Financial stress causes heart attack

Worrying about money can increase risks of several significant health problems - such as heart attack, ulcers, migraines, back pain etc. - a new study has suggested. 

While it is not surprising that the main source of stress for most people is money, this new research has found just what people can expect from their worries. 

In a comparison of people who had a high level of stress over debt and those who did not, it was found that people with high stress levels were twice as likely to have a heart attack compared with those who did not worry about their financial situation. 

The poll, conducted by the Associated Press and AOL, also found that 27 per cent of people with high stress over finances reported ulcers or digestive problems versus 8 per cent of people who did not worry about finances. 

Further 44 percent of people financially stressed reported having migraines versus 4 percent of people with low financial stress. 

And 23 percent of people with financial stress were depressed, compared with 4 percent of people who were not stressed. 

Highly stressed people were also 65 per cent more likely to suffer from back pain and muscle tensions than those with low stress. 

The good news is there is an easy way to avoid health problems associated with worrying about finances. 

Read More:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Financial-stress-causes-heart-attack/articleshow/12921023.cms

Merrin Fabre - Lighting up to take down bacteria

Whilst some bacteria can provide health benefits there are others that can do annoying things - like kill you. So in order to save ourselves we should probably kill them first. So, stand aside bacterial wipes, hand sanitisers and antiseptic sprays there is a new bug zapper in town.

Bring in the plasma flashlight - a torch that emits a plasma jet that kills bacteria on the skin in an instant. Developed by a group of Chinese and Australian scientists, including CSIRO, the flashlight is completely mobile, light, efficient, and works at room temperature.

Due to its mobility it could be used in ambulance emergency calls, natural disaster sites, military combat operations and many other instances where treatment is required in remote locations.

Kostya Ostrikov from CSIRO was one of the researchers working on the flashlight.

"'The plasma flashlight is an exciting development in potential health treatments," Kostya said. "It not only inactivates individual bacterial cells but also bacterial biofilms."

Read More:

http://www.interndaily.com/reports/Lighting_up_to_take_down_bacteria_999.html

Danny Schechter - Robots R’US: Military-style Drones Reported On 63 Bases In The USA

Listen to Danny Schechter every Friday at 1pm (Eastern Time) on "The News Dissector"

It’s easy to understand why Presidents, politicians and the military love robots. They don’t talk back. They follow orders.  You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal.

These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science ‘faction.’

Robots and drones don’t burn Korans or pose with the heads of their captives on the battlefield. (Robots also don’t protest wars.)  Lose the human factor and you get silent but deadly total destruction. 

And that’s why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice. You have video game jockeys sitting on their asses in front of consoles of digital displays at an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, targeting suspected terrorists in Afghanistan. After a couple of quick kills, they take the rest of the day off.

It’s only later, that we get the reports of civilians decimated as collateral damage.

Oops!

These new lethal toys are used both for surveillance and targeted assassinations.

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30576

Anthony Gucciardi - Mother Wins Top Environmental Award for Beating Monsanto

After experiencing the traumatizing death of her daughter to kidney failure just three days after her daughter was born, Sofia Gatica from Argentina became determined to find out what killed her daughter. Her conclusion? Monsanto’s genetically modified soy fields that surrounded her neighborhood, laced with damaging insecticides negatively affecting nearby neighborhood children and adults alike. Gatica began to detail how her small town was plagued with astronomically high birth defect rates, respiratory disease, and even infant mortality.

From this point, the courageous mother decided to take on Monsanto. Amazingly, she is not alone in her struggle against the biotechnology colossus when it comes to causing birth problems, as a large group of farmers — also from Argentina — have launched a lawsuit against Monsanto for causing ‘devastating birth defects‘ in children. Gatica was initially alone, however, when she first began her uphill battle. Forming a group of concerned mothers in her local area of Ituzaingó after hosting an event at her home to discuss her experiences, the mother would be one of the very few who has actually beat Monsanto.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/mother-wins-top-environmental-award-beating-monsanto-1335626115

Eric Reguly - When Bill Gates pushes high-tech agriculture, who benefits?

When Bill Gates speaks, the world tends to listen. The second-richest man on the planet is treated like a god when he opens his mouth. He’s still chairman of Microsoft. The billions of dollars of donations he has made through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have captured the attention of the World Health Organization and set the agenda for vaccine development and inoculation over the past decade. Now, through sheer wealth-driven clout, his plan to reduce world hunger has found a rapt audience in the United Nations’ food agencies.

Gates descended on Rome, home of three UN food agencies, in February like a rumpled angel. In a speech at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (disclosure: my wife is an employee), and at a related media event, two themes emerged: technology and big business.

His talk was peppered with phrases and references to “yield,” “global productivity target” and “digital agriculture.” He mentioned some of the biggest food processing corporations, among them Procter & Gamble and Nestlé, and seemed enthusiastic about their potential role in the food development chain. “I’m a huge believer in the private sector and drawing them in,” he told the dazzled crowd.

But I was left wondering whether Gates’s agenda would contribute to the public good or the good of big business. Philanthrocapitalism, as it has been dubbed, has a dark side. Relying on genetically modified (GM) crops and chemicals to push up output per acre may help Monsanto (which was one of the stocks in the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio), Syngenta and other tech-driven food biggies, but won’t necessarily support those who need the most help—poor smallholder farmers and underdeveloped countries. Making them part of Big Ag’s global supply chain might not help either.

Read More:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/when-bill-gates-pushes-high-tech-agriculture-who-benefits/article2413679/

Jane Hamsher - What Foreign Corporations Will Obama Empower to Undermine Environmental Laws Near You?

Australia

New Zealand

Brunei

Peru

Chile

Singapore

Malaysia

The White House wants to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” agreement with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Japan is waiting in the wings, Canada and Mexico want in, Taiwan has announced its intention to meet membership requirements and China says it will “earnestly study” whether to seek entry into the agreement.

Basically, the TPP is NAFTA on steroids.  The White House wants to reach a deal prior to the election because they know all the apparatchiks feeding on the $1 billion in Obama campaign money flowing through the system will launch tribalistic attacks on anyone organizing against it (activists, labor unions, workers) for “helping Mitt Romney win” — thus facilitating its easy passage.

Under TPP, foreign corporations would receive:

• Compensation for loss of “expected future profits” if local health, labor or environmental laws limited their ability to do business
• Rights to acquire land, natural resources and factories without government review
• Risks and costs of offshoring to low wage countries eliminated
• Special guaranteed “minimum standard of treatment” for relocating firms
• Right to move capital without limits
• New rights covering a vast definition of investment: intellectual property, permits, derivatives
• A ban performance requirements and domestic content rules (no “made in the USA,” “buy local” or “green jobs”). An absolute ban, not only when applied to investors from signatory countries
• Ability to extend drug patents and limit production of generic medicines that are used for global health programs
• Rollback of regulations that were put in place to prevent another global economic crisis such as “too big to fail” remedies

Read More:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/04/27/what-foreign-corporations-will-obama-empower-to-undermine-environmental-laws-near-you/

Frank Lipman - What Practical Tips Do You Suggest To Avoid GM Foods?

1. *Avoid "at risk" ingredients*
The commonest crops that are genetically modified are Soy (91%) Canola (88%) Corn (85%) Cotton (71%) Sugar Beets (90%) and Hawaiian papaya (more than 50%). So in general, avoid foods with ingredients derived from corn or soybeans. Fortunately there is no GM popcorn or blue or white corn.

2. *Avoid processed foods in general*
This is the most reliable way to prevent purchasing GM foods as most processed foods have GMO ingredients in them. Processed foods using products made from corn and soybeans contain the most GM ingredients.

3. *Buy organic*
Organic foods can be labeled in 3 different ways
a) “100% organic” – all ingredients are organic.
b) “organic”- at least 95% of ingredients are organic. The remaining 5% has to be non-GMO.
c) “made with organic (name of ingredient)”- 70% of ingredients are organic. The remaining 30% has to be non-GMO.

Read More:

http://www.drfranklipman.com/what-practical-tips-do-you-suggest-to-avoid-gm-foods/

MIT Researchers Predict ‘Global Economic Collapse’ By 2030

Seems everyone’s getting in the doomsday-prediction business. That’s not all that unusual in Fourth Turnings; in the 1930′s, “tent revivals” were all the rage, and radio preachers gained notoriety with their apocalyptic predictions based on the moral decay of the Roaring ’20s and Prohibition.

Today, we have people using the Mayan calendar, Harold Camping’s Rapture calculations and any number of extraterrestial events to predict the end times, as well as global resource depletion and “climate shift” science. The bright minds at MIT have taken it a step further and have built a computer model to simulate when they believe it will happen. Their simulation points to no later 2030.

Whether any of these are based on fact or faith (or both) doesn’t matter. What matters is that society’s belief that something is terribly wrong and needs to be fixed will eventually create action. We all know, intuitively, that civilization is operating at unsustainable levels and cannot continue this way much longer.

Next Great Depression? MIT Researchers Predict ‘Global Economic Collapse’ By 2030

April 4, 2012

A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester’s institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace.

Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says “the world is on track for disaster” and that current evidence coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, “The Limits to Growth.”

Read More:

http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=32713

John Vidal - Earth faces a century of disasters, report warns

World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills”, warns a major report from the Royal Society. Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.

The assessment of humanity’s prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.

“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, it says.

Read More:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/25/earth-faces-a-century-of-disasters-report-warns/

Nicky Hagar - ECHELON: Exposing the Global Surveillance System

This important article was published more than 15 years ago (February 1997) in Covert Action Quarterly

In the late 1980′s, in a decision it probably regrets, the U.S. prompted New Zealand to join a new and highly secret global intelligence system. Hager’s investigation into it and his discovery of the Echelon dictionary has revealed one of the world’s biggest, most closely held intelligence projects. The system allows spy agencies to monitor most of the world’s telephone, e-mail, and telex communications.

For 40 years, New Zealand’s largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation’s equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand’s intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be interviewed.

The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON.

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30532