More than 150 cars were disabled and countless others damaged after a tanker truck spilled sticky goo along nearly 40 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Tuesday night.

The tanker began leaking driveway sealant fluid near New Castle, Pa., and continued to spill as it drove eastbound for 39 miles until it exited the turnpike at a service plaza in Oakmont, Turnpike. The driver was not aware until getting off the turnpike that the tanker was leaking.

Laura Frick was driving from Cleveland to New Jersey for Thanksgiving when the tar decimated her tires.

Turnpike officials didn’t have estimates of how much damage had been caused. They said 150 or more cars were disabled, including some state police and turnpike maintenance vehicles that had to be towed away after getting stuck, reported The Associated Press.

The tractor-trailer, owned by Marino Transportation Services, was hauling between 4,000 and 5,000 gallons of sealant when it got onto the rainy turnpike at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night, Todd Leiss, an officer at the Turnpike Operations Center, told Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times. State police said it appears the seal broke on the truck’s valve, but didn’t provide any more information into the cause of the spill.

Maintenance crews used sand to collect the goop and pushed it the shoulder with snow plows, but all lanes remained open to traffic Tuesday night, according to the Beaver County Times.

Bob King, a firefighter from Illinois traveling through Pennsylvania whose red Dodge Durango turned black from tar on Tuesday, told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “I drove down the shoulder of the road, scared to death to stop because I didn’t want anyone running into me. Cars were sliding everywhere. I’m glad I have four-wheel drive.”

While state police fielded calls from hundreds of motorists, they did not receive any reports of wrecks, the Tribune-Review reported

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/214456/186/Sticky-goo-stops-Thanksgiving-travelers-in-their-tracks

Three children in Iowa have come down with a new type of flu virus previously linked to pigs, but this time the bug appears to have been spread by people.

The children, who live in rural Webster and Hamilton counties, did not become seriously ill, said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, medical director for the Iowa Department of Public Health. But the detection of the virus known as swine-origin A/H3N2 in patients who hadn’t had contact with animals raises concerns about potentially greater spread of a new type of flu.

“We have pretty good evidence of person-to-person spread,” Quinlisk said. “None of the children or anyone around them had exposure to swine, turkeys or other sources.”

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously detected seven cases of people with the new H3N2 virus that appears to have acquired a gene that may make it more transmissible from H1N1, the flu that sparked the so-called swine flu pandemic in 2009. Flu viruses often swap genetic parts. Officials say the new virus was probably formed when a pig became infected with the H3N2 virus and the H1N1 virus at the same time.  

The new bug has components of human, avian, H1N1 and swine flu viruses, all mixed together in what scientists call a recombinant virus.

The first new H3N2 case was identified in a child in Indiana in July, and has been followed by cases in Pennsylvania, Maine and, now, Iowa.

In the previous cases, however, the patients either had direct exposure with pigs, or exposure to a person who’d been around pigs. In the new cases, it appears that one of the children transmitted the flu to the other two, and none of them had any animal exposure, Quinlisk said. She declined to identify the children or their ages, saying only they were younger than 18. No further cases have been identified in the past week, she said.

The Iowa cases are nothing to panic about, health officials emphasized. The H3N2 flu causes symptoms similar to the regular seasonal flu, including fever, cough, fatigue, body aches and loss of appetite. 

“People need to be most concerned about the regular, everyday seasonal flu,” Quinlisk said.

But Iowa health officials are now testing samples of people with flu-like illness to detect further spread of the new bug. And CDC officials have asked states across the country to be vigilant in looking for it, said Dr. Joe Bresee, the agency’s influenza and epidemiology branch chief.

The current seasonal flu vaccine being offered by doctors and clinics was not developed to protect against the H3N2 virus. It contains some antigens similar to a flu virus that circulated in the 1990s, so some people who had the flu then or were vaccinated could have some immunity, but it’s not clear how much, Quinlisk said. The Iowa children apparently had not been vaccinated, she added.

With the new cases, CDC officials have confirmed 31 cases in the U.S. of the new swine-origin virus since 2005, including 10 with the H3N2 virus that carries the M gene from the 2009 H1N1 virus.

The best prevention for the new flu, as with any flu, is to wash hands frequently, cover coughs and sneezes and limit spread of germs by staying home when you’re sick, health officials said.

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/23/8977636-new-flu-virus-in-three-iowa-kids-raises-concern-about-wider-spread

When buying a soft drink in India, not all flavors are created equally. Some with sugar, all with carbonation, and a select few will be made with cow urine.

The Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is developing a soft drink using that very thing – cow urine. They say it will be tasty and full of flavor and expect it to be ready for humans by 2012.

Cow urine is thought to have many health properties in India and is said to treat problems with the liver and cancer. Prakash also says the drink will be cheap making it easy for the people of India to afford.

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2011/11/16/political-party-india-launching-line-cow-urine-soft-drinks/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programs.

They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.

The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.

Perhaps it’s some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it’s a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.

You can check it out yourself in Google Maps here.

The second structure seems to be some kind of giant targeting grid, also north of the Shule river.

If you zoom in, you can see vehicles destroyed. It’s west of what seems to be a fairly big electrical station or a radio station similar to HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program located near Gakona, Alaska, and funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska, and DARPA.