When Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, many hoped that he would govern competently from the center. More pessimistic critics consoled themselves by questioning how much harm a president can do in a few years. We now know the answer: a great deal.

Never has America's standing in the world's eyes been lower. Basic values that Americans regard as central to their identity have been subverted. The unthinkable has occurred: an American president defending the use of torture, using technicalities in interpreting the Geneva Conventions and ignoring the Convention on Torture, which forbids it under any circumstances. Likewise, whereas Bush was hailed as the first "MBA president," corruption and incompetence have reigned under his administration, from the botched response to Hurricane Katrina to its conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In fact, we should be careful not to read too much into the 2006 vote: Americans do not like being on the losing side of any war. It was this failure, and the quagmire into which America had once again so confidently stepped, that led voters to reject Bush. But the Middle East chaos wrought by the Bush years also represents a central risk to the global economy. Since the Iraq war began in 2003, oil output from the Middle East, which has the world's lowest-cost producers, has not grown as expected to meet rising world demand. Although most forecasts suggest that oil prices will remain at or slightly below their current level, this is largely due to a perceived moderation of growth in demand, led by a slowing US economy.

Of course, a slowing US economy constitutes another major global risk. At the root of America's economic problems are measures adopted early in Bush's first term. In particular, the administration pushed through a tax cut that largely failed to stimulate the economy, because it was designed to benefit mainly the wealthiest taxpayers. The burden of stimulation was placed on the Fed, which lowered interest rates to unprecedented levels. While cheap money had little impact on business investment, it fueled a real estate bubble, which is now bursting, jeopardizing households that borrowed against rising home values to sustain consumption.

This economic strategy was clearly untenable. Household savings became negative for the first time since the Great Depression, with the country as a whole borrowing $3bn a day from foreigners. But households could continue to take money out of their houses only as long as prices continued to rise and interest rates remained low. Thus, higher interest rates and falling house prices do not bode well for the American economy. Indeed, according to some estimates, roughly 80% of the increase in employment and almost two thirds of the increase in GDP in recent years stemmed directly or indirectly from real estate.

Making matters worse, unrestrained government spending further buoyed the economy during the Bush years, with fiscal deficits reaching new heights, making it difficult for the government to step in now to shore up economic growth as households curtail consumption. Indeed, many Democrats, having campaigned on a promise to return to fiscal sanity, are likely to demand a reduction in the deficit, which would further dampen growth.

Meanwhile, persistent global imbalances will continue to produce anxiety, especially for those whose lives depend on exchange rates. Though Bush has long sought to blame others, it is clear that America's unbridled consumption and inability to live within its means is the major cause of these imbalances. Unless that changes, global imbalances will continue to be a source of global instability, regardless of what China or Europe do.

In light of all of these uncertainties, the mystery is how risk premiums can remain as low as they are. Especially given the sharp brake on growth in global liquidity as central banks have raised interest rates, the prospect of risk premiums returning to more normal levels is itself one of the major risks the world faces today.

For the last few years, some bearish economists have warned about America's real estate boom, its consumption binge, global imbalances, and even unreasonably low-risk premiums; but somehow America, and the world, has muddled through. Some conclude that this proves that, even with poor political leadership, we can muddle through for still another year. Perhaps so. But perhaps not: muddling through has in some respects worsened the underlying problems, making the inevitable adjustments all the more painful. Indeed, that may be the main lesson we learn in 2007.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.

- Start with acts of contrition for past political sins committed by all parties. Bring in state financing of parties, with a strict cap on all spending over the electoral cycle and a ban on all money-raising except from fixed individual membership subscriptions. Give each voter the power to allocate their share of party funds by ticking a box on the ballot paper to stop a carve-up by the main parties, a good incentive to parties to get every vote out even in the safest seats.

- Encourage citizens to vote with a bonus off their council tax; if they still won't turn out, make voting compulsory. Make it more enticing with the alternative vote, letting voters put their choices in 1, 2 ,3 order, choosing small parties closer to their views, while still using their second choice to keep out the party they most fear. As it keeps the link between MP and constituency, it can be done for the next election while reforming the Lords. If any party fears losing out under the alternative vote, let it support full proportional representation.

- Prove British democracy is not in hock to press barons, despite the humiliating courting of these political thugs. Restore the laws limiting media ownership by any one magnate, abolished by Margaret Thatcher to let Rupert Murdoch acquire his empire, so that he now owns over 40% of the press plus ever more dominant Sky.

- Fix the BBC's future with a legal guarantee of at least inflation-proof rises in the licence fee, free of political intervention in perpetuity. (Tessa Jowell should resign in protest if she fails to secure the BBC steady state funding as a bare minimum.) The licence fee is a bargain.

- Turn the Low Pay Commission into the Pay Commission, with a duty to recommend not just the minimum wage rate but to comment on the dysfunctions and dislocations caused by out-of-control pay at the top, now fracturing middle pay rates, inflating house prices, raising interest rates and harming all. It should comment too on migration and its effect on pay rates.

- Create a standing tax commission to expose who pays what and how fat cats squeeze through loopholes. Get tough on tax exiles: cut the time they can spend here tax-free while stashing their cash in Jersey or Monaco, losing the Treasury escalating sums as the UK turns tax haven itself. Bring a top tax band at £100,000 as an opportunity tax, earmarked to pay for new life chances for left-behind children. Make Every Child Matters a reality, with Sure Start a genuine universal guarantee that every child gets wrap-around help from well-qualified professionals to rescue all at risk. Labour's great idea, 10 years on, is still often only a half-fulfilled promise.

- Cut crime at a stroke: let clinics prescribe enough heroin to addicts daily to stop them mugging, stealing and turning to prostitution to support a habit. Lives can be stabilised on regular heroin and that is also the best hope of getting chaotic addicts into rehab.

- Begin again on foreign policy and, as Chirac departs, turn back to the EU. Europe is the world's best hope on climate change, the only grouping of nations with the power and intent to tackle it. Make carbon trading work, invite in the rest of the world, and create and donate clean technologies to China and India.

- Give the climate change bill teeth. The public is ready to change its habits, but is waiting for strong leadership to say what everyone knows must be done.

- Merger and acquisition mania is back in the City with renewed ferocity. Boasts about "inward investment" to Britain are often just a sign on the borders saying Britain for Sale, in ways that amaze other countries. Water, gas, airports and other essentials are up for grabs to asset-strippers who borrow to tear companies apart regardless of anything but vast profits for the fixers. Time to cap City kickbacks that are the only reason for many of the most destructive deals.

- Grasp David Cameron's suggestion that, alongside measuring GDP, there should be a general wellbeing index. Hard cash is the tangible proof of a government's success, yet money is only the means to greater political ends. Without measuring who is spending it on what, crude GDP reveals little about the state of a nation. For decades there have been reliable measures of relative national happiness: countries with least inequality are the happiest. (Yes, the Nordics come top.) Cameron never considered the full implications, but moving the index upwards would require a radical shift in priorities to alleviate the worst suffering of the depressed and mentally ill, of neglected children or old people needing kinder care. If he really wants governments to be judged by a felicific calculus, then letting a billionaire acquire another £1m would score virtually nil. The loudest voices of the most powerful would no longer command the best of everything, since getting their way would do nothing for the wellbeing index.

New year's resolutions are only good intentions. But it is better to have them than not even to try. After 10 years, Labour is too stuck in the daily grind of limited possibilities, forgetting how to imagine what might be if only it dared, if only it had the nerve. The above are not that difficult, and more could be added; implementing just a few would shift the can't-do gloom Labour has fallen into and change the grey spirit of the times.

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

It was no ordinary defeat on 7 November. In the House, where the Democrats made a net gain of 29 seats, the losses were limited by a decade of redrawing (more politely, gerrymandering) of congressional districts that has greatly increased the number of rock-safe seats for both parties. But psychologically it was a landslide to match 1994, when the Republicans captured a net 52 House seats to sweep the Democrats from power. In the Senate the outcome was even more stunning - the Democrats made a net gain of six seats, larger than even most partisans had dared hope, lifting the party to a 51-49 majority. The elections had been a perfect storm, where domestic incompetence, the stain of corruption and foreign policy failure collided to change the face of US politics, perhaps for many years. First and foremost among the reasons was Iraq.

In 2004 voters gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, their patience ran out - at the incompetence and arrogance of power and its refusal to face facts, its inability to take responsibility for the mistakes it made, or to recognise the damage inflicted on the reputation and moral authority of the US in the wider world.

Americans now understand they have been led into a war apparently without end. The Iraq debacle was best summed up by retired general Anthony Zinni, arguably the sharpest strategic thinker produced by the US military in recent times: "We made a mess in the worst possible place we could have made a mess." Barring a miracle, Iraq will surely go down as one of the greatest, even the greatest, foreign policy blunder in the country's history.

America has been here before. Ronald Reagan in 1986, and Bill Clinton in 1994, were sitting presidents whose parties took a mid-term hammering. Both also suffered huge second-term embarrassments: the Iran-Contra affair in the case of Reagan, the Monica Lewinsky scandal for Clinton. But both recovered and left office amid high popularity.

Bush, however, is in a different position. His approval rating is around 35 per cent, with little prospect of improvement. The US is trapped in the no-man's land that is Antonio Gramsci's definition of a crisis, "When the old is dead and the new cannot be born" (or not until that January inauguration day two years hence).

The president who most closely resembles Bush is Lyndon Johnson, who had his own unpopular and ever more obviously unwinnable war. Vietnam prompted LBJ not to run for office again. Johnson made his announcement on 31 March 1968, and within barely seven months the country had a new president. George W Bush will be in the Oval Office until 2009, facing a hostile Congress and no longer in command of even his own party.

In retrospect, two dates stand out. The first is 7 November. Within 24 hours Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary who had been the lightning rod for the war, was forced to resign. Many Republicans claimed that had he gone a month earlier, the Senate at least could have been saved.

Characteristically, Rumsfeld was unyielding to the last. The air positively crackled in the Oval Office as President Bush stood between the outgoing Pentagon chief and the man chosen to replace him, the former CIA director Robert Gates. The fault was not his, Rumsfeld made clear. It was the American people who had so rebuked him at the ballot box - who had failed to understand what the war was about.

The second date was 6 December. Tony Blair had just arrived for a miserable summit and a press conference at which Bush was asked whether he actually understood what was happening in Iraq. More pertinent were two other events that day. In the morning, the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel headed by former secretary of state James Baker, went to the White House to deliver its damning verdict on the Iraq mess. Hours later, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress overwhelmingly approved Gates as the new Defense Secretary, by 95 votes to two.

The extent to which Iraq policy will change under Gates is as yet unclear. But the change in style was instant. Gone was the brusque, domineering Rumsfeld, unheeding of advice, ever certain he was right. In had come the crafty Gates, lower key and more cerebral, and like Baker an exponent of the "realist" school of foreign policy associated with President Bush the father. Bush the son, who had used the "war on terror" to greatly expand presidential powers and prerogatives, seemed by the year's end to have lost control of events - even inside his own administration.

For along with the "realists" that Bush junior once despised, leaks too have returned to Washington. For his first five years, Bush ran the tightest presidential ship in memory. But the floodgates have opened, first in a series of books, one of which revealed the existence of a secret programme of government eavesdropping without warrants, introduced in the name of the "war on terror". Then within the space of less than a week, The New York Times chalked up a couple of blockbusters. First it obtained a memo by Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, expressing grave doubts about Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister whom the administration effusively backed in public. Then it published a secret memo on the war from Rumsfeld in his final weeks at the Pentagon, whose dismal tone was utterly at variance with his upbeat public statements. In the US as everywhere, a leaking government is a sinking government.

But the Republican meltdown at the polls is not fully explained by either Iraq or the other inadequacies of a President ranked by some historians as the worst ever. This disaster has been a long time in the making - perhaps from the day the swaggering Newt Gingrich led his troops to victory in the Congressional elections of November 1994. The Republicans won then because Democrats had grown corrupt, lazy and out of touch after 40-odd years of power. It took them barely a decade to fall into the same trap.

The 109th Congress, which wrapped up its business on 9 December, must rank among the worst ever. The House of Representatives sat for just 102 days in 2006, fewer even than the "do-nothing Congress" of 1948. Though the Republican Party controlled both the White House and Capitol Hill, it failed in its most elementary constitutional duty by passing only two of the 12 bills funding the federal government in the current fiscal year. Much of its time was spent not on matters of concern to ordinary Americans, such as social security or immigration reform, but on symbolic issues such as the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and flag-burning. Unsurprisingly, Congress' approval rating is now even lower than that of the President. Equally unsurprisingly, the Republicans were blamed.

Then there were the scandals: first and foremost the one centred on the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he of the Indian tribes rip-off and the all-expenses-paid golfing trips to St Andrews for Republican pals on the Hill. In 2005, the Abramoff connection forced the once-mighty House majority leader Tom DeLay to resign. This year Bob Ney, a senior Ohio congressman, pleaded guilty to influence-peddling charges and faces two years or more in jail when he is sentenced next month.

Separately, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a flamboyant Republican congressman from California and born-again Christian, was jailed for eight years in March for taking over $2m in bribes from defence contractors. For many voters the case summed up the hypocrisy of politics as practiced by the type of Republican who wears religion on his sleeve. That impression was only confirmed by the devastating Mark Foley scandal that broke five weeks before the vote.

Foley was a senior Florida Republican who had made his name on Capitol Hill as an opponent of child pornography and as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. It then emerged that for years Foley had been an exploiter himself, sending sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages to young men he had known when they were teenage congressional pages. It further emerged that the Republican leadership had been given at least some idea of Foley's predatory behaviour as long ago as 2003.

The scandal deeply upset many Christian conservatives, one of the most important Republican constituencies, and may have kept some away from the polls on 7 November. And if that were not enough, a former Bush official wrote a book alleging, inter alia, that White House aides privately mocked the Christian right, even as they made a fuss of them in public.

Last but not least are the deepening ideological divides within Republican ranks. The party has long been a broad church - but now the side walls are so far apart that the roof is falling in.

Iraq, of course, is a part of the problem. The descent into civil war has deepened the rift between the "realists" and the discredited neo-conservatives who have made the foreign-policy running under Bush. It has also emboldened the isolationist, fortress-America wing of the party that loathes all foreign entanglements. The latter has been on one side of the bitterly fought immigration issue, pitting it against pro-business Republicans (among them President Bush) who favour a normalisation of the process and offering a path to citizenship to millions who have come to the US illegally.

Fiscal conservatives - another traditional Republican constituency - are appalled at the huge trade and budget deficits run by this administration. Libertarians who want the government to confine itself to government were horrified by the way in which the leadership and the White House injected themselves into Terry Schiavo's right-to-die legal case, a blatant act of pandering to the religious right. In 2006 Karl Rove, Bush's erstwhile electoral magician, gambled on getting out the Republican base. But he foundered on the question: which base? By the time voting day arrived, all that was required of Democrats was not to be Republicans.

Maybe voters on 7 November registered their dislike of the one-party control of the executive and legislature that had eroded the checks and balances vital to the US system of government - a failure most notable in the oversight of the Iraq war. In fact, Congress may actually have edged rightward last month. Many of the Republicans who lost were moderates, while some newly elected Democrats are little different from those they defeated. America remains conservative, and could return a Republican Congress in 2008, especially if the new Democrats on Capitol Hill fail to deliver. Far short of the veto-overturning majority of two-thirds in either House or Senate, the incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi will have to strike deals with the President if any significant legislation is to pass.

Equally possibly, however, American politics may be undergoing one of its twice- or three-times-in-a-century shifts. A Republican era of dominance that began in the late 1960s may be drawing to an end. The mid-term results may not have been merely a massive vote of no confidence in the President. They suggest that the once "natural majority" party is being penned back to the south and west. The Democrats not only own the two coasts, but are gaining ground in the Midwest and the fast-growing south-west. If so, then Iraq may have precipitated not just regime change in the US, but a quiet generational political revolution as well.

By this month, Lebanon's sectarian crisis, its attempted coups d'état (by the Iranians, by the Syrians, by the US, take your pick) had struck even the humble journalist. Each year at this time, I renew my residence card. To receive my card from the office of "General Security" at a whacking cost of around £1,300, I need a valid government-issued press card. To receive my press card, I need to present the Lebanese ministry of information with a valid work permit. And to receive a work permit, I have to ask the minister of labour for his signature on an insurance document. But - reader, you may have guessed - the Lebanese minister of labour is an elected member of the Hizbollah. And the Hizbollah - along with other Shia ministers - has resigned from the elected government of Fouad Siniora in an attempt to overthrow it, create a "national unity" government with more pro-Syrian ministers and, if you believe Siniora's supporters, prevent the UN tribunal into the murder of the ex-prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, last year from ever arresting the culprits.

So after 30 years of legal residency in Lebanon, I now have to apply for a humble tourist visa each time I arrive at the airport that is named after the man whose assassination changed the political face of the country in 2005 and produced elections that, for the first time in decades, freed the nation from Syrian hegemony and forced Damascus to withdraw its 22,000 soldiers. It didn't prevent the continued murder of Syrian opponents in Lebanon, but those of us who live there no longer had to look over our shoulders when we talked politics in Beirut's best restaurants - or, at least, we could glance over our shoulders more briefly than before. The US had promised to protect what the State Department called Lebanon's "Cedars Revolution". Well, maybe.

So when 2006 began, Lebanon felt like a safe home again - for its people as well as foreigners. There were "conciliation" talks in parliament between men with blood on their hands and men who have no blood on their hands (yet). General Michel Aoun, the crazed Christian ex-army officer who had returned from exile to found his own political party, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Rafiq Hariri's son Saad, the Christian ex-militia murderer Samir Geagea, even the Hizbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, gathered in central Beirut for coffee, croissants and manouches (a thick, toasted cheese sandwich) to discuss how they would work together in the new "Syrian-free" Lebanon (the quotation marks are a necessary precaution). The problem they had to confront - and preferred to avoid, especially Nasrallah - was that the same UN Security Council Resolution that successfully called for the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, also called for Syria's Hizbollah guerrilla allies, whose weapons come from Iran, to be disarmed.

Since it had been the Hizbollah that had largely driven the Israeli army out of Lebanon in 2000 (and since the resolution looked, even to Jumblatt and others, like a US attempt to "soften up" a powerless Lebanon for a peace treaty with Israel), it was agreed that the future of Nasrallah's earnest and ferocious young men would be regarded as a local, Lebanese issue rather than an international demand. But the US and France, who had sponsored the UN resolution, continued to ask when they could expect the Hizbollah to abide by the UN's instructions. Save for a few desultory incursions across the UN's blue line to attack an Israeli held-district called Shebaa Farms (which was Lebanese under the pre-Second World War French mandate but was regarded by the Israelis as occupied Syria), the Hizbollah was silent; Nasrallah even indicated to the Lebanese government, in which it had two ministers, to expect a quiet summer.

But on 12 July, it struck across the border and seized two Israeli soldiers, killing three others. Four other Israeli troops would be killed that same day when their tank was blown up by a mine. Israeli forces had many times captured or kidnapped Hizbollah men in Lebanon without eliciting a massive bombardment from the guerrillas, or any protest from the world. But Israel's response to its soldiers' capture was a bombardment of Lebanon that pulverised hundreds of villages, the Beirut suburbs, more than 40 road bridges, factories and civilian homes in the capital, along with the headquarters of the Hizbollah itself. The latter responded with thousands of new, long-range rockets into Israel, hitting Haifa and other northern cities.

The Israelis blamed Siniora's powerless government, and the US, hoping that Israel could fulfil its hopeless boast that it would destroy the Hizbollah (and thus intimidate Iran into abandoning its nuclear ambitions) postponed any talk of a ceasefire. George W Bush, along, of course, with Tony Blair, allowed the bombs to keep falling on Lebanon, killing a total of 1,300 civilians and a handful of guerrillas and causing billions of dollars' worth of damage. So much for Washington's support for Lebanon's democracy.

Hizbollah might not have won its "divine victory", but Israel certainly lost (Bush said the opposite, of course). Its soldiers fought to a standstill after one of its warships was set afire, its top-secret air-traffic control centre was hit by missiles, several of its major cities were struck by rockets and 40 Israeli troops were killed inside Lebanon in 36 hours. Fewer than 200 of its people were killed, more than half of them soldiers. The world, as usual, promised to rebuild Lebanon. The UN force in southern Lebanon was expanded to include thousands of Nato troops and the Lebanese acknowledged - at first - Hizbollah's courage. But as the scale of the destruction to the country and the millions of cluster bomblets with which the Israelis had soaked southern Lebanon was discovered, Hizbollah was held to account.

Which was when Nasrallah began to demand the overthrow of the "traitor" Siniora, whose government was "owned" by the US ambassador, whose ministers had supposedly urged the US to arrange an Israeli attack on Lebanon. The Hizbollah, in alliance with Aoun's Christians (he probably thought he might be made president) called for the overthrow of the non-Shiite Lebanese cabinet. Lebanon's Christians were now dangerously divided between two factions: those loyal to the messianic Aoun and those who followed Geagea's gangster politics. And, to place Lebanon even closer to the ghosts of the civil war, the Christian minister Pierre Gemayel was killed in east Beirut last month. The assassins were still at work.

If Lebanon survives into next year, it will be the only "democracy" in the Arab world to have done so. Afghanistan is crumbling, Iraq is already a mass grave. The Palestinians face their own inter-factional catastrophe. But desperate for the help of Syria and Iran to ease his trapped legions from Iraq, Bush is now urged to deal with Israel's Arab opponents. By year's end, the UN's tribunal investigator was no longer blaming Syria for Hariri's murder and the Lebanese awaited their second betrayal by the US: to be fed back to Damascus in return for salvation in Iraq. The world should watch what happens to little countries that believe in the promises of a superpower - and pray for their salvation.

"The temperature of 1C in the Bay of Parnu means conditions are ready for ice formation, if only we had at least a week of sub-zero temperatures," Kouts said.

"But the forecast shows mild weather continuing into the New Year."

Still, he assured, the sea could freeze this winter.

"It would take up to 10 days of freezing temperatures and we would see ice forming in the coastal areas," Kouts said.

"It's too early to rule out ice altogether for this winter."

Winters with little ice in the Baltic Sea are happening more frequently, and often it is only the Bay of Parnu in Estonia and the Gulf of Bothnia near Finland and Sweden that develop a layer of ice.

The warm winters of recent years stem from climatic change, but do not yet indicate an irreversible trend, Kouts said.

According to Kouts, the last time the region had particularly warm winters was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when four winters in a row saw above-average temperatures.

To find a similar series of warm winters before that, you would have to go back several hundred years, he said.

Meanwhile, the winter of 2002-2003 was significantly colder than average, Kouts said.

We suddenly became witnesses other than reporters. Photographic proof was evident of dramatic events. Obscure and blurry dots and streaks of unknown origin were replaced with large objects seemingly posing for the camera. Many of these photographs were taken while the objects themselves remained invisible until the photos were examined.

Some of the objects hovered over lakes or near historical buildings. Others were photographed possibly entering or exiting vortexes, appearing very similar in appearance to aircraft breaking the sound barrier. One tourist in Greece while capturing a panoramic night shoot of the mountains captured a truly remarkable photograph that clearly shows 4 - 7 unknown objects moving from left to right. The Great Lakes Dive company announced that they had discovered the wreckage of the F-89 Scorpion aircraft that allegedly crashed in 1953 while investigating an UFO spotted on radar.Extreme close-ups of these photos indicate classic UFO shaped objects. Odd shaped objects, rectangles, cubes, acorns and others have been photographed around the world at air-shows, skydiving and other public events.

The following is just a sampling of some of our more spectacular sightings, reports and articles.

The Kinross Incident

The Great Lakes Dive company announced that they had discovered the wreckage of the F-89 Scorpion aircraft that allegedly crashed in 1953 while investigating an UFO spotted on radar. This particular story, albeit real or hoax, has caused considerable controversy because certain elements of the story can't be validated and other individuals are paranoid that the military industrial complex will fly in, under the cover of darkness, and scoop up the mysterious wreckage.

The mystery surrounding the 1953 "Kinross Case" may well be on its way to being solved. The "Kinross Case", so called for the name of the air force base (AFB) from which the plane departed, involves the disappearance of a fighter jet and its crew, pilot Felix Moncla and radar observer Robert Wilson, sent to investigate an unknown object that was tracked on radar.

A Michigan based company, The Great Lakes Dive Company, announced in 2005 that they had discovered the wreckage of a F-89 and an unknown object at the bottom of Lake Superior. The objects were located at a depth of at least 250 feet. Ufologists, who have been investigating this case, have been waiting for the results of side scan sonar and remotely operated vehicles (ROV) imaging that was to commence in 2006.

The company is owned by a group of Michigan engineers and divers who share a common interest in shipwreck hunting and historical preservation.

The history and mythology of the Kinross Case began on November 23, 1953. A US Air Force F-89 jet fighter was scrambled from the Kinross AFB in Michigan. The plane known as the Scorpion was sent on an "active air defense mission" to intercept an "unknown object." Speculation as to the identity of the object has been the subject of debate for over 50 years.

American officials claim that the object was simply a Canadian aircraft, while Canadian officials deny the claim, citing that there were no Canadian aircraft in the vicinity at the time of the incident.

The following is extracted from the official accident report:

Aircraft took off at 2322 Zebra 23 Nov 53 on an active Air Defense Mission to intercept an unknown aircraft approximately 160 miles Northwest of Kinross Air Force Base. The aircraft was under radar control throughout the interception. At approximately 2352 Zebra the last radio contact was made by the radar station controlling the interception. At approximately 2355 Zebra the unknown aircraft and the F-89 merged together on the radar scope. Shortly thereafter the IFF signal disappeared from the radar scope. No further contact was established with the F-89. (The next 16 or so letters as well as the entire next sentence have been blacked out by Air Force censors) An extensive aerial search has revealed no trace of the aircraft. The aircraft and its crew are still missing.

Radar operators claim that the F-89 and the unknown object seemed to merge on their radar screens. At about the same time as the "blips" seemed to collide, both voice and identification friend or foe (IFF) contact were lost. According to reports, after the two objects came together, only one object, the original rogue object remained and it appeared not be affected as it continued on its original course and speed.

A large scale search was immediately launched. Its important to note that the aircraft was lost in late November and although the weather was stable, it was winter, snow covered the ground and the water of Lake Superior was freezing.

In the summer of 2005 The Great Lakes Dive company was testing some new equipment - wide trajectory side scan sonar and were so impressed by the initial results that they decided to search for a pair of French minesweepers, named the Cerisoles and its sister ship the Inkermann, that were lost in lake Superior in 1919. Unfortunately, they experienced glitches with their equipment and by the time the problems were corrected it was too late in the year for a full search that could take several months to complete.

Actual image of the missing plane. Used with permission of The Great Lakes Dive Company.
So they put off their search for the minesweepers and decided to attempt to solve the mystery of the missing plane, known as the "Kinross Case". Radar information and the original search grid were available as to where the F-89 was believed to have gone down, so the company had area to investigate. They had just begun searching the area, using the new wide trajectory side scan sonar, and on their first pass located an object on the bottom. It was a plane and the scans proved it was a F-89. The port (left) wing was missing, probably sheared off as well as a piece of the rear tail wing. The starboard (right) wing was partially buried, due to the crash or the gradual build up of silt over the years.

Further evidence was uncovered using Hi Res scans which show that the canopy and the fuselage of the aircraft were intact. The groups took a total of 28 passes over the area, but were unsuccessful in finding the missing wing and tail section. "We have not been able to confirm that the bodies of the two pilots are inside the aircraft", explained Adam Jimenez, spokesman for the company ,"but with the canopy intact, one would assume that would be the case. However, the ROV survey would tell the tale."

Jimenez stated, "We have confirmed the identity of the F-89 using several techniques. First, the general design of the aircraft is a complete match. Our scan shows an upswept tail section which is a design characteristic of only the F-89 (hence the model name "Scorpion"). Second, this aircraft has a wing pod. Also a design match to the F-89. Also the canopy location is a match. There are also other exact matches that I can't go into at this time. There were no other F-89s or similar aircraft lost over the middle of Lake Superior."

Jimenez describes the unknown as, "The object that the F-89 collided with is metallic and plowed into the lake bed in a similar manner as the F-89 south of the aircraft wreckage. The object bears a strike mark that matches a hole where the port side wing of the F-89 used to be (this supports the collision theory). We are a little baffled by the actual physics of the crash though...if you can imagine a plane colliding with another object and a wing shearing away, it seems as though the plane would spin out of control and disintegrate on the surface of the lake. Also, the plane is in deep water, yet appears to be plowed into the lake bed, how could the plane (or object for that matter) maintain enough power to accomplish this. I'm telling you this because we don't have all of the answers to this mystery yet. Our best guess is that the collision took place at or near sea level at relatively low speed. This scenario would preserve most of the aircraft structure, but still doesn't account for the plowing. We do have side scans of the object, and are currently discussing the possibility of releasing them."

There has been a lot of discussion within the team about the mystery object... but without ROV footage, it is very hard to determine what exactly it is. It is not a part of the F-89, and does not appear to be a part off of another aircraft...it is simply a mysterious object.

But like all great quests this one has hit a snag!

"2006 began as an ambitious project season for us, we were looking forward to further work at the F-89 site", said Jimenez . He added, "Then we received some bad news. The Canadian government refused to allow us to use our ROV at the wreck site without first providing them the GPS coordinates of the site and allows either a Coast Guard escort or government official to accompany the expedition. We were stuck, we don't want to give up the site (especially because of the object, and it's potentially huge significance) but we need stay on the good side of the Canadians due to our Gunilda project which involves a lot of other contributors."

The Gunilda is rumored to be a treasure ship that sank in 1911 and lies 265 feet below Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Dive company plans to provide a high definition view of the famous wreck. Their plan involves lowering twin light towers, provided by Cinemarine, to illuminate the entire shipwreck. ROVs, equipped with cameras will explore the interior of the historical ship.

"So as it stands now, we have just issued a letter to the Canadian government essentially abandoning work on the F-89 site this season", sums up Jimenez.

The company plans to produce a feature length documentary of the search and discovery of the F-89 and its mysterious companion.

Weapons patents can sound dead serious, dead ridiculous or both at once. One of this years most discussed suggestions was for bullets that required a password before the handgun could fire.

Another patent took a different approach to gun safety. The 'I've-been-shot gun' would aid policemen or soldiers by connecting wirelessly and informing HQ when and where it has been fired.

But why not do away with bullets altogether? According to two inventors from Albuquerque, US, it is possible to construct an energy weapon from a stack of components taken from ordinary household microwave ovens.
Slime time

An even less lethal alternative might be to coat an adversary with slippery slime. US researchers developed a super-slippery material that could be sprayed from the back of a truck or tank. It could be an ideal solution, they suggest, for police or military forces trying to break up riots without causing anyone serious harm.

An altogether different kind of gun was also one of the most bizarre ideas filed this year. The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) thinks a human-firing cannon might be the best way to get special forces, police officers or fire fighters onto the roofs of tall buildings in a single bound.

Meanwhile, ballistics on a very different scale could see the stinging cells of jellyfish used to inject drugs and apply tattoos. US company NanoCyte reckons these jellyfish injections could fire compounds through the skin less painfully than a conventional needle.
Think again

Great patents are not always about completely new technologies, however.

Some of the most interesting ideas of 2006 involve a new spin on an existing solution. One such idea was for a CD-ROM that doubles as a biological weapons detector. The disc would have data written as an antibody that binds with a biological agent. This causes it to stop working when the biological agent is present in the air, providing an immediate warning of an attack.

Sony, meanwhile, was trying to deal with the problem of tangle headphone wires. It filed an application for headphones that do away with wires altogether, instead sending pulsing signals straight through the listener's body. These body-wired headphones would pick up changes to the body's electrostatic charge, induced by a conductive pad on the player's wrist, or elsewhere.

Another electronics giant also had a curious idea for transmitted information. Samsung proposed to turn the whole ionosphere into a giant antenna to broadcast radio signals around the globe without the need for expensive satellites.
Office inventions

Another modification to an everyday piece of office equipment is the printer cartridge filled with exploding ink patented by UK defence research company Qinetiq. This lets an ordinary printer print out fuses for finely-controlled firework detonations, vehicle air bags and even conventional munitions.

Continuing with the theme of modified hardware, another patent application revealed that computer monitors could someday look right back at you. US computer giant Apple filed an application for a display that takes pictures while displaying images using sensors placed between its LCD pixels.

And, last of all, an even more subtle surveillance tool: the "invisible drone"created by US firm VeraTech. The whole of this Y-shaped craft rotates so rapidly that it becomes a hard-to-discern blur, like the blades of a helicopter.