Joe Barron, the Baptist minister taken into custody on Thursday in a sex sting operation has resigned from his position at the Prestonwood Baptist Church following the scandal, Rev. Jack Graham officially unveiled on Saturday, one day after Barron was released from the Brazos County Jail on bail. The Baptist minister, age 52, who is now charged with online solicitation of a minor and faces long years in prison, is member of one of the largest churches in the country, with 26,000 members and 40 ministers. His work focused on married adults. According to his neighbors, Barron and his wife looked like the average normal couple, never displaying out of the ordinary behavior, which is why the entire community is still shocked and upset with the news. Police has been tracking Barron’s actions for some time, and on May 6, when the minister proposed what he thought to be a 13-year-old girl to skip school and meet him for sex, they followed him and arrested him. Barron didn’t suspect for one moment that the ‘girl’ he was supposed to meet was actually an undercover police officer. Following his arrest, police officers found condoms and a web […]
Hurricanes and tropical storms will become less frequent by the end of the century as a result of climate change, US researchers have suggested. But the scientists added their data also showed that there would be a ‘modest increase’ in the intensity of these extreme weather events. The findings are at odds with some other studies, which forecast a greater number of hurricanes in a warmer world. The researchers’ results appear in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) said its findings did not support the notion that human-induced climate change was causing an increase in the number of hurricanes and tropical storms. ‘There have been some studies published that have suggested that this is the case, but this modelling study does not support that idea,’ observed lead author Tom Knutson. ‘Rather, we actually simulate a reduction in hurricane frequency in the Atlantic.’ Eye of the storm Although the study projected that there would be fewer extreme weather events in the future, Dr Knutson said that these storms were likely to be more powerful. ‘The model is simulating increased […]
HAVANA — A top Cuban official said Friday that Raul Castro’s government would consider loosening Internet restrictions on ordinary citizens newly allowed to purchase computers _ but Washington’s decades-old economic embargo makes it impossible. ‘We aren’t worried about the citizenry connecting from their homes,’ Telecommunications Vice Minister Boris Moreno told a small group of reporters. ‘But problems with technology and resources have made it necessary to give priority to connections that guarantee the country’s social and economic development,’ he said, referring to an islandwide network that lets Cubans receive e-mail and view domestic Web sites. The rest of the worldwide Web is blocked to most citizens in Cuba, which has access controls far stricter than in China or Saudi Arabia. Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are currently allowed unfiltered home Internet service, and many Cubans turn to the black market for expensive, slow dial-up accounts. Computers for home use were also not available until two weeks ago, when state stores began selling them to the public as part of a series of small quality-of-life changes since Raul Castro replaced his elder brother Fidel in February. But Moreno said the government is unable […]
MADRID — Barcelona received its first seaborne shipment of drinking water yesterday, part of an unprecedented emergency plan to tackle the city’s worst drought in decades. The tanker carrying five million gallons (23 million litres) of water from nearby Tarragona is just the first to help to alleviate the growing shortages in one of Spain’s top tourist destinations, which has already resulted in hosepipes being banned and many fountains turned off. One reservoir has fallen to such a low level that the remains of a village flooded in 1962 have reappeared. Other water shipments are due from the French city of Marseilles, and, in August, from a desalination plant in AlmerÃa, on the south coast. A total of 66 shipments a month are expected to arrive in Barcelona this summer, providing about 6 per cent of the region’s water needs, at a cost of €21 million (£17 million) a month. Additional shipments may come by rail from other parts of Spain. Other emergency measures that the regional government of Catalonia will take to prevent the northeastern Spanish region from running out of drinking water will include diverting the mouth of the Ebro river. This has […]
A few years ago, researchers in Montreal produced a disturbing finding. By the simple act of neglecting her young, a mother rat could permanently change the expression of genes in her offspring. Dams that licked their pups only infrequently-the rat equivalent of bad maternal care-sent their little ones off into the world with a more anxious disposition than rats with dams that had lavished care on them. What is more, this lack of attention, the researchers discovered, had chemically altered a gene controlling an important stress hormone. It was a striking case of how nurture affects nature. And it made the researchers curious about whether the same could be happening in humans. Now, by studying the brains of suicide victims, they have begun to explore that question. The field they are investigating is known as epigenetics. This is the interface between our genes, which are fixed, and our environment, which is ever-changing. Although people are born with a complement of genes that they are stuck with for life, those genes can be switched on and off-and this can make a world of difference. All the more harrowing, then, that simple things like dietary supplements and stress have been […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
