Bird-Flu Virus Engineered in Wisconsin Lab Isn’t Fatal, Scientist Says


An airborne strain of avian flu engineered in Wisconsin isn’t lethal and can be blocked with existing medicines, the study’s lead scientist said.

While the mutated virus was contagious among laboratory ferrets, it didn’t kill any of them, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. There’s an urgent need for more research on transmissible bird- flu strains, Kawaoka said in a commentary published online today in the Journal Nature.

Kawaoka was among scientists who last week halted their experiments for 60 days in response to what the researchers called a “perceived fear” that mutated forms of the virus may escape from labs and infect humans. The Wisconsin team, and a group of scientists in the Netherlands, agreed last month not to publish certain details of their bird-flu research after a U.S. biosecurity panel asked them to keep it secret for security reasons.

There is an urgent need “to expand development, production and distribution” of bird-flu vaccines “and to stockpile antiviral compounds,” Kawaoka said. Censoring the findings “will make it harder for legitimate scientists to get this information while failing to provide a barrier to those who would do harm.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-2 ... -says.html



Bird flu resurfaces in Tripura

Bird flu or avian influenza has resurfaced in Tripura, an official said here Wednesday.

Tripura animal resources development department secretary Swapan Saha told reporters: "Samples of sick poultry birds from the ICAR (Indian Council of Agriculture Research) duck farm at Lembuchara in western Tripura were found to contain H5 strain of avian influenza virus."

"Culling of 2,000 ducks and birds at the ICAR farm will start Friday," Saha said, adding that the culling of poultry birds and ducks in the adjoining villages would also start simultaneously.


Tripura, bordering Bangladesh, had earlier also been affected by bird flu - forcing the authorities to cull lakhs of ducks and poultry birds.

http://www.calcuttanews.net/story/20294 ... in-Tripura

Canadian labour market weakest in non-slump periods in decades, CIBC says



Canada's job market is in bad shape and may be the worst it has been in decades, except for the periods when the economy was in recession.

That's the assessment of the CIBC chartered bank, which regularly tries to assess both the number and quality of jobs being created in the economy.

According to its latest "employment quality index," which declined by one point in the past year, CIBC says the situation is bleak by either standard.

It says not only has jobs growth stalled over the past half year — and declined in real terms over the past three months — but the quality of new jobs is generally poor.

While full-time employment rose 1.5 per cent during the 12 months — a good indicator — many were in the less desirable self-employment class, and low-paying work rose four times faster than high-paying, CIBC senior economist Benjamin Tal said Wednesday.

"With both quantity and quality of employment falling in tandem, it is hardly a surprise that real disposable income was unchanged in the first three quarters (nine months) of 2011 — the worst showing in 15 years," Tal said.

"We haven't seen this kind of softening in a non-recessionary period since all the way back to the 1970s."

The paper says many new jobs in the past year have come in low-paying sectors such as hotel services, restaurants, wood and miscellaneous manufacturing, and personal care. Meanwhile, there are fewer high-paying jobs in public administration as well as in manufacturing, chemical, computer, electronic, petroleum and coal industries, mining and transportation.

The report is the latest in a series of indicators pointing to worsening labour market conditions in Canada, where the jobs recovery from the recession has been better than most the G7 big industrial nations.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canadi ... 11875.html

Taxpayers still owed $132.9B from bailout: report


A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven't repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered.

The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/26/ta ... z1kYVM6UIo

First cases of influenza H1N1 in Yucatan


The head of the Yucatan Health Department Alvaro Quijano Rivas reports two cases of influenza H1N1 in the state, who also remark that the vaccination campaign is still in action.

Quijano Rivas explained that one cases is a local and the other is a person from the state of Morelos, he also said that the two persons are stable and getting better. He commented that a big part of the population have already taken the vaccination that protects against the influenza B, H1N1 and H3N2, and for this season there are 125,238 doses available in order to avoid a massive outbreak of cases.

The Health Department call the population to take in action the preventive measurements to avoid being infected by this virus.

Washing hangs constantly.

Covering the mouth when sneezing

Avoid going to school or workplace when sick

According to the Federal Health Department during the first three weeks of this year there are 637 cases of influenza in the country, where 573 are the kind H1N1, 9 people have died.


http://www.theyucatantimes.com/2012/01/ ... n-yucatan/


but but but they say if take the flu vaccine you are super charged and should not catch the flu

Flu shot fantasies: How influenza vaccines halt flu infections (even when they don't)

Vaccines are so effective at halting disease that they confer total immunity, say vaccine advocates. "Take a flu shot and you won't get the flu!" Both flu shots and MMR vaccines are so safe and effective that everybody should be forced to take them, they insist.

And why? Because they claim all those un-vaccinated people will spread disease to the vaccinated people!

(Insert vinyl record screeching sound here.)

Hold on just a minute. Wasn't their whole argument about vaccines based on the idea that they confer total immunity to those who take them? Well, if that's true then they should have no fear whatsoever of un-vaccinated people!

According to vaccine promoters, if you take a flu shot vaccine, that means you can run around and drench yourself in flu viruses with total immunity. You can lick dirty doorknobs, shake hands with people who just wiped their runny noses, and even touch filthy drooling babies right before you eat a sandwich with your contaminated hands. Thanks to the vaccine, you're now bulletproof!

So why worry at all about un-vaccinated people infecting you?


Vaccines cause brain damage
See, the vaccine logic just doesn't add up. There's a reason for that, of course: Vaccines make you stupid. The chemical adjuvants added to vaccines actually cause neurological damage and interfere with healthy cognitive function. That's why brain-damaged people who take vaccines -- also known as Vaccine Zombies -- can't work out the simple logic explained above.

It's also why people who take vaccines are easily fooled into taking yet more vaccines. The critical thinking parts of their brains have been impaired, and they also have trouble with math and finances. Did you know that two-thirds of Americans cannot explain how compound interest works? Try to explain fundamental concepts of fractional-reserve banking to your average vaccine consumer and you'll quickly discover just how brain damaged they really are.

Vaccines, fluoride, MSG and toxic heavy metals all work together in our modern world to chemically lobotomize the masses, turning them into drooling (useful) idiots who are just barely smart enough to punch a clock and operate some machinery on the job, but not nearly smart enough to realize how much they're all being ripped off by the Fed's money creation schemes that devalue the currency.

In fact, you might say that a vaccine-impaired population is absolutely essential for the existence of a police state government that relies on the poor cognitive function of its own citizens to maintain power and control over them. If people could actually do math, for example, they'd be marching in Washington right now -- just over the national debt if nothing else.


Vaccine zealots are time travelers (in their own minds)
Another especially hilarious truism about flu shots is that they only work if you go back in time to the year before and expose yourself to last year's flu viruses. That's because each year's flu shot is made from the circulating viral strains found last year, not this year.

Viruses mutate rapidly, resulting in structural changes that often circumvent immune system antibodies, especially if those antibodies were created in response to exposure of a different strain. So getting injected with last year's viral strains is only useful if you're a time traveler with a time machine in your living room. Wanna relive the flu season of 2007? No problem! The vaccine companies have those strains readily available for you. Just crank up your time-traveling gizmo that you bought on eBay and you're ready to roll!

But if you're looking to protect yourself in the present (or the near future), getting injected with last year's influenza strain is about as idiotic as thinking you can beat the stock market by buying a crystal ball off eBay.


Vaccines need no proof that they work
The best part about the total morons who get vaccinated every year with flu shots is watching them try to explain why they always get sick anyway!

Me: "Hi, Cathy. Merry Christmas. Oh, you're sick again this year? What happened?"

Cathy: "I don't know, I just started feeling tired and achy again, and now I'm vomiting every four hours and can't eat."

Me: "Huh, sounds like the flu. But that's weird, don't you get the flu shot every year?"

Cathy: "Yeah, and it's a good thing, too, because if I didn't, this flu would have been even worse."

This is, of course, the very kind of loopy "quackery" logic that mainstream medicine invokes when attacking holistic medicine or homeopathy. Notice that Cathy has now justified her vaccine injections by believing they offered her flu protection even when she's the one who's sick? Furthermore, she mistakenly believes that flu shots reduce the severity of her influenza infection, even when that's pure bunk as well.

It's a curious behavioral tendency in humans, of course, to rationalize their decisions with irrational thinking. This is especially true in the vaccine industry where people have been brainwashed into thinking vaccines are effective whether or not they actually work.

Option #1) Did you avoid the flu this winter? Must have been the flu shot!

Option #2) Catch a flu this winter? Oh, it "could have been worse" without the flu shot.

So, in the minds of the flu shot takers, there is no scenario in which the flu shot fails. It ALWAYS works in their minds, regardless of the outcome. That's a sure sign that somebody at the medical clinic is quacking like a duck... Quack! Quack!


99% of the vaccine-taking public are delusional


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034452_flu_s ... z1hG6HYMLb

Mass dolphin strandings at Cape Cod

At least 85 dolphins have beached themselves in a shallow inlet of a US nature reserve at Cape Cod, officials said on Tuesday, adding that the cause of the mass strandings remained a mystery.

A spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said the huge number of beached mammals over the last two weeks, with most of them dying, was close to the amount usually recorded in the course of a year.

"We had a total of 85 confirmed strandings since January 12 and that number might be as high 101," AJ Cady said. "There are still about 16 dolphins reported in difficult locations we haven't been able to confirm."


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conse ... z1kYXv44Wv

Finback whale carcass in Ocean City cut up to determine how it die, then buried in north end beach


The second largest animal on Earth created an equally huge mess on the Seventh Street beach.

Ocean City Public Works crews raced the tide Tuesday to dispose of a dead finback whale that washed ashore Monday creating an oily, smelly mess within sniffing distance of the island’s most populous north-end neighborhoods.

“You can smell it,” Fire Capt. Robert Stanton said. “A friend of mine got some of the oil on his shoes when he was on the beach yesterday. Now he can’t drive his car. The smell is untenable. So he’ll be walking.”

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news ... 963f4.html

Whales Beaching in Washington
Wednesday, January 25th 2012 02:41pm
Two whales have washed ashore on the Washington coast. Keith Chandler with the Seaside Aquarium says tests will be done to determine how the whales died. One is a gray whale; a type of whale commonly seen by whale watchers on the coast. The 13-foot newborn was found near Oysterville. The other is a 39-foot sperm whale, which is not as easy to find. They swim in deeper waters further from the shoreline. It beached near Seaview.


http://www.kbnd.com/page.php?page_id=60 ... e_id=11409

30-foot beached whale found dead at Ft. Pierce inlet

Read more: http://www.cbs12.com/articles/pierce-47 ... z1kYYZ6vOC

33 whales shot after beaching in New Zealand

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/wh ... z1kYYmybLu



5,000 fish found dead in Perth's Swan River

Updated January 24, 2012 18:53:49

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-24/d ... er/3790926


GUYANA- Worst fish-kill in recent times off Guyana and Suriname
WEDNESDAY, 25 JANUARY 2012 14:02 DEMERARA WAVES HITS: 34

In what authorities believe is one of the worst fish-kills in recent times, a lot of Curiass is being washed up on the Guyanese and Surinamese foreshores, apparently due to murky Atlantic Ocean waters and the discharge of freshwater into the sea.

http://www.caricomnewsnetwork.com/index ... uriname&ca

Supermarkets rush to raise fuel prices as pumps run dry amid fears of panic buying

Fuel prices have risen again just 24 hours after one of Britain’s biggest refineries went bust, stopping supplies to filling stations.
There are fears of panic buying after long queues formed outside several filling stations in the South East yesterday as diesel pumps ran dry.
Supermarkets – which usually set the trend – have put up to 1p a litre on the price of diesel and unleaded.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1kYbX2egp

Take a leaf out of Jesus's book: Slash the cost of your luxury palaces by a quarter, senior bishops told

Senior bishops have been ordered to cut the lavish costs of running their palaces and mansions by more than a quarter.

The spending cap, confirmed yesterday by Church of England officials, will be lowered by a further third from 2014.

The disclosure comes in a week that has seen five bishops lead a rebellion in the House of Lords against Coalition plans to cap the cost of benefits payments.

They are among the 44 diocesan bishops who are covered by the spending restrictions on accommodation, as are the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

The five bishops opposed a £26,000 cap on benefits, claiming it would disproportionately affect families with children and make them homeless.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1kYdOw3UC

Bernanke says Fed pondering further stimulus


Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday the central bank was ready to offer the economy additional stimulus after it announced it would likely keep interest rates near zero until at least late 2014.

The Fed also took the historic step of adopting an explicit inflation target, though Bernanke took pains to stress that officials would be flexible about reining in price growth when unemployment was too high.

The late 2014 timeframe for the first rate hike was considerably later than investors had expected and some 18 months later than the Fed had suggested last year, and the announcement prompted a rally in U.S. government bonds.

Speaking at a news conference after a two-day policy meeting, Bernanke was cautious about recent improvements in the U.S. economy, and he left the door open to further Fed bond purchases.

"I don't think we're ready to declare that we've entered a new, stronger phase at this point," Bernanke said. "If the situation continues with inflation below target and unemployment declining at a rate which is very, very slow, then ... the logic of our framework says we should be looking for ways to do more."

In response to the deepest recession in generations, the Fed slashed the overnight federal funds rate to near zero in December 2008. It has also more than tripled the size of its balance sheet to around $2.9 trillion through two separate bond purchase programs.


http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-sa ... 20672.html


TSX gets boost from Fed rate statement


The TSX rose sharply on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve said, in a bid to boost the economy, that it was unlikely to raise interest rates before late 2014.

That put a fire under heavyweight gold miners such as Barrick Gold (Toronto:ABX.TO - News), up 5.8 percent at C$48.60, and Goldcorp (Toronto:G.TO - News), ahead 6.4 percent at C$47.71, as the price of gold soared 2.5 percent on the prospect of continued low U.S. rates. The index's materials sector, which includes gold miners, climbed 4.5 percent.


http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/tsx-ma ... 09735.html

Harper meets Canadian business leaders in Davos


Though European debt and trade are high on the agenda, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has kicked off the World Economic Forum in Switzerland by speaking with business leaders from his own country.

Harper is in the Swiss resort town of Davos where top powerbrokers are gathering to talk about the world's most pressing financial issues.

He arrived Wednesday morning alongside about 40 staff members and a fleet of 20 vehicles.

This year, the theme of the annual retreat is "great transformation" and the discussions will touch on how nations can prosper financially without being irresponsible.

More than 2,600 big thinkers from world's top and emerging markets are on hand at the meet. Harper, however, decided to start things off by meeting with businesspeople from his home and native land.

He spoke with Jim Leech of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, CIBC chairman Charles Sirois and the CEOs of Desjardins Group and Barrick Gold on Wednesday morning.

Calling the group "the biggest job creators in the country," Harper told the leaders that he wants to know and understand the challenges they face.

"As you know, the economy is our No. 1 focus," he told the group.

The meeting echoes speeches Harper has made in the past which have aimed to stir the confidence of corporate investors and stimulate growth.

However, Harper's biggest contribution to the conference is expected to centre on a global issue, specifically, Europe and its sovereign debt crisis.

In a phone call from Zurich, CTV News' Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said Harper will call on Europeans to act quickly to dodge both a domestic and global recession.

He'll likely advise them to devote more money to a rescue package, noted Fife.

Harper's clarion call would be coming just days after the International Monetary Fund warned that Europe is a global recession risk, or in the very least, can potentially slow world markets.

The IMF has also reduced its expectations for global growth, projecting 3.25 per cent expansion compared to last year's four per cent.



Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Politics/2012 ... z1kYiHcj35



The Elephants in the Davos Ski Lodge



The epic global shifts of 2011 transformed the political, economic, and social landscape from Shanghai to Sao Paolo, Washington to Cairo. No leader (not even Vladimir Putin) is safe from the vagaries of social unrest; no economy (not even China's) is unaffected by contagion from an over-leveraged, under-managed euro zone. No country (not even the United States) is immune from the threat of asymmetric attacks - anything from a terrorist bomb to cyber-warfare.

Volatility will be the rule, not the exception in 2012. What I call the emerging Archipelago World of fragmenting power, capital, and ideas is inherently unstable - as vulnerable to old conflicts and new threats as it is open to the dynamic entrepreneurship of rising powers and corporations remaking the map of the world.

A 20-year period of one-world, one-way globalization is being replaced by an era of competitive sovereignty. The walls are going back up. Developed and developing states alike are vertically integrating political and economic interests across public and private sectors in a global race for growth, employment and security. Having previously embraced interdependence as the motivation for horizontal integration across markets and regions, states as diverse as Canada, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brazil, Turkey and the United Kingdom are now pursuing more national strategies for economic and political security.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/reuter ... 59635.html

Japan's NEC to slash 10,000 jobs


NEC Corp said Thursday it will slash 10,000 jobs, almost one in 10 of its workers, in a bid to cut costs as competition from foreign rivals including Apple Inc pushes it deep into the red.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/japans-ne ... 17001.html