A report from the Social Security Administration shows that a record number of Americans are on disability at the end of 2013.
The report says that 10,998,269 Americans collect federal disability benefits with an average payout of $1.146.43 a month. The total average amount per month is also a record.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the number of Americans on disability surpasses the entire population of Greece, Portugal or the Czech Republic. The total is less than 200,000 people away from matching the population of Cuba.
The number of Americans on disability climbs to record levels every month and has shown no signs of slowing down. The last time the number of Americans on disability declined was February 1997, when the number of Americans on government disability was 4,357,251.
A new report exposes a piece of equipment used by the National Security Agency that allows operatives to break into computers from as far as eight miles away using WiFi technology.
The device, called NIGHTSTAND, allows the NSA to place viruses and other software on computers that use Microsoft operating systems. The system works using WiFi signals and would be completely undetectable by the computer’s users.
The project was just one of several NSA programs that were exposed in the German magazine Der Spiegel from leaks given out by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
DEITYBOUNCE was a program designed to hack into Dell servers through an exploit in the motherboard. IRONCHEF would allow two way communications between the devices.
A program called IRATEMONK was created to hack the boot programs on drives from multiple hardware manufacturers like Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung.
A record number of abortion clinics in the United States closed during 2013.
The survey from Operation Rescue says the number of surgical abortion clinics in the United States is down 12 percent in 2013 and down 73 percent from a record high in 1991.
In all, 87 clinics discontinued surgical abortions. Six of the clinics remained open to provide abortion-inducing drugs but 81 clinics completely closed their doors. The total does not include clinics that were closed for significant portions of time in 2013.
The number of clinics that only provide abortion-inducing drugs remained fairly steady at 176, with six documented clinic closures.
Planned Parenthood clinics accounted for 30 percent of surgical abortion clinics and 93 percent of all clinics that offer abortion via drugs only. Planned Parenthood, which receives tax dollars, is responsible for about one third of all abortions in the United States.
A new survey shows that 33 percent of Americans reject the idea of evolution and say “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”
The study from the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Survey showed that evangelical Protestants top the list of those rejecting evolution with 64 percent saying there is no such thing as evolution.
A quarter of those surveyed said that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things.”
The survey noted that while the overall number of those who do not believe in evolution has stayed steady, the partisan divide grew. In 2009, the last time the question was asked, 54 percent of Republicans accepted evolution. The total in 2013 is 43 percent. Democrat support for evolution was up 3 percent.
The survey of almost 2,000 adults was conducted in March and April 2013 with the findings released this week.
Like a slow-motion train wreck, the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster is still causing damage long after the world’s media has left the news story behind.
Reports are coming in that the North American food supply is already being affected by Fukushima.
Bluefin tuna caught off the San Diego coast is showing evidence of radioactive contamination. This is the first time that a migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity 3,000 miles from Fukushima to the U.S. Pacific coast. It is a nutrition source that accounts for approximately 20,000 tons of the world’s food supply each year.
According to the report published by the National Academy of Sciences, “We report unequivocal evidence that Pacific Bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis, transported Fukushima-derived radionuclides across the entire North Pacific Ocean.”
Source: WND Health – Japan radiation poisoning America?
Investigators in Michigan are marveling over the disappearance of Teleka Patrick.
The 30-year-old doctor had been in residency in Kalamazoo, Michigan when she failed to show up for work on December 6th. She has not been seen since.
Patrick’s car was found 100 miles south of Kalamazoo in a ditch next to Interstate 94. The car was abandoned but not crashed and search dogs show Patrick’s scent disappearing 30 feet from where the car was found.
Now, police have found a series of videos Patrick made for an unknown person that they believe could be connected to the disappearance. They have also been given a security video from a hotel in Kalamazoo that showed Patrick talking to the desk clerks the night of her disappearance.
Patrick’s family says they did not know of her being involved with anyone. The series of videos discovered on Patrick’s computer and storage shows her talking to an unknown person, showing a dinner set for two stating ‘this is where you would sit if you were here’ and also discussing ways they can be together.
Police say they have no evidence of foul play and no conclusive evidence regarding Patrick’s movements after she left the hotel and boarded the hotel’s courtesy van. However, they warn this situation could be a warning regarding giving out personal information on the internet and communicating with people you don’t know in person. It’s possible that Patrick was abducted by someone not who they claimed to be in their communications with her.
Twenty-four flights were canceled on Sunday and Monday after flu-stricken pilots and flight attendants working for Alaska Airlines called in sick.
According to Alaska spokeswoman Bobbie Egan, approximately 270 passengers were affected by canceled flights.
Off-duty pilots and flight attendants volunteered to work while their colleagues were out sick according to Egan.
The airline anticipates a less busy Tuesday, and says it probably won’t have to cancel any more flights due to illness.
A federal judge cited the September 11th terrorist attacks in his ruling that bulk collection of American’s telephone information was legal.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley of New York said the National Security Agency’s program is the government’s counter-punch to al-Qaeda’s use of technology to plot attacks against Americans. He cited al-Qaeda’s decentralized network and that it plots many of its attacks remotely.
“This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Pauley said. “The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented.”
The ruling counters a ruling earlier this month from a different federal judge who had granted a preliminary injunction against the program. The Washington, D.C. based judge said the program likely violates the fourth amendment to the Constitution.
The judge said the NSA had intercepted seven calls from 9/11 hijackers but thought they were overseas because they could not collect information they can collect now.
While most people were focusing on a part of a report from President Obama’s task force on surveillance calling for the NSA to scale back operations, one member of the force wants people to know he thinks more surveillance of citizens is necessary.
Michael Morell, a former acting director of the CIA, said that not only is the NSA’s telephone-data collection program necessary to avoid another 9/11 situation, that the program needs to be expanded to include e-mail surveillance.
“I would argue actually that the email data is probably more valuable than the telephony data,” Morell told te National Journal. “You can bet that the last thing a smart terrorist is going to do right now is call someone in the United States.”
Morell even claimed that had e-mail surveillance been part of the “215 program” and if it had been in place on 2000 and 2001, “I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened.”
The task force report did recommend and praise a program used to monitor e-mails sent and received outside the borders of the U.S.
Senior Israeli officials are furious after a new leak from fugitive Edward Snowden shows the NSA was tracking the e-mail of some of Israel’s highest leaders.
The report says that from 2008 to 2011, the U.S. obtained help from Britain to spy on the e-mails of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio that what the NSA had done to his country was “not legitimate” intelligence gathering and he called for an agreement between the two nations regarding espionage.
A spokesman for Olmert tried to downplay the news saying the account monitored was for questions from the public and that “there is no chance there was a security or intelligence breach.”
Israel stopped all espionage actions against the U.S. when former civilian intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was caught sending classified information to the Israelis.
“I think we should expect the same relations from the U.S.,” Steinitz said.