The Golden Rule Posted December 14, 2012 By Polly Dunbar Mail Online

Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals.

The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.

Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.
Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth.

Source: NBC News Washington Friday, Dec 14, 2012  |  Updated 9:20 AM EST

A man in Virginia Beach picked up an unusual jogging partner when an emu began following him.

Animal shelter supervisor Wayne Gilbert says Virginia Beach residents contacted the city after the emu showed up Thursday alongside the jogger in the Highgate Green neighborhood.

It turns out that the bird had merely drifted away from its home. Emus are legal to own in the area. Gilbert tells media outlets that animal control officers located the bird, which was returned to its owner.

NPR by Ailsa Chang December 13, 2012 4:25 PM

HSBC has agreed to pay $1.92 billion to settle a multiyear U.S. criminal probe into money-laundering lapses at the British lender, the largest penalty ever paid by a bank. Edgard Garrido/Landov/Reuters

Our Amazing Planet - Becky Oskin, 12/13/12

MBARI researchers used the “manipulator arm” on ROV Doc Ricketts to collect rock samples from the rhyolite dome.
CREDIT: (c) 2012 MBARI

SAN FRANCISCO — Scientists have discovered one of the world's weirdest volcanoes on the seafloor near the tip of Baja, Mexico.

The petite dome — about 165 feet tall (50 meters) and 4,000 feet long by 1,640 feet wide (1,200 m by 500 m) — lies along the Alarcón Rise, a seafloor-spreading center. Tectonic forces are tearing the Earth's crust apart at the spreading center, creating a long rift where magma oozes toward the surface, cools and forms new ocean crust.

To read the rest of this story, visit OurAmazingPlanet.com.

Source: The Extinction Protocol - 12/13/12

December 13, 2012 – ICELAND - A total of 1,500 earthquakes hit in Iceland last month. According to data from the Icelandic Met Office, the most seismic activity—or a total of 750 earthquakes—occurred in Eyjafjördur, which was also the location of the strongest earthquake, of a magnitude 3.8, mbl.is reports.

In late November, a minor glacial outburst flood was reported in Grímsvötn volcano in Vatnajökull glacier. GPS data shows that the ice level had decreased, a strong indication that a flood had started. The flood reached its peak on November 26. A glacial outburst isn’t necessarily an indication of an upcoming eruption. –Iceland Review