The Chinese block news and soft-core sex internet sites, but let porno sites through. They also block desperately needed AIDS information. A team from Harvard Law School spent 8 months testing more than 200,000 Chinese websites and discovered that nearly 20,000 sites are inaccessible there. They tested Saudi sites last year and found almost all women’s sites were blocked, including those advertising bathing suits.
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Patients who are being treated for cancer with radioactive materials may set off anti-terrorism devices installed in public places. A 34-year-old man with a thyroid condition who was being treated with radioactive iodine was strip-searched twice in New York subway stations. “Police had identified him as emitting radiation and had detained him for further questioning,” say Drs. Christoph Buettner and Martin Surks. “He returned to the clinic and requested a letter stating that he had recently been treated with radioactive iodine.”
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An unusually large early season winter storm has struck the United States from Oklahoma to New York, and will move up the eastern seaboard today. For the past three years, the flows of major ocean currents worldwide have been weakening, and some scientists have been predicting the possibility of very large winter storms in the US and Europe, with Europe being especially vulnerable. Whitley Strieber’s book “The Coming Global Superstorm,” predicted this kind of storm would be the beginning of global climate change.
This storm is unusual for its size. At one point it covered almost the entire south, and parts of east Texas and Oklahoma. Storms this large are rare at any time of year, but for a winter storm to cover this much land area this early in the season is uncommon.read more
We’re all worried about terrorist threats against airlines, but most of us are unaware of the dangerous microbes that live in aviation fuel that can mess up the planes’ instruments, cause fuel leaks, and even eat through the wings if undetected. Now scientists have developed a test that lets non-scientists check oils, fuels and water for “microbial fouling, spoilage and corrosion” caused by bacteria, yeasts and molds. Airlines simply add a sample of the fuel to a bottle of gel, and get results overnight.
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