(Or rather: Another False-Fear Alarm or A Last Gasp Scare Effort by the PTW…)

Stephen: Yep, that top headline is the main headline on stories around the world. And yes, it also appears to be the reason being given for 21 US embassies being closed tomorrow.

Two things I’d like to say. One, we’re only five weeks away from the 12th anniversary of 9/11 and what better way to re-create fear than to recreate fear. There’s also a big ad campaign planned in cities around the world for people to ReThink that fateful day. Two, creating a diversion like this could also be a clear indication that the Global Currency Reset is underway and the cabal is taking its final gasps to fight love, prosperity and abundance with a last ditch effort to keep thoughts of terrorism, separatism, xenophobia and religious vilification in people’s minds. Thus, when when they do hear that the world’s money markets are re-setting, they will already be in a state of fear; making them even more predisposed to being in further fear – for their money as well as their personal safety. Cruel.

So please read this with the detachment it deserves – and see it for what it is: a false-fear tactic. Nothing more.

From Al-Jazeera – August 2, 2012

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/08/201382221137510871.html

The United States has issued a global travel alert to warn its citizens of potential “terrorist attacks”, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, a day after it said 21 embassies and consulates would close on Sunday over security fears.

Britain announced on Friday that it would close its embassy in Yemen for two days – Sunday and Monday. Several embassy staff have been withdrawn from the capital, Sanaa, the foreign office in London said.

A US official told the AFP news agency on Friday that President Barack Obama had ordered “all appropriate steps” to combat a threat that officials said comes from the al-Qaeda armed group.

In a statement released on Friday, the US administration said it had information that al-Qaeda and its affiliates may redouble efforts to carry out attacks in the period between now and the end of August.

“Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests”, the US statement read.

“US citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services.”

A spokesman for Britain’s foreign office said it was “particularly concerned about the security situation in the final days of Ramadan and into Eid”.

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan ends next week with the feast of Eid al-Fitr.

The 21 US embassies and consulates to be closed on Sunday were listed on the state department website and are chiefly those in the Muslim world. Closures include Baghdad, Cairo, Sanaa, Dubai and Tripoli.

‘Abundance of caution’

The US alert expires on August 31 and state department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, called it “precautionary”.

“The Department of State has instructed certain US embassies and consulates to remain closed or to suspend operations on Sunday, August 4,” Harf said.

The decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting our installations”, she said.

Harf said that the embassies would be closed specifically on Sunday, with an assessment afterwards on whether to reopen them.

The US has been especially cautious about security since an attack on its consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 last year.

The attack killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, and led critics in Congress to accuse the state department of insufficient security.

Taiwan lawmakers brawl

Ruling and opposition lawmakers fight on the legislature floor in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Taiwanese lawmakers exchanged punches and threw water at each other Friday ahead of an expected vote that would authorize a referendum on whether to finish a fourth nuclear power plant on this densely populated island of 23 million people. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)

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Taiwanese lawmakers exchanged punches and threw water at each other on Aug. 2 ahead of an expected vote that would authorize a referendum on whether to finish a fourth nuclear power plant on the densely populated island of 23 million people. Nuclear power has long been a contentious issue in Taiwan and became more so following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. (AP)

Once rare stomach illness becoming more widespread

MARY CLARE JALONICK and DAVID PITT 22 hours agoHealthPublic HealthFoodborne illnessFood and Drug Administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donna Heller thought she had cancer. But multiple visits to the doctor after a month with debilitating nausea and diarrhea didn't yield any answers. Convinced she was dying, she met with her lawyer to get her will in order.

Then she saw a television report about an outbreak of cyclospora possibly linked to bagged salad mix. The stomach illness matched all her symptoms and is easily treatable with antibiotics. She told her doctor she suspected that could be the cause, and tests showed she was right.

"It went so long and nobody was able to give me answers," said Heller, a 54-year-old teacher in Crowley, Texas. "It didn't seem like anybody wanted to take you serious because there are so many stomach problems that resemble each other."

A mysterious outbreak of the parasitic illness usually found abroad is growing, with more than 400 confirmed cases in 16 states. FDA officials said Friday they had discovered the source of some of the illnesses, but not all of them. The agency said that the illnesses from Iowa and Nebraska are linked to salad mix from a Mexican farm that was served at Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants. Those make up around half of the cases.

The rest of the illnesses — many of them in Texas — are still a mystery, state and federal officials say.

The source of this outbreak has proved particularly hard to trace. Doctors have to test specifically for cyclospora and many don't because it is relatively rare. So they may not order the correct tests, at least not at first. The parasite is so tiny that it's often difficult to confirm that a person has the illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tests often have to be repeated with fresh samples.

Heller said initial tests from her doctor showed up as inconclusive, but she later received a call from the CDC telling her she definitely had the illness.

Doctors or labs may not notify state health departments as quickly as they would for a more common foodborne illness like salmonella. And there are different rules in different states about whether cyclospora has to be reported to federal health authorities.

All those obstacles are making it harder for state and federal officials. It also means there are probably many people who have the disease and don't know it.

The illness is rare — roughly 150 cases are reported in the United States annually. Scientists only identified it in the early 1990s.

In comparison, there are tens of thousands of lab-confirmed cases of salmonella food poisoning in this country each year, and officials believe there are hundreds of thousands more that are not confirmed.

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In this photo made Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013, Donna Heller sits for a photo in Burleson, Texas. Heller …

The cyclospora parasite is native to the tropics and tends to come into the United States on imported produce. For example, Guatemalan raspberries were the source of five outbreaks in Canada and the United States in the late 1990s. Two of those outbreaks involved more than 1,000 illnesses each, said Ynes Ortega, a cyclospora expert at the University of Georgia.

Officials say part of the problem is that the disease takes a week on average to show up, and diagnosis has often been delayed, making it hard for victims to remember what they ate.

CDC spokeswoman María-Belén Moran says the agency also is interviewing people who aren't sick as controls to get more information on eating patterns, as well as lab testing foods that they suspect.

For its part, the FDA says it has a 21-person team in its Maryland headquarters and specialists in 10 field offices across the country working to identify the source of the outbreak.

Food often goes through several stops — potentially in several countries — before it reaches a grocery cart, and trying to trace it is "labor-intensive and painstaking work, requiring the collection, review and analysis of hundreds and at times thousands of invoices and shipping documents," the FDA said.

Heller says she doesn't know what food might have caused her illness, but she said she was eating out a lot near her home 13 miles south of Fort Worth around the time she fell ill in late June.

She said she finally went on the correct antibiotics this week and is starting to feel better, though her symptoms aren't gone completely. She said the illness has taken an emotional toll.

"I literally, through the course of all this, have been brought to tears probably 10 different times, just so defeated," she said.

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Pitt reported from Des Moines, Iowa. AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Nigeria: Doctors treat lead-poisoned children

MICHELLE FAUL 20 hours agoSocietyMédecins Sans FrontièresNigeria

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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The Nigerian village that suffered one of the world's worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday.

For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Some children are blind, others paralyzed and many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said.

Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $3 million, the group said.

The poisoning caused by artisanal mining from a gold rush killed at least 400 children, yet villagers still say they would rather die of lead poisoning than poverty, environmental scientist Simba Tirima told the Associated Press Friday. Villagers make 10 times as much money mining as they do from farming in an area suffering erratic rainfall because of climate change, he said.

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FILE - In this Wednesday, June 9, 2010 file photo, men walk amongst the graves of children killed by …

Managing five landfills with some 13,000 cubic meters (nearly 460,000 cubic feet) of highly contaminated soil, and teaching villagers how to mine safely are major challenges to prevent new contamination, he said.

"That's a big, big worry. But I am joyful that for the kids who will be born in Bagega, we have at least removed one of the major strikes against them because they have so many strikes against them — nutritional problems, diseases ..." said Tirima, who is the field operations director in Nigeria for TerraGraphics International Foundation.

The Moscow, Idaho-based foundation advised Nigeria's northern Zamfara state government and oversaw the 5 ½-month cleanup, or remediation, of Bagega that ended two weeks ago.

There, people were exposed to mindboggling rates of lead contamination: Some residential soil with up to 35,000 parts per million of lead and the processing area with over 100,000 parts per million, Tirima said. The United States considers 400 parts per million safe for residential soil.

At the peak of the gold rush, Tirima said, more than 1,000 itinerant miners and followers were camped around the village — deep in the countryside, beyond the reach of paved roads and electricity and quite cut off in the rainy season when dirt roads become impassable.

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FILE - A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contam …

Despite its remote location, the booming economy attracted people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to Bagega, which also drew many locals as a regional commercial center with a primary and high school, a hospital and weekly market. In addition, cattle herders and nomads came here to water their animals at a reservoir so dangerously contaminated it killed goats and cows.

The entire human population of 6,000 to 9,000 was exposed, including some 1,500 children under the age of 5. Human Rights Watch said the death toll of 400 was only an estimate as villagers initially tried to hide the deaths, fearing the government would stop their illegal mining. The group said it was the worst epidemic of its kind in modern history.

The government released money for the cleanup in February, Doctors Without Borders began prescreening in March and found that nearly every one of 1,010 children tested need therapy, Chouinard said. Of them, 267 are severely contaminated and will get chelation — where medication binds the lead to a child's blood and helps them to eliminate it faster from their system.

All the children had more than the international standard maximum of 10 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood. Some had as much as 700 micrograms per deciliter, she said. The children will have to be treated for one to two years, she said.

The more basic methods used to get at gold helped cause the poisoning. Some women used hammers to beat open rock ore. Others used some of the 60 grinding mills at a processing area adjacent to the village and water reservoir, Tirima said.

Many took the rocks that carried high concentrations of lead into their homes for processing. The poisoning was facilitated because the particular lead compounds are very toxic and easily absorbed into the body, unlike other forms of lead, Tirima explained.

His TerraGraphics Foundation has trained dozens of Nigerians to clean up any future contamination.

Government officials initially reacted by trying to enforce a ban on illegal mining. When that did not work, they promised to find other sources of income for villagers, but nothing has happened in a country where corruption is endemic.

Tirima pointed to mounting evidence linking lead poisoning to crime waves and said he fears for the community when their poisoned children grow up.

U.S. grand jury probing contractor that vetted Snowden: WSJ

16 hours agoSocietyThe Wall Street Journal

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The company that conducted the most recent security review of former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden is the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into its background check processes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people involved with the probe.

Federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating whether USIS, a U.S. government contractor, rushed its cases without doing a proper review, which would be a violation of the False Claims Act, the Journal said.

The grand jury has issued subpoenas to former USIS officials in recent days, the paper reported.

US Investigations Services, LLC said the company does not comment on specific issues related to investigations or litigation.

"With respect to this matter, the company has been cooperating fully with the government throughout its investigation and continues to do so," USIS said in a statement.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the issue, while a spokeswoman for the Justice Department had no immediate response to an inquiry about the grand jury probe.

Snowden, who as a U.S. National Security Agency contractor had undergone a USIS security review in 2011, is facing U.S. espionage charges after disclosing details of secret U.S. surveillance programs.

After leaving the country and spending weeks holed up in the transit area of a Moscow airport, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia this week.

USIS, a Falls Church, Virginia-based company that is the largest private provider of federal government background checks, has been under investigation by the inspector general for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

While that probe predates the Snowden scandal, concerns have been raised about whether the company's background check into Snowden was carried out in an appropriate manner.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler and Vicki Allen)