CODEPINK peace activist Rae Abileah injured and hospitalized
Police arrested CODEPINK peace activist Rae Abileah at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington DC. Abileah was taken to the hospital after having been assaulted and tackled to the ground by AIPAC members of the audience in the House Gallery during Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
Abileah interrupted Netanyahu with a banner that said “Occupying Land Is Indefensible” and shouting, “No more occupation, stop Israel war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.” She rose up to speak out just after the Prime Minister talked about the youth around the world rising up for more democracy.
Swiss abandon nuclear plans
The Swiss government decided Wednesday to abandon plans to build new nuclear reactors, while European Union regulators agreed on a framework for stress-testing theirs, as repercussions from the disaster in Japan continue to ripple across Europe. The country will phase out nuclear energy slowly.
The country’s five existing reactors — which supply about 40 percent of the country’s power — would be allowed to continue operating, but would not be replaced at the end of their life span, it said. The last would go offline in 2034. [Jayaram Ramesh, learn from them.]
Ancient Protein Found in Sea Lizard Fossil
Tissue from a 70-million-year-old marine lizard was recently extracted from ancient remains by a team from Lund University in Sweden. Collagen protein, a type of connective tissue, was found inside the fossilized upper forelimb bone of the mosasaur Prognathodon, a long-dead relative of the monitor lizard.
While this is not the first time proteins have been recovered from dinosaur-era remains, this is the first find of preserved tissues from a marine environment. And the first time they have been found in place in a fossil. Earlier finds came from extracts of whole dinosaur bones preserved in sediments from what were once river floodplains.