Israel Shamir was arrested today in Tel Aviv. He phoned friends to say he had been arrested at LICRA's request. LICRA is the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisemitisme (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism)...

It is a sad day when discussion of certain topics can land one in prison.

Returning to the theme of ponerology, we can see how the pathocracy functions with its use of para-moralisms.

LICRA is the group that successfully banned Shamir's book Les fleurs de Galilée in France as well as securing three month's imprisonment for the publisher M. Cherifi and a fine totalling 23,000 euros. The victory in court in November is what opened the door to today's arrest of Shamir.

Shamir was condemned for referring in his book to “the Jews” dominating the world within the framework of the current third world war, which Shamir says is currently in progress, and also for citing the Protocols of the Elders of Sion, according to the decision.

It is a sad day when discussion of certain topics can land one in prison.

Returning to the theme of ponerology, we can see how the pathocracy functions with its use of para-moralisms.

One the one hand, we have the principle of freedom of speech. Any and all topics must be open for discussion in a free society. There can be no exceptions to this rule. People should have the right to publish what they wish to publish, discuss what they wish to discuss. Censored topics do not go away; they only recede into the shadows. Better they be permitted to be in the light.

Counter to that, in the case of what is called “anti-Semitism”, is the argument that the hatred of the Jews is so strong, as evidenced by their treatment during the second world war, and their numbers are so few, that they need a privileged status. They are the “endangered species” of the human race. If left to the world without protection, they would be eliminated.

Because of this, it is argued that there need to be special laws brought in to protect them, a special state created to shelter them, and a constant vigilance so that something like the Nazis never arises again. This is the paramoralism. It claims to be an appeal to morals when it is, in fact, a smokescreen for exceptionalism.

In the first case, the second world war was not a uniquely Jewish horror. Many millions of people from many nations and peoples died.

Second, while there are many endangered peoples on the surface of the planet today, the argument applies only to one. Also, there is really no hard evidence that the Jewish people, however they might be defined (and there is an ongoing argument about it, even with that community), are in fact “endangered”. The most dangerous place for a Jew to live may well be in the “safety” of Israel, placed in the middle of a region that is often characterized as a powder-keg.

Third, by so-closely linking fascism to anti-Semitism, the rise of a very pro-Semitic fascism, such as we see in the US today, is left obscured.

Fourth, if a group is set up to have the appearance of privilege, there will be a natural tendency for a backlash from those who are not privileged. Without passing over into theories of Jewish control of the press or other areas of society, one can note that in many domains associated with power, in different countries, that people who consider themselves Jewish have a stake that far outweighs their proportion of the population. Some people look to this as evidence of a “Jewish conspiracy”. Jewish publications talk about it openly as evidence of their success. We would like to suggest that to a certain extent it may also represent a set-up.

The result, however, of arguing for a special status for the Jews, and the measures of control used to implement that special status, results in a curtailing of the rights of every other group.

Israel Shamir is not calling for the extermination of the Jews. He is arguing that they should not be given special privileges.

Unfortunately, he has fallen afoul of the “anti-hate” and anti-Semitic” laws of France. We think that he has made an important error, and this error leads him and many others to fall for a set-up. In his article “The Elders of Zion and the Masters of Discourse” published in his condemned book The Flowers of Galilee, Shamir writes:

The Jews are perfectly able to coordinate their actions, but I doubt human beings, Jews or English, Russians or Chinese are able to form long-standing plans spanning centuries and continents. Nobody was able to prove such a plot exists. Usually, ‘anti-Semites’ (the people who doubt or deny inherent benevolence of the Jews to Gentile society) argue for its authenticity as Henry Ford did. The car king said73: “the only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on.” Indeed they do, exclaims Victor Marsden, the English translator of the Protocols.

There are two issues here: the possibility of a conspiracy spanning centuries and continents, and the notion of such a plot being Jewish. We will consider each in turn.

A conspiracy spanning centuries and continents?

Shamir spends a large part of his article showing that there need be no conspiracy as such, that the facts can be explained by the actions of simple self-interest on the part of certain groups. He is, in fact, arguing against the idea that there is any conspiracy, Jewish or otherwise. We think that there is much to be said for this idea. In a mechanical world of mechanical beings, self-interest can explain much. However, combine this notion of self-interest with the hyperdimensional hypothesis, and you have are much more robust theory, one that incorporates more data points..

It is one of the hypotheses of our work, based upon the work of many authors, but especially that of Laura Knight-Jadczyk, that such a hyperdimensional conspiracy can and does exist. The study of history, of the data shorn of its emotional content, supports such an idea.

See Laura’s book The Secret History of the World and other writings on the cassiopaea.org site for some of the evidence for hyperdimensional manipulation of human beings, Jews and Gentiles alike.

Part of the explanation for such a hyperdimensional conspiracy is found in the idea that our reality is embedded in a higher level, one in which the laws of space and time work differently, giving its possible inhabitants the ability to appear to us to move through time, the possibility of a cross-continental and cross-temporal, multi-racial conspiracy becomes easily conceivable, with a scientific basis that can be tested (when the adequate physics are known). In this hyperdimensional reality, were there a group of humans aware of the existence of this higher density, and were it inhabited by those beings we have come to know as our gods in legend and myth, and were these individuals to work with the “gods”, they would have a reason to make it span centuries as well as the means to do so.

So contrary to Shamir’s conclusion, we certainly do use such an idea as a working hypothesis in our research. The question then becomes: who’s behind it?

Given the hyperdimensional aspect of our working hypothesis above, part of the answer would include the individuals in the higher reality who have the ability to move through time to influence events. However, their existence is not a proven fact, only a good probability given the data we have in hand. But the theory would need some collaborator at our level of reality, someone making the conspiracy move forward on the ground.

Where could we look for the actors in this drama? Some people point us towards the alleged “Illuminati,” the Masons, the Jews, the CFR, the Bilderberger group, the City of London and international finance, the Vatican, the Queen of England, the Bush family, and any and every mixture of the above.

What if all of these are in some sense false leads? What if these are red herrings masking a menace that spans all of them and more? Spanning every people and country on the planet; a group that cannot be distinguished by its race, its colour, its, language, its religion, its ethnicity or physical appearance in any way?

Those who have been following this page in recent weeks will have an idea of what we are driving at: Pathocracy. Ponerology gives us an important missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the ultimate conspiracy theory by identifying a group that has been acting in such a way for centuries, spanning continents, cultures, and epochs. It is a group that can be clinically identified. It is a group that sees itself as different from the rest of humanity and is capable of implementing its plan in an utterly ruthless way, free from any sense of guilt or remorse. And this group exists in about the same percentages within any and all so-called “racial” types, all religions, ethnicities, nationalities, and so forth: about 6 % of any given population.

There is much more to be said on this topic, and we will return to it over and over in the coming months. For today, we think we have laid out a credible, and scientifically verifiable, hypothesis. Let’s look at some of the implications we can draw from this hypothesis, ideas that can be tested against the data.

Implications

The Jewish people have assumed a unique position in the world today. We think we can state this as a fact without any judgemental qualifications. The history of large parts of the planet during the last 2000 years - and most particularly, the last 100 years - is certainly intricately tied to the situation of the Jews, from their collection into camps under Hitler, the deliberate actions of the Nazis to annihilate them, and the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine as a direct consequence, to its current geostrategic position in the Middle East and its close relationship with the US. Again, these are, we think, statements of fact.

The question is, then, if there were in fact a “Jewish conspiracy”, does the current situation fit the expected results? If “the Jews” had the control some people claim, would the situation of “the Jews” be as it is today? Better? Worse?

We mentioned above that Israel is not quite the safe haven that its supporters proclaim. The push to eliminate the Palestinians from their ancient lands on the part of the more extreme members of Jewish society will only put the citizens of Israel in greater danger because it will augment the tensions and possibility of a greater conflagration that might well consume the country and region as a whole, wiping not only Israel, but many Arab countries off the face of the map.

Not a very successful conclusion for an ages-old “Jewish” conspiracy, is it?

So what if the Jewish people are being set up, maneuvered into a situation where the “final solution” is taking place under the guise of protecting them and herding them together?

If we factor in the hyperdimensional aspect, we could go even further and hypothesize that the three main monotheistic religions were created by hyperdimensional “gods” in order to play one group against another at various points in time for reasons that can only be conjectured. The end result is obvious: for some reason, the Semitic peoples - both Jews and Arabs - have become scapegoats and catalysts of conflagrations.

Thus it might be thought that the so-called “Jewish conspiracy” is in fact a conspiracy against the Jews to make them the scapegoats in a much more sinister plot: a conspiracy against the 94% of the population that are not part of the pathocracy.

In such a conspiracy, there are members of the real conspiracy, the Pathocracy, in every population. Those Pathocrats who are masquerading as Jews become the flash points for the anger against the acts done against others in the name of Greater Israel, feeding the anger against Israel, the anger that is used to justify the new “anti-Semitic” repression. However, there are also members in the United States in the Bush administration, in the UK in the Blair government, and in every other country on the planet. All the divisions of the human population into smaller, warring groups is part of the spectacle put into place to keep us from identifying those who are truly responsible, those who cannot be identified by the color of their skin, religion, ethnicity, or other obvious criteria. All conspiracy theories that point to a specific group that is not found in every population is part of the counter-spectacle designed to gather in those who start asking questions. Our attention is being diverted by the smoke and mirrors of pseudo anti-Semitism that creates real anti-Semitism; diverted from the real agents of evil, the true conspirators: psychopathic Pathocrats..

Only by awakening to the identity and activities of these true agents can we overcome the divisions they have placed between us.

As we finish this piece, we have just learned that Israel Shamir has been released. We know no more at the moment.

In its first report the bipartisan body exposed critical intelligence failures before Sept. 11, and fatal mistakes in the emergency response on the day itself. It also debunked the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were linked.

The commission recommended both sweeping and specific reforms.

On Monday, the commission issued its final report and it gives a dismal grade to the White House and Congress. After billions of dollars spent and a bureaucratic shakeup since the initial report, the commission's 10-member panel believes the U.S. is still in grave danger.

"There are many things that people think have been done that simply haven't been done. Our leadership has been distracted in this country. Some of the failures are shocking," said commission co-chair Thomas Kean.

Kean called it scandalous that police and firefighters are still having trouble communicating with each other in emergencies.

Further, he said, there is no unified terrorist watch list for airlines and homeland security spending has been turned into pork-barrel waste instead of going where it's most needed.

"We believe terrorists will strike again. So does every responsible expert that we have talked to. If they do and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?"

Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says the administration has done little to prevent nuclear, chemical or biological weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, something that he says should be at the top of the list, "Given the potential for catastrophic destruction, our current efforts fall far short of what we need to do," said Hamilton.

Every one of the commissioners who spoke expressed disappointment and worry. Several, including former congressman Timothy Roemer were indignant.

"When will our government wake up to this challenge? Al-Qaeda is quickly changing and we are not. Al-Qaeda is highly dynamic and we are not. Al-Qaeda is highly imaginative and we are not," said Roemer.

The commission said lessons have been forgotten, the urgency is gone and government moves at a crawl while the danger is rising.

A White House official blamed Congress for much of the inaction, but said the Bush administration would not rest on its laurels and acknowledged there is more to do.

"There's nothing to input into. Cheney is smart and knowledgeable, but he as well as Bush are ducking all the time to avoid the bullets."

The sources said the indictment and resignation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby marked the final straw in the deterioration of relations between President Bush and Mr. Cheney. They said Bush aides expect that any trial of Mr. Libby, Mr. Cheney's long-time chief of staff, would open a closet of skeletons regarding such issues as Iraq, the CIA and the conduct of White House aides.

"There's a lack of trust that the president has in Cheney and it's connected with Iraq," a source said.

The sources said Mr. Bush has privately blamed Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. They said the president has told his senior aides that the vice president and defense secretary provided misleading assessments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, as well as the capabilities of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

As a result, the sources said, Mr. Cheney has been ousted from his role as the administration's point man in the area of national security. They said presidential staffers have kept Mr. Cheney out of the loop on discussions on policy as the White House has struggled with the political and intelligence fallout from the war in Iraq.

Mr. Bush is not expected to replace Mr. Cheney unless the vice president follows the fate of his former chief of staff. The sources also said Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to remain in his post until U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

According to these sources, unless Novak, who is scheduled to testify before a grand jury this week about her conversation with Luskin in 2004, provides evidence that can convince the grand jury that Rove genuinely forgot he spoke with Cooper in July 2003, and that only when Novak "casually" told Luskin a year later that Cooper obtained his information about Plame Wilson directly from Rove did Rove remember, the man known as the "architect" will most likely find himself facing a criminal indictment.

Two Time magazine reporters who have shared bylines with Novak on several Plame Wilson articles published in the magazine and are familiar with her meeting with Luskin in 2004 said she will testify that she simply repeated to Luskin what had long been rumored in Washington, DC, circles for over a year at the time: that Rove was Cooper's source.

Novak - who bears no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak. Luskin had assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak, perhaps trying to convince Luskin that she knew more than she really did about her colleague Cooper's source, made an offhanded, casual comment to Luskin to the effect that the internal buzz at Time contradicted Luskin's account, in that everyone in the newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said.

Novak, who has written for Common Cause magazine, and co-authored the book Inside the Wire, about the atrocities at the Guantánamo prison camp, was in no way trying to tip off Luskin, the sources said; rather, she was trying to gauge his reaction to her comments because "she sensed a story," and thought that maybe Luskin would provide her with a "scoop" by disclosing to her that Rove was in fact Cooper's source.

Instead, according to Luskin's account, he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with Novak, and that led the two of them to begin an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove had sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately after Rove's conversation with Cooper, and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper on July 11, 2003. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

The email to Hadley, Luskin said, helped Rove recall his conversation with Cooper a year earlier, and Rove returned to the grand jury to clarify his previous testimonies in which he did not disclose that he spoke with journalists, the sources said.

But Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he had described in his email to Hadley, according to an email Cooper sent to his editor following his conversation with Rove.

"It was, KR said, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized [Wilson's] trip," Cooper's July 11, 2003, email to his editor said. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The email characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger .. "

It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told its staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims.

But Fitzgerald is said to be suspicious about the chain of events that led up to the discovery of the email. Moreover, he is said to be convinced that Rove had changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source - Rove - who revealed Plame Wilson's CIA status to him.

Additionally, Viveca Novak's forthcoming testimony before the grand jury appears unlikely to be helpful to Rove, and seems more an attempt at a stall tactic, sources inside Fitzgerald's investigation said.

For one thing, when Luskin and Novak met for drinks in the summer of 2004, there had already been Beltway gossip, and numerous accounts in major newspapers, fingering Rove as the source of the Plame Wilson leak to Cooper and Robert Novak, none of which forced Rove or Luskin to go back and search for evidence to determine if the rumors had merit.

Furthermore, sources close to Fitzgerald's investigation said, unless Viveca Novak pointedly told Luskin that she knew for a fact that Cooper would testify that Rove was his source, and that she had evidence to back it up, she was simply repeating to Luskin what had already been rumored when the leak first became public, and there is no reason to believe that her statements single-handedly forced Rove and Luskin to go back and check their facts.

The Time colleagues familiar with her meeting with Luskin said Novak had simply been fishing for a story and may have led Luskin to believe she was "in the know" about internal information at Time that Rove was Cooper's source. She did not provide Luskin with any new information about Cooper's conversation with Rove that had not already been reported in the media.

Still, Fitzgerald is said to have more evidence proving Rove tried to cover up his role in the leak as early as October 2003, just three months after Plame Wilson's CIA cover was blown.

Sources familiar with Luskin's conversations with Fitzgerald said Luskin told Fitzgerald that when Rove was questioned about his role in the leak in October 2003, he did not disclose his communication with Cooper, because Rove was enmeshed with the 2004 Presidential election, traveling around the country, attending fundraisers, meetings, and working more than 15 hours a day on the campaign as well as other pressing White House matters, and just forgot that he spoke with Cooper three months earlier.

But Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who in October was indicted on five counts of making false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice for his role in the Plame Wilson leak, had been the subject of dozens of news stories about the possibility that they played a role in the leak, and had faced dozens of questions as early as August 2003 - one month after Plame Wilson was outed - about whether they played a part.

Libby and other officials in Cheney's office were the first to learn about Plame's role as a CIA operative. They then shared the classified information with Rove and other senior administration officials in the State Department and the National Security Council, who used it to undermine the credibility of Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He had alleged that President Bush misspoke when he said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium, the key component used to build a nuclear bomb, from Niger.

The uranium claim was the silver bullet in getting Congress to support military action two months later. To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the country barely had a functional weapons program, according to a report from the Iraq Survey Group.

Wilson knew Bush's statement was false, because he had traveled to Niger more than a year earlier to investigate the yellow-cake claims. Rove, Libby, and other administration officials sought to discredit Wilson by claiming that Wilson had said publicly that he was sent to Niger at the request of Cheney's office. Cheney did, in fact, contact the CIA at first to arrange the mission, but Plame ultimately recommended Wilson. Still, in February 2002, Wilson traveled to Niger and reported back to the CIA that intelligence reports saying Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were false.

According to a preliminary FBI investigation, White House officials, including Rove and Libby, first learned of Plame's name and CIA status in June 2003 when questions surrounding Wilson's Niger trip were first brought to the attention of Cheney's aides by reporters, according to an Oct 13, 2003, report in the Washington Post.

"One reason investigators are looking back (to June 2003) is that even before Novak's column appeared, government officials had been trying for more than a month to convince journalists that Wilson's mission wasn't as important as it was being portrayed," the Post reported.

Fitzgerald is said to be particularly interested in the early days of the leak because they prove that, even before being questioned under oath, Rove had given false statements to prosecutors and that it doesn't appear believable that he could have forgotten about his conversation with Cooper about Plame Wilson so soon after it happened, the sources said.

It was during the weeks following Plame Wilson's outing that Rove and Libby had personally gone to great lengths to convince White House officials that neither of them had played a part, the sources said.

On October 7, 2003, President Bush and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, said during a press conference that the White House had ruled out three administration officials - Rove, Libby and Elliot Abrams, a senior official on the National Security Council - as sources of the leak. This was a day before the FBI questioned the three of them, based on questions McClellan said he asked the men.

A day later, Rove was interviewed under oath by FBI investigators and told them that he spoke to journalists about Plame for the first time after Robert Novak's column was published. In fact, it has since become public knowledge that Rove spoke with Robert Novak before his column was published and that he was one of Novak's two sources.

That same day in October 2003, in an unusual move, Bush said he doubted that a Justice Department investigation would ever turn up the source of the leak, suggesting that it was a waste of time for lawmakers to question the administration and for reporters to follow up on the story.

"I mean, this is a town full of people who like to leak information," Bush told reporters following a meeting with Cabinet members on October 7, 2003. "And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't have any idea."

Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, responded to the President's statement in an October 10, 2003, interview with the New York Times.

"If the president says, 'I don't know if we're going to find this person,' what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?'' Lautenberg asked. "Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation?"

During this time, the White House was facing a deadline on turning over documents, emails and phone logs to Justice Department officials probing whether or not the leak came from the White House. Rove's email to Hadley about the conversation he had with Cooper three months earlier didn't turn up during the search, the reasons for which are still murky. Furthermore, a log of Cooper's call to Rove wasn't included in White House phone logs either. Rove's assistant at the time, Susan Ralston, had said Cooper called the White House switchboard and was transferred to Rove's office and transferred calls aren't logged. However, she is said to have "clarified" her testimony earlier this month, saying that Rove told her not to log the call, after Fitzgerald is said to have obtained documentary evidence proving that wasn't the case with other calls transferred to Rove's office, sources close to the investigation who are familiar with Ralston's testimony said.

At the same time, the White House first started to lay the groundwork for a defense, specifically related to the role Rove played in the leak and whether he or anyone else in the administration knew Plame was a covert CIA operative and intentionally blew her cover in order to undercut Wilson's credibility.

On October 6, 2003, McClellan, in response to questions about whether Rove was Novak's source, tried to explain the difference between unauthorized disclosure of classified information and "setting the record straight" about Wilson's public criticism of the administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq.

"There is a difference between setting the record straight and doing something to punish someone for speaking out," McClellan said. "There were some statements made (by Wilson) and those statements were not based on facts," McClellan said. "And we pointed out that it was not the Vice President's office that sent Mr. Wilson to Niger. (CIA Director George) Tenet made it very clear in his statement that it was people in the counterproliferation area that made that decision on their own initiative."

The difference, according to McClellan's explanation, is crucial in that knowingly making an unauthorized leak of classified information is a federal crime. But repeating the leak when it has already been reported may not be considered a serious offense.

Jason Leopold spent two years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating sources close to the CIA leak invesigation, and will be a regular contributer to t r u t h o u t.

After weeks of delay and legal arguments over security and the legitimacy of the court, the trial of Saddam and seven co- defendants on charges of crimes against humanity heard confusing but graphic witness evidence of torture and summary execution.

"I swear by God I walked by a room and on my left I saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," said 38-year-old Ahmed Hassan, who said he had been kept in room 63 at the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

Hassan, the first witness to face Saddam in court, said he was 15 when Saddam visited the village in July 1982 and Shi'ite militants tried to assassinate him.

Speaking technically as an individual plaintiff alongside the state, which is pressing charges of crimes against humanity, Hassan said he and his family were among hundreds of people rounded up in a security operation run by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti after an attempt on Saddam's life in the village.

Barzan, one of Saddam's three younger half-brothers and the former head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service, is one of Saddam's seven co-accused in the case relating to the killings of 148 mostly Shi'ite Muslim men from Dujail.

"Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans and a sniper rifle," Hassan, a stockily built worker with a round face and a graying beard, told the heavily fortified court in central Baghdad.

He said Saddam, from the Sunni Arab minority, asked a 15-year-old boy if he knew who he was. "He said 'Saddam'. Then Saddam hit him in the head with an ash tray," Hassan said.

Hassan risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he gave evidence.

Toward the end of his testimony he stood facing Saddam as the former president challenged his testimony. Hassan held Saddam's gaze as Saddam asked how he could possibly remember the names and birth dates of people he said were killed, responding that he had memorized them as they were read out by guards.

With Barzan constantly interjecting from the dock and calling the testimony lies, Hassan said he was among hundreds of people taken from the Shi'ite village to the Hakmiya intelligence headquarters, run by Barzan.

He said it was while he was climbing the stairs there that he saw the meat grinder. "No one escaped torture," he said.

"They would put a mask on my eyes and because I was young it would fall down. I saw women being tortured," he said.

"My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched," Hassan said. "They told us, 'why don't you confess, you will be executed anyway'," he said.

"One man was shot in the leg with two bullets... Some people were crippled because they had their arms and legs broken."

He said they were held in Hakmiya for 70 days. While they were there a woman told a guard that her infant baby needed milk or he would die.

"He died and the guard threw him from the window," Hassan told the court. "Pregnant women gave birth in the prison. Their babies died."

Saddam and his co-defendants have all pleaded not guilty to the charges. They could be sentenced to death if found guilty.

John Pace, human rights chief at the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, also condemned what he called illegal detentions by Iraqi and U.S. military authorities, including thousands of suspects held at Abu Ghraib prison.


Pace expressed deep concern over the progress of the Saddam trial, which has had two brief hearings of a few hours each since October 19, and resumes on Monday.

"We're concerned already by what we have seen, we are concerned by the murder of two defense lawyers and the serious wounding of another," Pace told Reuters in Baghdad.

"There is already a paralysis in the legitimacy of the defense," he said in an interview at the UN's fortified compound, adding that defense counsel had to be able to work freely and effectively for the trial to be considered fair.

"We believe that weakness in the system of administration of justice, in addition to the antecedents surrounding the establishment of this tribunal, will never be able to produce the kind of process that would be able to satisfy international standards," Pace said.

"We're very anxious about the tribunal. The legitimacy of the tribunal needs to be examined. It has been seriously challenged in many quarters."

Rice defended the practice, called 'rendition,' but said the U.S. does not abuse the sovereignty of other nations and does not knowingly send prisoners to countries where they might be tortured.

"The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture.

"The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured," she said in prepared remarks.

"The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured," she said.

Rice made the statements before embarking on a European trip aimed partly at calming the uproar sparked by allegations the U.S. operates so-called "black sites" in several European countries.

Germany says it has a list of more than 400 overflights and landings of suspected CIA flights; Britain has asked Washington for more information; and the European Union has expressed concern over the transfer policy.

Campaigning in St. John's, Prime Minister Paul Martin was asked about allegations that private aircraft chartered by the CIA have been used to ferry suspected terrorists through Canadian airspace.

Martin said he has "checked with the Deputy Prime Minister [Anne McLellan], checked with the officials in charge, and there are absolutely no indications that anything of that kind is occurring."

But rumours the CIA is landing planes at the St. John's airport to refuel persist. Airport officials says if no one gets off any plane that lands simply to refuel, then no one knows who is on board.

And though she says there's no evidence of such planes touching down in Canada, McLellan, says she is investigating some 55 questionable takeoffs and landings.

"We are now in the process of following up on what we know about any of those, but as you can imagine, 55, it takes time to determine whether there's anything unusual in relation to any of those named flights," she said.

Islamic Jihad's Jerusalem Brigades claimed to have carried out the attack. The group has carried out all four previous suicide bombings since a joint cease-fire declaration last February.

An earlier claim in the name of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades was swiftly denied by the Fatah-linked group.

The attack occurred when a man carrying a black bag crossed the street in front of the mall. An Israeli driver waiting at a red light noticed the suspicious man, and got out of his car to alert police officers in the car behind him - in a scene caught on security cameras and broadcast last night on Channel 2.

"Within a second I knew he looked suspicious," said the driver, off-duty security guard Nir Hudra.

Policewoman Shoshana Atiya-Deloya got out of her car and approached the man, but he started running toward the mall. When he put his left hand in the bag, Atiya screamed "terrorist, terrorist, take his hand out of the bag," she told reporters from her hospital bed. "Then people started running, crossing the street, running in every direction."

The guards stopped the man and pushed him up against the wall and away from the crowd waiting to get in. Nearby police officers rushed to help, and at that point the bomber detonated the explosives. One of the security guards was killed and the policemen were wounded.

"I was looking [the bomber] in the eye and he pressed [the button] and blew up," Hudra said. "I flew, and all I remember is that I was looking in his eye. I saw his gaze."

Huge blast

The huge explosion, also caught on security cameras, sent smoke billowing into the sky and debris flying and clattering to the ground.

"There was a boom and there was a flash," witness Yisrael Klein told Channel 2. "Seconds later, people were lying on the ground, some wounded and some dead. The most horrific sight was the severed head of the terrorist."

"He looked at me and smiled, a very frozen smile, and exploded," policeman Shuki Golan told Israel Radio.

"If the bomber had gotten in, the result would have been much worse," said Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi.

Concrete ripped off

The blast shattered windows and pock-marked the outside of the brown multistory building. Pieces of concrete were ripped off the facade, blood stained the walls of the building and debris littered the sidewalk.

Deputy Public Security Minister Yaakov Edri told Israel Radio that there had been no specific warnings ahead of the attack.

David Baker, an official in the Prime Minister's Office, said that the attack was the result of PA refusal to dismantle the terrorist organizations in the territories.

In a statement released by his office, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, and vowed to punish those responsible.

The attack was the first suicide bombing in Israel since October 26, when a bomber killed six people in Hadera, just north of Netanya.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said the bombing is "more proof of the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority. Israel will act against the terror organizations with all its might and all the means at its disposal. Israel's response will be hard and painful."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli called on the Palestinian Authority to "take immediate steps to prevent these attacks, to end the violence and to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism."

He also demanded that Syria shut down the Islamic Jihad offices in Damascus.

U.S. military and Iraqi officials have warned that attacks by insurgents likely will increase ahead of next week's December 15 national election for parliament.

In addition to the double suicide attack, various shootings across the country claimed at least 10 lives Tuesday and one on Monday.

Officials said among those killed include Brig. Gen. Hamza Hussein Fadhil, an Interior Ministry police officer; two police officers in Baghdad; an election official in Hashimiyat; a guard for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari; and two high-ranking employees of the city of Tikrit.

Several powertrain and stamping plants will also close, it cited the unidentified source as saying based on his knowledge of a turnaround plan Ford is preparing and the group's overcapacity problems.

A Ford of Europe spokesman said he could not confirm the report and reiterated that the company would unveil its restructuring plan in January.

Ford has said it would unveil in January a restructuring plan for North America, dubbed "Way Forward," which Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr. has said would include plant closures.

Like General Motors Corp (NYSE:GM - news), Ford has seen its margins squeezed by soaring health-care and raw material costs and a decline in U.S. market share. So far this year, Ford's North American unit has lost over $1.4 billion before taxes.

GM has announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs through 2008 and close 12 facilities to reduce excess capacity.

In a separate interview with Automotive News, Bill Ford
declined to give details of what the restructuring plan will include other than to reiterate that the group would reduce capacity and focus on new products that could fuel demand.

He confirmed that he had approached "most of the top executives in this industry" over the past six or seven years about coming to work for Ford, but added he was intent on remaining in the top post for now.

"Look, I'm firmly committed to this job, this company, and I'm going to fight like mad to get this company back to where it deserves to be," he said.

Bill Ford said the company would feel the pinch on margins as customers increasingly shift into cars from more lucrative products such as sport utility vehicles.

"Obviously, the segmentation downshift, from a margin standpoint, is not a good one. But we've planned these vehicles from the start to be a much healthier business proposition than their predecessors were. But once you start coming down the price point curve, you clearly have lower margins," he said.

Over time, margins should start to converge as customers opt for added content on small and mid-sized cars, he added.

The plans are being seen as the most ambitious move till date by an international investment bank to take advantage of the low cost of highly educated staff in India. The bulk of the bank's processing of foreign exchange trades will be carried out at its centres in Mumbai and Bangalore.

It is also moving over much of the processing of credit derivatives contracts, an area where the UK regulators and US have expressed concern about backlogs across the industry.

Other investment banks are also planning to move operations to India and Stefan Spohr, of consultants AT Kearney, estimates that US and UK-based investment banks now have about 6,000 staff in India, of which half are directly employed, representing less than 5 per cent of their total headcount. However, he predicts this could rise to as much as 20 per cent in the next few years.

"This is not a trend that will go away. Global resourcing is becoming part of the way of doing business," he said. Industry analysts have been quoted saying that salaries in India are 70-80 per cent lower and total costs about 40 per cent below US levels.

Veronique Weill, head of operations at JPMorgan's investment bank, told the Financial Times: "The quality of the people we hire is extraordinary and their level of loyalty to the company unbeatable." JPMorgan is also seeking to tap talent that it can use elsewhere in the group and some of those hired for the new operations have already been transferred to the US.

According to the FT, the expansion in India is backed by Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's famously cost-conscious chief executive designate, who recently visited the Mumbai facility.

JPMorgan, which had only 200 offshoring staff in India two years ago, is currently hiring between 300 and 400 graduates a month and plans a total of 9,000 by the end of 2007. Some 3,000 will be working for the investment bank with the rest supporting the group's retail and commercial banking operations, including 2,000 call centre workers.

The European aircraft manufacturer said the deal was worth nearly $10 billion and was "the largest single order that Airbus has ever received since it entered the Chinese market two decades ago."

The A319s, A320s and A321s, all part of the A320 family, will go to Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines and Hainan Airlines.

The order upstages China's purchase last month of 70 Boeing jets during a visit to Beijing by President Bush. At list prices that deal was worth about $4 billion. Buyers typically get discounts on large orders.

Until now, Chicago-based Boeing has won about 60 percent of new plane orders from China, with Airbus taking about one-third. [...]

Though high speculative positions have made gold vulnerable to a correction, analysts said there were no signs of an immediate end to the rally that has seen prices double in about five years.

"Whether or not the rally can continue hinges critically on how long investors decide to stay in the market," Barclays Capital analyst Yingxi Yu said.

She said the rally was driven by hedge funds, largely shorter-term investors, not the longer-term players like pension funds.

"They are likely to exit the market quite quickly with any signs of the sentiment turning, but there is no sign of this happening any time soon."

Spot gold briefly hit $510.30/511.25 an ounce before easing to $509.00/509.80 by 1125 GMT, against $508.40/509.20 last quoted in New York on Monday. In April 1981 gold was fixed at $514.25 an ounce. In January 1980, gold hit a record $850.

Despite a stronger dollar, dealers said inflation fears have played a key role in gold's rise, especially over the past year. Robust investment demand as well as a stable level of global mine production have been supportive.

"... gold may have gone too far too fast and as a result may be vulnerable in the short term to a loss of momentum or even a correction," Goldman Sachs said in a report, recommending selling the spread between gold and a currency-based proxy.

A bullion dealer in Hong Kong said the market saw good Japanese buying, mainly related to Tokyo futures. He said Japanese investors were doing arbitrage -- selling Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) gold futures and at the same time buying spot bullion.

In the short term, gold was seen trading between $505 and $512, with major support seen between $502 and $498, he said, adding if gold were to exceed $512, it could surge to $520-$530.

Gold, used in jewelry and as an investment, spent much of the period from 1997 to 2001 below $300, before embarking on a bull run that saw prices doubling from about $254 in April 2001.

"Technically gold is overbought ... and a bout of long liquidation is overdue. However with the market in territory uncharted for 23 years, points of resistance are difficult to identify and standing in the way of a runaway bull is not the safest thing to do," Standard Bank said in a report.

Gold was also helped by central banks of Russia, Argentina and South Africa deciding to increase the amount of gold in their reserves, reversing a six-year trend of central bank sales, mainly from Europe.

Platinum eased to $992/996 an ounce from $999/1,003 late in New York. On Monday, platinum rose to $1,006, the highest since March 1980.

Palladium rose to $273 an ounce, the highest since April 2004, but fell to New York levels of $270/274.

Silver was quoted at $8.64/8.67 an ounce, versus $8.63/8.65 late in New York. Earlier silver hit $8.68/8.71, its highest since August 1987.

Israeli leaders have long identified Iran as the nation's biggest threat.

Israel accuses Tehran of supporting Palestinian militant groups and rejects Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in October that Israel must be "wiped off the map."

Iran's announcement Monday that it plans to build a second nuclear power plant — along with a deadly suicide bombing the same day by the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad group in the central town of Netanya — is likely to heighten Israel's concerns.

While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the world cannot accept a nuclear Iran, he contends that diplomacy remains the first line of defense. He has not said what should be done if diplomacy fails.

Netanyahu left few doubts about his solution: a pre-emptive strike similar to the 1981 attack ordered by then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor.

"I will continue the tradition established by Menachem Begin, who did not allow Iraq to develop such a nuclear threat against Israel, and by a daring and courageous act gave us two decades of tranquility," Netanyahu told the Maariv daily. "I believe that this is what Israel has to do."

Netanyahu, a bitter political enemy of Sharon, said he would support the prime minister if he carried out a pre-emptive strike. "If it is not done by the present government, I intend to lead the next government and to stop this threat. I will take every step required to avoid a situation in which Iran can threaten us with nuclear weapons." [...]

Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, called Netanyahu's comments "a desperate political move." She said such remarks would make it difficult to have a "rational and sane discussion" about policy toward Iran and undermine U.S. and European efforts to curb the Iranian nuclear program. [...]

He did not specify what exactly was pushing Moscow and Washington apart and said the two countries did appear to have become used to the idea that they had honest differences.

A mutual interest in combating terrorism has seen an increasingly warm relationship between U.S. President George W. Bush and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.

But Washington’s growing influence in regions once under Moscow’s domain and disagreements over several international issues — notably Iran’s nuclear ambitions — have started to tear at the closer ties between the former Cold War enemies.

Lavrov suggested that it was up to the United States to show more commitment to a balanced relationship with Russia.

“Russia is ready for team play based on equality, true partnership and mutual respect,” he said. “Cooperation should be based on agreed and transparent grounds.

”We need a more decisive shift towards partnership in issues concerning the whole spectrum of threats, first and foremost the terrorist threat, and in the sphere of helping our people flourish.“

Lavrov urged more cooperation in reforming the United Nations and a speedy conclusion of talks with the United States on Russia joining the World Trade Organization.

Russia’s biggest concern in its relations with the United States and the European Union is U.S. and EU support for peaceful pro-Western revolutions in ex-Soviet states.

Such revolutions have changed governments in Georgia and Ukraine and authoritarian Belarus has been tipped as next.

Russia is also concerned about Western pressure on its Central Asian ally Uzbekistan over its violent crackdown on protests in the town of Andijan in May, in which more than 500 people were killed by troops according to witnesses.

Lavrov said that Russia was generally opposed to attempts to export Western-style democracy to ex-Soviet states.

”We are convinced that democratic ideals in each country should be realized taking into account history, tradition, level of social and economic development,“ he said.

”Any artificial boost to natural social processes leads to destabilization rather than helping democracy.“

Mount Manaro on the island of Ambae has been spewing out ash and steam for more than a week and the authorities are preparing to declare a state of emergency if the situation worsens.

The volcano is regarded as one of the most dangerous in the world because it has a lake inside its crater.

An eruption could cause a major explosion if the water becomes superheated, while the lake wall could also burst, swamping villages that surround the mountain.

In Dalian, a beautiful seaside city in the northeastern Liaoning Province, the heaviest snow since 1951 put off 123 flights Sunday and laid over more than 4,000 passengers. School kids were told to stay home on Monday as fallen snow had added up to 28 centimeters in the city proper by 2:00 p.m. Sunday, almost knee-deep.

A cold front from Siberia, accompanied by strong gales, swept across most parts of northern China over the weekend, after an unprecedented long and warm autumn in the recent five decades.

In the national capital Beijing, the maximum daytime temperature dropped below zero for the first time this winter on Saturday. The biting cold and gale-force winds are expected to stay until Wednesday.

The central meteorological bureau said the temperature drop will also affect the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. In some areas the drop will exceed 10 degrees Celsius.

Even the southernmost tropical province of Hainan has started to feel the chilly weather: the island province has reported temperature drops from four to seven degrees Celsius since Saturday.

The provincial meteorological bureau said the sharpest drop is yet to come Tuesday night, when temperatures will fall to 11 to 13degrees Celsius in the island's central mountainous regions.

As the minimum temperature fell to minus 18 degrees Celsius in north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region Sunday, ice appeared in the 110-km-long Wuhai section of the Yellow River, nearly one month earlier than last year. The city government of Wuhai has ordered round-the-clock monitoring of the water level out of fear that the frozen river might damage the embankments and endanger the riverains. [...]

At least 10 tractor-trailers were blown over between Fort Collins and Cheyenne, Wyo., said Stacey Stegman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

One rig was knocked over on Interstate 25 in Pueblo and another one at a busy interchange near Denver. No injuries were reported.

The state Highway Department warned vehicles likely to be affected by wind not to use I-25 or U.S. 287 in northern Colorado, where winds of 65 mph were reported.

The wind picked up before dawn and by the morning rush hour was blowing garbage cans down the streets of Denver.

A roofer working in Broomfield, south of Boulder, said he received several phone calls from homeowners returning from work to discover roof damage.

"I went into this one cul-de-sac and there were shingles blown all over the place, all over the street," Matt McKinley said.

Photos of the animals have been shown to locals well acquainted with wildlife in the area and the organisation also consulted several Bornean wildlife experts but none recognized it.

"Most were convinced it was a new species of carnivore," WWF said, adding that researchers were hoping to set cage traps to catch a live specimen.

If confirmed, it would be the first time in more than a century that a new carnivore has been discovered on the island, it added.

The animal, which has very small ears and large hind legs, was spotted in the Kayan Mentarang national park in the mountainous jungles of Kalimantan, where vast tracks of rainforest still remain.

"The discovery of the mammal species in Kayan Mentarang national park indicates the existence of many other undiscovered species. Between 1994 and 2004, at least 361 new species have been described from Borneo," the WWF said. [...]

On Dec. 9, 1965, a fireball was reported streaking over four states, across the Pittsburgh area and toward Greensburg.

Local sightings touched off calls to police, who assumed they should be looking for an airplane on fire or a downed aircraft.

Around dinner time, residents of Kecksburg, a village in Mt. Pleasant Township, began reporting that something had fallen into a wooded area just outside the town.

Police responded. So did the fire department. And along with them came the curious onlookers.

Some people claim to have walked into the woods and seen a metallic object half-buried in the ground. They described it as acorn-shaped, big enough for a man to stand in, with some strange markings -- like hieroglyphics -- on it.

And within a few hours of the crash, the military showed up. Soldiers cordoned off the area, and some people reported being ordered to leave at gunpoint.

Also responding were newspaper, radio and television reporters, who heard police radio transmissions and received calls from people who had seen the fireball.

But by that point the woods had been declared off-limits to all.

In the wee hours of the morning, a military flatbed tractor-trailer was supposedly seen hauling some tarp-covered object out of the woods and speeding off into the night.

State police and the government later said they found nothing in the woods, insisting that people had seen a meteor that likely burned up before impact.

Kecksburg's fire department hopes to cash in on the anniversary of perhaps the biggest story to ever to hit the small village in Mt. Pleasant Township.

In cooperation with Stan Gordon, a Greensburg UFO and Bigfoot researcher, the community is set to recognize the purported UFO crash on Dec. 9, 1965, with a daylong event Saturday, complete with witnesses, speakers and even a refurbished replica of the object, a prop that was used when the television show "Unsolved Mysteries" produced a segment about the incident.

Because the rural department played a role that night four decades ago and because it is struggling financially, officials are hoping that a crowd with an interest in reports of flying saucers and aliens shows up with some cash to burn.

Admission is free, but there will be food, T-shirts, ball caps and DVDs for sale.

"We're just an old, country-style fire department. We've got something we can hold onto, and we're going to capitalize on it," said Rich Comp, co-chairman of the department's newly formed UFO and festival committee. "One of these days we're going to need a new truck."

Gordon, who maintains that he is convinced that something crashed 40 years ago, says interest is still high and people still speculate about what really happened in the woods of Kecksburg that night.

"Publicly, there seems to be a lot of support to find out what happened in 1965," he said.

He's lined up a list of speakers, all of whom either were in Kecksburg that night or are taking part in his ongoing investigation.

Among them are Leslie Kean, a journalist and the investigations director for The Coalition for Freedom of Information. According to the organization's Web site, its purpose is "achieving scientific, congressional and media credibility for the study of unexplained aerial phenomena while working for the release of official information and physical evidence."

Kean is the plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against NASA that seeks records related to the incident.

The Harvard-educated attorney handling the case, Lee E. Helfrich, of the Washington, D.C., firm Lobel, Novins & Lamont, is also expected to attend. She will talk about the status of the lawsuit.

Larry Landsman, special projects director for the Sci Fi Channel, is another guest speaker. His station produced two documentaries on the Kecksburg incident and put together The Coalition for Freedom of Information.

Witnesses also will be on hand, including Robert Gatty, a former Tribune-Review reporter who covered the incident for this newspaper.

Gordon said that when all the witness accounts are taken together, each piece corroborates the other.

"Over the years, many different individuals were able to confirm what other people had already told us without them having known each other. So many pieces of the puzzle began to fit together after so many years of research," Gordon said.

He says the actions of the government that night continue to fuel theories -- and suspicions.

"What was so important that the military responded the way it did that night?"

He said he thinks there are three possibilities -- that what crashed was an advanced, manmade space probe with some re-entry capability, that it was part of a secret government or military experiment, or that it was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

"It's an intriguing story," Gordon said.

Ron Struble, chairman of the community's UFO and festival committee, said there is no doubt in his mind that something did crash in Kecksburg. But the question of what it was is not for the community to answer.

"We're not investigators," he said.

The event is being held at the fire department's social hall. It begins at 1 p.m. Seating is limited.

Stan Gordon, of Greensburg, remembers that night and the rest of the story well.

Gordon was 16 years old at the time and was glued to both the radio and the television all night long, since he was already interested in supernatural phenomenon at an early age.

"It became more intriguing as the evening went on," Gordon said. "I stayed up as late as I could, and then I read about it in the Tribune-Review the next day on the front page."

Since then, Gordon's interest only grew. He started investigating the UFO incident over the years, making contact and interviewing numerous eye witnesses and consulting experts to post to his UFO/Bigfoot research Web site, www.stangordon.com

Gordon is the organizer of a special event to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Kecksburg incident, to bring more witnesses together and even attract new witnesses who may be now willing to tell the group what they saw.

"Some still wish to remain anonymous," he said.[...]

One Connellsville resident excited about the upcoming event is Jerry Betters, who was an eye witness of the incident.

It was on that Dec. 9 that Betters heard about the siting on the radio and decided to head out to the area with a few people.

The military was already on the scene, blocking the main roads, but Betters knew the community well and took the back roads, he said. He saw steam emerging from the woods like there was a fire. He also saw a lot of soldiers, what could have been top military brass, people in lab coats and something he'll never forget: an object on a flat-bed truck with hieroglyphic writings on it that was leaving the woods.

"That was no meteorite," Betters said. "It was something I'll never see again, but I'm glad I saw it."

Although what Betters saw was unique and armed military personnel yelled at them to leave the scene, he wasn't scared.

"I was very excited; it was a really good feeling," he said. "My heart was beating really fast."

UFO stories don't get any wilder than this one. A Las Vegas man has developed a cult-like following around the world by claiming to have worked with a live extraterrestrial at Area 51.

The story told by Dan Burisch is a whopper, but can he prove any of it? George Knapp of the Eyewitness News I-Team has the story of Dr. Dan's alien adventure.

His name today is Dan Burisch. Before that it was Dan Catselas, and when Eyewitness News first ran into him, it was Dan Crain. "Doctor" Dan Crain, he says. But is he a doctor, and has he really been face to face with an alien in an underground lab?

This story has a little bit of everything, including a lot of unanswered questions. When Channel 8 produced a story in 1994 about this volunteer teacher at the Boys and Girls club, he was introduced as Dr. Dan Crain. At the time, Dan Crain, now known as Dan Burisch, was supposedly participating in the most secret program in existence. But the secret is now out. Burisch has a worldwide following -- websites a message boards, books, audiotapes and DVDs.

He has a publicist and a biographer, a high profile for a secret scientist. Burisch says he worked in an underground lab at S-4 near Area 51, the same place first made public by Bob Lazar. Inside he met an extraterrestrial named Jrod and they became pals. He also met angels in the lab and they spoke in Hebrew.

On Frenchman's Mountain, Burisch discovered the first seeds of life on earth. Who believes this stuff? His wife Deborah for one. She signed a sworn statement saying she too works for MJ-12, the secret government. Family friend Marcia McDowell, another alleged secret agent, supports the story too. It's grown more complex ever since we first heard some of it in 1990. It's more complex now.

There are photos of Burisch and his wife in military garb saluting each other. Neither ever served in the military. Intriguingly, they have a sticker on their windshield that allows access to Nellis AFB. Would a real government scientist be allowed to openly dribble out government secrets? We asked former army intelligence Colonel John Alexander.

"It's highly improbable," said Col. John Alexander, retired army intelligence. What about his PHD? Burisch says he earned his doctorate in 1990 at Stony Brook University in New York. The school says he was never a student there. Burisch says his records were erased. But at the time he supposedly earned his degree in New York, records show, he had a full time job in Las Vegas as a parole officer.

He now says he flew back and forth to the school on weekends. Ridiculous, the university says. He met his wife as a parole officer. She was there on drug charges. She's spent 12 years in the PBX department of the Mirage, but that's just a cover job.

We asked MGM Mirage if they know they have a secret agent working for them in a cover job. They do now. Marcia McDowell, another secret operative, who solicited our coverage a few times, is seen in a video as she uncovers a space probe on Frenchman's Mountain and then meticulously dissects it's sophisticated electrical tape and rubber tubing.

Someone else who believes Burisch is his mom, Dodie Crane, although she has some doubts too. "If my son is the biggest bull****er in the world, I want to know about it," said Dodie Crain. Dan's mom.

Like everyone else in this story, Dodie declined an on camera interview, but told us her son, whom she hasn't seen in 12 years, is telling the truth. She's written her own book about it. ...

Two other points -- that sticker on the windshield from Nellis. The United States Air Force says it's a low level sticker, easy to get, allowing access to the commissary, and that you can get one if you've had a relative in the military, as Deb Burisch has.

Also, we talked to UNLV where Dan Burisch really did earn a B.A. in psychology. He's listed in the alumni guide as having that PHD from New York, but UNLV told us the alumni guide doesn't verify someone's post graduate credentials, so just because it says PHD in the guide means little.

Dan Burisch is a smart guy and this is an interesting story, which a lot of people seem to believe. We think it is sorely lacking in verifiable evidence. If any surfaces, we'd like to see it.

The suspected armed robber was caught by a police officer outside Roane County Jail, reports WVLT-TV news.

Sergeant Wes Stooksbury arrested the man and says he was carrying a package containing clothes, liquor, prescription pills, crack cocaine - and the burgers.

It is unclear whether the man was planning to keep his haul for himself or if he was trying to smuggle it in to sell to other prisoners.

It's believed he had escaped for only a short time. The Roane Sheriff's Department is still investigating the case.

Hawks calls his plan "intuitive eating" and thinks the rest of the country would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.

As part of intuitive eating, Hawks surrounds himself with unhealthy foods he especially craves. He says having an overabundance of what's taboo helps him lose his desire to gorge.

There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full.

That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blue or digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table is.

The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart desires when you are actually hungry.

"One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you're always eating things that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons, not because it's there and tastes good," he said. "Whenever you feel the physical urge to eat something, accept it and eat it. The cravings tend to subside. I don't have anywhere near the cravings I would as a 'restrained eater.'"

Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and wanted to return to his home state. But at 210 pounds, he didn't think a fat person could get a job teaching students how to be healthy, so his calorie-counting began.

He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. But the pounds soon came back.

For several years his weight fluctuated, until he eventually gave up on being a restrained eater and the weight stayed on.

"You definitely lose weight on a diet, but resisting biological pressures is ultimately doomed," Hawks said.

Several years later and still overweight at a new job at BYU, Hawks decided it was time for a lifestyle change.

He stopped feeling guilty about eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips. He also stopped eating when he wasn't hungry.

Slowly and steadily his weight began to drop. Exercise helped.

His friends and co-workers soon took notice of the slimmer Hawks. [...]

But 11 months later, Peck sometimes eats mint chocolate chip ice cream for dinner, is 35 pounds lighter and a believer in intuitive eating.

"There are times when I overeat. I did at Thanksgiving," Peck said. "That's one thing about Steve's ideas, they're sort of forgiving. On other diets if you slip up, you feel you've blown it and it takes a couple weeks get back into it. ... This sort of has this built-in forgiveness factor." [...]

In a small study published in the American Journal of Health Education, Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group of BYU students and found those who were intuitive eaters typically weighed less and had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than other students.

He said the study indicates intuitive eating is a viable approach to long-term weight management and he plans to do a larger study across different cultures. Ultimately, he'd like intuitive eating to catch on as a way for people to normalize their relationship with food and fight eating disorders.

"Most of what the government is telling us is, we need to count calories, restrict fat grams, etc. I feel like that's a harmful message," he said. "I think encouraging dietary restraint creates more problems. I hope intuitive eating will be adopted at a national level."

The state-of-the-art Neorest toilet, from Toto, is sleek, compact and automated, reports the Arizona Republic.

Approach it, and the lid lifts up, stand in front of it and the seat rises. The Neorest automatically flushes and lowers the lid upon completion.

The remote controls the temperature of the seat. It also activates the gentle cleansing process.

A wand extends from the back of the rim and sprays water upward. Water aim and temperature can be controlled by the seated occupant. Then comes the air dryer.

Leslie Shirey, a salesperson at the Central Arizona Supply showroom, admitted sales had been slow - because of the price.

But the Neorest has found some converts among Hollywood celebrities, including Will Smith, who gushed about it during an interview on Access Hollywood.

The toilets are also installed in the main headquarters of Google.