WORLD NEWS STORIES
December 6th, 2009 by Barry Eaton
Apple’s Sweatshop Problem: 16 Hour Days, ~70 Cents An Hour
By Henry Blodget | Daily Ticker – Fri, Jan 20, 2012 12:28 PM EST
This story is about Foxconn, a factory in Shenzhen that employs 430,000 people assembling products for Apple and perhaps other tech companies. One of the workers, a 13 year old girl was interiewed about working conditions. The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn’t really check ages
The workers stay in dormitories. In a 12-by-12 cement cube of a room, Daisey counts 15 beds, stacked like drawers up to the ceiling. Normal-sized Americans would not fit in them.
A screen cleaner called Hexane is used on the production line because it evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.
Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers’ hands no longer work, obviously, they’re canned.
The labor board puts people on a black list that is circulated to every company in the area. The workers on the black list are branded “troublemakers” and companies won’t hire them.
One man got his hand crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. Foxconn did not give him medical attention. When the man’s hand healed, it no longer worked. So they fired him. (Fortunately, the man was able to get a new job, at a wood-working plant. The hours are much better there, he says — only 70 hours a week).
Please see this story in full, including an on screen report - these facts need to be revealed.
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Study: Nearly all women with Breast Cancer have Parabens in their Breast Tissue
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
http://www.naturalnews.com/
(NaturalNews) They are added to everything from shampoos and deodorants to processed foods and pharmaceutical drugs in order to inexpensively extend shelf life and improve product stability. But a new study out of the University of Reading (UR) in the UK has found that, based on tests conducted, nearly every single woman with breast cancer has one or more paraben chemicals in her breast tissue, suggesting a possible link between the chemical and the disease.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, Dr. Philippa Darbre and her team from UR gathered tissue samples from 40 women who were undergoing mastectomies for breast cancer between the years of 2005 and 2008. The team took four different tissue samples from each woman at separate times, which collectively totaled 160 samples, and performed an extensive analysis on each of their contents.
In the end, the group found that 99 percent of the breast tissue samples contained at least one type of paraben, while 60 percent contained at least five. And while the presence of parabens in cancer-infected breast tissue does not necessarily imply that the chemicals are responsible for causing the disease, it sure does lend suspicion to the notion that parabens could be a potential culprit.
Where have these chemicals come from
“The intriguing discovery that parabens are present even in women who have never used underarm products raises the question: where have these chemicals come from?” asked Dr Darbre after observing that even women who did not use typical paraben-containing products still had the chemical in their breast tissue. “The fact that parabens were present in so many of the breast tissue samples does justify further investigation.”
In a separate study, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that nearly every human urine sample tested contained parabens. This is particularly concerning, since research compiled by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) suggests that parabens are linked to causing organ system toxicity, reproductive and fertility problems, birth and developmental defects, and endocrine (hormone) disruption. (http://www.ewg.org/chemindex/
When shopping for personal care products and food, be sure to read all ingredient labels carefully to avoid unnecessary exposure to parabens. High-quality personal care products, for instance, will often contain helpful labels indicating that they do not contain parabens.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
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If you ever had any doubts that we are enmeshed in the digital age this next story may help change your mind….
Kodak files for Chapter 11 in US bankruptcy court
[Fri 20/01/2012 09:01:31]
By Brendan Swift
Film and camera company Eastman Kodak has filed for chapter 11 business reorganisation in the US Bankruptcy Court after failing to back innovative technologies and battling new market entrants.
The company, which has been in business for more than a century, will now undergo a restructure after securing a $US950 million debtor-in-possession credit facility from Citigroup to enhance liquidity and working capital.
Non-US subsidiaries, such as the Australian arm, are not affected. Kodak Australasia’s general manager, entertainment imaging and professional services (Australia and New Zealand), Darren Swenson, was unavailable for comment.
Motion picture film remains a popular choice for high-end local feature films although ongoing advances in digital capture technology, such as the ARRI ALEXA, are continuing to win over cinematographers. Film has suffered a sharper decline in the local TV commercial market over the past year.
Kodak retrenched three Australian staff last year amid a downturn in local production. Nonetheless, US executives recently said the US film division remains profitable and the company also said it remains committed to the market.
Kodak chairman and chief executive Antonio M. Perez said the company planned to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.
“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio: our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images and have generated over $US3 billion of licensing revenues since 2003; and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies, which give Kodak a competitive advantage in our growing digital businesses.”
Kodak had closed 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reduced its workforce by 47,000, since 2003. It said digital and materials deposition technologies now generate approximately 75 per cent of its revenue.
Last year, Perez said Kodak was five years too late to accelerate its shift to the digital age.
The company developed the first digital camera in 1975 but, fearing for its traditional film business, shelved it. It eventually entered that market and, while its digital cameras were popular for a time, in recent years sales plummeted as customers turned to in-built cameras in their smart phones.
Stripped down as you’ve never seen her: Pictures of Tower Bridge during construction found dumped in a skip
By Daily Mail Reporter
This is one of the London’s most beloved landmarks as you’ve never seen her before.
Stripped down to her underwear, the never before seen pictures of Tower Bridge - one of the world’s most recognisable structures - have been unveiled after the stash of hundred-year-old prints were found in a skip.
Coinciding with the 125th anniversary of the bridge’s foundation, the 50 sepia photos reveal in incredible detail the ingenuity behind one of the capital’s most popular tourist destinations, which was the first bridge of its kind in the world.
Never seen before: The pictures of London’s Tower Bridge were found in a skip and then wrapped up in brown paper and put in a carrier bag under a bed
The unique pictures, dating back to 1892, document the construction the iconic bridge, which at the time was a landmark feat of engineering nicknamed ‘The Wonder Bridge’.
The discarded pictures, which were retrieved by a caretaker who was looking after a building being turned into flats in 2006, have spent the last five years in a carrier bag underneath his bed.
The 59-year-old, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that after the occupants of the Westminster office building moved out, the album and a number of documents were thrown into a skip outside.He said: ‘I took the ledgers to the Tower Bridge Museum because I thought they might have some historical value.
Remarkable find: The prints reveal in incredible detail the ingenuity behind one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions and how it was put together
A view of the bridge: The sturdy steel frame of Tower Bridge can be seen, before it was covered with its distinctive stone-cladding on the orders of architect John Wolfe-Barry
‘They included records of the materials and used in the bridge’s construction and what they cost.
‘I told the man at the museum that I had also found some photos but he told me they already had plenty of those.
‘I didn’t know what to do with them so I wrapped them in some brown paper and put them in a bag under the bed.’ It wasn’t until earlier this month, when the owner of the photos mentioned them to his neighbour, City of Westminster tour guide Peter Berthoud that the significance of the find fully emerged.
Mr Berthoud, an expert in the history of London who gives guided tours around famous landmarks including Tower Bridge, said he was gobsmacked by the haul.
Stripped down: The photographs show how the bridge was put together over eight years, revealing why it was nicknamed at the time the ‘Wonder Bridge’
Landmark: Tower Bridge remains one of the capital’s most iconic structures and a tourist attraction today, 125 years after building started
Sepia to silver screen: The incomplete Tower Bridge features in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes battles with his adversary Lord Henry Blackwood
And contrary to popular misconception, the images reveal the bridge is a sturdy steel frame beneath the instantly recognisable stone-cladding.
Mr Berthoud said: ‘When my neighbour gave me a disk with the images on I just couldn’t believe it.
‘I spent hours going through my books to see if these pictures were already around, but I couldn’t see them anywhere - they are totally unique.
‘Quite simply London Bridge is the world’s most iconic bridge, and it’s the only bridge over the Thames which has never needed to be replaced at some point.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067581/Stripped-youve-seen-Pictures-Tower-Bridge-construction-dumped-skip.html#ixzz1iaHtRQvk
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This story has already come under the microscope on RadioOutThere this year in discussions with Duncan Roads, editor of Nexus Magazine. It’s interesting to see how it’s now being picked up by the news media.
Solar Activity and Potential Global Effects
(Reuters) - An upcoming cycle of stormy solar activity risks causing damage to electrical transformers and threatening vulnerable energy infrastructure around the globe, a report by an insurance group says.
The sun follows a predictable 11 year activity cycle, with the next period of stormy activity expected to begin in 2012-13.
The report by German insurance group Allianz said a high impact solar storm, not easily predicted due to its recorded rarity, could cause blackouts and economic losses of over $1 trillion and that the worst case scenario would be even worse.
“What we’re coming into at the moment is the bad (space)weather period,” Jim Wild of Britain’s Lancaster University, an expert in solar plasma physics, told Reuters.
A large explosion on the surface of the sun could release billions of tones of superheated magnetically charged gas at a speed of a million miles per hour, and when that gas hits the earth’s magnetic field, it can trigger a big solar storm.
The severity of a potential disruption has made experts at insurance and national security institutions take notice.
“When you start to imagine not having electricity in a sizeable fraction of a country or a continent for weeks or even months … it’s serious business,” Wild said.
SMALL LEAD TIME
The difficulty lies in predicting how often serious solar type events occur.
The small lead time given by satellites is also a problem for preventing solar storm damage, as currently no satellite is close enough to the sun to give more than an hour’s warning, Wild said.
Updating the satellites to give the earth more preparation time would cost around $1 billion, he added.
Space weather is a relatively new area of study, with sophisticated observations going back only 50 years and lacking an international coordinated tracking system such as that found with normal meteorological weather.
“We have very little on a solar time scale,” Wild said.
The most damaging storm in recent memory was a 1989 outage in Quebec, Canada, which affected six million people.
The first scientific recording of a large solar storm was made in 1859 by English astronomer Richard Carrington, who observed a white light explosion on the surface of the sun.
Wild said: “what they didn’t know back then was why about two or three days later you could see the northern lights over Cuba and all of the telegraph system was disrupted by geomagnetic activity.”
According to the Allianz report, an event on the same scale today would cause extensive damage to electrical infrastructure.
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This story has taken a few months to get to me, but it’s worth reading…..
Greenpeace Finds Toxic Chemicals in Top Clothing Brands
100 percent of Chinese brands found to be contaminated
By Fang Xiao, Epoch Times Staff
Share http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/greenpeace-finds-toxic-chemicals-in-top-clothing-brands-60799.html
Traces of toxic and hormone-disrupting chemicals have been found in clothes bearing 14 top manufacturing brands, Greenpeace said in its report released earlier this year in the Philippines and China, where many of the clothes are made.
Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) were found pervading clothing and fabric-based shoes sold internationally by brands such as Adidas, H&M, and Abercrombie & Fitch. NPE breaks down to form nonylphenol, which interrupts biological endocrine functions and harms the reproductive system.
“Scientific research has shown that NPE have direct correlation with premature puberty,” Zhang Kai, who was in charge of the investigation, told Chinese business daily Changjiang Daily. “Experiments have confirmed that these environmental hormones could induce male fish to transform into female fish.”
Zhang said that among the brands, 40 percent of Adidas products were found to have NPE, while the Chinese athletic brand Li Ning was the most contaminated with the chemicals in 100 percent of its tested products.
While the brand is not well known in the West, Li Ning, with all its clothes made and sold in mainland China, is a domestic competitor to Nike and Adidas.
“It is difficult for us to understand why the Chinese government bans exports of clothes containing NPE abroad, but allows the manufacturing and sales of such products in its domestic market,” said Zhang. “The government has yet to have regulations regarding the usage and disposal of NPE in China.”
In response to the report, Li Ning’s Public Relations Director Zhang Xiaoyan submitted a statement to the Hangzhou-based Metro Express, saying that a recent test conducted by internationally reputable testing agencies SGS and CTI concluded that all of Li Ning’s sample products were in full compliance with the European Union’s REACH standard
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Another Zhang, Mr. Zhang from the southeastern province of Zhejiang, was not buying the explanation by Li Ning’s Zhang Xiaoyan.
“China’s PR is really unusual, and some PR girls are really very capable,” he said. “The Li Ning products can pass EU inspection; it has everything to do with the PR work by the Ling Ning company. This type of PR is actually a crime.”
In a sarcastic voice, Zhang said, “The samples for inspection are randomly chosen and sent for inspection. I think Li Ning’s products can pass EU inspection, and the PR department has made a great contribution.”
“However, Greenpeace is an independent organization,” Zhang said. “Its sampling is a done during a surprise visit, so there is no time for Li Ning’s company to do PR. Therefore, such an investigation result is credible. In China, we lack such an independent organization that gives a fair inspection.”
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12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure (Feb 18, 2011) - 8 min 20 sec - ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0ZkgqM1TE
Göbekli Tepe, is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge some 15 km northeast of the town of Sanlžurfa, in southeastern Turkey and 500 miles away from Istanbul, Turkey. It is the most astonishing archaeological discovery in modern times and also thought to be the oldest advanced civilization on Earth. Ancient Aliens Season - 02, Episode - 08