2010-03-14T04:10:36Z Signs of the Times tag:sott.net,2010-03-14:/:signsofthetimes tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204704 2010-03-14T04:09:50Z

Date-Time: Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 1955 UTC Location: 45.50°S, 166.64°E Depth: 7 km (4.35 miles) Distances: 80 km (49.7 miles) west of Te Anau, South Island, 110 km (68.4 miles) north-west of Tuatapere, South Island, 170 km (105.6 miles) north-west of Invercargill, South Island, 300 km (186.4 miles) west of Dunedin, South Island Region: Likely felt in Fiordland. Possibly felt in western Southland.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204703 2010-03-14T03:50:51Z

Would House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democratic leaders try to cram the Senate version of Obamacare through the House without actually having a recorded vote on the bill? Not only is the answer yes, they would, they have figured out a way to do it, according to National Journal's Congress Daily: "House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday. "Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version. "Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. 'Once the CBO gives us the score, we'll spring right on it,' she said."

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204702 2010-03-14T01:55:43Z

Back in 2007 the notorious American Jewish right-wing organization, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) announced that it recognised the events in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred as "genocide." The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, insisted that he made the decision after discussing the matter with 'historians'. For some reason he failed to mention who the historians were, nor did he refer to their credibility or field of scholarship. However, Foxman also consulted with one holocaust survivor who supported the decision. It was Elie Wiesel, not known for being a leading world expert on the Armenian ordeal. The idea of a Zionist organization being genuinely concerned, or even slightly moved, by other people's suffering could truly be a monumental transforming moment in Jewish history. However, this week we learned that the ADL is once again engaged in the dilemma of Armenian suffering. It is not convinced anymore that the Armenians suffered that much. It is now lobbying the American congress not to recognize the killings of Armenians as 'genocide. This week saw the ADL "speaking out against Congressional acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, and is, instead, advocating Turkey's call for a historical commission to study the events."

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204701 2010-03-14T01:29:44Z

In a remarkable exposé of the Mossad operation in Dubai, The Times happens to refer to Meir Dagan's (the Mossad chief) 'philosophy'. "The tone of Dagan's directorship is set by a photograph on the wall of his modest office in the Tel Aviv headquarters. It shows an old Jew standing on the edge of a trench. An SS officer is aiming his rifle at the old man's head. 'This old Jew was my grandfather' Dagan tells visitors". According to The Times, the picture reflects Dagan's belief: "We should be strong, use our brain, and defend ourselves so that the Holocaust will never be repeated," Dagan's interpretation of the photographic symbolism as a license to kill is rather banal yet common amongst Jews and Zionists in particular. However, this interpretation is far from being the only interpretation available. I haven't seen the Photograph on Dagan's wall but I guess that it must depict a devastatingly intense situation between a murderer in Nazi uniform and an oppressed Jewish man facing his death. However, Dagan and to a certain tragic extent, far too many Jews, are clearly fascinated by the role of the man with a rifle rather than with the ordeal of their collective grandfather, a defenseless venerable victim. Instead of grasping the Holocaust as a universal message against racism or oppression of any kind, Dagan and his Jewish State interpret the holocaust as a license to execute.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204700 2010-03-14T01:11:04Z

Teacher seeking to give 11-year-olds insight into horrors faced by Jewish children during World War II tells them nine of them would soon be separated from their parents and may end up in orphanage. Parents enraged, say children traumatized A primary school teacher in Lanarkshire, Britain found a creative way to teach her students about the crimes of the Nazis: She told them that they would soon be separated from their families and might end up in an orphanage as part of a "Holocaust game". The Daily Mail reported Wednesday evening that the pupils broke into tears when they were told that nine of them would be taken away from their families. The bizarre "game" was aimed at giving the 11-year-olds an insight into the horrors faced by Jewish children when they were sent to concentration camps during World War II. The person responsible for this role play was none other than the school's deputy head teacher. According to the report, she told the shocked children that those who were born in January, February and March had lower IQs than other children, "due to lack of sunlight in their mother's womb", and that they had to put yellow hats on and be sent to the library.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204699 2010-03-14T01:02:00Z

A new editorial in Nature is startling for what it reveals, especially the fact Paul Ehrlich is a go-to figure about how hard scientists have it when it comes to media access. Ehrlich is an individual who became an international celebrity by spinning one frightening story after another (about the death of the oceans, for one thing) who maintains, with a straight face, that he and his fellow scientists have an unfair disadvantage in communicating their side of the climate debate. He is quoted by Nature as saying, regarding the aftermath of Climategate and the fact that skeptic scientists are finally getting a hearing, "Everyone is scared shitless, but they don't know what to do." People often forget: Goliath, right before the end, sensed that something was amiss. For, ironically, among the most pervasive myths attending global warming is the one pitching David against Goliath, in which those touting the risks of damaging climate change are cast as David and Big Oil is Goliath. The story requires observers to ignore the facts: Media, most scientists, and governments the world over have spent and received so much money on their version of events that they have collectively become Goliath. Observers must ignore, too, the reality that skeptic scientists maintain their intellectual freedom at significant risk. Funding routinely dries up; tenure is denied them; ad hominem attacks of the most vicious variety are launched against them from the Ivory Tower of academia, from the studios of multi-billion dollar news organizations, and from the bully pulpit of government.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-14:/articles/show/204698 2010-03-14T00:50:47Z

For 1,400 years, a stash of Anglo-Saxon artefacts remained buried - until it was found last year by a man with a metal detector. It throws fascinating new light on clashes in the Dark Ages, but now we must win the fight to keep this precious hoard in Britain It's a misty dawn in Middle England, some time in the 7th century. A small band of armed men struggle up a wooded hill. At the summit they pause. While one keeps watch, the others tip their loot on to the ground. They divide up the jewels and coins, then they turn to the rest of the booty: swords, crosses, saddle fittings, which are mostly gold and exquisitely made. They hammer at them with stones and the hilts of their knives, they rip the pommels from the swords and stuff the blades into their jerkins, smash the helmets and bend the arms of the crosses until they look like nothing more than twisted pieces of metal. They stuff the small gold and bejewelled fragments into leather pouches, grub out a hole in the earth, and bury their cache. Then they disappear over the hill as swiftly as they came. Centuries pass: William the Conqueror's Normans arrive; the Tudors squabble over national control; Queen Victoria and the British Empire come and go. The hoard remains untouched - until 1,400 years later, when an amateur collector, Terry Herbert, rediscovers it on what is now a farm. Since Terry came across the treasure, now known as the Staffordshire Hoard, using a simple metal detector last July, the story behind it has captured the public imagination. The items he discovered - more than 1,500 pieces of beautifully crafted gold and silver - have been described as the most important Anglo-Saxon archeological evidence ever found in Britain. The battle to keep the bling in the country is well under way. The government would be unlikely to grant an export licence but it could still be split up and taken abroad illegally by a private collector. Despite all the furore, the hoard poses as many questions as it answers.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204697 2010-03-13T23:19:07Z

Landslides in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have destroyed homes and caused the evacuation of 82 people, emergency workers said on Saturday. The landslides, which are moving at a speed of 15 cm an hour, are occurring in the town of Buynaksk, some 40 km from the republic's capital, Makhachkala.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204696 2010-03-13T23:13:07Z

Ruling is the fourth against autism claims Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. "The Meads believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines caused William's regressive autism. As explained below, the undersigned finds that the Meads have not presented a scientifically sound theory," Special Master George Hastings, a former tax claims expert at the Department of Justice, wrote in his ruling.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204695 2010-03-13T23:10:32Z

A search is underway for a mysterious predator which has been attacking livestock in the central Colombian department of Boyaca. Concern has been mounting over the past month among rural Boyaca communities, due to the spate of bloody attacks against livestock, reported Colombian media Monday. The most recent killing was discovered early Monday morning on the outskirts of the department's capital Tunja, bringing the grim total to some 20 butchered animals, including calves, bulls and, allegedly, a donkey.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204694 2010-03-13T23:02:28Z

Stock market slides may hurt more than your savings. New research suggests they might prompt heart attacks. Duke University researchers found a link between how a key stock index performed and how many heart attacks were treated at their North Carolina hospital shortly after the recession began in December 2007 through July 2009, when signs of recovery emerged. The trend weakened after they did a second analysis taking into account seasons of the year. Some research suggests heart attacks are more common in winter, meaning the initial finding could have been a statistical fluke. However, leading scientists unconnected with the work said they found it plausible and worth further research in a nationwide study.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204693 2010-03-13T23:01:02Z

Santo Domingo - Intelligence agencies investigate how a "mysterious" aircraft took off from Higüero International Airport with fake registry and a flight plan initially to Port-au-Prince, but once in flight changed course toward South America, vanishing from radar screens. The Cessna Centurion 210L is airplane, number 21059588 left Higüero Sunday night, using for its flight plan the registration of another craft, which is under repair in one of the airport's hangars.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204692 2010-03-13T22:59:28Z

The latest study to find a link between smoking and lowered risk of Parkinson's disease says that the protective effect appears to be related to the number of years of smoking, not how many cigarettes a smoker consumes daily, Reuters reported March 10. Researchers studied more than 305,000 men and women over 10 years and found that the more years the subjects smoked, the lower their risk of developing Parkinson's disease. Those who smoked at least a pack a day for less than 10 years reduced their risk by 4 percent, for example, but those who smoked 10-19 years had a 22-percent lower risk, and risk was reduced 41 percent among those who smoked for 30 years or more.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204691 2010-03-13T22:56:52Z

Beginning on January 1, 2010, Russia has officially banned imported poultry products from countries that use chlorine in their processing methods. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will no longer allow chicken imports from the U.S. because the chlorine baths used to sanitize chickens do not meet Russian food safety standards. Since it comes from Russia, many may dismiss the ban as being politically charged with no scientific validity. However many nations around the world, including all within the European Union, have banned poultry imports from chlorine-using countries because of the dangers posed by the chemical. These countries use different methods to disinfect meat, including air chilling and electrolyzed water treatments, which do not expose the meat to harmful chemicals. Putin expressed that Russia is working to become poultry self-sufficient by the year 2015 but, until then, will import only from nations that do not use chlorine in meat processing. Each year, the import quota will be dropped until, eventually, all chicken will be domestically raised in Russia.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204690 2010-03-13T22:56:43Z

Many children's snacks marketed as healthy alternatives are actually full of unhealthy ingredients like sugar, salt and fat, according to an analysis conducted by the consumer watchdog organization, "Which?." "Parents should be able to pick out healthy products for their kids' lunchboxes, but what you see isn't always what you get," said the group's Martyn Hocking. "Many [products] declare that they don't contain additives, but don't mention they're also full of salt or sugar - giving the impression they're healthier than they are," the report reads. For example, while Dairylea Lunchables' Ham 'n' Cheese Crackers are advertised as providing half of the recommended daily calcium for a child, nowhere on the label or in promotional materials does the company acknowledge that the product is high in fat, saturated fat and salt -- containing 1.8 grams of the maximum daily recommended 3 grams of the latter.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204689 2010-03-13T22:54:51Z

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes... As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204684 2010-03-13T22:45:30Z

Fort Morgan officials are investigating mysterious surges of some sort of contaminant in the city's wastewater treatment plant. Water Resources Director Gary Dreessen told the Fort Morgan City Council on Tuesday about the episodes, providing a chart of one such incident on Sunday night that showed "a huge spike in the total suspended solids" in the effluent from the treatment plant. The TSS is essentially a measurement of the "dirt" remaining in the treated wastewater after it passes through the plant, Dreessen said. While the city's limit for TSS is 30 milligrams per liter, and the plant's discharge is normally well below 10, the spike on Sunday night reached more than 100 mg/l, Dreessen said in an interview Wednesday.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204688 2010-03-13T22:45:13Z

8:48 p.m. Fire Chief James Shelly told News 5 there was no explosion in Theodore. He heard the loud noise and says it shook things pretty good. Shelly said he thinks it was a sonic boom. 4:21 p.m. News 5 has received reports from Spanish Fort to the Mississippi state line about a big boom around 2:00 p.m. that shook their homes. We've done some digging, but so far, no one has an answer for us. The National Weather Serve had no reports and suggested we check with the US Geological Survey.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204687 2010-03-13T22:36:27Z

Military jets performing training maneuvers over Gulf of Mexico waters are being credited with creating sonic booms heard along Florida's west coast earlier this week, to include Pasco, Hillsborough, Marion, Levy, Hernando and Citrus counties. The sheriff's offices in Pasco and Citrus counties have said the most likely explanation is that jets based at Eglin AFB in Florida's Panhandle had created the booms that shook windows and rattled dishes. That was confirmed by an Eglin AFB Public Affairs spokesman, who said the "atmospheric conditions" most likely caused the booms to be heard as the military was performing maneuvers over the Gulf.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204686 2010-03-13T22:35:32Z

It sounds like the basis for a Monty Python sketch, rather than a $50,000 lawsuit. A woman from Pennsylvania is suing Bank of America, after a contractor wrongly repossessed her home and impounded her beloved pet parrot. Angela Iannelli was separated from Luke, a blue macaw, for more than a week. The incident last October caused so much "emotional distress", she said, that she was forced to begin taking prescription medication for anxiety. Her lawsuit alleges that a contractor working for the bank broke into her home near Pittsburgh, changed the locks, cut off the utilities, damaged the floors, poured antifreeze down sinks and toilets, and "stole" the parrot.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204685 2010-03-13T22:31:35Z

A mother and daughter, Samantha Combs , 18, and her mother, Donna Henderson, 52, were found just before midnight Monday, March 8 in their mobile home. Police first thought the two women were overcome by carbon monoxide from the home's heating system, but according to news reports, Silverhill Police Chief Kim Wasdin now says the deaths are being treated as an active homicide investigation. The pair, Wasdin said, were last seen late Friday night.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204683 2010-03-13T22:19:38Z

At least two dozen people became sick and complained of fumes at two West Side buildings, but officials can't determine what was wrong. View more news videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video. The mystery began at about 10 a.m. Thursday, when staffers at the Alivio Medical Center in Pilsen began complaining of light-headedness and nausea. "I got a phone call from one of my managers that several people were complaining bout coughing, (being) teary-eyed (and having a) dry nose, and it was like hacking sensation in one area," said center spokeswoman Dora Garcia. That building was evacuated and some of those who said they were sick were taken to another facility. Once there, even more people said they were feeling sick.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204559 2010-03-13T22:06:20Z

Earthquakes dominate once again this month as a string of strong quakes prompts us to ask, "What in Earth is going on?" That the US government would engage in such nefarious activity to induce a strategically-placed earthquake in Haiti is a frightening prospect. Could any or all of the recent cluster have been deliberately induced? Or have we just witnessed Nature's awesome retort to the Evil Empire's puny arsenal? We'll examine the political state of play in Chile on the occasion of its most powerful earthquake in 50 years and recall the notorious roots of the Pathocrats' economic shock therapy that's so prevalent today. Record snowfall blanketed all but Hawaii in the US and freezing temperatures froze ships mid-stream in Europe, yet Canada emerged from the cruelest of winters warm and dry. We would ask the "climatologists" for their take on this but they're too busy modelling alternate realities, answering corruption charges and just generally keeping well below the radar. We'll present an alternative Cosmic Climate Change hypothesis that honours the scientific data and doesn't require sleight of hand to "hide the decline." Financial terrorism from Wall Street's finest banksters struck gold again this month with a false-flag attack on the euro. Economic warfare, like any other form of warfare, sears a trail of tears and destruction through innocent peoples' lives, only it comes in the covert manner of currency manipulations and speculative attacks on target economies. And just as with conventional warfare, its psychopathic conspirators often hatch their murderous plans over dinner and fine wine. From a meeting in Manhattan we'll chart the Evil Empire's desperate pitch to keep its paper-worthless dollar atop the sinking pile. When a tiny country like Israel can manipulate empires from afar, what is there to stop it walking into its neighbour's house and murdering him? Well, nothing, as the Mossad brazenly demonstrated in January. But if Dubai can have Interpol serve arrest warrants where no other country dares to tread, we wonder if the international exposure Mossad Murder Inc received this month has severely compromised its cover of darkness? More light, say we! Join us as we Connect the Dots in February...

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204682 2010-03-13T22:03:17Z

If the first complaints to City Councilman Ray Lopez's office had come anywhere close to the truth, they probably wouldn't have gotten much attention. I mean, "My garage door opener's not working and I think the government's involved"? That's tinfoil hat territory. But the calls kept coming, and soon Lopez and his District 6 staff confronted a mystery that led them to the doorstep of the National Security Agency, the nation's code-maker and code-breaker, which is putting a data center into the old Sony microchip plant near Loop 410 and Military Drive. Call it the Case of the Garage Door Gremlins. It started in January with a trickle of calls and e-mails, but the complaints were oddly similar. West Side residents around Loop 410 and Military Drive were having problems with their garage door openers. Some had talked to one another and suspected a widespread problem.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204681 2010-03-13T21:54:51Z

A simple abduction case has been enveloped by a web of intrigue. At first it seemed like a simple case of abduction: a five-year-old British boy snatched by masked gunmen in Pakistan on the last day of a two-week holiday with his father. A £100,000 ransom demand for his safe return had been issued and, as the boy's father and police frantically searched the Punjab, a distraught mother made a desperate appeal from her home in Oldham to be reunited with her child.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204679 2010-03-13T21:18:49Z

Hundreds of homeowners in the Northwest part of town can't seem to get their garage doors to open. "We were wondering why," explains homeowner John Zurita. "We have to go in out and out of the house, the remote doesn't work at all." He's not alone. Residents that live within a five mile radius of Culebra and Portranco Road are experiencing the same problem.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204678 2010-03-13T21:18:42Z

In spite of the fact that the United States faces no enemy anywhere in the world capable of opposing it on a battlefield, the Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1 percent from current levels. A lot of the new spending will be on drones, America's latest contribution to western civilization, capable of surveilling large areas on the ground and delivering death from the skies. It is a peculiarly American vision of warfare, with a "pilot" sitting at a desk half a world away and pressing a button that can kill a target far below. Hygienic and mechanical, it is a bit like a video game with no messy cleanup afterwards. The recently released United States Quadrennial Defense Review reports how the Pentagon will be developing a new generation of super drones that can stay airborne for long periods of time and can strike anywhere in the world and at any time to kill America's enemies. The super drones will include some that can fly at supersonic speeds and others that will be large enough to carry nuclear weapons. Some of the new drones will be designed for the navy, able to take off from aircraft carriers and project US power to even more distant hot spots. Drones are particularly esteemed by policymakers because as they are unmanned and can fly low to the ground they can violate someone's airspace "accidentally" without necessarily resulting in a diplomatic incident.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204677 2010-03-13T21:18:33Z

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times. The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman's home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled "Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery", Nato claimed that the force had found the women's bodies "tied up, gagged and killed" in a room. A Times investigation suggests that Nato's claims are either wilfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204676 2010-03-13T21:14:32Z

At least 35 people have been killed after a series of explosions rocked the centre of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, an interior ministry spokesman has said. Saturday's attacks also left 45 people, including policemen and civilians, injured. Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "We spoke to the spokesman of the governor to the city of Kandahar [and] it appears to be a co-ordinated attack. "One explosion happened near the police headquarters. The second one was heard near the provincial guest house in an area where also President [Hamid] Karzai's half brother [Ahmad Wali Karzai] lives. Now he [Wali Karzai] is in Kabul; we did speak to him and he did not have much more information than that.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204675 2010-03-13T21:09:26Z

"Two months after the devastating earthquake, the situation in Haiti is downright criminal," says Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson of the activist network Haiti Action Committee, major western players such as the US are more interested in defending their own geopolitical interests in Haiti than truly helping the hardly hit Caribbean country. Johnny Van Hove: Haiti has disappeared almost completely from the front pages. Since you are in close contact with a number of Haitian grassroots organizations via the Haiti Action Committee, could you describe how the situation down there is at the moment? Robert Roth: The situation is a catastrophe. At this point about 230,000 people have died and 3,000,000 people are still left homeless. Hundreds of thousands of people have no shelter whatsoever and are literally sleeping outside. Under sheets, not in tents. In many, many areas there is no water, no tents, no healthcare. One to two million people are in internal refugee camps that are now dotting Port-au-Prince. They were set up by international aid agencies, but they are in terrible shape.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204674 2010-03-13T20:56:04Z

For Jews, Jerusalem is its historic capital. Muslims also claim it for the third holiest site in Islam, containing the 35 acre Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. The 1947 UN Partition Plan designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council. After Israel's 1947-48 War of Independence, it was divided between Israel and Jordan, and during Israel's 1967 Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was captured and occupied, its current status today. In March 2009, a confidential EU report (now public) accused Israel of using settlement expansions, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies, restrictive permits, closing Palestinian institutions, the West Bank Separation Wall, and various other ways to "actively pursu(e) the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem and "increase Jewish presence" in the city. In a December 2009 report, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel affirmed the EU report's concerns. Titled "Dispossession and Eviction in Jerusalem," it provides historical context, a legal overview, and case study examples in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood between the Old City and Mount Scopus.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204673 2010-03-13T20:44:17Z

At least 75 people have been killed in clashes in the Somali capital of Mogadishu since fighting broke out earlier this week between government forces and Al-Shabaab rebels, medical sources and a witness said Saturday. At least 30 people died on Wednesday, and another 35 died on Thursday, the city's ambulance service said. Another five died of their wounds while hospitalized, according to Duniyo Ali Mohamed, medical director of Mogadishu's Medina Hospital. A local journalist whose identity is not being disclosed for security reasons said he saw five other bodies in the capital.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204672 2010-03-13T20:37:56Z

Date-Time: Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 00:57:45 UTC Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 09:57:45 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location: 1.710°S, 128.051°E Depth: 52.4 km (32.6 miles) Distances: 220 km (135 miles) N of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia 285 km (180 miles) SSE of Ternate, Moluccas, Indonesia 1230 km (760 miles) NNW of DARWIN, Northern Territory, Australia 2415 km (1500 miles) E of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204669 2010-03-13T20:09:02Z

The DNA tests that revealed how the famed boy-king Tutankhamun most likely died solved another of ancient Egypt's enduring mysteries - the fate of controversial Pharaoh Akhenaten's mummy. The discovery could help fill out the picture of a fascinating era more than 3,300 years ago when Akhenaten embarked on history's first attempt at monotheism. During his 17-year rule, Akhenaten sought to overturn more than a millennium of Egyptian religion and art to establish the worship of a single sun god. In the end, his bold experiment failed and he was eventually succeeded by his son, the young Tutankhamun, who rolled back his reforms and restored the old religion.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204671 2010-03-13T20:07:31Z

Researchers have uncovered the courses of ancient river systems under the Simpson Desert in Central Australia. Professor Mike Hutchinson from the Australian National University says the systems are approximately 50 million years old and about 35 metres below the surface.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204670 2010-03-13T20:04:23Z

The regenerating liquid-metal robots in the Terminator movies have a cosmic relation: incoming asteroids that quickly reassemble if blasted by a nuclear bomb. If a sizable asteroid is found heading towards Earth, one option is to nuke it. But too small a bomb would cause the fragments to fly apart only slowly, allowing them to clump together under their mutual gravity. Simulations now show this can happen in an alarmingly short time. Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico simulated blowing up asteroids 1 kilometre across. When the speed of dispersal was relatively low, it took only hours for the fragments to coalesce into a new rock.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204668 2010-03-13T19:44:09Z

Israel on Saturday extended a lockdown on the occupied West Bank and restricted access to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem as tensions soared over its latest settlement plans. Defence Minister Ehud Barak extended until Tuesday at midnight the lockdown on the West Bank, which was due to end Saturday night, because of a continued risk of attacks, an armed forces spokesman said. Israel sealed off the West Bank on Friday after the announcement that it planned to build new homes for Jewish settlers in mainly Arab east Jerusalem sparked a row with Washington and fuelled anger in the Palestinian territories.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204667 2010-03-13T19:37:38Z

A new study has shown that Arctic reindeer have abandoned use of the internal clock that drives the daily biological rhythms in other organisms, in order to live under extreme conditions in the Arctic. "Our findings imply that evolution has come up with a means of switching off the cellular clockwork," said Andrew Loudon of the University of Manchester. "Such daily clocks may be positively a hindrance in environments where there is no reliable light-dark cycle for much of the year," he added. Light-dark cycles drive hormone rhythms via a circuit that involves the eye and nervous system projections to structures involved in regulating hormone rhythms, in particular melatonin, Loudon explained.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204666 2010-03-13T19:33:02Z

Police are trying to reassure New Yorkers that life-sized figures placed on rooftops by the British sculptor Antony Gormley are not people contemplating suicide. The New York police department issued a statement after the first of the 31 figures started going up around Madison Square Park in lower Manhattan. The police are trying to avert a spate of emergency calls similar to those made after the exhibition went on display in London in 2007. "We were notified because of concerns the public might misperceive what they see and call police. We will respond no matter what because you can have an actual jumper at the same building," a police spokesman said.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204665 2010-03-13T19:22:58Z

Published: March 11, 2010 Date: 07-18-08 On Friday July 18, 2008, at about 10:30 PM, a co-worker and I were taking a 15 minute break on the stern of the SS Horizon's Edge - Boston, a casino cruise ship and company I was employed for at the time out of Lynn, Massachusetts. We were drifting on the outer edge of the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary during casino hours. As we started to make our way back inside the vessel to return to work, we heard a loud "whooshing" sound from about 10 to 15 degrees off the port bow. This is not an uncommon occurrence as waves continually hit the bow; especially during inclement weather. But we knew right away the sound was a bit "off."

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204664 2010-03-13T19:22:55Z

Published: March 9, 2010 Date: 03-06-10 I saw something on March 6, when I was driving by Lakeland Florida Airport. From a distance I thought it was just several planes flying in a close formation, but that is explainable because they may have been landing. When I got closer I saw that there were seven small, blue blinking lights like you would see on the bottom of airplanes. It was these flashing lights that lead me to believe they were planes at first. As I got even closer I saw that they were completely still. Totally frozen. Hovering motionless. It couldn't be planes. They can't hover.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204663 2010-03-13T19:22:18Z

A multi-billion Euro rescue package for Greece is set be put to eurozone finance ministers as early as Monday, with Germany and France the main cash backers. The bailout fund - which could top €25bn - would be made available if crisis-stricken Greece asked for help to tackle its €300bn debt pile. The Mediterranean country's deficit currently stands at four times the amount allowed under EU rules. So far, Greece has not sought help from its EU partners. However, an April and May deadline to repay debt back has pushed Greece to seek financing of around €20bn on the bond market.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204662 2010-03-13T19:17:59Z

At least 80 people have suffered injuries as up to 170 vehicles were involved in a massive chain road accident in the vicinity of Augsburg town in Germany's Bavaria province. According to police, cars and trucks were unable to avoid the pile-up as a spring snowstorm and thick fog created dangerous road conditions throughout the southern state on Friday morning. The incident took place at around 7 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) as a one-kilometer stretch of vehicles had spanned on the A8 motorway, the news site Local reported.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204661 2010-03-13T19:14:13Z

Taxi drivers have been caught out overcharging passengers by $8.3 million (£5.5 million) in the past two years. The drivers were found to have been setting their meters at double rate and at least 1.8 million rides were wrongly charged. Within New York city limits taxi meters are supposed to run at half the amount they do in the suburbs. To operate the scam drivers simply switched to the higher rate while they were still in the city and passengers failed to notice.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204660 2010-03-13T19:07:48Z

The Thames Tunnel, the brainchild of engineering geniuses Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is open to the public for the first time in 145 years. However, access to the tunnel - described by contemporaries as "the eighth Wonder of the World" - will only last for two days. Opened in 1852, the tunnel gripped the nation's imagination: nothing had been seen like it before and it paved the way for the present day Tube system. Lying deep beneath the River Thames, it is one of the Brunels' greatest engineering triumphs - and the only project they worked on together.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204659 2010-03-13T18:57:48Z

The last of 10 American missionaries detained in Haiti on suspicion of kidnapping is facing a new charge. Judge Bernard Saint-Vil says Laura Silsby has been charged for a newly discovered, alleged attempt to bus child earthquake survivors to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 26.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204658 2010-03-13T18:52:10Z

The United Nations' climate change panel is facing fresh criticism after new research contradicted the organisation's claims about the devastating effect climate change could have on the Amazon rainforest. A new study, funded by Nasa, has found that the most serious drought in the Amazon for more than a century had little impact on the rainforest's vegetation. The findings appear to disprove claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could react drastically to even a small reduction in rainfall and could see the trees replaced by tropical grassland.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204657 2010-03-13T18:40:19Z

Tributes are pouring in for the victims of a deadly shooting rampage in Edmonton. A man walked into a car dealership Friday and started firing. Two men were killed, including the shooter. Another is in hospital with critical injuries.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204656 2010-03-13T18:33:15Z

Two Minnesota witnesses watched a silent, triangle-shaped UFO moving south across the night sky on February 27, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database. The object was described as having three white lights at the three triangle points, a red flashing light in the middle moving from side to side, and two blue lights at the rear of the craft. The following is the unedited and as yet uninvestigated report filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that most UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If Minnesota MUFON investigates and reports back on this case, I will release an update.

tag:www.sott.net,2010-03-13:/articles/show/204655 2010-03-13T18:33:10Z

Comment: Below you will find several articles about the UFO in Euclid, Ohio over Lake Erie in Ohio. But since this UFO(s) comes back for several nights in a row, is it just another elaborate hoax meant to bring more discredit to the UFO field? If it is we'll soon know about it. And why is FOX News getting into the middle of this? Euclid, Ohio UFO returns for Sixth Consecutive night by Roger Marsh, UFO Examiner March 10, 2010 Fox News 8 is again reporting on the Euclid, Ohio, UFO sighting. They are reporting that an unexplained "light show" has appeared over Lake Erie now for several nights in a row. Eugene Erlikh, 20, of Euclid, has been watching the same object outside his apartment building now for six days in a row. The witness says the light gets very bright, changing colors, then gets dim again. And when the object becomes dim, it beings to move. Cleveland-based UFO researcher Richard Lee says the video images the witness captured were not of a quality to make a final determination, but admitted that Ohio was in the top 5 or 10 states with good UFO sightings over the years. But Lee says the images do show there is something out over the lake. A second witness to the same event said the object moved so fast, he had not seen anything like it. National UFO Reporting Center Director Peter Davenport was also interviewed for the piece, saying that "more people need to see it, and more research is necessary before it makes anyone else a true believer. The UFO Examiner originally reported on this story in: Fox News reports UFO sighting over Lake Erie 5 nights in a row. Euclid is in Cuyahoga County, population 52,717.