Threat Assessment: January 30th-February 10th
WITH US
Ten-year-old girl discovers new molecule
When Kenneth Boehr, a fifth-grade teacher at a Montessori school in Kansas City, Mo. instructed his students to build molecules with modeling kits, one of them, Clara Lazen, 10, randomly arranged a unique combination of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms. Boehr's friend Robert Zoellner, a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University, determined that Lazen’s molecule was unique and had the potential to store energy. Zoellner published a research paper on his findings to the January issue of Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, listing Lazen and Boehr as co-authors. [Humboldt State University via @NatureNews]
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AGAINST US
Donald ("You're fired!") Trump endorses Romney
Announcing his endorsement in Las Vegas days before Nevada's primary, the billionaire business magnate/reality TV star told reporters he will not mount an independent campaign if Romney is the Republican nominee. Trump wasn't always such a Romney fan. During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" in April, he said this of Mitt's business career, "He'd buy companies. He'd close companies. I've built a great company. My net worth is many many times Mitt Romney." [CNN]
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Komen Pulls a Uie: Will Continue to Fund Planned Parenthood
Komen for the Cure, which earlier this week announced it was pulling funding for Planned Parenthood on the grounds that the family planning organization was under congressional investigation, released a statement on Friday reversing the decision: "We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," the statement says. "The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood." [Dallas News, Komen Foundation
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AGAINST US
Facebook Board is a Boy's Club
Most of Facebook's more than 800 million users are women, but the company's seven-member board includes only men. This makes the company an outlier even in the male-dominated business world; just 11.3 percent of the Fortune 500 had male-only boards last year "We’re long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better," Anne Mulcahy, the former head of Xerox Corp, who sits on a number of prestigious corporate boards, told Bloomberg. [Bloomberg]
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Mike Bloomberg to give Planned Parenthood $250,000
The billionaire mayor of New York City will give $1 for every new dollar Planned Parenthood raises up to $250,000 in response to the controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision to pull grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings. "Politics have no place in health care," Bloomberg said in a statement, according to The New York Times. "Breast cancer screening saves lives and hundreds of thousands of women rely on Planned Parenthood for access to care. We should be helping women access that care, not placing barriers in their way." The Komen Foundation had been giving Planned Parenthood about $700,000 a year. [Huffington Post]
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Stephen Colbert's Super PAC outraises Sarah Palin's
In the fake presidential stakes, Colbert has bested the Tea Party favorite; the comedian's Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, raised over $1 million, Palin's just $752,000. [Mother Jones]
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AGAINST US
Gadhafi's Blood-stained shirt, wedding ring, on sale for $2 million
A Libyan man is selling the silver ring and button-down beige shirt worn, so he claims, by the Libyan dictator when he was found by rebels, dragged out of his hiding place, beaten and then shot dead. Debates over the ethics of selling the the dead leader's effects quickly sprang up online. [ABC News]
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Chris Rock happy to pay more tax
The comedian, who's worth an estimated $70 million, told the Associated Press Wednesday, "I can pay higher taxes and people can have jobs or I can pay lower taxes and I have my kids' teacher asking me for a loan because she's going to lose her house, which is true." [AP Video]
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U.S. to exit Afghanistan next year
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta yesterday announced that America hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013, more than a year ahead of schedule, the latest sign, notes the Washington Post, that the United States and its NATO allies "are seeking to hasten the end of their involvement in the unpopular, decade-long war." [Washington Post]
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AGAINST US
Surveillance Drone Industry Plans PR Push
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVSA), a trade group that represents the drone industry in the UK, has recommended drones should be shown to "benefit mankind in general", be decorated with humanitarian-related advertisements, and be painted bright colors to set them apart from military drones. [The Guardian]
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Millions Have Switched Their Banks in Last 90 Days
Last November, the Occupy Wall Street movement inspired "Bank Transfer Day, when Americans were encouraged to show their displeasure with the nation's biggest banks by moving their money to a different institution. In the three months since, around 5.6 million people – three times the normal rate – have done so. The nation’s 10 biggest banks could lose as much as $185 billion in deposits this year as a result; Bank of America alone could lose $42 billion and 10 percent of their customers. [ThinkProgress]
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AGAINST US
Leading Womens' Health Org Cuts Off Planned Parenthood
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the nation's leading breast cancer advocacy organization, has decided to eliminate most of its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening. A Komen board member said Wednesday the was made because of the fear that a GOP House investigation of Planned Parenthood would damage Komen’s credibility with donors. [New York Times]
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AGAINST US
92 Percent of political ads run in Florida were negative
Says Kenneth Goldstein, president of Kantar Media CMAG, which tracks content and targeting of political advertising.“For as long as I’ve been in politics, 14 years, journalists call me and ask if this is the most negative election ad atmosphere I've ever seen. And every year I say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But this year it's true." [The Daily Beast]
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No Big Health Impact Seen from Japanese Nuke Meltdown
Last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan caused relatively little harm to the health of people in the surrounding area, thanks partly to prompt evacuations, a U.N. investigation has concluded.
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AGAINST US
Jeb Bush Lobbied On Behalf Of Medicare Fraudster
The former Florida governor and brother of George W. Bush personally lobbied the secretary of health and human services in the mid-1980s, while his father, George H.W. Bush, was vice president, on behalf of Miguel Recarey, a hospital executive who would later be accused of defrauding the government of hundreds of millions of Medicare dollars. [Huffington Post]
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LAPD cracks down on drone use by … real estate agents
The Los Angeles Police Department is warning real estate agents not to use images of properties taken from unmanned aircraft, saying the aerial drones pose a safety hazard and could violate federal aviation policy. The warning came after a television news report showed a basketball-sized object with rotors hovering over a Westside residence. [LA Times]
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AGAINST US
Mitt Romney 'not concerned' about the very poor
During an interview with CNN, the GOP frontrunner said, "I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." [CNN]