enough to curb Wall Street excesses like bonuses, which came out to an average of $128,530 in 2010. Protesters, calling themselves Occupy Wall Street, have been camped out in Manhattan’s financial district since Sept. 17 demonstrating against corporate greed and income inequality among other things. The movement has inspired similar demonstrations across the country. Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ef1x

Brian, Khanklink Pyron Face Foreclosure Over Never-Transferred Title [WATCH]

Harry Bradford



Under the best of circumstances, foreclosure is a painful process. But in Houston, Texas, one couple is now joining the unenviable ranks of those losing their home for reasons unrelated to payments.



Brian and Khanklink Pyron, as well as their 18-month-old daughter, may soon lose the family's first home despite allegedly staying current on payments because they were never technically transferred the title of the house, MyFoxHouston reports (h/t The Consumerist).



In 2008, shortly after the Pyrons purchased their home but before the title to the estate was transferred, the responsible company went bankrupt. Never notified of the situation, the family continued for two years to make mortgage payments to their lender Bank of America, according to MyFoxHouston. Those payments, however, never reached Wells Fargo, the mortgage-holder previous to the Pyron's purchase of the home.



"We did everything we were supposed to do," Brian Pyron told MyFoxHouston. "Nobody has communicated with us, notified us. We had been paying our mortgage and everything."



Stories like that of the Pyron's have become familiar since the recession. In August, a senior couple in Florida faced foreclosure not for missing a payment, but for sending a check too early.



In June it was reported that a man in Massachusetts faced foreclosure over a $0.00 payment that Bank of America said he owed. More recently, a Florida resident nearly lost her condo over what had originally been a fee of $4.70.



Millions have dealt with foreclosures since the housing bust. In August, foreclosure sales accounted for six times more home purchases than they would in a healthy housing market, according to experts.



Now some homeowners are fighting back. AOL Real Estate reports that protests organized by The New Bottom Line, a coalition protesting big bank foreclosure practices, have already taken place in Seattle and Boston and are set to begin in New York, Chicago and Minneapolis this week.



A pending foreclosure settlement against major U.S. banks has recently lost steam, with California pulling out of discussions and Attorneys General from Massachusetts and New York having expressed concerns that the current settlement too easily lets banks off the hook.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ef1t

http://amplify.com/u/a1ef1p

Amplify’d from www.space.com

'Jaw-Dropping!' Crab Nebula's Powerful Beams Shock Astronomers

by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer

An artist's conception of the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula, with a Hubble Space Telescope photo of the nebula in the background. Researchers using the VERITAS telescope array have discovered pulses of high-energy gamma rays coming from this object. CREDIT: David A. Aguilar / NASA / ESA View full size image

When astronomers detected intense radiation pumping out of the Crab Nebula, one of the most studied objects in space, at higher energies than anyone thought possible, they were nothing short of stunned. The inexplicably powerful gamma-rays came from the very heart of the Crab Nebula, where an extreme object called a pulsar resides. "It was totally not expected — it was absolutely jaw-dropping," Andrew McCann, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a co-author of the new study, told SPACE.com. "This is one of the hottest targets in the sky, so people have been looking at the Crab Nebula for a long time. Now there's a twist in the tale. High-energy rays coming from the nebula are well-known, but coming from the pulsar is something nobody expected."

Details of the study, which was led by Nepomuk Otte, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are published in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science.

The Crab's mysteries The photogenic Crab Nebula is really the wreckage of a long-dead star that emitted an explosion of light that reached Earth in the year 1054, and was seen and recorded by Chinese and Native American skygazers. The dying star was located 6,500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus when it erupted in a brilliant supernova explosion. [50 Fabulous Deep-Space Nebula Photos] At the heart of the nebula's colorful layers of gas is a so-called pulsar, which is the remains of the original star's core that collapsed in on itself into a super-dense, spinning neutron star. The Crab pulsar spins 30 times a second and is so dense that it has a greater mass than the sun. A pulsar emits a continuous beam of radiation that sweeps around like a lighthouse, but appears to pulse when it is viewed through ground-based telescopes. The gamma-ray beams that were detected from the Crab pulsar exceeded 100 billion electron-volts, stronger than anyone or any theories projected — a million times more energetic than medical X-rays and 100 billion times stronger than visible light, the researchers said.

The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the most detailed view of the Crab Nebula in one of the largest images ever assembed by the space-based observatory. CREDIT: NASA/ESA and Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). View full size image

"If you asked theorists a year ago whether we would see gamma-ray pulses this energetic, almost all of them would have said, 'No,'" study co-author Martin Schroedter, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. "There's just no theory that can account for what we've found. In fact, the findings were so unlikely that some researchers told Otte that he was crazy to look for such highly energetic emissions from the pulsar. "It turns out that being persistent and stubborn helps," Otte said in a statement. Shaking up the field These new details of the Crab pulsar could change scientists' understanding of gamma-ray emissions and how they are generated, Otte added. [Top 10 Strangest Things in Space] "We thought we understood the gamma-ray emission, and this was really becoming a foundational feature of our models, but that's now thrown out," McCann explained. "The reason why this is so exciting is that it's turning things around in the field." The gamma-ray beams from the Crab pulsar were detected by the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), which is located at the Smithsonian's Whipple Observatory, just south of Tucson, Ariz. Possible explanations for the Crab pulsar's intense beams have been suggested, but the researchers said that plenty more data will need to be collected before the mechanisms behind these gamma-ray pulses can be better understood. Scientists also expect to refine their observations once VERITAS undergoes an upgrade in the summer of 2012 to make its instruments more sensitive, McCann said. Other planned next-generation observatories — such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), a project to build a very high-energy gamma-ray instrument — should also further this research. "It's much more long term, but once CTA comes on, it's really going to write the book on this," McCann said. VERITAS, which began collecting full-scale observations in 2007, is used to examine the remains of exploded stars, distant galaxies, powerful gamma-ray bursts, and to search for evidence of mysterious dark matter particles.

Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions Top 10 Star Mysteries Gallery: Strange Nebula Shapes, What Do You See? Read more at www.space.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ee34

Amplify’d from www.infowars.com

Armored Vehicles Plow Into Protesting Christians In Cairo

At least 24 people have been killed in clashes in Cairo Sunday, as Christians angry over a recent church attack, fought with hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces.

See more at www.infowars.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1ee1c

CNN News 2011 Niburu is Real!

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

The Revelation Of The Pyramids

Important Note for Viewers: This is an excellent documentary! highly recommend you to watch quickly before it's gone (This file will delete within few hours). For centuries the Great Pyramids have fascinated mankind and each year brings a batch of new theories from the plausible to the absolutely bizarre. Now in THE REVELATION OF THE PYRAMIDS, out on 22nd August, courtesy of Optimum Home Entertainment, the truth is uncovered. After nearly forty years of study and research, the producers of this documentary have at last managed first to understand and then to prove what lies behind one of the greatest archaeological mysteries. Patrice Pooyard, the director of the film guides you through the world's oldest and most beautiful sites after six years of investigation, aided by his anonymous informants and technical specialists. The result will shake the world history to its very core, and revolutionise Egyptology entirely.

See more at www.youtube.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1edfq

The Revelation Of The Pyramids