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Santa Barbara aftermath: how California is breaking new ground on gun control
By Daniel Wood, Staff writer
LOS ANGELES — Four months after a mentally unbalanced student went on a shooting rampage – killing six and injuring 13 next to the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus in May – California has taken the national lead in gun control with two new laws allowing temporary seizure of guns from those who courts have decided are a threat to others or themselves.
With one of the laws, signed yesterday by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state becomes the first in the country to allow close relatives to request that a judge order that firearms be removed from someone who may pose a threat.
Several legal analysts say the laws neatly walk the tightrope between the constitutional right to bear arms and public safety. Gun rights advocates, however, say they trample on Californians’ civil liberties and deny the accused due process.
more
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2014/1001/Santa-Barbara-aftermath-how-California-is-breaking-new-ground-on-gun-control
Wednesday Toon Roundup 3- The Rest
GOP
Texas
Education
Banksters
Nukes
Climate
China
Pollution linked to lethal sea turtle tumors
Pollution in urban and farm runoff in Hawaii is causing tumors in endangered sea turtles, a new study finds.
The study, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PeerJ, shows that nitrogen in the runoff ends up in algae that the turtles eat, promoting the formation of tumors on the animals' eyes, flippers and internal organs.
Scientists at Duke University, the University of Hawaii and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducted the study to better understand the causes behind the tumor-forming disease Fibropapillomatosis, which is the leading known cause of death in green turtles, said Kyle Van Houtan, adjunct associate professor at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
"We're drawing direct lines from human nutrient inputs to the reef ecosystem, and how it affects wildlife," said Van Houtan, who is also a scientist in NOAA's Turtle Research Program.
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140930113302.htm
Add dolphins to the list of magnetosensitive animals
Add dolphins to the list of magnetosensitive animals, French researchers say. Dolphins are indeed sensitive to magnetic stimuli, as they behave differently when swimming near magnetized objects. So says Dorothee Kremers and her colleagues at Ethos unit of the Université de Rennes in France, in a study in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften -- The Science of Nature. Their research, conducted in the delphinarium of Planète Sauvage in France, provides experimental behavioral proof that these marine animals are magneto receptive.
Magnetoreception implies the ability to perceive a magnetic field. It is supposed to play an important role in how some land and aquatic species orientate and navigate themselves. Some observations of the migration routes of free-ranging cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises, and their stranding sites suggested that they may also be sensitive to geomagnetic fields.
Because experimental evidence in this regard has been lacking, Kremers and her colleagues set out to study the behavior of six bottlenose dolphins in the delphinarium of Planète Sauvage in Port-Saint-Père. This outdoor facility consists of four pools, covering 2,000 m² of water surface. They watched the animals' spontaneous reaction to a barrel containing a strongly magnetized block or a demagnetized one. Except from this characteristic, the blocks were identical in form and density. The barrels were therefore indistinguishable as far as echolocation was concerned, the method by which dolphins locate objects by bouncing sound waves off them.
During the experimental sessions, the animals were free to swim in and out of the pool where the barrel was installed. All six dolphins were studied simultaneously, while all group members were free to interact at any time with the barrel during a given session. The person who was assigned the job to place the barrels in the pools did not know whether it was magnetized or not. This was also true for the person who analyzed the videos showing how the various dolphins reacted to the barrels.
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140929105237.htm
Iceland Announces Men-Only Conference On Gender Equality
During a speech before the United Nations, Iceland's Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi said his country and Suriname are convening a conference to talk about gender equality.
The catch? Only men and boys are invited.
Bragi said that his country wanted to do its part to "promote gender equality." So, he announced:
"We want to bring men and boys to the table on gender equality in a positive way.As the AP reports, Bragi was making the announcement in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 1995 U.N. women's conference in which world leaders declared, "women's rights are human rights."
"Iceland and Suriname will convene a "Barbershop" conference in January 2015 where men will discuss gender equality with other men, with a special focus on addressing violence against women. This will be a unique conference as it will be the first time at the United Nations that we bring together only men leaders to discuss gender equality."
more
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/29/352541250/at-u-n-iceland-announces-men-only-conference-on-gender-equality
Iraq Accidentally Drops Food, Ammo on ISIS Fighters
Iraqi military supply helicopters were supposed to be taking shipments of food, water, and ammunition to besieged troops in the Shaqlawah base in Anbar Province late last week, where they’ve been out of the normal supply lines for a week. The supplies were dropped, just not where you’d want them.
Instead of dropping the shipments of food, water, and ammunition on the besieged base, many of the pilots mistakenly dropped the supplies on the ISIS fighters themselves.
Which is great for ISIS, who after all is using the same US-made weaponry Iraq’s own military is, largely looted from Iraqi military bases, and might’ve had a hard time finding spare ammunition otherwise.
The bungled airdrops were reported by Iraqi MP Hakim al-Zamill, from the Security and Defense Committee. He said the mistakes were because of “lack of experience of the pilots.”
more
http://news.antiwar.com/2014/09/30/iraq-accidentally-drops-food-ammo-on-isis-fighters/
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