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DAVE NEWBART, Chicago Sun-Times Staff Reporter, reports:

A 14-year-old boy who went into cardiac arrest after he was zapped by a Chicago Police stun gun had not threatened police or anyone else before he was shocked, four eyewitnesses to the February incident say.

The developmentally delayed boy was sitting on a couch in a juvenile home and was not attempting to harm anyone, the witnesses claim in sworn court depositions obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

After the boy went into convulsions and fell to the floor, the officer who used the Taser allegedly said, “Now look at this f—–’ paperwork I’ve got to do,'’ at least two witnesses claim in the depositions.
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Jennifer Pritchett, Staff Writer, The Kingston Whig-Standard, reports:

Kingston’s closest U.S. border crossing will employ high-tech radio frequency technology to monitor visitors from other countries who want to enter the States from Canada – a move that alarms both a Kingston privacy expert and an immigration specialist.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said this week that the crossing between Lansdowne and Alexandria Bay, N.Y., will be one of three Canada-U.S. land borders to require non-Canadians to carry wireless devices as part of a pilot project.

Travellers will be required to carry the devices as of Aug. 4.
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Activist Marc Emery lights up a large marijuana cigarette in front of London Ontario Police headquarters on Aug. 26, 2003. Police raided a business run by the head of the B.C. Marijuana party on Friday based on a search warrant requested by the U.S. government, which wants Marc Emery extradited to face charges related to the sale of marijuana seeds on the Internet and by mail. Photo: CP

ROD MICKLEBURGH, The Globe and Mail (Canada), reports:

Vancouver — Marc Emery, Canada’s most prominent pro-marijuana activist, is facing the possibility of life imprisonment in the United States for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to U.S. customers.

In a stunning development, RCMP officers arrested the self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot” in Halifax yesterday after a U.S. federal grand jury indicted him on charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

The charges stem from Mr. Emery’s lucrative sale of marijuana seeds, an activity he has carried on from his Vancouver base with minimal legal penalty for 10 years.

“I’ve sold about four million seeds,” the marijuana mogul boasted in a 2002 media interview. “Unlike most other seed dealers, I use my real name and I’m easy to find.”
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Keith J. Winstein, The Wall Street Journal, reports:

What time is it when the clock strikes half past 62?

Time to change the way we measure time, according to a U.S. government proposal that businesses favor, astronomers abominate and Britain sees as a threat to its venerable standard, Greenwich Mean Time.

Word of the U.S. proposal, made secretly to a United Nations body, began leaking to scientists earlier this month. The plan would simplify the world’s timekeeping by making each day last exactly 24 hours. Right now, that’s not always the case.

Because the moon’s gravity has been slowing down the Earth, it takes slightly longer than 24 hours for the world to rotate completely on its axis. The difference is tiny, but every few years a group that helps regulate global timekeeping, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, tells governments, telecom companies, satellite operators and others to add in an extra second to all clocks to keep them in sync. The adjustment is made on New Year’s Eve or the last day of June.
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A farmer prepares to burn his dead chicken, suspectedly of bird flu, at a farm in Makassar, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 27, 2005. There is no evidence linking pigs to the bird flu outbreak and countries should focus their efforts on chickens and other fowl, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Rizky Noval via )

Kim Zetter, Wired Nws Reports:

For 26 years, strange conversations have been taking place in a basement lab at Princeton University.

No one can hear them, but they can see their apparent effect: balls that go in certain directions on command, water fountains that seem to rise higher with a wish and drums that quicken their beat.

Yet no one hears the conversations because they occur between the minds of experimenters and the machines they will to action.
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The LaRouche PAC writes:

Lyndon LaRouche, on this Wednesday afternoon, issued an international alert, covering the period of August 2005, which is the likely timeframe for Vice President Dick Cheney, with the full collusion of the circles of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to unleash the recently exposed plans to stage a preemptive tactical nuclear strike against Iran. The danger of such a mad, Hitler-in-the-bunker action from the Cheney circles would be even further heightened, were the United States Congress to stick with its present schedule, and go into recess on July 30 until September 4. With Congress out of Washington, the Cheney-led White House would almost certainly unleash a “Guns of August” attack on Iran.

LaRouche based this assessment on a series of factors, reported to him over the recent days, beginning with the qualified report, from a former U.S. intelligence official, published in the American Conservative magazine, that Dick Cheney ordered the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to prepare contingency plans for a conventional and tactical nuclear strike against hundreds of targets in Iran, in the event of a “new 9/11-style attack” on the United States. As EIR reported several months ago, the Bush Administration, under CONPLAN 8022, had already placed the relevant “mini-nukes” under the control of theater military commanders, as part of a new Global Strike doctrine, a doctrine originally conceived when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s.
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Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, reports:

Michael Lynn is a security researcher who worked at the security firm ISS until yesterday. Now he’s under a restraining order from Cisco, arising from his disclosure of critical flaws in Cisco’s routers that threaten the world’s information infrastructure.

Lynn had found a buffer overflow exploit that lets an attacker take absolute control over Cisco routers. He sent the details to Cisco in April, but they still have not fully repaired the vulnerability. Since many of the world’s key routers are supplied by Cisco, this means Cisco’s foot-dragging places large parts of the world’s information infrastructure at grave risk of collapse.
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Professor Ishiguro (r) stresses the importance of appearance in his robots

David Whitehouse , Science editor, BBC News, reprots:

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet - a “female” android named Repliee Q1Expo.

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.
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RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer, reports:

(07-27) 14:56 PDT BOMBAY, India (AP) –

India’s financial capital was paralyzed Wednesday by the strongest rains ever recorded in Indian history, with torrential downpours — 37 inches in one day — marooning drivers, forcing students to sleep at school and snapping communication lines. At least 200 people died.

At its worst, the rainfall descended in what looked like a solid wall of water, overwhelming Bombay, a crowded city long accustomed to monsoon rains.
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BLT Research Team Inc., via Rense.com, reports:

Close-up taken on July 19th which suggests that the herringbone pattern has been created more by an interlacing of plants than an actual weave.

On July 5, 2005 a Greene County farmer found what may be the very first crop formation of its kind in the world. The farmer, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered an approximately 44′ x 35′ rectangle of downed wheat as he was harvesting his field, at first thinking the downed-crop area had been caused by deer. Upon closer examination he realized there was a distinct design to the manner in which the plants were bent over, resulting in a “woven” or interlaced herringbone pattern throughout the flattened crop.
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Patricia Doyle, PhD () relays Xinhuanet via ProMED-mail, via Rense:

The mysterious death of at least 300 egrets in a Guangzhou forest park sparked fears that the bird flu was to blame, the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

A party secretary of the park’s management firm, the Huangpi company, has dismissed the claims saying he had yet to receive any reports of deaths.

People living near the park in Baiyun District had been finding 20 to 30 dead egrets every day, according to a report by the China News Service, quoting the Guangzhou-based TVS online.

The residents, who said they had discovered the birds in the past few days, estimated the death toll had reached 300.

Some villagers blamed the heat, but others feared it was linked to the bird-flu virus and urged the government to investigate.

The report followed an outbreak of bird flu on an island sanctuary in May 2005 that killed thousands of migratory birds in Qinghai. Some 6000 birds died in the outbreak, officials said.

“What is surprising is that there are people who have started eating egrets, with some being cooked on barbecues,” China News Service said. People had also caught the sick birds to sell at markets, the report said.
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The BBC reports:

Sir Paul McCartney has suggested late Beatles bandmate George Harrison helped him write a song for his latest album from beyond the grave.

Sir Paul said he wrote Waiting For Your Friends To Go with help from Harrison, who died in 2001.

“I just got this feeling, this is George,” he told Tom Robinson on BBC digital station 6 Music. “I was like George - writing one of his songs.”

“It just wrote itself very easily because it wasn’t even me writing it.”
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The Globe and Mail (Canadian Press)reports:

Ottawa — Health Canada is advising men who take drugs for impotence and erectile dysfunction to seek immediate medical attention if they experience vision problems.

Users of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are at risk of a rare side-effect called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, caused when blood flow to the optic nerve is blocked.

Symptoms include sudden and painless loss of vision in one or both eyes. Those who experience one episode are at greater risk of experiencing a second episode affecting the other eye.

While in some cases the condition may improve over time, it can also be irreversible.
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The BBC, reports:

Flu viruses can swap many genes rapidly to make new resistant strains, US researchers have found.
Scientists previously believed that gene swapping progressed gradually from season to season.

The National Institutes of Health team found instead, influenza A exchanged several genes at once, causing sudden and major changes to the virus.

The findings in PLOS Biology suggest strains could vary widely each season, making it potentially harder to treat.
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Paul Brown, environment correspondent, The Guardian (UK) reports:

Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant “superweed”, the Guardian can reveal.

The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government’s three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago.

The new form of charlock was growing among many others in a field which had been used to grow GM rape. When scientists treated it with lethal herbicide it showed no ill-effects.
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MosNews, via Slashdot, reports:

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

Kushnir, 35, headed the English learning centers the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, all known to have aggressive Internet advertising policies in which millions of e-mails were sent every day.
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Thermoacoustic prototype that uses a “Bellows Bounce” resonator.

NPR reports:

All Things Considered, April 28, 2004 · Scientists have found a new way to refrigerate ice cream, by using sound waves instead of chemicals. The system, which can power a small ice-cream freezer case, is sponsored by Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, a company known for its efforts to protect the environment.

At the heart of the system is sound — a 190-decibel note that fluctuates some 100 times per second. That expansion and compression creates pockets of cold and warm air. A system of air circulators then funnels the cool air into the ice cream case.
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Andrew Osborn in Moscow, The Independent (UK), via Rense.com, reports:

Vladimir Putin’s much-publicised campaign to stamp out corruption was shown to be spectacularly failing yesterday when an authoritative study showed Russians are being forced to bribe their way through life like never before.

The study, by the independent Indem think-tank and the respected Romir Monitoring Centre, revealed that the cost of the average bribe has rocketed by a factor of 13 in the past four years and Russians now pay $319bn (£183bn) a year in backhanders.

The average bribe for an ordinary person now stands at about $100 but businessmen are forced to pay much more. In 2001, the average bribe in the business world was $10,200 but in 2005 the report said the figure was $135,800.

Officials have “price-lists” for bribes and the report’s authors accused the Russian state of being “the country’s biggest racketeer” and said the sheer quantity of cash involved was more than two-and-a-half times greater than the annual state budget.
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Reuters, via BoingBoing, reports:

Brazilian police arrested 10 people on Thursday accused of selling drugs using Google’s international social networking site Orkut, which is hugely popular in the Latin American country.

“We discovered the drug ring first via authorized phone tapping, and later the investigation included monitoring of their activities on the Internet,” said a duty officer at the Drugs Enforcement Service in the city of Niteroi, just across the bay from Rio de Janeiro.
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MosNews, via Rense.com, reports:

Large quantities of poultry were killed by the bird flu virus type AH5 in the city of Novosibirsk, the chief spokesman for Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said Thursday.
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Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, The Independent (UK) reports:

A virulent new strain of MRSA is spreading through the community and poses a particular threat to children and young adults, specialists have warned.

Two people have died from the new strain of the superbug, including a physically fit young soldier who grazed his leg while out running in Devon and a woman who caught the infection at a gym.
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Doohan’s last public appearance was in October 2004 when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The BBC reports:

Actor James Doohan, who played the chief engineer Montgomery Scott in Star Trek, has died at the age of 85.
Doohan, whose role was immortalised in the line “Beam me up, Scotty”, had been suffering from pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, his agent said.

His wife of 28 years, Wende, was by his side, Steve Stevens added.
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Dr. Henry L. Niman, PhD, Recombinomics Commentary, reports:

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told reporters lab tests from Hong Kong showed the 38-year-old man and his two children, 9 and 1, had the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

She said the tests done in Hong Kong were based on specimens from the father and one of the daughters, but it could be concluded that all three had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
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Dr. Henry L. Niman, PhD, Recombinomics Commentary, via Rense.com,
reports:

Patient’s infection source is the chicken which edible includes the virus, the duck, the goose and its the egg product or the above living specimen contact. The patient after the infection internal heat birds and beasts flu, the virus meets the ambush, the usual incubation period is 15 days, crosses the patient after the incubation period to be able to appear the blood to be hot, the hands and feet department massively sheds skin, has the red spot phenomenon, the patient lungs can appear the high fever which continues, causes cough which the patient appears suppresses with difficulty, and has the discontinuity to have a poor appetite, dizziness, the body becomes emaciated and so on the symptom, the partial partners have the flu symptom, the partial crowds have the immunity to this type virus, this virus at present treats unusual complex, belongs to the stubborn disease, at present China’s many places merely list as this disease the simple chronic pneumonia, the chronic bronchitis, virulent flu, Chinese medicine rebirth all kinds.

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