2 pilots break long distance balloon-traveling record

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. –  Two pilots from the U.S. and Russia have traveled farther and longer in a gas balloon than anyone in history, trying to eliminate any remaining debate over a century of records in long-distance ballooning.

The Two Eagles pilots surpassed the distance and duration records that have held since the 1970s and 1980s, and were aiming Saturday for a safe landing somewhere on a beach in Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

Troy Bradley of Albuquerque and Leonid Tiukhtyaev (too-kh-TY'-yev) of Russia lifted off from Japan Sunday morning, and by Friday, they beat what's considered the "holy grail" of ballooning achievements, the 137-hour duration record set in 1978 by the Double Eagle crew of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman in the first balloon flight across the Atlantic.

By early Saturday morning, the Two Eagles team had been in the air nearly 155 hours and was smashing the distance record, having traveled more than 6,500 miles, including the crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

"The technology has improved so much in the last couple of years. I don't think there's going to be any question about the records," said Katie Griggs, a regional director with the nonprofit Balloon Federation of America.

The world has been tracking their progress online and through social media sites. Still, the official distance and time of the Two Eagles flight must be confirmed by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which requires staying aloft 1 percent longer and farther than the previous record.

The balloon is outfitted with an array of monitors and other instruments that are tracking its course and compiling the data, using technology that didn't exist in decades past, leaving some claims unproven.

Their first target was the official distance record of 5,209 miles set by the Double Eagle V team during the first trans-Pacific flight in 1981. They surpassed that on Thursday.

The journey has been tough on the pilots, who have been on oxygen for days; high altitude can take a physical toll. But they've been managing to crack jokes when checking in with mission control and their families.

The flight's mission control director, Steve Shope, said their priority now is getting the balloon to a safe landing after bad weather along the U.S. West Coast forced them to make a sharp right turn toward Mexico.

"Right now we have a big job ahead of us to get this balloon down," Shope said.

A chase crew of volunteers and members of the mission were en route Friday to record their arrival, help tether their craft and gather the balloon.

The pilots plan to come in low and drop thick trailing ropes into the ocean to help slow the balloon before setting down on some dunes in Baja California. Once they reach the sand, they will have traveled more than 6,800 miles.

"We're very excited. The pilots are excited. I think they're ready to land," Shope said.

Gas Blast at Mexico Children's Hospital, at Least 2 Dead

Injured and bleeding, mothers carrying infants fled from a maternity hospital shattered by a powerful gas explosion on Thursday, and rescuers swung sledgehammers to break through fallen concrete in hunt for others who may have been trapped.

At least two people were killed and 56 injured, said Claudia Dominguez, spokeswoman forMexico City's civil defense agency. Officials earlier said at least four had been killed.

Thirty-five-year-old Felicitas Hernandez wept as she frantically questioned people outside the mostly collapsed building, hoping for word of her month-old baby, who had been hospitalized since birth with respiratory problems.

"They wouldn't let me sleep with him," said Hernandez, who said she had come to the city-run Maternity and Children's Hospital of Cuajimalpa because she had no money.

The explosion occurred when the tanker was making a routine, early morning delivery of gas to the hospital kitchen and gas started to leak. Witnesses said the tanker workers struggled frantically for 15 or 20 minutes to repair the leak while a large cloud of gas formed.

"The hose broke. The two gas workers tried to stop it, but they were very nervous. They yelled for people to get out," said Laura Diaz Pacheco, a laboratory technician.

"Everyone's initial reaction was to go inside, away from the gas," she added. "Maybe as many as 10 of us were able to get out ... The rest stayed inside."

Workers on the truck yelled: "Call the firefighters, call the firefighters!" said 66-year-old anesthesiologist Agustin Herrera. People started to evacuate the hospital, and then came the massive explosion that sent up an enormous fireball and plumes of dust and smoke.

Herrera saw injured mothers walking out carrying babies. He said there had been nine babies in the 35-bed hospital's nursery, one in very serious condition before the explosion.

"We avoided a much bigger tragedy because the oxygen tanks are right beside (the area) and they didn't explode," Herrera said. The most affected parts of the hospital were the neonatology, reception and emergency reception units, he added.

Miguel Angel Garcia, smoked a cigarette outside Hospital ABC-Santa Fe, trying to calm his nerves while he waited to see his wife and new baby daughter, who had been moved there.

Garcia, 22, had been driving a bus when he heard about the explosion at the hospital where his wife had given birth to their second child just the day before. He dropped off his passengers, then his bus and took off for the hospital.

"When I arrived and saw it in pieces, I thought the worst," Garcia said. He waited for an hour before authorities told him his wife and daughter had been taken to the Santa Fe hospital. A nurse there told him both were fine, but he hadn't been allowed to see them yet.

As the day wore on, people arrived to offer diapers and baby formula. There was an hour-long wait to donate blood.

The driver and two employees were hospitalized but are also in custody, said a Mexico City government spokesman, who could not be named because she was not authorized to speak to the press.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera earlier told the Televisa network that at least 54 people were injured, 22 of them children. Most of the injuries were relatively minor, he said, many caused by flying glass.

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RABOBANK EMBROILED IN CALIFORNIA MONEY LAUNDERING INVESTIGATION

The United States Justice Department is investigating whether Rabobank ignored signs of money laundering at its US branches in California. The investigation could lead to additional enforcement action against Rabobank, Bloomberg reports

The investigation comes after Rabobank was connected with previous cases of money laundering by the banks clients in the US. The United States seized assets from Rabobank accounts in at least two criminal cases in 2011 and 2013, Bloomberg reports. In 2011 the money was tied to a Mexican cocaine trafficking operation. In 2013 the funds belonged to a San Diego customs broker, who pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Rabobank currently has more than 120 branches in the United States.

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LED HEALTH EFFECTS MUST BE RESEARCHED: HEALTH COUNCIL

There may be risks to health from the bluer light of LED, found investigations by the Health Council of the Netherlands.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are being used in increasing amounts, lighting the screens of many smartphones and tablets. In addition to the benefits of LED light, the Council warns that it can cause damage to eyes and disruption of the biological clock.

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A person’s biological clock “controls numerous physiological and behavioral processes”, reads an investigatory and advisory report released by the Council. “It operates autonomously, but may be affected due to external factors. One of the most important factors is light.”

The researchers found that people are interfering with their melatonin (sleep hormone) production and thus reversing their biological clocks by exposing themselves to LED light in the evenings. “The short-term effects are shorter sleep, reduced attention, and increased risk of accidents. The long-term risks include development of cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease and mental disorders,” reads the report.

The Council says consumers must be alerted to opportunities to reduce those risks.

The Council has also called for research and development into products that emit less blue light, and further research into the health effects of LED light.

“We know that the blue light from LED light is potentially harmful to the eyes, but it is unclear whether the degree to which we are exposed to it is harmful”, said a spokesperson for the Health Council, according to nu.nl.

In the advisory report, the Council explains that more products are being manufactured with LED lighting, and that with each generation they are becoming brighter. The Council also said that the increased amount of time that people are spending in front of screens contributes to the health impacts.

This is not a new discovery by scientists. Research by Harvard University in 2012 reported that exposure to blue light at night reduced alertness during the day, and suggested staying away from blue light several hours before going to bed.

EMAIL SCAM TARGETS 40 DUTCH MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Dutch MPs were the intended victims of a phishing scam this week, police in the Hague reported Thursday. An investigation is underway.

The email scam was sent to the official work addresses of “40-something” MPs in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, police spokesman Thomas Aling told NL Times. The email was made to appear like an internally transmitted message, pointing recipients to enter personal information on a site claiming to offer increased email safety.

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Police believe that a television show is responsible for the attack. “Several points are pointing that way,” said the spokesman. But when asked what technical evidence led to the preliminary conclusion, he refused to comment because the investigation is ongoing. The spokesman also refused to comment when asked if the show was, as de Telegraaf has suggested, located in the media hub of Hilversum.

No email recipients are known to have fallen for the scam. Access to the phishing site has been blocked from the Tweede Kamer’s network. The police praised parliament’s security, who had intercepted the emails.

“They did the right thing. They look very quickly and they saw there was phishing,” the spokesman told NL Times.

LIFEBOAT, DEAD BODY FOUND DURING HUNT FOR MISSING SHIP

Search and rescue crews trying to track down the fishing trawler missing in the English Channel found an empty life-raft on the French coast just south of Boulogne-sur-Mer. The serial number on the raft links it to the missing ship, which was found with some wooden debris, the Dover Coast Guard reported late Thursday morning.

Later on Thursday, a rescue boat found a corpse in the water about 17 kilometers off the coast of France. It is not known if the deceased person had been on the missing ship, the Z-85 Morgenster.

       Download the video of the rescue team

                                               

Hope is fading as the search continues. The Dutch Coast Guard expressed pessimism when the search restarted on Thursday morning. “If the crew are in the water since yesterday, the survival rate is virtually zero”, said Réjane Gyssens, head of the Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Oostende.

The Coast Guard estimated the water temperature to be nine degrees Celsius at the time the ship disappeared from the radar, according to Belgian news source hln.be.

The Belgian-registered Z-85 Morgenster was carrying a crew of two Dutchmen (Jan Kramer and Bert Woort), one Portuguese (Martins dos Santos) and one Belgian (Maurice Coussaerd).

Mayor Pieter van Maaren of Urk, Flevoland where the Dutch fishermen are from, has taken to Twitter to tell his citizens to “fold their hands and bend their knees” for the missing sailors.

The last signal from the vessel was received at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday when the vessel was 20 miles off the coast of Dover.

Muslim Sex Groomer was Unaware UK Didn’t Allow Raping 13-Year-Olds

This seems to be a serious and ongoing problem with Muslims in the UK, Australia, New Zealand. The only alternative may be to ask them to stay in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc to avoid any more rape misunderstandings. (via Religion of Peace)

A pedophile illegal immigrant who had sex with a 13-year-old girl claimed he was not aware it was against British “cultural norms”, a court has heard.

Married father Zia Maroof Khail, 29, carefully groomed the victim and fooled her into believing they were “boyfriend and girlfriend”.

Khail, originally from Afghanistan, persuaded her to meet him at his home twice a week, said Mark Lamberty, prosecuting.

He sexually abused her there, and had sex with her in an alleyway and at her own home.

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   “He was abusive to her if she refused to co-operate in sexual conduct,” Mr Lamberty added.

His sex crime came to light when the girl made a complaint about other men she said had abused her.

Police tracked Khail down using DNA evidence which matched his on a database at Colnbrook Immigration Centre, Heathrow, where he was waiting to be deported.

He told officers he did not think he had done anything wrong because he was not aware of the “culturSpecifically raping non-Muslim unattended teenage girls is not against Afghan Muslim cultural norms. Which is a problem for any non-Muslim country they visit.

Simon Mintz, defending, said Khail’s jail term would be “harder to bear” because of his lack of English. He added: “But bear it he must.”

Or the UK could just deport him now. On a plane. From 10,000 feet in the air.

But it seems that Khalil had enough English when he was pursuing a teenage  girl. He’ll manage in prison which is full of Muslims these days because of their “unawareness of cultural norms” about rape, drug dealing, terrorism, etc

The cultural norm excuse has been accepted by some judges though.

A Muslim pedophile in Nottingham was given a suspended sentence after he claimed that he had attended a Muslim school where he was taught that women are worthless.  Adil Rashid told a psychologist that his Muslim school had taught him that, “Women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground.”

Esmatullah Sharifi, an Afghan refugee, offered an Australian woman a ride home and then put his right hand around her neck and his left hand over her mouth and raped her. Sharifi’s lawyers claimed that due to cultural differences he was confused about the nature of consent.

This wasn’t Sharifi’s first misunderstanding of the difference between rape and sex. He had already been sentenced to 7 years in jail for raping an Australian teenager on Christmas Day in 2008.

The sentencing judge rejected Sharifi’s excuse, but a court of appeals judge found that claiming cultural differences was a valid basis for an appeal.

Islamic law. You may not be interested in it, but it’s interested in you. And very interested in your daughter.al norms” in Britain.

Miss Colombia Crowned Miss Universe, With Miss USA as Runner-Up

MIAMI — Miss Colombia, Paulina Vega, was crowned Miss Universe on Sunday night, while Miss USA, Nia Sanchez, came in second. The other finalists, chosen from among 88 contestants, were Miss Jamaica, Kaci Fennell; Miss Ukraine, Diana Harkusha; and Miss Netherlands, Yasmin Verheijen.

Vega, of Barranquilla, Colombia, granddaughter of the legendary tenor Gastón Vega, said the contests leading to MIss Universe were the first she'd participated in and would be her last as she's eager to return to her studies in business administration.

Sanchez, 24, of Las Vegas, has a fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and has traveled the country teaching others. She spoke in the competition about equipping women to defend themselves against crime. "It's just something that's so prevalent in our society and why not empower women to take control of a dangerous situation into their own hand," she said.

TODAY anchor Natalie Morales hosted the show.

ANDREW INNERARITY / REUTERS

Miss Colombia, Paulina Vega, smiles after being crowned Miss Universe in Miami on Sunday.

Play-Doh Enrages Parents With a Penis-Shaped Baking Toy

Play-Doh, by most standards, is an exceedingly innocuous toy. Kids can use the pliable dough to build all manner of things—rather than level cities and shoot people—and they can even eat moderate amounts of it without ending up in the emergency room. But over the holiday season, some parents made a rather unpleasant discovery: a tool in a Play-Doh kit that strongly resembles a penis. Pictures of the offending part circulated on Twitter with clever wordplays like "Dil-Doh." 

Included in the $20 Sweet Shoppe Mountain Playset is an extruder for squeezing out "icing" onto Play-Doh cakes, similar to a baker's pipette. But when the plunger is removed, the case takes a different (less family-friendly) form. Enraged parents havereportedly been complaining about the tool since November, but following Christmas—when the playsets were presumably doled out in relatively large numbers—angry comments on Play-Doh's Facebook page garnered more attention. The comments have now been removed. 

Play-Doh is owned by Hasbro, whose brand portfolio includes Transformers, Monopoly, and My Little Pony. Asked to comment on the snafu, Hasbro's publicist, Julie Duffy, responded thusly: "We have heard some consumer feedback about the extruder tool in the Play-Doh Cake Mountain playset and are in the process of updating future Play-Doh products with a different tool." Customers can contact Hasbro's consumer care number, 800-327-8264, to request a replacement.

The event caps a notable year of design scandals that included Hallmark's swastika-covered Hanukkah wrapping paper, Zara's kids' T-shirt resembling a concentration camp uniform, and Airbnb's new logo, which was compared to breasts, buttocks, a uterus, a vagina, and, yes, male genitalia. Indeed, 2014 will go down as the year when a handful of designers, somehow blind to history and uncanny resemblances, made some woefully egregious mistakes. 

The Cheapest Tax Prep Software for 2015 (Hint: It's Not TurboTax)

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For the second year in a row, TurboTax has raised its prices. At least that's what it feels like to many customers. 

Last year, TurboTax changed how it categorized its options for online filing, which looked to many users like a price-hike. A $20 “basic” return was gone. The $30 “deluxe” package no longer worked for filers with stock or mutual fund sales. Customers who’d been using "deluxe" for years discovered they needed to upgrade to the $50 “premier” package. Faced with a $20 charge after spending hours entering their tax information, many just forked over the up-charge.

This year, TurboTax made the same changes to the software it sells in stores. Loyal customers started complaining, loudly, when they realized they’d bought the wrong box. Almost 1,500 negative reviews were posted on Amazon, and H&R Block saw its opening: it made its tax prep software free to anyone affected.  

TurboTax apologized and is offering deluxe buyers $25. “While we made the best long-term decision, our good intent was not matched with good execution," says Julie Miller, a spokeswoman for Intuit Inc., which owns TurboTax. 

What it didn't apologize for was the fact that the reclassification simply makes it harder to compare prices. The three major players online – TurboTax, H&R Block and low-cost TaxACT – each divide their tax prep services into different buckets. Here's how it breaks down: 

TaxACT is the cheapest option for most people. With only 115 full-time employees, TaxACT spends little on marketing but handles 7 million returns a year. Its pricing is relatively simple: Nothing at all for a basic federal filing tool with all the necessary forms, plus $15 for state filing. A deluxe package — federal return, state return and more guidance — costs $20. 

H&R Block claims the cheapest option – $20 for a state and federal return. But that’s only available to those who fit narrow criteria, homeowners or others who file a 1040 form with Schedule A. And it’s only a better deal than TaxACT's $20 option if you take into account H&R Block’s “in-person audit support.” Other H&R Block federal options cost $30 and $50 online.

TurboTax charges $37 for a state return on top of a federal return (the same as H&R Block). TurboTax raised prices by $5 this year, bringing "premier" to $55, or more than $90, if you include a state return. TurboTax says it can charge more because it’s a better product than its rivals; Intuit’s Miller cites the software's “intuitiveness.”

TurboTax does offer one bargain. For a limited time, people with very simple taxes – using 1040A or 1040EZ forms – can file for free. That includes a state return, which competitors' "free" options charge for. This is an effort to grab more share in the slow-growing tax prep market, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Scott Schneeberger says.

An in-person preparer, meanwhile, will cost $200 or more. Last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office went incognito to 19 tax prep offices. In one scenario, a “waitress” was charged fees ranging from $160 to $408. A fictional “mechanic” was charged $300 to $587. 

One more tip: File early. The earlier you file, the cheaper it tends to be. (The IRS started accepting returns Jan. 20.) Early filers tend to be lower-income Americans getting big refunds, and special offers aimed at them, like TurboTax’s entirely free returns, often disappear by late February, Schneeberger says. Prices jump again in the last week of March. Procrastinators, don't say we didn't warn you.