Monthly Archives: June 2013

Resources for Non-GMO Products

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Boycott these Monsanto-pandering factory ‘food’ companies and help drive GMOs out of the food supply

Thursday, June 13, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) If Americans are truly serious about making real progress in the fight against genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), then we are going to have to take things to the next level by voting with our wallets, and boycotting every single factory food company that continues to secretly use GMOs in its products. And one way to help jump start this efforts is to get the health-conscious community up to speed about which major food companies are still using GMOs in secrecy.

The blog REALfarmacy.com recently created a “Do Not Buy” list that outlines all the major food producers that use GMOs in their products. Besides the more obvious offenders such as Coca-Cola, General Mills, Pepsi, and Frito-Lay, the list also pins “health”-branded food companies like Nature Valley and Morningstar that many people are still unaware also use GMOs in their products. You can view this list here:
http://www.realfarmacy.com

As you will notice, virtually every major food brand in America uses GMOs in its products. This is hardly surprising, as the most recent figures show that 88 percent of all corn, 90 percent of all canola (rapeseed), 93 percent of all soybeans, and nearly 100 percent of all sugar beets grown in the U.S. contain transgenic traits patented and owned by Monsanto, Bayer CropScience, and a handful of other biotechnology companies. In fact, any food product that is not certified organic or that is not specifically designated as being non-GMO likely contains GM ingredients.

Purchase only local, non-GMO, organic foods; avoid eating out at restaurants that serve conventional food

Though admittedly difficult due to the sheer volume of contamination caused by GMOs, boycotting all products that contain them will be vital for eventually ridding the food supply of these toxic poisons. Major progress has already been made in the form of voluntary GMO labeling by food chain Chipotle, for instance, as well as mandatory GMO labeling in all Whole Foods Market stores by 2018 (or potentially even 2015, pending the passage of GMO labeling legislation at the individual state level). Even big-box retailer Target has jumped onboard, having announced that it will unveil a new non-GMO store brand known as “Simply Balanced.”

But we must do more. The brands we frequent as health-conscious individuals must be willing to take a stand now to eliminate GMOs from their product lines, or else they are not worth purchasing. Companies like Amy’s Kitchen, Annie’s, Applegate Farms, Beanitos, Bragg, Earthbound Farm, Eden Foods Organics, Kettle, Lundberg Family Farms, Nature’s Path, Organic Valley, and Pacific Foods are among those leading the way in providing clean, non-GMO foods. But what about all the other major brands that are still floundering in their commitment to clean food?

You can view a full list of verified non-GMO brands, as certified by The Non-GMO Project, here:
http://www.nongmoproject.org

The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) has also created a Non-GMO Shopping Guide designed to help you avoid common ingredients like soy, canola, cottonseed, corn, sugar from sugar beets, and now wheat – unapproved GM wheat was recently found growing in a commercial field in Oregon – that are likely of GM origin. You can access this guide here:
http://www.nongmoshoppingguide.com/

You can also view the IRT “Buy Non-GMO” link with helpful shopping quick tips here:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/buy-non-gmo

As far as dining out is concerned, it is always best to ask questions and essentially let restaurant owners and managers know that you are concerned about the quality and integrity of their offerings. As them what types of oils they cook with, for instance, and inquire about which foods are prepared fresh and which ones are canned or bagged. IRT has some helpful tips for avoiding GMOs while dining out that you can access here:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/buy-non-gmo/dine-out-non-gmo

SUpreme Court: Human Genes Cannot be Patented

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Sanity prevails: US Supreme Court rules that human genes are not eligible for patent protection

Thursday, June 13, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) In a unanimous ruling, the United States Supreme Court ruled today that human genes cannot be patented. The ruling invalidates the thousands of patents that have already been granted on human genes, including the patent by Myriad Genetics on the BRCA breast cancer genes which the company says no one else can research or even detect without paying it a royalty. Click here to read the complete ruling.

“Myriad did not create anything,” said Justice Clarence Thomas. “To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.”

Well, exactly. This point should have been obvious to the lower courts, too, but in today’s world of corporate domination over seemingly everything, gene industry lawyers were able to argue that patent protection would somehow inspire more innovation and research. “The biotechnology industry had warned that an expansive ruling against Myriad could threaten billions of dollars of investment,” wrote Reuters.

But exactly the opposite is true. Gene patents restricted research and created medical monopolies that raised prices for consumers. Even USA Today seemingly gets this point, saying, “The decision represents a victory for cancer patients, researchers and geneticists who claimed that a single company’s patent raised costs, restricted research and sometimes forced women to have breasts or ovaries removed without sufficient facts or second opinions.”

The ACLU, which argued the case before the Court, said, “By invalidating these patents, the Court lifted a major barrier to progress in further understanding how we can better treat and prevent diseases.”

Corporate efforts to influence the Supreme Court ultimately failed

Had the Supreme Court upheld the patentability of human genes, it would have unleashed a horrifying new era of corporations and universities rushing to claim monopoly patent protection on every gene in the human genome. Virtually no one in the media covered this angle other than Natural News. We warned readers that everything found in nature could then be patented: blades of grass, insects, human ears, eye colors, hair colors… anything encoded with DNA.

We also pointed out that Angelina Jolie’s carefully orchestrated announcement of a double mastectomy following BRCA gene testing seemed timed to be part of a public relations campaign engineered by the biotech industry to influence the Supreme Court decision. We also challenged Jolie to publicly denounce patents on human genes, which she never did.

It’s clear that powerful forces were at work behind the scenes to try to influence this Supreme Court decision, but they failed. Ultimately, the court discovered a moment of unanimous sanity… something we see so rarely that perhaps it deserves patent protection, too.

Huge loss for the biotech and pharmaceutical industries

It’s important to note that this decision is a huge loss for the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, both of which relentlessly seek total domination over all forms of life on the planet through monopoly patent protection. The biotech industry, of course, would love to patent all seeds and food crops — even ones it hasn’t genetically engineered. And the pharmaceutical industry would love to patent every human gene, thereby claiming literal ownership over every human being born into the world.

Myriad Genetics tried every desperate argument to convince the court that human genes should be patentable by corporations. They even rolled out a whacky “baseball bat theory” which claims it’s an “invention” to decide where to start and end a gene sequence:

“A baseball bat doesn’t exist until it’s isolated from a tree. But that’s still the product of human invention to decide where to begin the bat and where to end the bat.” – Myriad lawyer Gregory Castanias.

That absurd argument claims that the mere deciding of which genes to snip out of DNA strands somehow makes all genes corporate property. Thankfully, the court did not agree with the baseball bat theory. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained:

“The baseball bat is quite different. You don’t look at a tree and say, well, I’ve cut the branch here and cut it here and all of a sudden I’ve got a baseball bat. You have to invent it.”

Huge victory for humanity

Ultimately, this decision is a tremendous victory for all humankind because it prevents the power-hungry, evil-bent medical and biotech corporations from claiming ownership over genetic sequences that already occur in nature.

This ruling means the biotech industry cannot patent common plants and animals, either. They can’t patent human body parts or human gene sequences. Yes, the industry can still patent synthetically-created genes, said the Supreme Court, but that’s something they would actually have to create rather than merely discover in an already-existing organism.

Today’s ruling also means that men and women will have access to far less expensive testing for gene sequences in their own bodies. Currently, women who want to test themselves for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes must pay as much as $4,000 for the test due to the monopoly “ownership” of those genes by Myriad Genetics. But now that the Supreme Court has ruled such patents are invalid, prices for the test should drastically fall over time as competition enters the picture. Ultimately, the test could eventually be offered for as little as $100.

The ruling also means that other companies can conduct research on those genes without first seeking permission from Myriad. This will actually spur more innovation, potentially leading to more advanced genetic analysis tests that might help people better understand their health risks (and hopefully encourage them to change their diets and lifestyle choices to avoid expressing those genes).

In a world that seems increasingly dominated by corporate monopolies and biotechnology insanity, this ruling is a breath of fresh air. It confirms that corporations cannot patent naturally-occurring things which have been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years, and it confirms that when you have a child through an act of genetic replication, corporations cannot force you to pay royalties for your own child.

This is a decision of fundamental freedom, which is why I’m shocked the court actually ruled this way. This must be one of those rare moments of sanity in a Supreme Court that otherwise seems intent on destroying human liberty, dignity and justice.

Decision shows the important work of ACLU in protecting human rights against corporate domination

We must all thank the ACLU on this decision, as it was the ACLU which argued this to victory.

“Over the last 30 years, the U.S. Patent Office has issued patents on thousands of human genes, including genes associated with colon cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, muscular dystrophy, and many other devastating diseases. The status quo meant that companies controlling gene patents had the right to stop all other scientists from examining, studying, testing, and researching our genes,” the ACLU wrote in a press release.

The ACLU further wrote:

We celebrate the Court’s ruling as a victory for civil liberties, scientific freedom, patients, and the future of personalized medicine. It also demonstrates the power of creating alliances and fighting for the public interest. The ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation filed the case four years ago on behalf of twenty plaintiffs, including organizations representing over 150,000 medical professionals, geneticists, breast cancer and women’s health advocacy groups, and patients. Few thought we had a chance against the decades-long Patent Office practice as well as the entrenched industry position. But litigation can be a strong tool in producing change, never more than when diverse communities come together. Here, the medical, scientific, and patient communities united, and were soon joined by many others, eventually including the U.S. government. We honor the contributions everyone made to our success today.

The ACLU, by the way, has also filed suit against the NSA’s Patriot Act phone surveillance.

 

GMO Court Case Update

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Farmers vs. Monsanto: Court Case Update

Organic market13th June 2013

By Jack Adam Weber

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Many of you likely recall the OSGATA vs. Monsanto case from last year. The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), comprised of some 300,000 individuals and non-GMO farming alliances, filed suit against the biotech behemoth Monsanto in 2011 in order to protect themselves against Monsanto’s suing for incidental GMO seed drift onto their non-GMO fields.

To the world’s outrage, OSGATA’s case was denied last year by judge Naomi Buchwald on insufficient grounds for bringing a preemptive case against Monsanto. In other words, they were denied the right to protect themselves against Monsatno’s frivolous lawsuits. OSGATA vowed to appeal, which they did, and that appeal was finally heard by a three-judge panel on June 10, 2013.

Unfortunately, Judge Buchwald’s decision was again upheld. But this time, we won something. The plaintiffs were denied because Monsanto went on record making a promise. “Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower’s land).

Dan Ravicher, the attorney for OSGATA, understands the recent decision as a partial victory.

“Before this suit, the Organic Seed plaintiffs were forced to take expensive precautions and avoid full use of their land in order to not be falsely accused of patent infringement by Monsanto,” said Ravicher. “The decision today means that the farmers did have the right to bring the suit to protect themselves, but now that Monsanto has bound itself not to sue the plaintiffs, the Court of Appeals believes the suit should not move forward.”

In other words, even though OSGATA again had their case denied, farmers across the nation are now guaranteed protection against Monsanto’s dubious practice of aggressively seeking out otherwise innocent and often unwitting violators to persecute for stealing Monsanto’s “intellectual property”—i.e., their lousy patented GMO seeds.

On the brightest side, today’s decision allows farmers who are contaminated by Monsanto’s GMO junk to sue Monsanto and Monsanto’s customers for damages caused by that contamination without fear Monsanto’s retaliating with a “patent infringement” claim.

Today’s ruling may give farmers a toehold in courts regarding the unwanted contamination of their crops, but it does not protect our food supply from the continued proliferation of Monsanto’s flawed technology,” said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. “The real threat of continued contamination of our nation’s food supply was only highlighted last week when Monsanto’s unapproved GMO wheat was discovered in an Oregon farmer’s field more than 10 years after it was legally planted in that state.”

Despite the Court of Appeals’ Decision today the plaintiffs (OSGATA) still have the option to ask the Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals decision and to reinstate the case. Attorney Ravicher said the Organic Seed plaintiffs are considering doing so.

We hope they do and gain more injunctions against the biotech bully—for our sake and for the Earth’s sake!

Please continue to boycott all Monsanto products and if you have not, please join GEM for updates and how to safeguard your health and those you love from the pollution of GMOs.

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2013/06/13/farmers-vs-monsanto-court-case-update/

THe Mind of the Heart

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Activating Your Heart’s Intelligence

Burning Heart14th June 2013

By Marianne Weidlein

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Understanding the function and power of the heart is essential for effective self-management and quality of life.

The physical world, including our bodies, is made from electrical and magnetic fields of energy. The human heartbeat is known to be the strongest generator of the body’s electrical and magnetic fields. I’ve read it to be 60, 100, or 100,000 times electrically stronger than the brain. And I consistently read the heart to be 5,000 times magnetically stronger than the brain. This makes the human heart very powerful!

Physics says that to change the atoms of physical matter, either the electrical field or magnetic field must be changed. The heart is so strong that it can affect both! Whereas, the energetically weaker brain cannot. It is more like a computer that processes and stores information, directs bodily functions, and so on.

The heart has its own nervous system with which it can sense, learn, remember, and process emotion and vibrational information from the environment and brain. It decodes the energy it receives, and with each heartbeat, transmits these impulses to the brain to interpret and act upon.

The heart is the sensing, feeling organ that guides us to make choices that honor our truth. It sources our frequencies of courage, caring, love, and compassion, with which it helps to guide our thinking and decision-making.

However, when neural pathways between the brain and heart have not been activated, the intellect functions independent of the power of the heart. Since this lack of connection then disconnects us from ourselves and life, we feel separate. We are dominated more by fear, insecurity, anxiety, limitation, and so on than by intention. To survive, we tend to develop divisive strategies of control, defense, competition, manipulation, excessive attention or work, or even deception or fighting to survive.

Simply said, our thoughts influence our feelings and emotions. Likewise, the energy of the heart influences our ability to effectively attract what we need and want. Understanding this can help us to magnetize and cultivate the quality of life we want for ourselves, our families, and the world.

Indeed, with increasing global instability and disruption, we need sound decision-making. For this, the heart and its wisdom, must come alive… through the heart of each of us in caring for ourselves… in caring for each other… in caring for all life. An awakened heart inspires wisdom and all is cultivated and well-tended. It’s time for humanity to become nurturers and protectors of life, and move into a thriving future!

© Marianne Weidlein 2012

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2013/06/14/activating-your-hearts-intelligence/

Benefits of Range Grazing Cattle

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Grazing Livestock May Hold the Secret to Reversing Climate Change

Farm_Cattle14th June 2013

By Carolanne Wright

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Allan Savory is a controversial figure with a shocking message: Global warming and desertification can be radically reversed by grazing large herds of animals.

The antithesis of accepted thought on climate change, Savory’s solution has rubbed many in the scientific community the wrong way. But the question remains — can his method save us from imminent environmental doom?

Standing ovation for a radical message

After Allan Savory’s presentation “How to Green the Desert and Reverse Climate Change” at the 2013 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) global conference, “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.“, he received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the audience.

This was not the typical parched scientific lecture on global warming. The TED talk explored the disturbing trend of desertification, described by Savory as “a fancy word for land that is turning into desert,” and the implications this holds.

The devastation of habitat, usable land and waterways are the stark realities of spreading deserts. Climate change is also accelerated.

Due in part to the widespread practice of burning dry grasslands in an attempt to revitalize the soil, global warming is also aggravated by the carbon and moisture loss from exposed soil. Considering the burning of a single hectare of land “gives off more and more damaging pollutants than 6,000 cars,” said Savory, better solutions are urgently needed.

Keep in mind that Africa alone burns over one billion hectares a year.

According to Savory, if carbon remains in the ground instead of rising into the air, the soil is healthy and can sustain plant life. Waterways are preserved as well. The ramifications are enormous. Not only is the land fertile for agriculture and livestock but entire communities also have access to water, curbing disease along with starvation. And global warming is rapidly reversed too.

Holistic land management 101

Developed over 40 years ago, Holistic Management is a system that “results in ecologically regenerative, economically viable and socially sound management of the world’s grasslands … [It] teaches people about the relationship between large herds of wild herbivores and the grasslands,” as stated by the Savory Institute.

Allan Savory discovered through years of observation, study and failure that when herd animals are removed from the land, the soil dies. Yet, when domesticated animals are properly managed to mimic natural herd migrations and grazing, the soil and surrounding ecosystem spring back to life.

He realized herd animals play a crucial role in easing desertification by providing dung and trampled plant matter. A protective layer is formed through this process, trapping moisture and carbon in the soil. The results are truly staggering — lush and healthy grasslands, waterways and communities replace barren desert.

Too good to be true?

Critics of Savory’s method are quick to point out thorough scientific research is lacking. They also maintain that livestock grazing, regardless of management, remains destructive to the environment and atmosphere. Savory counters that his proof is in the outcome. One of the many stunning success stories is found with the rangelands in Dimbangombe, Zimbabwe.

When all is said and done, the end result is what counts. Environmentalist Bill McKibben observes, “Done right, some studies suggest, this method of raising cattle could put much of the atmosphere’s oversupply of greenhouse gases back in the soil inside half a century. That means shifting from feedlot farming to rotational grazing is one of the few changes we could make that’s on the same scale as the problem of global warming.”

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2013/06/14/grazing-livestock-may-hold-the-secret-to-reversing-climate-change/

6/12 Violent Weather

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It was a wild weather night over much of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Mid-Atlantic on Wednesday, as tornadoes and an organized complex of severe thunderstorms known as a bow echo brought damaging winds to a large swath of the country. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) logged twelve preliminary reports of tornadoes in Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio, but no injuries or major damage were reported with the twisters. A large area of severe thunderstorms organized into a curved band known as a “bow echo” over Indiana during the evening. The bow echo raced east-southeastwards at 50 mph overnight, spawning severe thunderstorm warnings along its entire track, and arrived in Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland near 9 am EDT Thursday morning. SPC logged 159 reports of high thunderstorm wind gusts of 58 mph or greater in the 26 hours ending at 10 am EDT Thursday morning, and three of these gusts were 74 mph or greater. SPC did not classify this event as a “derecho”, since the winds were not strong enough to qualify. Last year’s June 29, 2012 derecho had 675 reports of wind gusts of 58 mph or greater, with 35 of these gusts 74 mph or greater. Thirteen people died in the winds, mostly from falling trees; 34 more people died from heat-related causes in the areas where 4 million people lost power in the wake of the great storm.

Another round of severe weather is expected over the Mid-Atlantic states Thursday afternoon and evening, and SPC has placed portions of this region in their “Moderate Risk” area for severe weather.


Figure 1. Lightning strikes the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in downtown on June 12, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)


Figure 2. An organized line of severe thunderstorms took the shape of a “bow echo” over Indiana last night, triggering severe thunderstorm warnings along the entire front of the bow.


Figure 3. Severe weather reports for the 24 hours ending at 8 am EDT June 13, 2013, from SPC.

Big wind in the Windy City
I watched with some trepidation Wednesday evening as a large tornado vortex signature on radar developed west of Chicago, heading right for one of the most densely populated areas in the country. Fortunately, the storm pulled its punch, and Chicago was spared a direct hit by a violent tornado. But what would happen if a violent, long-track EF4 or EF5 tornado ripped through a densely populated urban area like Chicago? That was the question posed by tornado researcher Josh Wurman of the Center for Severe Weather Research in Boulder and three co-authors in a paper published in the January 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Their astonishing answer: damage of $40 billion and 13,000-45,000 people killed–the deadliest natural disaster in American history, eclipsing the Galveston Hurricane (8,000 fatalities.)


Figure 4. Tornadoes to affect the Chicago area, 1950-2005. Background image credit: Google Earth. Tornado paths: Dr. Perry Samson.

Huge tornado death tolls are very rare
A tornado death toll in the ten of thousands seems outlandish when one considers past history. After all, the deadliest tornado in U.S. history–the great Tri-state Tornado of March 18, 1925–killed 695 people in its deadly rampage across rural Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. That was before the advent of Doppler radar and the National Weather Service’s excellent tornado warning system. In fact, there has only been one tornado death toll over 100 (the 158 killed in the Joplin, Missouri tornado in 2011) since 1953, the year the NWS began issuing tornado warnings. Chicago has been hit by one violent tornado. On April 21, 1967 a 200-yard wide F4 tornado formed in Palos Hills in Cook County, and tore a 16-miles long trail of destruction through Oak Lawn and the south side of Chicago. Thirty-three people died, 500 more were injured, and damage was estimated at $50 million.


Figure 5. Wind speed swaths for the 1999 F5 Mulhall, Oklahoma tornado if it were to traverse a densely populated area of Chicago. Units are in meters/sec (120 m/s = 269 mph, 102 m/s = 228 mph, and 76 m/s = 170 mph). Winds above 170 mph usually completely destroy an average house, with a crudely estimated fatality rate of 10%, according to Wurman et al.. Insets x, y, and z refer to satellite photo insets in Figure 2. Image credit: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.


Figure 6. Aerial photographs from Google Earth of densely populated area of Chicago (insets x, y, and z from Figure 5) These areas contain mainly single-family homes, with housing units densely packed on small lots. A mixture of three-story apartments and single-family homes is typical across the Chicago metropolitan area and many older cities such as New York City and Detroit. At lower right is a photo of Moore, OK, showing lower density housing like the 1999 Bridgecreek-Moore tornado passed through.

The paper by Wurman et al., “Low-level winds in tornadoes and the potential catastrophic tornado impacts in urban areas” opens with an analysis of the wind structure of two F5 tornadoes captured on mobile “Doppler on Wheels” radar systems–the May 3, 1999 Bridgecreek-Moore tornado, which hit the southern suburbs of Oklahoma City, and the Mulhall, Oklahoma tornado of the same day, which moved over sparsely populated rural regions. The Bridgecreek-Moore tornado had the highest winds ever measured in a tornado, 302 mph. Winds of EF4 to EF5 strength (greater than 170 mph) are capable of completely destroying a typical home, and occurred over a 350 meter (1150 foot) wide swath along this tornado’s path. The Mulhall tornado had weaker winds topping out at 245-255 mph, but had EF4 to EF5 winds over a much wider swath–1600 meters (one mile).

The F4 to F5 winds of the Bridgecreek-Moore tornado killed 36 people. Given the population of the area hit, between 1% and 3% of the people exposed to these winds died. The authors thought that this number was unusually low, given the excellent warnings and high degree of tornado awareness in Oklahoma’s population. They cited the death rate in the 1998 Spencer, South Dakota F4 tornado that destroyed 30 structures and caused six deaths, resulting in a death rate of 6% (assuming 3.3 people lived in each structure). There are no studies that relate the probability of death to the amount of damage a structure receives, and the authors estimated crudely that the death rate per totally destroyed structure is 10%. This number will go down sharply if there is a long warning time, as there was in the Oklahoma tornadoes. If one takes the Mulhall tornado’s track and superimposes it on a densely populated region of Chicago (Figure 5), one sees that a much higher number of buildings are impacted due to the density of houses. Many of these are high-rise apartment buildings that would not be totally destroyed, and the authors assume a 1% death rate in these structures. Assuming a 1% death rate in the partially destroyed high-rise apartment buildings and a 10% death rate in the homes totally destroyed along the simulated tornado’s path, one arrives at a figure of 13,000-45,000 killed in Chicago by a violent, long-track tornado. The math can applied to other cities, as well, resulting in deaths tolls as high as 14,000 in St. Louis, 22,000 in Dallas, 17,000 in Houston, 15,000 in Atlanta, and 8,000 in Oklahoma City. Indeed, the May 31, 2013 EF5 tornado that swept through El Reno, Oklahoma, killing four storm chasers, could have easily killed 1,000 people had it held together and plowed into Oklahoma City, hitting freeways jammed with people who unwisely decided to flee the storm in their cars. The authors emphasize that even if their death rate estimates are off by a factor ten, a violent tornado in Chicago could still kill 1,300-4,500 people. The authors don’t give an expected frequency for such an event, but I speculate that a violent tornado capable of killing thousands will probably occur in a major U.S. city once every few hundred years.

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

Solar FIlaments

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AN OUTBREAK OF MAGNETIC FILAMENTS: The sunspot number may be low, but the sun is far from blank. Amateur astronomers monitoring the sun report a large number of magnetic filaments snaking across the solar disk. Sergio Castillo captured more than half a dozen in this picture he sends from his backyard observatory in Inglewood, California:

“Filaments are popping up all over the solar surface,” says Castillo. “Each one has a unique shape and length.”

The longest one, in the sun’s southern hemisphere stretches, more than 400,000 km from end to end. “It’s one of the longest filamentary structures I have ever seen,” says veteran observer Bob Runyan of Shelton, Nebraska.

If any of the filaments collapses, it could hit the stellar surface and explode, producing a Hyder flare. Filaments can also become unstable and erupt outward, hurling pieces of themselves into space. Either way, astronomers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.

fr/spaceweather.com

Ryuku Islands Earthquake

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Strong earthquake out in the sea of the Kagoshima prefecture, Japan (Ryukyu Islands)

Last update: June 13, 2013 at 2:26 pm by By

–

Update 14:23 UTC : The hypocenter of this earthquake was right in the subduction slope and very shallow (8 km), which may explain in part why it was felt as strong by the people living and working on the nearby islands.

Update 13:52 UTC : There is of course NO tsunami danger for this earthquake

This earthquake was very well felt in the Kagoshima prefecture but was not really dangerous with a maximum JMA3 intensity shaking. Based on our experience with Japanese earthquakes, earthquake-report.com considers JMA 5+ intensity as a potentially dangerous shaking.

Image courtesy and copyright JMA Japan

Image courtesy and copyright JMA Japan

89km (55mi) E of Nago, Japan
102km (63mi) ENE of Gushikawa, Japan
102km (63mi) ENE of Haebaru, Japan
106km (66mi) E of Ishikawa, Japan
1235km (767mi) S of Seoul, South Korea

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 5.6

Local Time (conversion only below land) : Unknown

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-06-13 13:24:44

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/13/strong-earthquake-ryukyu-islands-japan-on-june-13-2013/

Earthquake – Eastern Turkey

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Moderate earthquake in Eastern Turkey (Van) – Cracked buildings in several villages

Last update: June 13, 2013 at 8:19 am by By

This quake is given with Magnitude 4.6 by Turkish authorities. According to Turkish news agencies, medical teams who are working in Van district reported minor cracks to a couple of houses in different villages close to the epicenter. They are currently checking the affected areas for larger damage. So far there are no reports of injuries.
The Turkish Van province was hit by a devasting M 7.1 quake in October 2011, killing hundreds of people. Since then this region is regulary affected by weak to moderate aftershocks, which sometimes generated minor damage.

Van

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 4.5

Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-12 22:02:53

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-06-12 19:02:53

Depth (Hypocenter)  : 10 km

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/12/moderate-earthquake-eastern-turkey-on-june-12-2013/

Torrevieja Area in Spain – Earthquakes

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Second earthquake today in the Torrevieja area (San Fulgencio), Spain

Last update: June 13, 2013 at 2:31 pm by By

Update 14:05 UTC : We do not expect that this earthquake will be seriously damaging, however minor damage like cracks can always occur. Normally damage is only reported in this area and fault type from approx. M4 and above.

Again a very shallow (8 km depth) earthquake, which means that it was seriously felt by people living in the direct area of the epicenter.

Screen Shot 2013-06-13 at 15.44.27

360 km NW of Algiers, Algeria / pop: 1,977,663 / local time: 14:24:23.0 2013-06-13
41 km E of Murcia, Spain / pop: 436,870 / local time: 15:24:23.0 2013-06-13
6 km E of Formentera de Segura, Spain / pop: 2,765 / local time: 15:24:23.0 2013-06-13

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 3.3

Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-06-13 15:24:24

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-06-13 13:24:24

Depth (Hypocenter)  : 10 km

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/06/13/minor-earthquake-spain-on-june-13-2013/