The Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Wednesday that Turkish Trade and Customs Minister Hayati Yazici had announced that the wall would be built along the Cilvegozu gate with Syria in Turkey’s southern province of Hatay.

The minister added that a protocol had already been signed with the Turkish Armed Forces on the construction of the wall.

“According to the protocol, we have defined a project that aims to increase the security of the military zone by building a part barbed wire, part concrete wall with security camera system,” Yazici stated.

The Turkish minister said Ankara would also expand the use of X-ray control devices in the border area.  “These devices scan cars while they cross the border. We sent them to Cilvegozu and we are working to increase their number.”

The Cilvegozu gate is located about ten kilometers from the central part of the Turkish town of Reyhanli, where two car bomb attacks claimed over 50 lives and injured more than 100 people on May 11. Yazici said Ankara had closed the Yayladagi border gate with Syria after the Reyhanli bombings to prevent suspects from fleeing. The Yayladagi gate is situated some 90 kilometers from Reyhanli.

Ankara has accused Damascus of being behind the bombings, but the Syrian government holds Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responsible for the attacks. Syria says Turkey has facilitated the flow of arms, explosives, vehicles, militants and money into the country over the past months of turmoil.

© Copyright 2013 Press TV – Published at Set You Free News with license

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The unbalanced federal budget and the growing debt of the United States greatly in­crease the risk of US dollar devaluation, there­fore threatening its status as a world reserve currency. The currency which serves as the store of wealth for the governments and cen­tral banks of the world should not be exposed to devaluation risks. The quantitative easing stimulus used by the Obama administration to kick-start the ailing American economy is often viewed as an exercise in unbridled mon­ey printing which allows the US government to export inflation around the world and buy votes at home at the expense of the foreign holders of dollar-denominated currency re­serves.

A sign of global distrust in the way the US government manages the world’s most impor­tant currency is the resurgence of gold as an investment and as a currency. Central banks of China, Russia, Brazil, South Korea, Kazakh­stan, Philippines, Mexico, South Africa, Paki­stan and Turkey have been buying gold from local mines and international markets. Last year was a record breaking year for central bank gold demand as the world’s monetary authorities bought 534.6 tons of the yellow metal. The recent drop in gold prices left the central banks unfazed. Dominic Schnider, head of commodities research at UBS AG’s wealth-management unit in Singapore told Bloomberg that “central banks are here to stay as net buyers; they are probably the ultra long­term investors”.

Gold is often regarded as an ultimate reserve currency because it cannot be “printed” at will. The mainstream media and the political cheerleaders of quantitative easing try to downplay the importance of gold as an alternative to the US dollar. Such attempts are easily explained by Peter Schiff, an American investment broker, author and conservative financial commentator who be­lieves that “politicians don’t like the gold standard, because it keeps them honest”.

Gold is not the only competi­tor for the role of the currency that will replace the weakening US dollar. China is trying to break free from its dollar de­pendency and is creating a web of bilateral “swap lines” and trade agreements that will help the internationalization of the Yuan. Before the beginning of the American economic crisis, almost all of the Chinese exports were priced in US dollars, re­gardless of the geographical lo­cation of the buyers. Now, China is trying to switch its trade to Yuan. If the European, African, South American and Asia buy­ers of the Chinese goods require the Yuan to pay for their pur­chases, China will achieve its goal of creating a Yuan-based economic ecosystem. This eco­system is likely to gradually re­duce the global influence of the US dollar, confining its use to the North American continent.

According to a report by the Organization for Economic Co­operation and Development, China will become the world’s largest economy, overtaking America, around 2016 so it is only natural for its currency to become the main currency of the world economy.

China is not the only coun­try trying to reduce the world’s dependency on the US dollar. BRlCS control more than half of the world’s trade, 40% of the la­bor force and 25% of the world’s GDP. A big part of the influence of the dollar is due to the fact that institutions like the IMF and World Bank give dollar- based credits to countries around the world. For the worlds’ corpo­rations, dollar-based financing is the cheapest and most accessible. The BRICS aim to change this situation and are actively financ­ing African, European and South American countries which are taking loans in Yuans or Rus­sian Rubbles. Moreover, BRICS countries are becoming the creditors of choice for the Euro­pean companies. Replacing the current dollar-based financial system has become a top priority for the BRICS leadership.

One of the points of the official Russian “Strategy for BRICS participa­tion” signed by the President Vladimir Putin states that one of the goals of BRICS is the “reform of the global financial system for the creation of a more represen­tative, stable and predictable sys­tem of world reserve currencies”.

The reputation of the dollar is getting clob­bered by each fiscal mistake made in Washington and each rise of the debt ceiling. Even the geeks and the hackers of the digital age are jumping on the bandwagon of alternative currency creation. A digital, encrypted, peer-to-peer currency called Bitcoin has emerged from the cypherpunk subculture and has taken the internet by storm. Bitcoins can now be used for buying web servic­es, guns, gold, pizzas and even cars. So far, Bitcoin looks like a grassroots attempt to use technology where American politicians have failed.

The American mainstream media has made a habit out of demonizing anyone who tries to circumvent or reform the dollar system. The Chinese are being accused of “stabbing the dol­lar”; gold investors are labeled “gold bugs” while the users of Bitcoins are being accused of money laundering without any proof whatsoever. The world can’t be forced to use the dollar at gunpoint. Why would anyone want to price goods or store wealth in a currency which is being continuously debased? What happens if the President of the US decides to naturalize 15 millions of illegal aliens and grant them the right to use Medicare, Medicaid and provide them with foodstamps? Such expenses can only be financed through ob­scene amounts of freshly printed money.

In such a scenario, the dollar could lose half of its value overnight. Why would anyone trust a currency exposed to such risks? The main enemies of the dollar based currency system do not come from Beijing or Moscow or a secretive hacking com­munity. The main enemies of a strong and reli­able dollar are located in Washington DC.

Until the American budgetary mess is sorted out, the rest of the world, along with free-spirited Ameri­can citizens, will have to look for alternatives to the once mighty US dollar. Deprived of the privileges given by the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency, the US will not be able to pay for imports, finance its army and provide social security to its citizens.

The fall of the dollar sys­tem will force the US government to default on its debts and cut its budget. If Washington’s reck­less policy doesn’t change, America will become a second-rate country engulfed in poverty, price inflation and social unrest.

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Delegates from around the world will converge on Port-au-Prince May 31 to take part in a two-day Continental Conference aimed at bringing an end to the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH, which marks its ninth anniversary on Jun. 1.

The military occupation force, which now comprises about 9,000 armed soldiers and police officers from some 50 countries and costs some $850 million per year, was deployed by the UN Security Council at the behest of permanent members U.S. and France following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état (which Washington and Paris fomented) against former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At the time, the world public was told that the mission would be deployed for only six months, time enough to hold new elections. Instead, MINUSTAH is now entering its 10^th year. Its latest one-year mandate ends Oct. 15, 2013.

The Continental Conference, spearheaded by a Brazilian political action committee called “To Defend Haiti Is To Defend Ourselves,” will be attended by activists from the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, France, Spain, the United States, and other countries. Over 150 delegates from all corners of Haiti will also attend the conference, to be held at the Plaza Hotel in downtown Port-au-Prince.

The Haitian organizing committee, composed of unions and popular organizations, is also organizing a public rally from 3 to 6 p.m. on May 31 in the Place Dessalines on the Champs de Mars in conjunction with the conference.

On Jun. 1, dozens of Haitians will testify before the Conference about MINUSTAH’s many alleged crimes, including thievery, rape, murder, and massacres.

From Apr. 15 to 24, outspoken Sen. Moïse Jean-Charles conducted a speaking tour in Brazil and Argentina to build support for the conference, where he will be a leading speaker. “It is an outrage that Brazil and Argentina are doing Washington’s dirty work in Haiti,” Moïse told a large public meeting held at the Legislative Assembly in Sao Paolo on Apr. 18. “Brazilian and Argentinian troops are not helping Haiti. They are merely defending U.S. imperial interests.”

Brazilian soldiers make up MINUSTAH’s largest contingent, about 2,200 soldiers. There are about 600 Argentinian troops in the force. During the 10 day trip to the two countries, Moïse met with governement officials, parliamentarians, unionists, students, popular organizations, and the general public, in meetings both large and small.

On Apr. 16, for example, Senator Moïse met with the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Deputies in Brasilia. Four deputies, Committee president Nelson Pellegrino and Fernando Ferro, both of the ruling Workers Party (PT), and Luiza Erundina and José Stédile, both of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), held a cordial meeting of over 90 minutes with the senator, who stressed, as he did at other meetings, that the Haitian Senate had unanimously voted a resolution in 2011 calling on MINUSTAH to completely withdraw from Haiti by October 2012. That resolution has been flagrantly ignored by the UN.

Then later that same day, Sen. Moïse met for almost two hours with students at the University of Brasilia, who asked him many questions. “Everybody knows that Brazil is heading up the UN military occupation in Haiti,” he said in response to one question. “But who is making the big money in Haiti? The Americans. Who is giving the orders? The Americans. This game of bluff has to stop.”

Senators, deputies, city councilmen, leaders from large union federations, and prominent activists from Brazil, Argentina, and around Latin America and Europe have pledged to attend the event.

In the build-up to the Continental Conference, meetings have been held in numerous countries. On May 17 in New York, a political and cultural fundraising rally was held at the Riverside Church featuring the renowned musical group Welfare Poets and several other artists.

Other speakers included Dr. Fritz Fils-Aimé of the  Haitian American Veterans Association (HAVA), Dr. M. Alexendre Sacha Vington of Humanity Haiti, Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council, Ralph Pointer, the husband of jailed human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart, and Kim Ives of Haïti Liberté.

“People around the world are standing with the Haitian people in their call for UN troops to get out of Haiti,” said Colia Clark, a veteran civil rights activist who worked alongside Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., and who organized the May 17 event.

“The upcoming Continental Conference in Port-au-Prince will be the first time people and organizations from around the world will sit down together to see how we can assist our Haitian brothers and sisters in their struggle to regain their sovereignty and send MINUSTAH packing.”

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Last week Syrians lost access to the Internet for the second time in a month. While the Assad regime claims the lapses were the result of a faulty network link, the evidence suggests that they were deliberate efforts by the government to hamper the opposition’s ability to communicate inside the country and with the outside world.

As American policy makers debate additional measures to pressure President Bashar al-Assad and aid moderate elements of the opposition, they should consider a military cybercampaign to give Syrians the ability to communicate freely online. Doing so would serve our strategic interests, while also demonstrating a principled commitment to Internet freedom.

For example, through the military’s new Cyber Command, we could create a digital “safe haven,” akin to physical safe havens for refugees, by deploying long-distance Wi-Fi technologies along Syria’s borders and in rebel-held areas in coordination with vetted opposition groups.

Platforms that enable transmission of Wi-Fi signals over distances of up to 60 miles are already in use in parts of South Asia and other rural markets.

With a guarantee of secure Internet access points, opposition groups would be able to link their terrestrial and wireless networks with those of like-minded groups. This would enable them to reach deeper into the country, giving broad sections of the Syrian populace Internet access. And because the United States would be able to monitor those networks, we could make sure that moderate opposition elements would be the primary beneficiaries.

Subsequent actions could include measures to counter the Assad regime’s capacity to monitor opposition communications within the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

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You probably know already that organic foods are good for you. The major problem most people have with organic food is the expense. However, there are several different ways to radically reduce the cost of your food.

Growing your own is probably one of the best, and can be extremely satisfying. I am convinced that growing sprouts is more practical and useful for most people and takes less space and time but it will be a bit longer before I am able to provide a comprehensive article on how to do that.

In the meantime anyone, regardless of space allowance, can also produce their own food. If you have a back yard, you’re blessed indeed. But apartment dwellers can also grow fresh produce. Alex Mitchell’s book The Edible Balcony is an excellent resource.

One of the major benefits of growing your own food is that you have complete control over the end product, from soil composition to chemical exposure.

Whereas a conventionally-grown garden might include the use of chemical fertilizers and potentially toxic insecticides to protect the crop, an organic gardener will forgo the chemicals and feed the soil with natural fertilizers and insect barriers.

The same goes for weed control. While a traditional gardener may apply synthetic herbicides to control weeds, an organic gardener, just like an organic farmer, will use hand weeding and cover crops with mulches to control weeds. For every toxic solution, there’s usually an equally effective non-toxic alternative.

Growing Seedlings Can Give You a Head Start on the Season

While you can certainly wait until the danger of spring frost has passed, and then plant your seeds directly in the soil outdoors, you can get a head start by growing seedlings and then transplanting them into your garden. This can be particularly useful in areas where the growing season is short.

Growing seedlings, which can take between four and 12 weeks to sprout, will allow you to harvest your vegetables four to six weeks earlier than had you planted the seeds directly outdoors.

The University of Maine¹ has an excellent web site describing how to grow your seedlings, and which ones are best left for direct-seeding due to their rapid maturation:

“Using transplants instead of direct-seeding is especially important for plants that take a long time to mature or are sensitive to frost, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and melons.

Some plants (mostly root crops) do not transplant well, or they mature quickly enough that starting seedlings indoors is not necessary. Vegetables that are typically direct-seeded in the garden include beans, beets, carrots, corn, peas, spinach, turnips, and zucchini.”

To get started on your seedlings, you need just a few supplies:

• Fresh seed, ideally heirloom

• Containers, about 2 to 3 1/2-inch deep with adequate drainage holes

• Growing medium. Use fine-textured soilless mix of equal parts of peat moss and vermiculite or perlite. Do not use conventional fertilizers

Now, once your seedlings are grown and the outdoor temperature is 45 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, the plant will require one to two weeks of “hardening off” before they can be transplanted into the ground, to prevent them from going into shock. This is done by placing them outdoors for just a few hours at a time in a semi-shaded location.

Gradually, over several days, increase the time you leave them outdoors, and gradually increase the amount of direct sunlight they’re exposed to. Transplant your seedlings into your garden in the late afternoon, as the weather starts to cool down (or choose a cloudy day), and water the plants thoroughly. For detailed step-by-step instructions, see the University of Maine’s seedling page².

The Edible Balcony

In her book The Edible Balcony, Alex Mitchell details how to grow fresh produce in small spaces. Filled with beautiful color photographs throughout, the book helps you determine what might work best for you, depending on your space and location, and guides you through the design basics of a bountiful small-space garden. For example, those who live in a high-rise apartment will undoubtedly have to content with more wind than those who live on the bottom floor. There are solutions for virtually every problem, and in this case, wind-tolerant plants can be used, or you could construct some sort of protective screening.

You can use virtually every square foot of your space, including your lateral space. Hanging baskets are ideal for a wide variety of foods, such as strawberries, leafy greens, runner beans, pea shoots, tomatoes, and a variety of herbs. And instead of flowers, window boxes can hold herbs, greens, radishes, scallions, bush beans, strawberries, chard, and chiles, for example.

While you will obviously need to use pots if you don’t have a garden plot, avoid using many small pots. The smaller the pot, the faster it will dry out. Instead, opt for large yet lightweight containers. You may also want to consider self-watering pots, which will reduce the time you have to spend watering. (You could even make your own. Mitchell shows you how in her book.)

Another excellent tip for the time-pressed gardener is to install a timer to your outside tap, and have a plastic dripping tube connected to the tap. Position one tube over each pot to be watered. Then all you have to do is set the timer to water your plants twice a day for five or ten minutes. Adding a top layer of mulch will also reduce the amount of watering a plant will need. For smaller containers, mix in a handful of water-retaining crystals or gel, as these will help retain moisture. Mitchell’s book contains creative solutions to take advantage of every nook and cranny, and recycle common household items for your garden. Such tips include:

• Attaching horizontal rows of gutters on a wall, which can hold your leafy greens and herbs

• A hanging bottle herb garden, using discarded plastic bottles

• Two or more stacked tires with a plastic bag to hold the soil can make for an excellent planter for plants that like warm soil, such as sweet potatoes and basil

Another excellent tip is provided in Mitchell’s book: An ancient technique called “3 sisters,” used by the Native American Indians, involves planting specific combinations of plants together, as the plants support each other. For example:

“Corn provides something for the beans to climb up, while they in turn add nitrogen to the soil. This benefits the corn and squash, and the latter helpfully shades the roots of the other plants, protecting them from the drying effects of the sun.”

What Kind of Soil Should You Use for Your Potted Garden?

Quality produce begins with healthy soil. This is because the nutrition your plants require is derived from beneficial microorganisms in the soil. These organisms take the mineral material that’s in your soil and convert it into a plant-available form. Without these bioorganisms, your plants cannot get the nutrients they need. According to Mitchell.

“When you first plant anything, you need to buy potting mix. The one you buy depends on what you are growing: annual vegetables, fruit, and flowers are happy with one that is general, soilless, organic and peat-free; acid-loving crops such as blueberries need lime-free compost; while fruit trees and bushes, which will live for many years, will benefit from a soil-based potting mix, which releases its nutrients slowly.”

If you have enough space to create your own compost, I highly recommend picking up Dr. Elaine Ingham’s book, 10 Steps to Gardening with Nature. Dr. Ingham³ is chief research scientist at Rodale Institute, and is an internationally recognized expert on the benefits of sustainable soil science. Her book explains the mechanisms behind how the beneficial microorganisms in the soil benefit your plants, and how to create compost that support your chosen crops. You can also find valuable information and resources on soil health and composting on the Rodale Institute’s website.⁴

Besides composting, setting up a little worm farm can also help you restore soil health naturally, eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers. In addition to helping create a valuable compost to help plants grow, worms have also been singled out for their ability to break down toxins like cadmium, lead and other heavy metals, helping to detoxify soil. They do this by optimizing the bacterial content of the soil. Worms also can even break down cardboard waste fibers, making them a potential recycling tool.

While we’re touching on larger-scale gardens, it may be useful to know that shrubs and trees require two-and-a-half to four times less water than a lawn. Amazingly, a typical suburban lawn uses an estimated 10,000 gallons of water each season, above what’s provided by rainfall. So planting an edible garden can kill several birds with one stone; not only can you reduce your food bill while eating the freshest food imaginable, your garden can also reduce your outdoor water usage. To learn more about water conservation, see Audubon’s water conservation page.⁵

Keeping Weeds and Pests at Bay

Another important aspect of growing your own food is the ability to avoid chemical exposure. American homeowners apply an estimated 78 million pounds of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides per year to their homes, lawns, and gardens.⁶ The problem is that these toxic chemicals are toxic not just to the weeds or critters they’re designed to kill. They’re also toxic to beneficial insects, birds, wild animals, pets, young children, and anyone who eats foods to which these toxins have been applied. According to Audubon:⁷

“In a recent study of pesticide exposure among children living in a major U.S. metropolitan area, traces of garden chemicals were found in 99 percent of the 110 children tested.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides to be carcinogenic. Pesticides (used to kill insects) are also notoriously hazardous. Commonly used pesticides have been linked to health problems such as:

Fortunately, there are safe and effective natural alternatives for virtually every pest problem you come across. For instance, for a homemade garden spray that will discourage most pests, use some mashed garlic paste combined with a little cayenne pepper or horseradish. Add a small amount to a gallon jug of water and let it sit for a day or two, shaking it occasionally. Just spray a small amount onto a few leaves first to make sure it’s not so strong that it will burn them.

For more details on these types of natural solutions to pests of all kinds, I recommend the book Dead Snails Leave No Trails by Nancarrow and Taylor, or visit the website BeyondPesticides.org.⁸ They have a section on do-it-yourself natural solutions⁹ to a wide range of pest problems along with a resource to find pest management companies that use non-toxic products.¹⁰ Mitchell’s book also has a section on how to address a wide variety of specific plant pests.

Sprouts—One of the Most Nutrient Dense Foods, Ideal for Small Spaces

Sprouts are an authentic “super” food that many overlook or have long stopped using. In addition to their superior nutritional profile, sprouts are really easy to grow if you’re an apartment dweller, as they don’t require an outdoor garden.

A powerhouse of nutrition, sprouts can contain up to 30 times the nutrition of organic vegetables grown in your own garden, and allow your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat. During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable. Furthermore, both the quality of the protein and the fiber content of beans, nuts, seeds and grains improves when sprouted. The content of vitamins and essential fatty acids also increase dramatically during the sprouting process.

Sunflower seed and pea sprouts tend to top the list of all the seeds that you can sprout and are typically each about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:

• Support for cell regeneration

• Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage

• Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)

• Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

Planting and Harvesting Sprouts at Home

I used to grow sprouts in Ball jars over 10 years ago but stopped doing that. I am strongly convinced that actually growing them in soil is far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. It is also less time consuming. With Ball jars you need to rinse them several times a day to prevent mold growth. Trays also take up less space. I am now consuming one whole tray you see below every 2-3 days and to produce that much food with Ball jars I would need dozens of jars. I simply don’t have the time or patience for that.

I am in the process of compiling more specific detailed videos for future articles but I thought I would whet your appetite and give you a preview with the photos below. For now you can get instructions on how to grow them by viewing a step-by-step guide at rawfoods-livingfoods.com.¹¹

My two favorites are sunflower sprouts and pea. They provide some of the highest quality protein you can eat. Sprouted sunflower seeds also contain plenty of iron and chlorophyll, the latter of which will help detoxify your blood and liver. Of the seeds, sunflower seeds are among the best in terms of overall nutritional value, and sprouting them will augment their nutrient content by as much as 300 to 1,200 percent! Similarly, sprouting peas will improve the bioavailability of zinc and magnesium.

I have been sprouting them now for a few months and they have radically improved the nutrition of my primary meal, which is a comprehensive salad at lunch. They are a perfect complement to the fermented vegetables. My current salad consists of about half a pound of sunflower sprouts, four ounces of fermented vegetables, half a large red pepper, several tablespoon of raw organic butter, some red onion, a whole avocado and about three ounces of salmon or chicken. It is my primary meal. In the late afternoon, I typically only have macadamia nuts and coconut candy in addition to drinking 16-32 ounces of green vegetable juice. I break it up occasionally by going to a restaurant with friends.

Ready, Set, Garden!

With benefits ranging from fresher, uncontaminated food and cutting your grocery bill, to beautifying your community and educating the next generation, there’s really nothing holding anyone back from creating an edible garden—even if all you have is a couple of window sills or a small balcony. There are tons of creative solutions that will allow you to make the most of even the tiniest space.

Sprouts is one of my favorite tight-space crops, simply because you get so much for so little time, money and effort. It’s hard to find a food that will provide you with so much nutrition. So try it out! Start small, and as you get the hang of it, add another container of something else. Before you know it, large portions of your meals could come straight from your own edible garden.

You want to also make sure you are using only the finest seeds when starting your garden.  Picking the types of seeds can go a long way in helping your garden be plentiful and even determines how juicy or hardy your vegetables are. Heirloom seeds are seeds that have been carefully cultivated to produce the best plants possible; they’re hardy and bountiful. You can find packages containing 26 of the popular heirloom seeds in my Heirloom Variety Seed Collection, available in my online store.

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If the data on a well-known international weather forecasting website, accuweather.com is to be believed, the Ultra Violet (UV) radiation in Chhattisgarh is at critically high levels, exposing residents to the risks of various skin ailments, including cancer.

While the local meteorological department does not collect any data on daily UV radiation, popularly known as UV Index, the website indicates that for the past four days the levels across the state have been recorded above 11, which in meteorological parlance is dubbed as “Extreme” and coded with purple colour.

In fact the UV level was the highest today at 13 in all major cities of the state, including Raipur and Bilaspur.

According to Dr ASRAS Shastri, Professor Department of Agrometerology, Indira Gandhi Agriculture University, said that many factors go into calculating the UV index for a particular area on a given day, including the elevation of the location, cloud coverage for that day, the amount of ozone in the atmosphere over that area and skin’s sensitivity to UV radiation.

He said the scale typically runs from 0-10, with 0 being the lowest risk of UV exposure (night time) to 10, when the conditions for radiation are at their peak. Ratings of 11 or higher are typically only used in areas where there is significant damage to the ozone layer. The higher the number, the more at risk you are, and the more safety measures you should be taking.

Dr Vivek Chaudhary, Cancer specialist and in-charge of Cancer Institute, Raipur said that in Chhattisgarh, sunlight is high, dry heat and due to high industries pollution, UV rays are at extreme level and that is the reason skin cancer cases are high in number. In 2008, only 19 cases were reported while 42 cases were reported in 2012. He said it’s more common in those who are exposed to sunlight for long hours.

Dr AK Chandrakar, head of Ophthalmology department, Dr BR Ambedkar hospital said that in Chhattisgarh, people get cataract at early age (around 40-42) than their counterparts in other states. “We believe that exposure to sunlight, because of work, is one of the biggest risk factors. There has been no study indicating radiation as a risk factor in India. But there is medical literature abroad that shows that it can lead to early cataract.

According to WHO, excessive exposure to UV radiation caused loss of approximately 1.5 million DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) and 60000 premature deaths in the year 2000. It states that between 50% and 90% of skin cancers are due to UV radiation.

What is surprising is that while UV radiation alerts are issued by weather monitoring agencies in all advanced countries, advising people to take adequate precautions, the meteorological here has no clue about it. According to officials here, recording UV radiations does not fall within their purview.

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Now they’re just messing with us. Physicists have long known that quantum mechanics allows for a subtle connection between quantum particles called entanglement, in which measuring one particle can instantly set the otherwise uncertain condition, or “state,” of another particle—even if it’s light years away.

Now, experimenters in Israel have shown that they can entangle two photons that don’t even exist at the same time.

“It’s really cool,” says Jeremy O’Brien, an experimenter at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the work. Such time-separated entanglement is predicted by standard quantum theory, O’Brien says, “but it’s certainly not widely appreciated, and I don’t know if it’s been clearly articulated before.”

Entanglement is a kind of order that lurks within the uncertainty of quantum theory. Suppose you have a quantum particle of light, or photon. It can be polarized so that it wriggles either vertically or horizontally.

The quantum realm is also hazed over with unavoidable uncertainty, and thanks to such quantum uncertainty, a photon can also be polarized vertically and horizontally at the same time. If you then measure the photon, however, you will find it either horizontally polarized or vertically polarized, as the two-ways-at-once state randomly “collapses” one way or the other.

Entanglement can come in if you have two photons. Each can be put into the uncertain vertical-and-horizontal state. However, the photons can be entangled so that their polarizations are correlated even while they remain undetermined.

For example, if you measure the first photon and find it horizontally polarized, you’ll know that the other photon has instantaneously collapsed into the vertical state and vice versa—no matter how far away it is. Because the collapse happens instantly, Albert Einstein dubbed the effect “spooky action at a distance.” It doesn’t violate relativity, though: It’s impossible to control the outcome of the measurement of the first photon, so the quantum link can’t be used to send a message faster than light.

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Accrording to a statement from the FBI, two FBI special agents were killed last Friday during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Special Agent Christopher Lorek and Special Agent Stephen Shaw were members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico, Virginia. The cause of the incident is under review, the FBI said.

Prison Plane reports that last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Yesterday, I reported that a man,  who knew Boston bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot dead by an FBI agent Tuesday night in Orlando.

People surrounding the Tsarnaev brothers are dying at a faster than rate those who were somehow connected to the JFK assassination.

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A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained.

In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success.

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes.

“What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”

At the heart of the network, Hudes said, are 147 financial institutions and central banks — especially the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress but is owned by essentially a cartel of private banks. “This is a story about how the international financial system was secretly gamed, mostly by central banks — they’re the ones we are talking about,” she explained. “The central bankers have been gaming the system. I would say that this is a power grab.”

The Fed in particular is at the very center of the network and the coverup, Hudes continued, citing a policy and oversight body that includes top government and Fed officials. Central bankers have also been manipulating gold prices, she added, echoing widespread concerns that The New American has documented extensively. Indeed, even the inaccurate World Bank financial statements that Hudes has been trying to expose are linked to the U.S. central bank, she said.

“The group that we’re talking about from the Zurich study — that’s the Federal Reserve; it has some other pieces to it, but that’s the Federal Reserve,” Hudes explained. “So the Federal Reserve secretly dominated the world economy using secret, interlocking corporate directorates, and terrorizing anybody who managed to figure out that they were having any kind of role, and putting people in very important positions so that they could get a free pass.”

The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”

As far as intervening in the gold price, Hudes said it was an effort by the powerful network and its central banks to “hold onto its paper currency” — a suspicion shared by many analysts and even senior government officials. The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. Even congressmen and foreign governments have tried to find out if the precious metals were still there, but they met with little success. Hudes, however, believes the scam will eventually come undone.

“This is like crooks trying to figure out where they can go hide. It’s a mafia,” she said. “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together.… Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

Of course, the major corruption at the highest levels of government and business is not a new phenomenon. Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.

“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”

But it is not going to happen, Hudes said — at least not if she has something do to with it. While the media are dominated by the “power grabber” network, Hudes has been working with foreign governments, reporters, U.S. officials, state governments, and a broad coalition of fellow whistleblowers to blow the entire scam wide open. There has been quite a bit of interest, too, particularly among foreign governments and state officials in the United States.

Citing the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers in creating a federal system of government with multiple layers of checks and balances, Hudes said she was confident that the network would eventually be exposed and subjected to the rule of law, stopping the secret corruption. If and when that happens — even if it may be disorderly — Hudes says precious metals will once again play a role in imposing discipline on the monetary system. The rule of law would also be restored, she said, and the public will demand a proper press to stay informed.

“We’re going to have a cleaned-up financial system, that’s where it is going, but in the meantime, people who didn’t know how the system was gamed are going to find out,” she said. “We’re going to have a different kind of international financial system…. It’ll be a new kind of world where people know what’s going on — no more backroom deals; that’s not going to keep happening. We’re going to have a different kind of media if people don’t want to be dominated and controlled, which I don’t think they do.”

While Hudes sounded upbeat, she recognizes that the world is facing serious danger right now — there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, she said. The next steps will be critical for humanity. As such, Hudes argues, it is crucial that the people of the world find out about the lawlessness, corruption, and thievery that are going on at the highest levels — and put a stop to it once and for all. The consequences of inaction would be disastrous.

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