Frozen fruit bars recalled after typhoid outbreak

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. – Fruiti Pops, Inc. of Santa Fe Springs has recalled its mamey (mah-MAY') frozen fruit bars because of a possible link to a rare U.S. outbreak of typhoid fever.

The company said Thursday that the fruit bars were distributed in California, Arizona and Texas since May 2009.

Fruiti Pops says retail stores, ice cream trucks and vending machines sold the frozen fruit bars, which have the UPC number 763734000097.

The company says the frozen fruit bars were made from contaminated mamey pulp that Goya Foods, Inc. voluntarily recalled on Aug. 12, after it was linked to a typhoid fever outbreak in California and Nevada. So far no illnesses have been reported from the mamey fruit bars.

Mamey or zapote (zah-POH'-teh), is a fruit popular in Latin America and the Carribean.

US economic growth revised down to sluggish 1.6pc

The US economy grew at a slower annual rate in the second quarter than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said on Friday.

The estimated rise in gross domestic product, the value of goods and services produced, for the period between April and June was revised down from 2.4pc to just 1.6pc, as companies reined in inventories and the trade deficit widened.

The revision – despite beating economists' estimates of a 1.4pc rise – would appear to provide further evidence that the recovery is losing steam.

The US economy enjoyed a 3.7pc expansion in the first quarter.

The cut in growth stemmed from mainly from a "sharp acceleration in imports and sharp deceleration in private inventory investment," the department said.

Business spending on equipment and software was trimmed to 17.6pc from an initial estimate of 21.9pc in the second quarter. First-quarter spending was revised down to a 7.8pc rise from 20.4pc.

"The recovery continues but remains tenuous," Augustine Faucher, economist at Moody's, told AFP.

Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke was set to offer a fresh assessment at 3pm (BST) on Friday of the weakening US economy.
Pimco sounds alarm

US economic data are “alarming” signaling the recovery is losing momentum, Mohamed El-Erian, head of the world’s largest bond fund, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Friday.

Unemployment is high, consumer credit is shrinking and small companies are having trouble obtaining bank lines of credit, Mr El-Erian, chief excutive of Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco), said.

“Throughout the summer, data signals have become more alarming,” he wrote. “Current policy approaches here and abroad are unlikely to deliver a durable and robust US recovery.”

The record $239bn Pimco Total Return Fund managed by Bill Gross returned 12.3pc in the past year, beating 66 percent of its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Pimco, which managed more than $1.1 trillion of assets as of June 30, according to its website, is a unit of Munich-based insurer Allianz SE.

Thousands seeking mortgage help line up at Palm Beach County Convention Center this morning

WEST PALM BEACH — Thousands of people are lined up this morning outside the Palm Beach County Convention Center - some arriving by the busload, hoping the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America will help them save their homes.

They are here from throughout the country, including Detroit and California.

"I'm here because I have to be," said P. Reed, who drove all night from South Carolina. "They put me in foreclosure last week."

The non-profit group opened the doors at 9 a.m. to begin a five-day marathon of around-the-clock loan modifications. The event, which is free, aims to get homeowners cheaper monthly mortgage payments through interest rate reductions, extending the life of the loan and a reduction in loan amount.

To be first in line, Lizandra Garcet, of West Palm Beach, arrived Thursday morning to set up her beach chairs at the front entrance of the convention center.

But she was too late to take the top spot in the queue. Someone, who came on Wednesday, got that.

Lizandra, 16, is helping her mother, who doesn't speak fluent English, through the process.

They came on the last day of the event when NACA was in West Palm Beach in February, but it was too late to get help.

This time they wanted to make sure they got in.

"We've been here the whole night," she said, as rain clouds threatened to soak those in line. "We just don't want to lose our home."

The last NACA event at the convention center drew tens of thousands of people, and counselors worked on more than 24,000 loans. Those who want help should bring tax statements, proof of income and mortgage documents to assist in the process.

Darren Duarte, spokesman for the Boston-based group, encouraged people who could not get help at the earlier event to come to this one.

"We want them to come back and get it done if they haven't," he said.

Staff writer Sonja Isger contributed to this story.

Mysterious bright spot found on Venus

A strange spot emerged on Venus last week, and astronomers are not sure what caused it. They hope future observations will reveal whether volcanic activity, turbulence in the planet's atmosphere, or charged particles from the sun are to blame.

Amateur astronomer Frank Melillo of Holtsville, New York, first spotted the new feature, which is brighter than its surroundings at ultraviolet wavelengths, on the planet's southern hemisphere on 19 July. That same day, an amateur observer in Australia found a dark spot on Jupiter that had been caused by a meteoroid impact.

The Venus spot was confirmed by other observers, and images from Europe's Venus Express, the only spacecraft in orbit around the planet, later revealed that the spot had appeared at least four days before Melillo saw it.

Observations show that the spot had already spread out somewhat by the end of last week, and astronomers are awaiting more recent observations from Venus Express.

The spot is bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, which may argue against a meteoroid impact as a cause. That's because rocky bodies, with the exception of objects very rich in water ice, should cause an impact site to darken at ultraviolet wavelengths as it fills with debris that absorbs such light, says Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Venus Express team.

Powerful eruption?

Another possibility is that a gust of charged particles from the sun could have created the glow by energising a patch of the upper atmosphere. Alternatively, waves in the atmosphere, which trigger turbulence and are thought to carry material up and down, could have concentrated bright material to create the spot.

A volcanic eruption is another suspect. Venus boasts the most volcanoes of any planet in the solar system, and nearly 90% of its surface is covered by basaltic lava flows, although no 'smoking gun' has yet been found for current volcanic activity. But an eruption would have had to be very powerful to punch through a dense layer in Venus's atmosphere to create the spot some 65 to 70 kilometres above the planet's surface.

"It's fair to say something unusual happened on Venus. Unfortunately, we don't know what happened," Limaye told New Scientist.

Volcanic gases

Two spectrometers on board Venus Express might help reveal the culprit. One directly measures the spectrum of light emanating from the planet, while the other can measure trace constituents in the atmosphere by measuring how gases there absorb sunlight.

These instruments could reveal changes in the size distribution of particles in the atmosphere and higher concentrations of molecules, such as sulphur dioxide, that could suggest a volcanic eruption.

If a volcano is to blame, proving it will be difficult. Even if Venus Express finds higher-than-average levels of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere, the observation could be explained by non-volcanic processes, cautions Limaye. Sunlight can break down sulphuric acid in Venus's clouds to create sulphur dioxide, which may not be evenly circulated in the planet's atmosphere.

Mystery world

This is not the first time astronomers have spotted bright features in Venus's atmosphere. Bright spots have been seen from Earth for decades, although they have not been clearly explained, Limaye says.

The most recent dramatic brightening occurred in January 2007, when areas in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the planet brightened. Because it is localised in a spot, this new feature looks different, but it is equally mysterious.

"This shows how much we don't know about Venus," Limaye says. In some ways, Venus is a simpler planet than Earth – it has no oceans and because of its nearly vertical spin axis, practically no seasons, he adds. But planetary scientists still do not understand what causes the planet's atmosphere to rotate 60 times faster than the planet itself.

Our terrifyingly crowded solar system: New video reveals just how many asteroids are out there

It's not just our country that's a little over-crowded - our whole solar system is too.

A fascinating colour-coded video illustrates how we have become increasingly aware of the number of asteroids flying close to Earth as telescopes improve.

The footage shows the discovery of every new asteroid over the past three decades and charts it on an increasingly congested map of the solar system.

Created by British astronomer Scott Manley, the three-minute clip - which is the equivalent of two months per second - starts with a sprinkling of white 'dust' around the edge of the planets.

Scroll down for video...

Cluttered: This image shows the number of asteroids in the solar system currently (2010)

Crowded: The final image in 2010 shows a vast amount of asteroids within our solar system

Over the years, and as more telescopes are added to the experiment and detection methods improve, this becomes a dense green 'ring' as the number of 'minor planets' found in the asteroid belt increases.

Worryingly, the red dots are those which fly around the inside the Earth's orbit - with the footage showing that some appear dangerously close.

The final colour of an asteroid on the video indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system - with yellow indicating Earth-approachers.

Mr Manley created 'maps' every day from 1980 to 2010 to pinpoint the location of asteroids discovered by telescopes.

1998: The white sprinkling of asteroids starts to become a dense green ring

Not quite so busy: The density of asteroids was lower in 2000

Thirty years ago, we knew of just 8,954 within our solar system. Today, we have discovered 530,091 - forming a green 'eye' of minor planets.

Mr Manley, a former research student at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, said: 'The images are created by using the known orbits of the asteroids to figure out where they've been on a day-to-day basis.

'Just like we can figure out where the Earth, Mars and Venus have been, we can do the same with anything orbiting the sun.

'I created maps for every day over the last 30 years - that's about 11,000 images - then I combined them to make a video.'

Virtually empty: This image shows the known asteroids in 1980. 11,000 images in total were used in the video

Collision: A meteor crater 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 550ft deep in Arizona, America

Asteroids are small solar system bodies that orbit the sun. They are smaller than planets, and are sometimes referred to as minor planets.

Their size ranges from 950km for the largest known asteroid, Ceres, to just tens of metres across.

Small asteroids - five to 10 metres in diameter - enter the Earth's atmosphere about once a year, but normally explode before impact. Larger minor planets - of about 1km in size - strike every 500,000 years.

But although some of the asteroids on Mr Manley's map look as though they are terrifyingly close to the Earth, he has some words of reassurance.

'The positions are all to scale, but the sizes of objects are expanded to make them visible,' he said.

'One pixel on the screen is one million kilometres - so even if an asteroid appears right on top of Earth in the video it could be up to a million kilometres away. That's more than twice the distance to the Moon.'

Best viewed in full screen...

Editor's note: Several commentators below have quite rightly pointed out that the actual number of asteroids has not increased, just the number we have identified thanks to better telescopes and a more concerted effort at tracking them. The copy above has now been amended accordingly.

vaccines Australia bans flu vaccines in children after vomiting, fevers, seizures

(NaturalNews) Although it's still summer in North America, it is of course winter in Australia, and the flu season is well under way there. As usual, Australian health authorities have been urging parents there to vaccinate their children against the flu, propagating the mythology that flu vaccines are both safe and effective. But this time around, many Australian parents found out the hard way that they were being lied to.

It didn't take long to realize the truth after their children start going into convulsions following the flu vaccine injections. Other children began vomiting or exhibiting dangerously high levels of fever. One child has gone into a coma and may never recover.

As reported in WA Today (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f...)

"Perth mother of two Bea Flint said her 11-month-old boy Avery had a seizure after receiving the first dose of the two-dose flu vaccination on Saturday. Mrs Flint said that after the 9am vaccination she noticed Avery had a minor temperature about 2pm. At 7.45pm, Avery started whimpering and moaning. When Mrs Flint got to his cot the baby had vomited and was lying on his side having a seizure. 'He couldn't cry - his head was hanging down in the car seat and he couldn't move. I was petrified - it was one of the worst experiences of my life."

The story goes on to say, "The doctor who treated Avery told Mrs Flint her baby was the fifth child with similar symptoms admitted to the hospital that day."

In other words, this was no rare event. Vaccinated children suffering severe convulsions were piling up in hospital emergency rooms across the country.

The real kicker, though, is that children started having convulsions two weeks ago but Australian health authorities ignored them, insisting that the vaccine was safe and causing it to be injected in yet more babies. Two weeks later, with dozens more children experiencing convulsions (and who knows how many thousands actually being harmed in less obvious ways), Commonwealth chief health officer Professor Jim Bishop finally announced the vaccination ban.

Remember: Health authorities in Australia, UK, the United States and everywhere else have relentlessly insisted that flu vaccines are perfectly safe and can't possibly harm anyone. In the U.S., the FDA has given its approval to the very same flu vaccine that's harming children in Australia, and the CDC has insisted that all children in the USA -- regardless of age -- should now be injected with this very same flu vaccine.

So now we've got a vaccine that Australia has banned but the USA somehow says is safe enough to inject into a six-month-old infant. How many convulsing babies will it take in the U.S. before American parents realize the truth about flu vaccines?

Chemically induced convulsions

As you're reading this, you may find yourself wonder, "Well, what could cause such convulsions in children?"

The answer is more terrifying than you might think, because it's not "weakened flu viruses" that vaccine manufacturer claim they put into the vaccines. A weakened flu virus doesn't send children into convulsions. Only a chemical can do that.

The chemical in question is one that's routinely added to most vaccines as a way to aggravate the immune system to respond to the presence of the weakened virus. It's called an "adjuvant" and consists of a highly inflammatory chemical that we now know may damage brain tissues and the nervous system. It is this adjuvant that most likely caused the convulsions in children.

Even in children who don't experience convulsions, there is speculation that this adjuvant may lead to future Alzheimer's disease or other neurological disorders. Vaccine manufacturers always attempt to downplay their use of adjuvant chemicals, and few media outlets focus on this important point, but it is the adjuvant that is most likely responsible for sending these Australian children into hospitals with convulsions.

Health authorities defend dangerous vaccine

One thing I've noticed about vaccine pushers is that they behave like irrational zealots. No matter how much evidence surfaces about the dangers of vaccines, they continue to mindlessly push them while ignoring the evidence.

A pediatric professor in Australia, Dr Peter Richmond, admitted that researchers were trying to figure out if the entire vaccine was dangerous, or if there was just a bad batch. But even before getting the answer to this question, he goes on to say that everybody over the age of five should go ahead and get injected with this same vaccine! (http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/f...)

In other words, he's so convinced the vaccine is safe -- even after dozens of children were obviously harmed by it -- that he's still pushing the same dangerous vaccine onto everybody else!

This is precisely the kind of attitude reflected across the vaccine industry. Reports of children being harmed, or paralyzed, or hospitalized by vaccines are always written off as "coincidence." The mounting evidence is simply thrown out the window because it conflicts with the pro-vaccine agenda.

Can you imagine the outrage if an herbal product sent fifty kids to the hospital suffering from convulsions? Health authorities across the world would be quick to condemn the product, and they'd confiscate it right off the shelves while shutting down the operations of its manufacturer. But somehow when a vaccine does the same thing, these same health authorities urge people to keep on injecting their children with it!

It makes no sense. But then again, the vaccine industry was never based on rational thinking in the first place. If health authorities were truly rational, they'd be handing out vitamin D supplements to children instead of injecting them with vaccines, because vitamin D has been scientifically proven to provide better protection against the flu than vaccines. (http://www.naturalnews.com/029333_v...)

Of course, to ask health authorities to make rational decisions is sort of like asking politicians to start telling the truth. In the complicated world of profits and politics, rational, honest thinking just doesn't get any traction. It's far more profitable to keep lying to the world and raking in billions of dollars each year off dangerous vaccines, even as they continue to harm innocent children.

I often wonder... How many dead children will it take before parents wake up and realize that flu vaccines are dangerous? The answer may surprise you: Even a million dead children won't change the minds of most parents because they just do whatever they're told by health authorities, even if it makes no rational sense.

Most parents are so brainwashed by the medical system that they would gladly line up to have their babies injected with chemotherapy if they were told it was somehow necessary.

At some point, the parents whose babies are being harmed or potentially even killed by these vaccines can only blame themselves. They were the ones who brought their babies to be injected with a chemical adjuvant and viral fragments, and they should know better than to trust the government when it comes to health advice. The government, after all, still says that pharmaceutical chemicals are good for you while vitamins, herbs and natural remedies are dangerous. And it's the government that approved the very vaccines that are right now sending these children to the hospital.

Any parent that trusts the government with the health of their child is setting themselves up for catastrophe. And that catastrophe could very well cost them the life of their child.

Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget

The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth … pennies on the dollar.”

The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the … pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”

Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”

And this happened to coincide also with a program being pushed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called “Retirement USA” which would create a government-forced retirement program with assets being directed into special Treasury Retirement Bonds, or R-Bonds. “Retirement USA” is promoting the idea that all workers have a “right” to a government retirement account, in addition to Social Security and any private pension plans those workers already have in place. Others behind “Retirement USA” also support more government dependency for workers, including the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Pension Rights Center.

All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”

The world view of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.

The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,

…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.

But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans. In “Making the Case for a New System” they take the view that “A secure retirement is part of the American dream. Yet our retirement system is failing many Americans. Social Security is the cornerstone of our system, but as currently structured, is not meant to be our only retirement program. Pensions and savings plans are supposed to fill the gap, but too many workers don’t have plans, and too many plans don’t do the job.” They complain that:

Private retirement plan coverage is not UNIVERSAL…

For millions of Americans, private retirement benefits are not SECURE…

And Private retirement benefits are not ADEQUATE…

And, continues “Retirement USA”’s website, “Social Security must be preserved and strengthened… [and] we must encourage employers to offer and maintain them.”[emphasis added]

Underlying all of this is, of course, the statist presumption that government knows best what’s good for the citizens, and when the citizens’ behavior fails to meet government expectations, then mandates and force must be used to do for those citizens what the government thinks is best.

And the fact that Washington is looking at annual trillion-dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see,” that $4.5 trillion of private monies is just too tempting to ignore.