BBC – When South Sudan became independent last July, Sudan lost most of its oil. However, the export pipelines go through Sudan, which has seized some $815m (£520m) in oil revenue, accusing the south of not paying transit fees. South Sudan last week said it was suspending oil production, accusing Sudan of “stealing” its oil. Read article
Reuters – Syrian troops are deployed in a Damascus suburb as tension mounts. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.
ABC – The WA [Western Australian] government should stop logging immediately in old growth forest in order to save the lives of black cockatoos. That’s the opinion of Glenn Dewhurst, chair of the Black Cockatoo Preservation Society Australia. … “A lot of people point the finger at farmers,” says Glenn. “We’ve been following cases where DEC successfully charged farmers (over illegal) clearing. “But when you have a look at it, the areas they want to clear are not good cocky [cockatoos], or even native (species), habitat. Read article
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Using the Livingston and Penn Solar Cycle 25 amplitude estimate, this is what the solar cycle record is projected to look like:
Reuters – Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity as the Central American nation seeks to close files on a brutal 36-year civil war. A judge found sufficient evidence that linked Rios Montt, who ruled during a particularly bloody period in 1982 and 1983, to the killing of more than 1,700 indigenous people in one counterinsurgency effort. Read Article
Reuters – A Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp and some of its local managers within weeks, adding the threat of prison sentences to an $11 billion civil lawsuit as punishment for a November offshore oil spill. The filing in federal court in Campos, Brazil, will likely include a request for criminal indictment of George Buck, chief executive of Chevron’s Brazil unit, as well as other staff, three Brazilian government officials involved in the case told Reuters. Read article
MSNBC – A teacher with Horry County Schools has been placed on leave after she was reportedly tased while refusing to listen to Horry County officers Friday night. According to a police report obtained by WMBF News, officers were patrolling in the Dog Bluff area of Horry County around 10 p.m. when they saw a white Ford Explorer traveling south on Dog Bluff Road. After a check of the license plate, it was discovered that the plates were suspended as well as expired. According to the report, the driver did not stop once a traffic stop was initiated until he got to a home along Dog Bluff Road. Read Article
BBC – An Israeli military court has ordered Hamas MP Aziz Dweik, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, to be held without trial for six months. His lawyer told Reuters news agency that the detention order says his client is “liable to be involved in hostile actions against Israel”. Read article
Defense News – The European Commission has sent the German and Dutch governments a letter warning them to take action to comply with an EU defense procurement law within two months or face potential fines. In a statement issued Jan. 26, the commission says it is “concerned that [Germany and the Netherlands] have failed to fulfill their commitments under the Directive (2009/81/EC) regarding procurement of arms, munitions and war material (and related works and services) for defense purposes, and also the procurement of sensitive supplies, works and services for security purposes. Read Article
Bloomberg – European stocks fell, erasing earlier gains, as insurers and mining companies retreated. The Stoxx 600 dropped 0.2 percent to 257.24 at 12:10 p.m. in London. The benchmark measure is headed for a gain of 0.5 percent this week and has advanced 5.2 percent so far this year. Read Article
AFP – International action to snuff out cybercrime is desperately needed, officials and business leaders say, warning that criminals move at internet speed while countries drag their feet. Many hackers are no longer just mischievous individuals. Instead well-funded organisations do it for profit, along with spies and terrorists, but many governments are struggling to fight it. Read Article
MSNBC – Jessica Wilcox thinks her in-laws still view her ideas about childbirth as kind of out there, but it’s hard to argue with success: In the last five years or so, Wilcox has given birth to two boys and two girls — each weighing more than 10 pounds — at her northern Virginia home. And she hopes to do it again one or two more times. Wilcox is part of a small but growing trend. While home births are still rare in the United States, they’ve posted a surprising climb in recent years, according to a government report out Thursday. Read article
ABC – The retired colonel who claims to have seized control of Papua New Guinea’s military has threatened to use “necessary actions” to resolve the country’s political stand-off. Colonel Yaura Sasa has told reporters in Port Moresby that soldiers under his control fired several shots this morning as they stormed barracks and took defence force commander Francis Agwi hostage under house arrest. Read article
Wired – When Adm. Eric Olson, the former leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, wanted to explain where his forces were going, he would show audiences a photo that NASA took, titled “The World at Night.” The lit areas showed the governed, stable, orderly parts of the planet. The areas without lights were the danger zones — the impoverished, the power vacuums, the places overrun with militants that prompted the attention of elite U.S. troops. And few places were darker, in Olson’s eyes, than East Africa. Read Article
Associated Press – Companies that were bailed out during the financial crisis still owe U.S. taxpayers nearly $133 billion. Treasury’s plans to recoup that money have been slowed by the volatile stock market and weakness among smaller banks. Some of the money will never be recovered. Read Article
BBC – Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis. In its blog, Twitter said it could “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”. But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide. Read Article
Medical Xpress – In the two largest clinical studies ever conducted on the molecular genetics of lung cancer, an international team led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has demonstrated that an available molecular test can predict the likelihood of death from early-stage lung cancer more accurately than conventional methods. The work may eventually help improve the odds of survival for hundreds of thousands of patients each year. Read article
BBC – Thousands of Egyptians have remained in Cairo’s Tahrir Square after a rally marking the anniversary of the uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Read article
AP – The Pentagon outlined a plan Thursday for slowing the growth of military spending, including cutting the size of the Army and Marine Corps, retiring older planes and trimming war costs. It drew quick criticism from Republicans, signaling the difficulty of scaling back defense budgets in an election year. The changes Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described at a news conference are numerous but hardly dramatic. They aim to save money by delaying some big-ticket weapons like a next-generation nuclear-armed submarine, but the basic shape and structure of the military remains the same. Read Article
PressTV – BP Plc, UK, and EU have reportedly convinced US lawmakers to exempt a BP-led project from the newly- proposed Washington sanctions on Iran. This is a clear indication that the West is pushing for stricter embargoes on Tehran without harming its own economy. US senators have discussed provisions that could bar companies like BP from working with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Reuters quoted one congressional aide as saying on Monday. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Google received 65 requests from the Government to remove web pages from its database in the first half of last year, the Leveson Inquiry has heard. National security was “the single biggest category” among the reasons cited for wanting pages removed from Google search results, the company’s legal director said. Daphne Keller, who flew in from the US to give evidence to the inquiry into media standards, said that Google had complied with the requests in 82 per cent of cases. Having heard evidence from newspaper editors and journalists over the last month, Lord Justice Leveson turned his attention to online news providers to help him address the issue of how best to achieve a level playing field between print and online media when it comes to regulation Read Article
Reuters – Police rush the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, away from angry protesters as concerns for her safety grew.
Editorial Note – In a classic case of Problem, Reaction, Solution no sooner than this quiet easily avoidable, but great TV, event happened then “commentators” (aka Useful idiots) started calling for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to be pulled down – something that Australian political leaders have long yearned for. Very similar also to UK Government efforts to dispand protests in front of Parliament that have been there for years, and US Government efforts to disrupt the Occupy Washington protestors.
Reuters – Children who develop autism already show signs of different brain responses in their first year of life, scientists said on Thursday in a study that may in the future help doctors diagnose the disorder earlier. British researchers studied 104 babies at 6 to 10 months and then again at 3-years-old, and found that those who went on to develop autism had unusual patterns of brain activity in response to eye contact with another person. Read article
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