In related news South Korean reported Saturday that the North Korean cargo ship Kang Nam 1 that was believed to be on its way to Burma, but changed course after being tracked by U.S. vessels, appears to be carrying conventional small weapons, including Soviet-era rifles and missile launchers.  Anyway Kim Jong-Il, thanks for the 4th of July fireworks, now go crawl back into your bunker and die please!

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Jones suffered a devastating industrial accident 12 years ago when hot aluminum exploded in his face, causing burns to 37 percent of his body, the loss of his left eye and blindness in his right eye.

Previous attempts using stem cells to restore sight in his right eye failed.

Mr. Liu a corneal specialist and Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon based at Sussex Eye Hospital, Brighton pioneered the amazing procedure and believed Jones was a prime candidate.

The novel procedure has been performed on only 50 other patients in Britain.

Liu first removed a patch of skin tissue from inside Jones’ cheek and transplanted it into his eye for two months, to allow it to develop its own blood supply

Liu then removed one of Jones’ incisors, drilling a hole in a segment of the tooth and fitting a man-made lens inside. After two months the tooth fitted with the sight giving lens was inserted into Jones’ eye, gently placing the flap of new skin over the implant.

The last step involved surgeons cutting a hole in Jones’ cornea to allow light to pass through.

When Jones’ bandages were finally removed after the last step, his sight was restored and he was finally able to see his wife whom he described with awe as “…wonderful and lovely.”

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Photo Source: Rotherham Advertiser

Well if quitting office, during your first term as governor with a year and a half still to serve is her strategy for running for president, I say good luck with that.

Source: CNN

The researchers discovered that boosting the levels of a protein in the visual cortex, called RGS-14 allowed mice to remember images they had seen for up to two months. Mice without the memory booster were only able to retain memories of the images for one hour.

The scientists were able to isolate a specific area of the visual cortex responsible for forming visual memories, called layer six of region V2. When they removed that region from the brains of the lab mice, they completely lost their ability to form visual memories.

Although the protein has not yet been tested on humans, the researchers believe it shows great promises for future use as a human memory enhancer.

The full study is available in the latest edition of the journal Science.

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Head of the powerful Guardian Council, ultra-conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, just announced that the remaining British embassy staff in custody are to stand trial for their crimes of inciting the anti-government protests.

Ayatollah Jannati is a top confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and has frequently denounced the West as arrogant. “No matter how many stones they throw in our path, they cannot prevent the spread of the Islamic revolution in the world,” said Jannati referring to Western powers.

Jannati just ratified the election of Ahmadinejad on Monday and has now added some strong actions to match Iran’s harsh rhetoric against England in recent weeks, blaming Britain for instigating the mass protests against the election results.

Iran rounded up seven of nine local British embassy staff members, but has since released all but two. The remaining two staff members in custody are to be tried for instigating the riots and protests against Ahmadinejad’s election.

“In these incidents, [the British] embassy had a presence, some people were arrested. Naturally they will be put on trial, they have made confessions,” said Jannati.

Britain is denying its embassy staff took part in any demonstrations, saying the claims are baseless. “We are concerned about these reports and we are seeking clarification on this as a matter of urgency,” said a spokesman for Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The EU nations refused to join in a British proposal to recall all diplomatic envoys from Iran, but did agree to a strongly worded letter threatening Iran with visa restrictions.

The arrests and threatened trials of British staff members are part of a desperate effort by the Iranian government to blame the protests on foreign governments, instead of a mass revolt from its own citizens decrying the election results and demanding greater freedoms from the oppressive government.

Additional arrests were made yesterday of seven Iranian exiles the government also claims were provocateurs of election demonstrations.

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The giant moa bird, weighed about 250 kilograms and grew to 2.5 meters tall, with smaller moa species the size of modern day turkeys. The obscure moa birds once roamed the forests of New Zealand, before the time of man, until they became extinct, sometime in the 1500s due to over hunting by the native Maori who appeared around 1280 AD.

The hungry Maori, essentially ate the moa birds to extinction.

Scientists have been able to surmise the relative size and different moa bird species from bones and fossils, but never before, have they been able to visually reconstruct a moa bird with its feathers. “Until now, the scientific community has not known what the 10 different species of moa looked like,” said PhD student Nicolas Rawlence from the University’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

With the help of ancient DNA, the scientists were successful in linking the feathers to four different moa species. They reconstructed a stout-legged moa, heavy-footed moa, upland moa and the South Island giant moa. The giant moa was one of the biggest birds ever known to exist in the world.

The scientists discovered that most of the moa birds were clothed with dull brown feathers, but some species exhibited white-tipped feathers lending them a spectacular speckled appearance.

Scientists from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA are excited about using these findings to reconstruct other extinct birds by extracting DNA from feathers found in fossil deposits.

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According to the report, a high ranking staff member within the USDA a few years back was lobbied by a food company. She chose to overrule her staff, and allowed them to receive an official USDA label for their product, which used unorganic additives in their so-called ‘organic’ products.

From there a number of USDA employees have done the same, reducing the standards for companies that wish to apply that label to their own foods.

Now, though half the country buys organic some or all of the time, less and less products are featuring truly organic ingredients. And what is worst is they are getting away with it,

“It will unravel everything we’ve done if the standards can no longer be trusted. If we don’t protect the brand, the organic label, the program is finished. It could disappear overnight,” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was quoted by the MSNBC expose.

Investigations into the matter are expected to be held, but whether or not anything will be done is another matter. Tom Vilsack, the Secretary for Agriculture, has said that he agrees something should be done, but that there is much pressure from the food industry to lower standards.

Apparently, it’s ridiculous to expect the government to encourage companies to higher theirs.

Yahoo made the announcement this week, saying that almost all of their energy needs for their newest Data center will be powered by hydroelectrics, coming from the churning waters of the Niagara.

But that’s not all.

According to a report by EcoGeek, Yahoo has also promised to reduce their carbon foot print from every single data center they have built or will build by 40%. This will have been accomplished, they say, by 2014.

The move by Yahoo, which is sure to be a big selling point for the company, may cause their domination to once again grow, and surely for other companies to follow in their footsteps. Only time will tell.

Lebanon born, Nassim Taleb, author of his newest book, “The Black Swan” and the popular Wall Street cult favorite, “Fooled by Randomness,” is a former Wall Street trader, turned financial philosopher and advisor to Universa Investments, a hedge fund firm, who believes human beings are continually blindsided by dramatic, improbable events that shape the course of history.

Taleb rejects Plato’s view of a structured and ordinary world, instead viewing the world controlled by a series of random, unexpected events that he compares to the existence of mutant black swans.

Against this philosophy, Taleb provocatively asserts that anyone making financial predictions, based on past history don’t know what they are talking about. Taleb told the Squawk Box crew when asked to make a prediction about the financial crisis and rising unemployment, “We’re in the middle of a crash.” “So if I’m going to forecast something, it is that it’s going to get worse, not better,” said Taleb.

Taleb described our global financial system as extremely fragile that is destined to crash. He referred to stimulus programs as an example of monetary policy that’s out of control, producing little “green shoots” of economic recovery, “…but you are still in a world that’s breaking,” said Taleb.

Teleb advised the U.S. government to deleverage debt and not rely on stimulus packages that will only inflate assets. He recommended that the government convince banks to take aggressive, large-scale steps to convert debt into equity.

He called for a worldwide, deleveraging of debt totaling $40-to-$70 trillion,” to make a transition into a more stable financial environment.

Taleb suggested that banks attempt to negotiate with homeowners on the verge of foreclosure, offering to lower monthly payments in return for part-ownership of the property, averting foreclosures and additional debt on the banks’ balance sheets.

“The monkey on our back is debt,” said Taleb. Government leaders need to “take the devil by the horn” and aggressively deleverage our massive debt into equity or suffer the consequences of a global financial crash.

Dire words indeed from one of the world’s hottest thinkers, who predicted the financial crisis and earned millions during the financial meltdown, against all odds, based on his “Black Swan Protection Protocol.”

Video of Taleb’s remarks can be found here.

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