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Amazon's 'lost tribes' resist modern world ? for now

On a cloudless afternoon in the foothills of the Andes, Eliana Mart?nez took off for the Amazon jungle in a single-engine Cessna 172K from an airstrip near Colombia?s capital, Bogot?. Squeezed with her in the tiny four-seat compartment were Roberto Franco, a Colombian expert on Amazon Indians; Crist?bal von Rothkirch, a Colombian photographer; and a veteran pilot. Mart?nez and Franco carried a large topographical map of R?o Pur? National Park, 2.47 million acres of dense jungle intersected by muddy rivers and creeks and inhabited by jaguars and wild peccaries?and, they believed, several isolated groups of Indians. ?We didn?t have a lot of expectation that we?d find anything,? Mart?nez, 44, told me, as thunder rumbled from the jungle. A deluge began to pound the tin roof of the headquarters of Amacayacu National Park, beside the Amazon River, where she now serves as administrator. ?It was like searching for the needle in the haystack.?

Read the full story, "Lost Tribes of the Amazon," at Smithsonian.com

Mart?nez and Franco had embarked that day on a rescue mission. For decades, adventurers and hunters had provided tantalizing reports that an ?uncontacted tribe? was hidden in the rainforest between the Caquet? and Putumayo rivers in the heart of Colombia?s Amazon. Colombia had set up R?o Pur? National Park in 2002 partly as a means of safeguarding these Indians, but because their exact whereabouts were unknown, the protection that the government could offer was strictly theoretical. Gold miners, loggers, settlers, narcotics traffickers and Marxist guerrillas had been invading the territory with impunity, putting anyone dwelling in the jungle at risk. Now, after two years? preparation, Mart?nez and Franco were venturing into the skies to con- firm the tribe?s existence?and pinpoint its exact location. ?You can?t protect their territory if you don?t know where they are,? said Mart?nez, an intense woman with fine lines around her eyes and long black hair pulled into a ponytail.

Descending from the Andes, the team reached the park?s western perimeter after four hours and flew low over primary rainforest. They ticked off a series of GPS points marking likely Indian habitation zones. Most of them were located at the headwaters for tributaries of the Caquet? and the Putumayo, flowing to the north and south, respectively, of the park. ?It was just green, green, green. You didn?t see any clearing,? she recalled. They had covered 13 points without success, when, near a creek called the R?o Bernardo, Franco shouted a single word: ?Maloca!?
Mart?nez leaned over Franco.

"Donde? Donde???Where? Where? she yelled excitedly.

Image courtesy of Dominic Bracco II/Prime for Smithsonian Magazine.Directly below, Franco pointed out a traditional longhouse, constructed of palm leaves and open at one end, standing in a clearing deep in the jungle. Surrounding the house were plots of plantains and peach palms, a thin-trunked tree that produces a nutritious fruit. The vast wilderness seemed to press in on this island of human habitation, emphasizing its solitude. The pilot dipped the Cessna to just several hundred feet above the maloca in the hope of spotting its occupants. But nobody was visible. ?We made two circles around, and then took off so as not to disturb them,? says Mart?nez. ?We came back to earth very content.?

Back in Bogot?, the team employed advanced digital technology to enhance photos of the maloca. It was then that they got incontrovertible evidence of what they had been looking for. Standing near the maloca, looking up at the plane, was an Indian woman wearing a breechcloth, her face and upper body smeared with paint.

Franco and Mart?nez believe that the maloca they spotted, along with four more they discovered the next day, belong to two indigenous groups, the Yuri and the Pass??perhaps the last isolated tribes in the Colombian Amazon. Often described, misleadingly, as ?uncontacted Indians,? these groups, in fact, retreated from major rivers and ventured deeper into the jungle at the height of the South American rubber boom a century ago. They were on the run from massacres, enslavement and infections against which their bodies had no defenses. For the past century, they have lived with an awareness?and fear?of the outside world, anthropologists say, and have made the choice to avoid contact. Vestiges of the Stone Age in the 21st century, these people serve as a living reminder of the resilience?and fragility?of ancient cultures in the face of a developmental onslaught.

***

For decades, the governments of Amazon nations showed little interest in protecting these groups; they often viewed them as unwanted remnants of backwardness. In the 1960s and ?70s Brazil tried, unsuccessfully, to assimilate, pacify and relocate Indians who stood in the way of commercial exploitation of the Amazon. Finally, in 1987, it set up the Department of Isolated Indians inside FUNAI (Funda??o Nacional do ?ndio), Brazil?s Indian agency. The department?s visionary director, Sydney Possuelo, secured the creation of a Maine-size tract of Amazonian rainforest called the Javari Valley Indigenous Land, which would be sealed off to outsiders in perpetuity. In 2002, Possuelo led a three-month expedition by dugout canoe and on foot to verify the presence in the reserve of the Flecheiros, or Arrow People, known to repel intruders with a shower of curare-tipped arrows. The U.S. journalist Scott Wallace chronicled the expedition in his 2011 book, The Unconquered, which drew international attention to Possuelo?s efforts. Today, the Javari reserve, says FUNAI?s regional coordinator Fabricio Amorim, is home to ?the greatest concentration of isolated groups in the Amazon and the world.?

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Other Amazon nations, too, have taken measures to protect their indigenous peoples. Peru?s Man? National Park contains some of the greatest biodiversity of any nature reserve in the world; permanent human habitation is restricted to several tribes. Colombia has turned almost 82 million acres of Amazon jungle, nearly half its Amazon region, into 14.8 million acres of national parks, where all development is prohibited, and resguardos, 66.7 million acres of private reserves owned by indigenous peoples. In 2011 Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed legislation that guaranteed ?the rights of uncontacted indigenous peoples...to remain in that condition and live freely according to their cultures on their ancestral lands.?

The reality, however, has fallen short of the promises. Conservation groups have criticized Peru for winking at ?ecotourism? companies that take visitors to gape at isolated Indians. Last year, timber companies working illegally inside Man? National Park drove a group of isolated Mashco-Piro Indians from their forest sanctuary.

Colombia, beset by cocaine traffickers and the hemisphere?s longest Marxist-Leninist insurgency, hasn?t always succeeded in policing its rainforests effectively either. Several groups of Indians have been forcibly assimilated and dispersed in recent years.

Today, however, Colombia continues to move into the vanguard of protecting indigenous peoples and their land. In December, the government announced a bold new plan to double the size of remote Chiribiquete Park, currently 3.2 million acres in southern Colombia; the biodiversity sanctuary is home to two isolated tribes.

Franco believes that governments must increase efforts to preserve indigenous cultures. ?The Indians represent a special culture, and resistance to the world,? argues the historian, who has spent three decades researching isolated tribes in Colombia. Mart?nez says that the Indians have a unique view of the cosmos, stressing ?the unity of human beings with nature, the interconnectedness of all things.? It is a philosophy that makes them natural environmentalists, since damage to the forest or to members of one tribe, the Indians believe, can reverberate across society and history with lasting consequences. ?They are protecting the jungle by chasing off gold miners and whoever else goes in there,? Franco says. He adds: ?We must respect their decision not to be our friends?even to hate us.?

***

Especially since the alternatives to isolation are often so bleak. This became clear to me one June morning, when I traveled up the Amazon River from the Colombian border town of Leticia. I climbed into a motorboat at the ramshackle harbor of this lively port city, founded by Peru in 1867 and ceded to Colombia following a border war in 1922. Joining me were Franco, Daniel Matapi?an activist from Colombia?s Matapi and Yukuna tribes?and Mark Plotkin, director of the Amazon Conservation Team, the Virginia-based nonprofit that sponsored Franco?s overflight. We chugged down a muddy channel and emerged into the mile-wide river. The sun beat down ferociously as we passed thick jungle hugging both banks. Pink dolphins followed in our wake, leaping from the water in perfect arcs.

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After two hours, we docked at a pier at the Maloca Bar?, a traditional longhouse belonging to the 30,000-strong Ticuna tribe, whose acculturation into the modern world has been fraught with difficulties. A dozen tourists sat on benches, while three elderly Indian women in traditional costume put on a desultory dance. ?You have to sell yourself, make an exhibition of yourself. It?s not good,? Matapi muttered. Ticuna vendors beckoned us to tables covered with necklaces and other trinkets. In the 1960s, Colombia began luring the Ticuna from the jungle with schools and health clinics thrown up along the Amazon. But the population proved too large to sustain its subsistence agriculture-based economy, and ?it was inevitable that they turned to tourism,? Franco said.

Not all Ticunas have embraced this way of life. In the nearby riverside settlement of Nazareth, the Ticuna voted in 2011 to ban tourism. Leaders cited the garbage left behind, the indignity of having cameras shoved in their faces, the prying questions of outsiders into the most secret aspects of Indian culture and heritage, and the uneven distribution of profits. ?What we earn here is very little,? one Ticuna leader in Nazareth told the Agence France-Presse. ?Tourists come here, they buy a few things, a few artisanal goods, and they go. It is the travel agencies that make the good money.? Foreigners can visit Nazareth on an invitation-only basis; guards armed with sticks chase away everyone else.

***

Image courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine.In contrast to the Ticuna, the Yuri and Pass? tribes have been running from civilization since the first Europeans set foot in South America half a millennium ago. Franco theorizes that they originated near the Amazon River during pre-Columbian times. Spanish explorers in pursuit of El Dorado, such as Francisco de Orellana, recorded their encounters?sometimes hostile?with Yuri and Pass? who dwelled in longhouses along the river. Later, most migrated 150 miles north to the Putumayo?the only fully navigable waterway in Colombia?s Amazon region?to escape Spanish and Portuguese slave traders.

Then, around 1900, came the rubber boom. Based in the port of Iquitos, a Peruvian company, Casa Arana, controlled much of what is now the Colombian Amazon region. Company representatives operating along the Putumayo press-ganged tens of thousands of Indians to gather rubber, or caucho, and flogged, starved and murdered those who resisted. Before the trade died out completely in the 1930s, the Uitoto tribe?s population fell from 40,000 to 10,000; the Andoke Indians dropped from 10,000 to 300. Other groups simply ceased to exist. ?That was the time when most of the now-isolated groups opted for isolation,? says Franco. ?The Yuri [and the Pass?] moved a great distance to get away from the caucheros.? In 1905, Theodor Koch-Gr?nberg, a German ethnologist, traveled between the Caquet? and Putumayo rivers; he noted ominously the abandoned houses of Pass? and Yuri along the Pur?, a tributary of the Putumayo, evidence of a flight deeper into the rainforest to escape the depredations.

The Pass? and Yuri peoples vanished, and many experts believed they had been driven into extinction. Then, in January 1969, a jaguar hunter and fur trader, Julian Gil, and his guide, Alberto Mira?a, disappeared near the R?o Bernardo, a tributary of the Caquet?. Two months later, the Colombian Navy organized a search party. Fifteen troops and 15 civilians traveled by canoes down the Caquet?, then hiked into the rainforest to the area where Gil and Mira?a had last been seen.

Saul Polania was 17 when he participated in the search. As we ate river fish and drank a?a? berry juice at an outdoor caf? in Leticia, the grizzled former soldier recalled stumbling upon ?a huge longhouse? in a clearing. ?I had never seen anything like it before. It was like a dream,? he told me. Soon, 100 Indian women and children emerged from the forest. ?They were covered in body paint, like zebras,? Polania says.

The group spoke a language unknown to the search party?s Indian guides. Several Indian women wore buttons from Gil?s jacket on their necklaces; the hunter?s ax was found buried beneath a bed of leaves. ?Once the Indians saw that, they began to cry, because they knew that they would be accused of killing him,? Polania told me. (No one knows the fate of Gil and Mira?a. They may have been murdered by the Indians, although their bodies were never recovered.)

Afraid that the search party would be ambushed on its way back, the commander seized an Indian man and woman and four children as hostages and brought them back to the settlement of La Pedrera. The New York Times reported the discovery of a lost tribe in Colombia, and Robert Carneiro of the American Museum of Natural History in New York stated that based on a cursory study of the language spoken by the five hostages, the Indians could well be ?survivors of the Yuri, a tribe thought to have become extinct for more than half a century.? The Indians were eventually escorted back home, and the tribe vanished into the mists of the forest?until Roberto Franco drew upon the memories of Polania in the months before his flyover in the jungle.

***

A couple of days after my boat journey, I?m hiking through the rainforest outside Leticia. I?m bound for a maloca belonging to the Uitoto tribe, one of many groups of Indians forced to abandon their territories in the Colombian Amazon during the rubber atrocities early in the past century. Unlike the Yuri and the Pass?, however, who fled deeper into the forest, the Uitotos relocated to the Amazon River. Here, despite enormous pressure to give up their traditional ways or sell themselves as tourist attractions, a handful have managed, against the odds, to keep their ancient culture alive. They offer a glimpse of what life must look like deeper in the jungle, the domain of the isolated Yuri.

Read about the race to save the world's dying languages at Smithsonian.com

Half an hour from the main road, we reach a clearing. In front of us stands a handsome longhouse built of woven palm leaves. Four slender pillars in the center of the interior and a network of crossbeams support the A-frame roof. The house is empty, except for a middle-aged woman, peeling the fruits of the peach palm, and an elderly man wearing a soiled white shirt, ancient khaki pants and tattered Converse sneakers without shoelaces.

Jitoma Safiama, 70, is a shaman and chief of a small subtribe of Uitotos, descendants of those who were chased by the rubber barons from their original lands around 1925. Today, he and his wife eke out a living cultivating small plots of manioc, coca leaf and peach palms; Safiama also performs traditional healing ceremonies on locals who visit from Leticia. In the evenings, the family gathers inside the longhouse, with other Uitotos who live nearby, to chew coca and tell stories about the past. The aim is to conjure up a glorious time before the caucheros came, when 40,000 members of the tribe lived deep in the Colombian rainforest and the Uitotos believed that they dwelled at the center of the world. ?After the big flooding of the world, the Indians who saved themselves built a maloca just like this one,? says Safiama. ?The maloca symbolizes the warmth of the mother. Here we teach, we learn and we transmit our traditions.? Safiama claims that one isolated group of Uitotos remains in the forest near the former rubber outpost of El Encanto, on the Caraparan? River, a tributary of the Putumayo. ?If an outsider sees them,? the shaman insists, ?he will die.?

A torrential rain begins to fall, drumming on the roof and soaking the fields. Our guide from Leticia has equipped us with knee-high rubber boots, and Plotkin, Matapi and I embark on a hike deeper into the forest. We tread along the soggy path, balancing on splintered logs, sometimes slipping and plunging to our thighs in the muck. Plotkin and Matapi point out natural pharmaceuticals such as the golobi, a white fungus used to treat ear infections; er-re-ku-ku, a treelike herb that is the source of a snake-bite treatment; and a purple flower whose roots?soaked in water and drunk as a tea?induce powerful hallucinations. Aguaje palms sway above a second maloca tucked in a clearing about 45 minutes from the first one. Matapi says that the tree bark of the aguaje contains a female hormone to help certain males ?go over to the other side.? The longhouse is deserted except for two napping children and a pair of scrawny dogs. We head back to the main road, trying to beat the advancing night, as vampire bats circle above our heads.

***

In the months before his reconnaissance mission over R?o Pur? National Park, Roberto Franco consulted diaries, indigenous oral histories, maps drawn by European adventurers from the 16th through 19th centuries, remote sensors, satellite photos, eyewitness accounts of threatening encounters with Indians, even a guerrilla from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who had seen the Indians while on a jungle patrol. The overflights, says Franco, engendered mixed emotions. ?I felt happy and I also felt sad, maybe because of the lonely existence these Indians had,? he told me on our last morning in Leticia. ?The feelings were complicated.?

Franco?s next step is to use the photographs and GPS coordinates gathered on his flights to lobby the Colombian government to strengthen protection around the national park. He envisions round-the-clock surveillance by both semi-assimilated Indians who live on the park perimeter and rangers within the park boundaries, and an early warning system to keep out intruders. ?We are just at the beginning of the process,? he says.

Franco cites the tragic recent history of the Nukak tribe, 1,200 isolated Indians who inhabited the forests northwest of R?o Pur? National Park. In 1981, a U.S. evangelical group, New Tribes Mission, penetrated their territory without permission and, with gifts of machetes and axes, lured some Nukak families to their jungle camp. This contact drove other Nukak to seek similar gifts from settlers at the edge of their territory. The Indians? emergence from decades of isolation set in motion a downward spiral leading to the deaths of hundreds of Nukak from respiratory infections, violent clashes with land grabbers and narco-traffickers, and dispersal of the survivors. ?Hundreds were forcibly displaced to [the town of] San Jos? del Guaviare, where they are living?and dying?in terrible conditions,? says Rodrigo Botero Garc?a, technical coordinator of the Andean Amazon Project, a program established by Colombia?s national parks department to protect indigenous peoples. ?They get fed, receive government money, but they?re living in squalor.? (The government has said it wants to repatriate the Nukak to a reserve created for them to the east of San Jos? del Guaviare. And in December, Colombia?s National Heritage Council approved an urgent plan, with input from the Nukak, to safeguard their culture and language.) The Yuri and Pass? live in far more remote areas of the rainforest, but ?they are vulnerable,? Franco says.

Some anthropologists, conservationists and Indian leaders argue that there is a middle way between the Stone Age isolation of the Yuri and the abject assimilation of the Ticuna. The members of Daniel Matapi?s Yukuna tribe continue to live in malocas in the rainforest?30 hours by motorboat from Leticia?while integrating somewhat with the modern world. The Yukuna, who number fewer than 2,000, have access to health care facilities, trade with nearby settlers, and send their kids to missionary and government schools in the vicinity. Yukuna elders, says Matapi, who left the forest at age 7 but returns home often, ?want the children to have more chances to study, to have a better life.? Yet the Yukuna still pass down oral traditions, hunt, fish and live closely attuned to their rainforest environment. For far too many Amazon Indians, however, assimilation has brought only poverty, alcoholism, unemployment or utter dependence on tourism.

It is a fate, Franco suspects, that the Yuri and Pass? are desperate to avoid. On the second day of his aerial reconnaissance, Franco and his team took off from La Pedrera, near the eastern edge of R?o Pur? National Park. Thick drifting clouds made it impossible to get a prolonged view of the rainforest floor. Though the team spotted four malocas within an area of about five square miles, the dwellings never stayed visible long enough to photograph them. ?We would see a maloca, and then the clouds would close in quickly,? Eliana Mart?nez says. The cloud cover, and a storm that sprang up out of nowhere and buffeted the tiny plane, left the team with one conclusion: The tribe had called upon its shamans to send the intruders a message. ?We thought, ?They are making us pay for this,?? Franco says.

Read more great longreads at Smithsonian.com

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/the-lost-tribes-of-the-amazon-202206728.html

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Ways to Stick to Your Workout: Exercise Motivation - Shape Magazine

If you're the type of person who's ever huffed and puffed, struggling to push through a treadmill session while secretly wanting to slap that smug smile off the lanky runner effortlessly trotting next to you, you're not alone! And now it looks like there may be a physiological reason why some people dislike exercise more than others.

Hoping to encourage more people to leave the couch and move, researchers at Iowa State University are studying the body's biological and chemical processes to better understand the attitudes people have about exercise. So far they've made a few surprising discoveries, including that our interpretation of our body's sensations while we sweat it out influences how we feel about exercise in general.

Everyone, no matter their fitness level, has a physical capacity for exertion beyond which the body becomes stressed and begins to feel bad. Researchers estimate that anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of that stems from genetic factors such as lung capacity, oxygen transport, and the rate at which oxygen is used in the muscle cells.

This physical capacity will vary from person to person, and some people may start out with more ability than others, but oftentimes people, especially sedentary ones, unwittingly push themselves too far, too soon, which can be discouraging, physically painful, and cause them to stop exercising altogether.

RELATED: If you're working out to lose weight, you also need the right eating plan. Be sure you're not making any of these diet mistakes that mess with your metabolism.

Ultimately the Iowa State researchers stressed that it's important for adults to try new things as well as start slowly.

We agree! At SHAPE, we've long since recommended that you find a workout you'll love because you'll be more likely to stick with it. Here are a few tips to help exercise be more enjoyable.

1. Stop trying so hard. It's important to challenge yourself, but you don't want to push youself to the point of injury, nor do you want to go so far past your ventilatory threshold (the point at which your body starts to feel bad) that you stress yourself out. Plus, the Iowa State resarchers noted in their research that the more positive experiences people have with exercise, the more likely they are to keep at it. So if you notice your resolve waning, don't force it, give yourself a break for a couple of days, and check out these 22 ways to stay motivated. You'll be more refreshed, recharged, and ready to tackle your goals again in no time.

2. Let Pinterest inspire you. They say a picture's worth a thousand words. We say these pinworthy photos are about to be worth 1,000 calories?burned!

3. Ask for help. From weight-loss bloggers to fitness websites to the nation's powerhouse fitness and diet experts, there is an almost unlimited amount of resources at your fingertips. If you're feeling stressed, worried, or have a question about something, reach out to someone for advice! You may gain a new perspective on health or fitness.

Source: http://www.shape.com/blogs/shape-your-life/shape-shares-find-workout-you-love-and-stick-it

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EPA unaware of industry ties on cancer review panel | The Center ...

The ?pure science? bottleneck

Some 700 new chemicals hit the market each year, adding to the tens of thousands already in use. Yet the EPA has assessed only 557 chemicals since the IRIS program began in 1985. A typical review takes six to eight years, sometimes much longer. It took 27 years for the agency to issue a partial assessment of dioxin, a byproduct of plastics manufacturing and burning.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in 2008 that the IRIS program was so bogged down that it was in danger of becoming obsolete.

In 2009, EPA Administrator Jackson made bold promises within her first weeks in office to fix the program. She?pledged?to finish many more assessments and to try to complete each one within two years. Since May 2009, the EPA said it completed 24 IRIS assessments, ?double the number? completed in the same time period prior to May 2009.

Yet its overall progress remains slow, and in the past two years, the program produced as few assessments as ever. Last year, the EPA planned to complete 40 assessments. It finished three.

The reasons for the logjam are complex. But it has become common for industry and its allies inside the federal government to push for?delay. ?Even a single delay can have far-reaching, time-consuming consequences, in some cases requiring that the assessment process essentially start over,? the GAO reported.

In the case of chromium (VI), evidence shows that industry worked closely with the EPA as the agency conducted its assessment. On Oct. 8, 2009, a scientist at a law firm representing chemical companies complained in an email that the EPA was pushing ahead on its assessments without waiting for studies to address ?gaps? in the science.

?EPA moved Chrom VI up by about two years after ?we? entered into a process of planning research with them to address gaps,? wrote Richard Canady, a former scientist at the White House?s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who was then working at the private law firm of McKenna, Long & Aldridge. ?I?d like to make a case for EPA planning ahead in cooperation with industry.?

Canady?s email was sent to Nancy Beck, a toxicologist at OMB who reviewed the EPA?s findings. Beck referred Canady to an American Chemistry Council official for help in gathering data. A 2009?investigation?by a subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee criticized Beck for improperly interfering with IRIS assessments during the George W. Bush administration. Beck now works for the ACC. She did not return a call last week seeking comment; an ACC spokesman said Tuesday?he would seek her perspective.

In a recent interview, Canady said he could not recall the precise details from his email and declined to reveal clients for which he was working. But Canady said he thought the process of planning research with the EPA ?wasn?t that formal.? Instead, industry scientists would call EPA scientists to find out what new data would help them in their chromium (VI) assessment, he said.

His 2009 email also said, ?Peter made a point to me the other day about how boron and methylene chloride were good examples of working together on developing data ahead of assessments in ways that influenced the outcome.?

Canady said this was a reference to Peter Preuss, then the director of the EPA?s National Center for Environmental Assessment, which oversees IRIS.

The EPA originally planned to issue its chromium (VI) assessment last summer, giving the ACC time to finish its new studies. However, under Jackson?s imperative to quicken assessments, the EPA moved up its timeline by six to nine months.

When the EPA?s Cogliano rebuffed the ACC?s request for a delay, the trade association turned its attention to the peer review panel.

Critics say the industry uses comments on chemicals that are under review to overwhelm the agency.

?There?s a very elaborate process that involves multiple opportunities for industry to pick away and blast away and confuse and overload the staff of IRIS, and the IRIS staff reacts by trying to address each and every one of industry?s concerns,? said law professor Steinzor.

?The chemical industry has made IRIS its leading target, one of its leading targets, for spoil in the current age of greed,? Steinzor said

Of the 49 public comments submitted to the EPA on chromium before the peer-review panel met, the American Chemistry Council and its research partners authored 29 of them, totaling 1,661 pages. In addition, 10 other comments totaling 137 pages came from industry urging the EPA to wait for the ACC studies.

As the EPA stood poised to announce potential new safeguards for chromium (VI), the ACC had hired a scientific consulting firm, ToxStrategies, to manage the $4 million studies of mice and rats given the chemical for 90 days.

The panel met May 12, 2011, at a Hilton hotel near Reagan National Airport. Patierno was highly critical of the EPA?s findings and suggested the agency ?absolutely consider the extensive new data being provided.? Hamilton and Wise agreed.

In a recent interview, Wise said he wasn?t entirely familiar with ToxStrategies? findings, which hadn?t yet been published. But he assumed the delay would be short, only a few months. The EPA initially said the delay would take four years. Later, the agency said the assessment would be done this year.

Anatoly Zhitkovich, a professor at Brown University who chaired the EPA peer review panel, was upset with the results and wrote his own review published in the journal?Chemical Research in Toxicology, according to Costa, a close colleague. Zhitkovich declined an interview request, but his?article?supported the findings of the EPA.

In lobbying for delay, the American Chemistry Council quietly enlisted the help of a small office within the U.S. Small Business Administration.

SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy Winslow Sargeant, an electrical engineer by training, submitted a comment to the EPA on Oct. 5, 2011, challenging its scientific conclusions and urging it to delay its chromium assessment pending completion of the ACC studies. Winslow cited the peer review comments from Hamilton and Wise to support his argument.

But emails obtained through FOIA by the advocacy group Center for Effective Government revealed that the ACC helped shape the SBA letter. An ACC lobbyist, Randy Schumacher, sent an email to Sargeant?s office on June 28, 2011, asking for its help.

?Administrator Jackson calling upon her to stop the Cr6 risk assessment process to do exactly as EPA?s peer reviewers deemed advisable,? Schumacher wrote. ?Since it appears EPA needs to hear from more constituents for it to listen to its own peer review team, would SBA be willing to send a letter to Ms. Jackson to weigh in on this matter??

Later emails from Schumacher suggested editing changes to Sargeant?s letter. The SBA official has not responded to interview requests.

Source: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/13/12184/epa-unaware-industry-ties-cancer-review-panel

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FINANCE VIDEO: Bounty Oil and Gas (ASX:BUY) CEO Philip Kelso Presents at Investorium.tv on February 4th, 2013

Sydney, Feb 12, 2013 (ABN Newswire) - Presenting to investors in Sydney on February 4th, 2013, Bounty Oil and Gas (ASX:BUY) CEO Mr. Philip Kelso outlined the company's strategy and current projects as well as an overview of global oil demand.

Bounty is positioned to take advantage of highly prospective targets both domestically and offshore, with a cash flow from producing wells.

Mr. Kelso has 40 years experience as a lawyer and geologist.He started his career as a hard rock geologist and after 7 years switched to law in 1975. His law practice both as a solicitor and barrister focused on commercial, resources and environmental law. He has international oil and gas experience having worked on exploration, development, acquisition and commercialisation projects in Australia, North America, South East Asia and Europe since 1990.

He is past Chairman and Director of Dome Resources NL and has overseen mine development and operations. Until 2007 Mr. Kelso was Managing Director of Drillsearch Energy Limited and of its Canadian offshoot Circumpacific Energy Corporation. He managed the group's growth through project and equity financing as it participated in a major oil development project in the Cooper Basin and in development of its assets in the Western Canada Basin.

To view the video presentation, please visit:
http://www.abnnewswire.net/press/en/74664/bounty

To Download the Presentation, please visit:
http://media.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/74664-buy.pdf

Source: http://www.abnnewswire.net/press/en/74664/

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Mountain Dew Breakfast Drink: Actually Coming Soon!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/02/mountain-dew-breakfast-drink-actually-coming-soon/

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Dean Baker: Tax Games and Redistributing Income Upward

The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is almost at its pre-Depression peak.

These would seem like impressive accomplishments but the process of upward redistribution, from Joe Sixpack to Joe Six Houses, is a never-ending struggle. Toward this end, Louisiana Governor and Republican wunderkind Bobby Jindal has just proposed replacing the state's income tax with a sales tax.

Sales taxes will generally be more regressive than income taxes for the simple reason that low- and moderate-income people will spend a larger share of their income than upper-income people. That means that the portion of income that wealthy Louisianans save will escape taxation, imposing a larger burden on low- and middle-income families in any revenue neutral shift.

However, saving is only part of the story in this picture. Wealthy Louisianans are likely to spend more time and money outside of the state than less affluent residents. Insofar as wealthy Louisianans spend money at out-of-state vacation homes or Parisian shopping trips, they will be creating a tax gap for the less affluent and less well-traveled to fill.

In fact, fans of economics will likely point to the problem of Louisianans stepping over the border (less than an hour away from the state's major cities) to escape the sales tax on purchases of big-ticket items such as televisions and refrigerators. This will leave an even larger burden for the sales tax to cover, which will fall especially hard on those who may not have access to a car or for other reasons might not find it as easy to take advantage of such tax-evading tourism.

So this shift from an income tax to sales tax looks like a big step forward in the process of upward redistribution. It's easy to see why Jindal is considered a leading contender for the 2016 Republican nomination.

Needless to say, the wealthy dislike state income taxes every bit as much as they dislike federal ones. Insofar as they gain complete control of state governments, they will take the opportunity to shift the tax burden lower down the income ladder.

They may get help in this process from one of the widely talked about tax reforms at the federal level: limiting the total amount of tax deductions that can be taken. While this may sound like a progressive measure -- requiring that everyone pay their fair share of taxes -- this limit could put pressure on state governments to reduce taxes on the wealthy.

With the restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, the highest-income taxpayers are facing a marginal tax rate of almost 40 percent. This means that almost 40 percent of the state income tax paid by the wealthiest taxpayers is in effect paid by the federal government, since it comes directly off their taxes.

However, if there was a cap on deductions that most of the wealthiest taxpayers actually hit, then the burden of state income taxes would fall fully on the wealthy people in the state. Needless to say, the wealthy in New York, California and other relatively high tax states will raise much more objection to state income taxes when they are paying 100 cents on every dollar rather than 60 cents of every dollar of the tax. A likely outcome will be lower state taxes on the wealthy, and higher taxes and/or reduced services for everyone else.

The picture looks even less appealing when we consider that contributions to charity are likely to be excluded from the cap. This means that if a wealthy person feels bad about homelessness so that she contributes $100,000 to a charity to shelter the homeless, the federal government will pick up $40,000 of this tab. However if she and others in the state consider sheltering the homeless to be an obligation of government that should not depend on the kindness of the wealthy, the taxes to cover the cost will be fully born out of their own pocket.

It's hard to see the rationale for this asymmetry, but wait, it gets worse. Suppose our rich person gives $100,000 to an opera that he and his rich friends patronize. The federal government will pick up $40k of that contribution, but zero for the state government's efforts to shelter the homeless. Suppose that our rich person decides that his friend should get a $1 million annual salary to run the opera. Well, the feds are on the hook for 40 percent of his friend's salary, but still not contributing to the state's efforts to shelter the homeless.

The point here should be clear. The effort to cap deductions is not actually about making the rich pay higher taxes; it is about putting pressure on state governments to cut back their services. President Obama proposed limiting deductions to a 28 percent rate regardless of individuals' tax rate. This policy makes sense as a way of getting more tax revenue from those who can most afford to pay it. Capping the deduction does not. There is a reason that Republicans support it.

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Follow Dean Baker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeanBaker13

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/tax-games-and-redistribut_b_2620986.html

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Twitter, Washington Post targeted by hackers

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2010 file photo, Twitter CEO Evan Williams makes a presentation about changes to the social network at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, In the latest online attack, Twitter says hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2010 file photo, Twitter CEO Evan Williams makes a presentation about changes to the social network at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, In the latest online attack, Twitter says hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Social media giant Twitter is among the latest U.S. companies to report that it is among a growing list of victims of Internet security attacks, saying that hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users. And now, The Washington Post is joining the chorus, revealing the discovery of a sophisticated cyberattack in 2011.

Twitter said in a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as "a very small percentage of our users." The company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The Twitter attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

On Friday, The Washington Post disclosed in an article published on its website that it was also the target of a sophisticated cyberattack, which was discovered in 2011 and was first reported by an independent cybersecurity blog. Washington Post spokeswoman, Kris Coratti, didn't offer any details including the duration of the attack or the origins. But according to sources that the newspaper quoted, who it said spoke on condition of anonymity, the intruders gained access as early as 2008 or 2009. According to the sources, Chinese hackers are also suspected.

Coratti couldn't be reached immediately for comment by The Associated Press. According to her comments made to the newspaper, the company worked with security company Mandiant to "detect, investigate and remediate the situation promptly at the end of 2011."

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyberattacks.

Twitter didn't provide any clues as to whether it believes that China was behind its hack. However, the blog post by the company's director of information security, Bob Lord, made clear that the hackers knew what they were doing. Lord said in the blog that the attack "was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident."

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked," Lord said. "For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users."

Reached on Saturday, Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser had no further comment.

Based on the few details released about the Twitter and Washington Post attacks it's hard to say whether Chinese hackers were involved, said Rich Mogull, CEO of Securosis, an independent security research and advisory firm. There are certain pieces of malicious software that are characteristic to Chinese hackers, he said, but "the problem is not enough has been made public."

One theory is that the Twitter hack happened after an employee's home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized. Independent privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani said such a move would give attackers "a toehold" in Twitter's internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company's system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users' passwords.

The relatively small number of users affected suggests that attackers weren't on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company's servers, Soltani said.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hack might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist's movements.

"More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service," Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist's emails.

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AP reporters Raphael Satter in London and Didi Tang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-02-02-Twitter%20Hack/id-b51dde61ac644d36ad5bc1e3e7d19d6f

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