(CBS News) Consumer Reports found significant levels of arsenic in apple juice earlier this year, and now, the magazine has a new study, showing many brands of rice also contain the toxin.
The arsenic enters into the rice when it is grown, according to Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He explained the rice with the highest levels of arsenic is from Texas and Louisiana, and along the Gulf coast where fields were used to grow cotton a century ago.
“When there was cotton there they had to treat the cotton with arsenic pesticides to control the bowl weevil,” he said. “Now a century later, that arsenic is still in the soil, the rice is very effective at pulling it out of the soil in and it concentrates in the rice.”
Arsenic causes lung, skin and bladder cancer, Landrigan said. He added that arsenic is also very harmful to babies' brain development. If a baby is exposed to arsenic in the womb because the mother is eating arsenic or if a baby ingests arsenic in the first months of life in cereal, rice milk or other food, the arsenic could interfere with brain development, reduce the child's intelligence, and cause behavioral problems.
ROME (AP) — Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, paving the way to possible extradition requests by Italian authorities.
The ruling by the Court of Cassation marks the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.
The Americans were convicted in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
“It went badly. It went very badly,” lawyer Alessia Sorgato said after the court announced its decision after a day of deliberations. “Now they will ask for extradition.”victed in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.
Milan Prosecutor Armando Spataro, one of Italy's top anti-terrorism magistrates who shaped the prosecution, hailed the top court's decision, saying it was tantamount to a finding that extraordinary rendition “is incompatible with democracy.”
The drug war is far, far more than just simply criminals at work, says scholar Oliver Villar.
Note: The following interview helps us understand the drug war from a dramatically different perspective than the one the corporate media paints. Instead the traditional portrayal of the war on drugs as a fight between law enforcement and illicit drug dealers, scholar Oliver Villar explains that the illegal drug trade is a tool of empire a means of “social control” as much as profit. Villar, a lecturer in politics at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia's insight is well worth the read.
EXTRACT:
LS: Catherine Austin Fitts, a former investment banker from Wall Street, shared this observation once with me:
Essentially, I would say the governments run the drug trade, but they're not the ultimate power, they're just one part, if you will, of managing the operations. Nobody can run a drug business, unless
the banks will do their transactions and handle their money. If you want to understand who controls the drug trade in a place, you need to ask yourself who is it that has to accept to manage the transactions and to manage the capital, and that will lead you to the answer who's in control. [2]
What are your thoughts on this essential equation?
Investigations by me, published yesterday on Press TV’s website, cited “Reverand” and “Doctor” Terry Jones as the source of the videos cited for instigating violence across the Middle East.
Our investigation into Jones past showed him to be a trained CIA asset with direct ties to the Mossad. He served in Germany for years as an organizer for the CIA under the highly secret “Gladio” program until expelled by the German government. You can be a CIA agent, even a terrorist bomber but in Germany, if you buy a mail order PhD, it is a crime. “Dr.” Terry Jones would have been better off had he called himself “Agent” Terry Jones.
VT offers its heartfelt condolences to the family of Ambassador Stevens and the families of the other Americans lost in Libya.
Here is an MSNBC clip covering their “day late” discovery of Jones at the heart of what is a conspiracy, not only to cause unrest but as a cover for assassinations of US diplomats by highly trained special operations teams.
OSTANINO, Russia — When a Chinese investor bought a farm outside this village a few years back, he was pleased enough to name it Golden Land. The soil was rich, the sunshine and rain bountiful.
The land, deep in rural Russia, was also largely devoid of people.
No more. Today, row upon row of greenhouses here teem with dozens of Chinese farmhands picking tomatoes. And in a season with a bumper crop of tomatoes, the foreman said he would happily have employed hundreds more.
The influx of Chinese farm labor in Russia reflects the growing trade and economic ties between the two countries, one rich in land and resources, the other in people.
For years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, both countries have struggled to convert these complementary strengths into real business opportunities. A few mining ventures are succeeding. And state companies have struck big oil, coal and timber deals that form the backbone of the economic relationship.
Following is a link to the most detailed, in-depth article I have yet to read on GLOBAL Fukishima fallout…including fallout in the southern hemisphere (yes, dorothy).
Time to really start being careful about what you eat and drink…in most countries, and both hemispheres.
Only a few weeks ago, most western observers had written off Mohamed Morsi, the new President of Egypt and a moderate member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a stooge who would dance to the tune of the military rulers of the Egyptian deep state. That view is rapidly changing. Morsi quickly consolidated power by forcing “deep-state” generals to retire (with dignity) and replacing them military leaders of a more reformist nature and less likely to lapdogs of the US and Israel. Thus Morsi seems to have out maneuvered the deep state apparat in a similar but even quicker way than Prime Minister Recep Erdogan did in Turkey. Also, like Erdogan in Turkey, he is flexing his nation’s regional diplomatic muscle in independent and sometimes surprising ways. Big things may be happening in Egypt and the Middle East, especially in the area of foreign policy, as only a few writers have noted (see for example, Esam Al-Almin, Patrick Seale, editorialin Al-Arahm). Attached is another analysis in this vein: Immanuel Wallerstein, describes why he thinks Morsi might be on the cutting edge of profound changes shaping the Middle East. If Wallerstein is correct in his sense that the focus of regional geopolitics is about to shift back to the Palestinian Question, the US is will be caught flatfooted again and may be again on the wrong side of history, while Israel’s isolation is likely to increase.
If we analyze the geopolitics of the Middle East, what should be the principal focus? There is little agreement on an answer, and yet it is the key question.
The Israeli government has been sedulously and constantly trying to make the focus be Iran. This has been considered by most observers as an effort to divert attention from Israel's unwillingness to pursue serious negotiations with the Palestinians.
In any case, this Israeli effort has failed, spectacularly. Netanyahu has been unable to get the U.S. government to commit to supporting an Israeli raid on Iran. And Iran's ability to gather most of the non-Western world — including Pakistan, India, China, Palestine, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon — to the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran underlines the political impossibility of the Israeli wish to concentrate attention on Iran.
For the past year, the center of attention has become Syria, not Iran, even if there is a link between the two. It has been primarily Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have struggled, with considerable success, to make Syria the focus of attention. Some observers feel this has been an effort to divert attention from Saudi Arabia's internal problems and anti-Shi'a oppression in the Gulf states, especially Bahrain.
This Syria-focus however is about to come to an end, for two reasons.
