FIRST DROPS

Meteor lights up early morning sky

A fast-moving meteor lit up the night skies over most of Utah just after midnight Wednesday. Scientists are calling it a "remarkable midnight fireball." .


Spot the common theme in the following three flashbacks:

FLASHBACK - Nov 6 2009




Asteroid Flyby, Fireball over Utah, Meteor Shower

Asteroid 2009 VA flew past Earth at about 4.30pm. EST. It didn't disintegrate but it passed just 8700 miles (14,000 km) from our planet's surface -- slightly less than Earth's diameter. The space rock was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey only some 15 hours before it approached us.

FLASHBACK - Mar 2009

Asteroid narrowly misses Earth

A 200-foot wide asteroid zoomed past Earth today at an altitude of 40,000 miles - swerving far enough from our planet to avoid total destruction, officials said.

Dubbed 2009 DD45, the large rock was discovered only Friday by Australian astronomers.

The enormous asteroid narrowly avoided a collision with Earth at 8:44 EST, officials said.

Although 40,000 miles sounds like a safe distance, it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon and less than twice as far out as most satellites, astronomers said.

Had 2009 DD45 slammed down onto the Earth, it would have exploded with the force of a large nuclear blast

FLASHBACK - Jan 2002

Huge Asteroid Narrowly Misses Earth

An asteroid capable of causing widespread devastation narrowly missed the Earth on Monday. This asteroid known as 2001 YB5 was discovered on December 26-7, 2001.

Although the nearest the asteroid came to Earth was 390,000 miles (627,644 kilometers), had it arrived four hours earlier on its journey around the sun it would have scored a direct hit.

The asteroid, measuring 300 meters (984 feet) across, passed Earth at 7:37 a.m. For a moment, it was less than twice as far from Earth as is the Moon.

Scientists were unaware of its approach until a month ago, when it was spotted by an American observatory dedicated to tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Astronomers insisted there was never any danger of a collision with Earth. But they warned that the asteroid was one of up to 400,000 small NEOs up to 1000 meters (3280 feet) wide that could strike Earth with little or no warning because of the absence of an adequate early-warning system.

FIRST DROPS

Another fiery meteorite

As forecasters predicted, the Leonid meteor shower peaked during the late hours of Nov. 17th, favoring sky watchers in Asia with an outburst of 100+ meteors per hour.
 Just as the outburst was dying down, an even bigger event took place over the western USA.
Something hit Earth's atmosphere and exploded with an energy equivalent of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT.  Witnesses in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and elsewhere say the fireball "turned night into day" and "shook the ground" when it exploded just after midnight Mountain Standard Time.
Researchers who are analyzing infrasound recordings of the blast say the fireball was not a Leonid.
It was probably a small asteroid, now scattered in fragments across the countryside. Efforts are underway to measure the trajectory of the asteroid and guide meteorite recovery efforts.

MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

John Muhammad, the Washington Sniper of 2002

Washington sniper is put to death

The man behind the 2002 sniper attacks in and near Washington DC is executed after a final appeal was thrown out.

Motive remains a mystery

"He showed no remorse at all that I've been able to see, from his arrest through the court proceedings. And I've had no reports at all of remorse in prison"

"I'm certain he would be back to killing people again if he had the opportunity."

Muhammad's former wife, Mildred, told BBC News that while he had been a soldier serving in Saudi Arabia, before the first Gulf War, his personality had undergone a powerful change.

"When he returned from Saudi Arabia… he was confused, puzzled, unsure of himself or his ability to do anything," she said. "And he was absolutely quiet."

Mildred added that she believed her ex-husband had intended to kill her as punishment for the break-up of their marriage and his estrangement from their children.

The other shootings, Mildred believes, were intended to disguise her murder, to make it appear random.

She said she had once heard John talk of the ability of an individual to terrorise a city.

"We were watching a movie, and he said, 'I could take a small city, terrorise it, they would think it was a group of people, but it would only be me'.

NOTHING NEW

The Sudden Birth of 2009 A/H1N1, aka Swine Flu

Influenza viruses are transmitted more easily in cold dry air*. Even if the current outbreaks in the northern hemisphere quiet down in the next weeks and months, some experts are concerned that the virus will produce epidemics in the southern hemisphere during winter (June through August), and then return with a vengeance to the northern hemisphere in its fall and winter seasons.

That’s exactly what happened in the pandemic of 1918-1919. However, that pattern doesn’t always happen: The swine flu outbreak that occurred at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in early 1976 did not return the next winter.
However, in anticipation that it would, 40 million people were immunized, and about 1 in 100,000 vaccinated people developed Guillain-Barré syndrome.

[* Didn't this one come from Mexico?]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Web post by Fort Hood gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan

It was reported that Major Hasan had come to the attention of the FBI after a user named NidalHasan posted on the Scribd.com website in May, comparing the actions of an American soldier who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq with those of Islamist suicide bombers. No action was taken against him.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

US officials identified the gunman as
Major Nidal Malik Hasan

Fort Hood shooter and the FBI

While few official details have been released about Hasan, his family and others have given some insight into the man accused of killing 13 people and wounded 38 others in Thursday's massacre at Fort Hood Army Post in Texas.

On a form for those looking for spouses through the mosque he listed his birthplace as Arlington, Virginia, but his nationality as Palestinian, Mr Khan said. - BBC

His aunt, Noel Hasan, said her nephew had been upset by the injuries he saw at Walter Reed (Medical Centre). "He must have snapped," she added.
Dr Thomas Grieger, who was training director at the centre while Maj Hasan was an intern there, said told AP that he had had "difficulties" that required counselling and extra supervision.

Ms Hasan said Maj Hasan had spent holidays and free time at her house, and that he "did not make many friends".

Nidal Hasan may have attended a lecture in January at George Washington University involving the Israeli ambassador to the United States and other officials discussing Israel's offensive into Gaza last winter. Video from the lecture shows a person who appears to be Hasan dressed in military fatigues seated in the audience taking notes.

INTERNET CONNECTION

A neighbor, Willie Bell, said Hasan had helped him set up his laptop and regularly tapped into Bell's wireless service.

Bell, a maintenance man at Fort Hood who didn't show up for work Thursday, said he was interviewed by the FBI for four hours that day and the laptop was seized. He said he received two calls from Hasan early Thursday, one at 2:37 a.m. asking Bell to turn on the wireless service and again at 5 a.m. to say he was moving.

One official was quoted by the New York Times as saying that the FBI had become aware of internet postings by a man calling himself Nidal Hasan.
In one such posting, the act of a suicide bomber who kills himself to protect Muslims was compared to a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to protect other soldiers.

However, officials said they had not confirmed that Maj Hasan was the author of the postings.

 BBC

TABLES TURNED

Police warned on social sites

SOUTH Australian police officers have been warned against using social networking sites, which could be used to provide confidential police information and an avenue to discredit officers in court.

A warning has been issued from the police union to members regarding their personal use of such networking sites as Facebook, RSVP.com.au and MySpace.

Police Association president Mark Carroll said those sites often inadvertently provided personal information, which could be accessed by criminals.

Mr Carroll also warned that in cases interstate and overseas, lawyers had used information posted on such sites to discredit the character of police as witnesses.

He said information posted could have a "devastating effect".

"The media and, indeed, criminals, use social internet sites to gather information on police officers, their families, friends and associates," he said.

Registering on such sites, he said, ran the risk of revealing private information about colleagues, potentially compromising safety, revealing confidential police information and revealing the identities of police working undercover "either now or in the future".

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Would you hop onto a plane
if the pilot was snorting speed? [MAC]

The answer may well be YES!


Pilots Fell Asleep During Approach To Denver Iinternational

A commercial pilot and his first officer fell asleep while approaching Denver International Airport* in an A319 Airbus jet, going twice the allowed speed, according to a federal safety web site.

The incident, which occurred on March 4, 2004, was one of several incidents that was brought out during a congressional hearing on airline safety in Washington this week.
Rep. Bart Gordon , D-Tenn., wanted to know why this information was available on a public web site where pilots anonymously report the incidents themselves, while NASA wasn't willing to release it as part of a larger survey.

NTSB: Both Pilots Asleep on Hawaii Flight

The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed an initial finding that the captain and first officer of a flight that overflew its destination in Hawaii inadvertently fell asleep while the plane was on autopilot.The NTSB on Monday issued its final report in the case of a 2008 go! airlines flight from Honolulu that overflew Hilo International Airport by 30 miles.

I wasn't asleep, says pilot who forgot to land

PREVIOUSLY: Oct 25, 2009

One of the pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight carrying 144 passengers that missed its destination of Minneapolis by 240 kilometres has denied he and the captain fell asleep at the controls.
First officer Richard Cole also denied they had an argument causing them to fly into the neighbouring state of Wisconsin before they turned around.
Air traffic controllers tried for more than an hour to contact the pilots.
Both were repeatedly called on their mobile phones and sent text messages but not until they were 240 kilometres past their destination did they respond.

Mr Cole would not say just what it was that led to them to forget to land but insisted they were not asleep or arguing.

The pilots have told authorities they were having a discussion.

This excuse however has prompted deep scepticism with the national transport safety board set to question them on Monday about whether they did fall asleep.

DENVER AIRPORT BUILT BY "NEW WORLD AIRPORT COMMISSION"




Denver Airport Underground base and weird murals

An African woman in colorful native garb; a Native American woman who's heritage the airport's art supposedly celebrates; a blonde girl with cupid bow lips, a Star of David on her chest and a bible in her hands. Each lay dead in open coffins for your viewing pleasure. A burning city, children sleeping on piles of bricks, a line of mourning women in rags with dead babies, limp in their arms. A huge, looming military figure in a gas mask brandishes a sword and machine gun. Part of an actual note written by a child interred in a Nazi death camp. Strange words embedded in the floor with no explanation about what they mean. Welcome to Denver Internatinal Airport!



Mustang
a 32-foot tall cast fiberglass sculpture by New Mexico artist Luis Jiménez, made its long-awaited debut at Denver International Airport. Mustang was one of the original public art commissions for DIA from 1993. The 9,000-pound sculpture was his masterpiece—by far the largest sculpture of the artists’ career. Tragically, Jiménez died while working on the sculpture, having completed the painting of the head of the horse. The final sanding and painting of Mustang was completed posthumously by his studio staff and family, along with professional lowrider/race-car painters Richard LaVato and Camillo Nuñez. Once the work was complete, the sculpture was shipped in three pieces to Kreysler and Associates in California. There, Mustang was finally assembled, reinforced and wrapped for shipment to its final home atop a windswept knoll between the inbound and outbound lanes of Peña Boulevard at DIA. The bright blue rearing mustang with gleaming red eyes was installed permanently on a windy morning, February 11, 2008.
http://www.denvergov.org/RecentInstallations/LuisJimenezMustangFebruary2008/tabid/428802/Default.aspx
"New World Airport Commission" - - Denver International Airport

STASI STATE

Dressed in old prison clothes, Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel contemplates his cell

Reliving Stasi isolation - for art

The West German political activist had been demonstrating in East Berlin against the arrest of political prisoners and had suddenly become one himself.

He was locked up in a secret Stasi prison. He spent the next nine months in complete isolation, as his Stasi interrogators tried to break him. He was subjected to psychological torture.

Now Mr Holzapfel has returned to the former Berlin jail, Hohenschoenhausen, to relive his incarceration.

FIRST DROPS

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia raises fears about Earth's defences

An asteroid that exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere with the energy of three Hiroshima bombs this month has reignited fears about our planet’s defences against space impacts.

On 8 October, the rock crashed into the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The blast was heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario.
Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster.
The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph. The sudden deceleration caused it to heat up rapidly and explode with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT.

HIDDEN EVIDENCE

Ship built from 9/11 steel sets sail

A warship built with steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Centre has set sail for New York.
Its bow stem contains 7.5 tonnes of steel, salvaged from the rubble following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

[Many would still like to know why that twisted metal wasn't analysed forensically, as would have happened at any other similar air crash site. Instead, metal from the site was spirited away, melted down and co-opted for the glorious homeland's hearts and minds campaign.]

PORN & VIOLENCE

Pornography 'desensitised' teen rapist

The Northern Territory Supreme Court has heard a teenager who raped a 24-year-old woman had been surrounded by pornography, alcohol and drug abuse as a young child.
The 16-year-old boy pleaded guilty to raping the woman in an Alice Springs park in February.
The court heard he had been drinking with the woman as part of a larger group and convinced her to go for a walk.
He attacked her when she refused his advances.

Chief Justice Martin acknowledged the boy had been desensitised to violence, including sexual violence, as a young child, having watched pornography with his uncle as a six- or seven-year-old.

[Note that the judge says the boy was desensitised to violence through watching porn, not through watching Arnie flicks or Wrestle Mania. More likely he was desensitised to violence by being beaten and abused himself. Or perhaps he was born a psychopath.]

DREAM PREMONITION

Yes, we do have a sixth sense: our intriguing dreams

The death of 116 innocent children, killed in the school, tore at the very heart of the nation. In a cruel irony, the youngsters had been making their way back to their classrooms after singing All Things Bright And Beautiful at morning assembly when the disaster struck.

No one in the close-knit community was unaffected by the tragedy and the bereaved parents would never recover from their loss.

But for one family, the overriding grief was even more acute. For one of those killed, 10-year-old Eryl Mai Jones, had not only predicted the catastrophe, but had warned her mother of it, too.

In the days leading up to the atrocity, Eryl had told her mother she was 'not afraid to die'. 'I shall be with Peter and June,' she added.

Eryl's busy mother offered her imaginative daughter a lollipop and thought no more about it. Then, on October 20, the day before the disaster, Eryl said to her mother: 'Let me tell you about my dream last night. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it!'

The next day, Eryl's horrific premonition came to pass and she was killed alongside schoolfriends Peter and June. They were buried side-by-side in a mass grave, just as the youngster had predicted.

DON'T CALL ME

Mixed signal from mobile studies review

Studies on whether mobile phones can cause cancer vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, a review has found.

The best studies suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea's National Cancer Centre found.
Dr Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 published studies of more than 37,000 people in what is called a meta-analysis.

[Journal of Clinical Oncology]

CANCER VANISHES

Aliens cure woman's cancer

An overjoyed mother-to-be says aliens took her aboard a spaceship – and cured her of leukemia!
“They saved my life and the life of my child,” Greta Brandt, 34, told reporters in Berlin, Germany.
“My own doctors said we were doomed and there was nothing they could do for us.
“But those strange men knew exactly what to do. They used all sorts of strange lights and instruments to cure me of the killer leukemia.”

Dr. Frans Wenderoth, the woman’s obstetrician, confirmed that she developed leukemia, but miraculously she no longer shows any signs of having the terminal disease.

THOU SHALT

Death row inmate tells story of own execution

Around 2:00pm, after a shower, a phone call to his brother and several cups of coffee, Romell Broom was told his 25 years on death row would end later that day with him being executed by lethal injection.

Lucasville prison warden Phillip Kerns read the death sentence and a short time later two nurses began to administer three chemicals: one an anaesthetic, one to paralyse his muscles and another to stop his heart.

It was his punishment for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, a charge he has denied.

"There were three guards present in the room. One guard was on the right side of me, one was on the left side of me and one was at my feet," he said, according to written testimony made three days after the ordeal.

Broom's lawyers have filed a suit, arguing that the botched execution and an attempt to execute him a second time violated his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

ONE-EYED SUPPORTER

Afghani girl in a one-eyed niqab. Revealing two eyes encourages
the use of seductive eye make-up, says Saudi cleric.

Saudi cleric (man) favours one-eye veils (for women)

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The ultra-conservative cleric, who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

SHOOT THE MESSENGER

iiNet 'allowed 100,000 dodgy downloads'

The Federal Court has heard almost 100,000 illegal downloads of video and music files were detected during a 59-week investigation of the internet service provider iiNet.

A group of 34 film, television and music companies is suing the company for allowing its customers to illegally share files.

The court has heard the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft had warned iiNet during the investigation that its customers were illegally sharing files, but the internet provider failed to act.

The prosecution alleges iiNet drew up a policy document dealing with repeat copyright infringers, but never implemented it for fear of driving away customers and losing revenue.

Outside court, an iiNet spokesman said blaming the internet service provider for copyright infringement was akin to suing Australia Post if drugs were sent in the mail.

THE QUICKENING

Emergency Brakes Needed to Stop Climate Crash

In the end, governments accepted evidence from the world's top scientists that climate change impacts could be abrupt and irreversible, and that they require urgent action.

"We are riding in an airplane with the bolts falling out while heading into a storm," Tonser said.

The IPCC has greatly underestimated the climate storm ahead, says British scientist James Lovelock. He calculates that when all the earth systems are taken into account an atmospheric concentration of 500 ppm of CO2 will result in a six degree rise in global temperatures, not the two degrees Celsius the IPCC says is most likely.

"The IPCC's Synthesis Report must show that while it is already too late to prevent some of global warming's impacts, we do have the ability to stop the rot," says Stephan Singer, head of WWF's European climate and energy programme.

"Governments must wake up. They could be responsible for the next mass extinction of species if they don't act to stop carbon pollution now," said Singer

FEAR FACTOR

Negative subliminal messages work

People are more confident about their choices if the message is negative and they can perceive subliminal messages, particularly if the message is negative, according to a UK study.
In three experiments at University College London, participants were briefly shown masked words and asked to classify them as emotional or neutral.

MULL IT OVER

California mulls legalising marijuana

In 1996, voters in California approved a referendum that made it legal for the first time in decades in the US for people to consume cannabis for medicinal purposes.

More than a dozen states have followed suit since and several others - the most recent of which is Massachusetts - have approved laws decriminalising the possession of small amounts of the drug.

Now, there are moves afoot in California to go further to fully legalise marijuana.

CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

In 1995, the US Congress asked two independent scientists to assess whether the $20 million that the government had spent on psychic research had produced anything of value.

Professor Jessica Utts, a statistician from the University of California, discovered that remote viewers were correct 34 per cent of the time, a figure way beyond what chance guessing would allow.

She says: "Using the standards applied to any other area of science, you have to conclude that certain psychic phenomena, such as remote viewing, have been well established.

"The results are not due to chance or flaws in the experiments."

DYING ART

Assisted suicide: Debate around the world

Proponents of assisted suicide believe support for legalisation is growing among lawmakers and the public around the world. In the past year three names have been added to the list of places which permit it.

SEVEN SATELLITES

India launches seven satellites

INDIA has successfully launched seven satellites including six from foreign countries underlining the country's ambitions in the space business.

The country's space agency announced that the seven satellites had been put into orbit about 720 kilometres (447 miles) above the
India will use one of the satellites, Oceansat-2, for monitoring ocean patterns and identifying fishing zones.

INSURANCE RULES

Insurance issue leaves swine flu vaccination plans in shambles

The federal government's plan to immunise the population against swine flu is under threat because insurers may not cover doctors who administer the injections.

Insurers say inadequate testing and the possibility of spreading infections means there is too high a risk that patients will sue, Fairfax newspapers report.

BOOT CAMP

Teen internet addict 'beaten to death'

A Chinese teenager, 15-year-old Deng Senshan, sent to an internet addiction rehabilitation camp has allegedly been beaten to death by counsellors. China is increasingly taking action against what it sees as a pandemic of web addiction.

[People around the world are becoming addicted to a virtual life because their real world is populated by brutal and oppressive rulers.]

PLAYING CHIKAN

Japan’s Simulated Train Cafe – Groping Allowed

The record number of women groped on Tokyo’s trains continue to rise. As the suburban trains are usually crowded, bringing the workers to large cities and back to their suburban homes, close physical contact is unavoidable. Many men use this to their advantage, pressing onto women and groping them. The groping problem is so extreme that Tokyo started a campaign of women-only carriages.

So how’s a groper supposed to get his kicks? Welcome to “Train Cafe,” a simulated train where groping is allowed just minutes away from Tokyo’s Ikebukuro station. The cost to ride is 5,000 yen (~$42US). Once each hour, Train Cafe holds an “all aboard” event, where the paying male members “board” the train together with the girls and engage in simulated ‘chikan’ (groper) play.

Each 20 minute ride allows gropers to grabs any girl’s behinds or breasts. Upskirt grabs aren’t allowed and will result in a violation. Since the girls are just normal folk that hang out at the Cafe after work, male attenders are free to ask them for a date or drink after the session has ended.

TROUSER PRESS

Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed Al-Hussein
wearing her trousers

Woman may receive 40 lashes for wearing trousers

Lubna Ahmed Hussein says she was arrested for wearing trousers. She has adopted a defiant attitude, urging authorities to try her although she faces up to 40 lashes in public.

Earlier, she told the BBC she was not afraid, saying: "Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions."

Ms Hussein has resigned from a UN job that would have given her immunity to take on the case - indicating she wants it to become a test case for women's rights in Sudan.

"If the court's decision is that I be flogged, I want this flogging in public," she told the BBC's Today programme.

[Update: She missed a flogging but copped a $300 fine.]

GREEN SHOOTS

Obama right to be circumspect

HOURS AFTER reading Jeff Jacoby’s column criticizing President Obama’s cautious response to the protests in Iran (“Obama’s restraint on Iran,’’ Op-ed), I was reading reports that the regime in Tehran was already blaming the US for the demonstrations.
Iran’s current government was created after the toppling of the shah, an American proxy.
It has subsisted for 30 years on anti-American rhetoric, and like all authoritarian states it uses imagined external threats to cement its power at home and crush dissent.

[Sound familiar?]

POLICE STATE

Gangs unite against anti-bikie laws

QC Geoffrey Nicholson says the laws are unfair and could be used to target other groups.

"They are very wide in their application, they refer generally to any organisation or club in the community," he said.

"Members of such organisations, if declared, can have their communications, their right to speak, the right to use the telephone, the right to meet and mix with whoever they want for lawful purposes, stopped."

OUR BACKYARD

At left is the parachute and backshell that guided the Mars rover Opportunity to a safe landing. link

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the remains of space probes and landing gear on the surface of Mars. The camera was able to zoom in on Viking I and Viking II, which landed in 1976, in addition to the two currently operating rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

CONDOMNATION

Pope's condom stance sparks backlash

"To claim that condoms 'aggravate' the problem of AIDS goes totally against all the efforts made by the Cameroonian Government and other actors implicated in the struggle against AIDS in Cameroon."

Alain Fogue, a spokesman for MOCPAT said in Yaounde that the 81-year-old pontiff was out of touch with the modern world.

SPACE WEATHER

Sunspot 1026 is about as wide as Earth. SOHO measurements show the spot's
magnetic polarity and identified it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24.

New sunspot cycle begins

SUNSPOT 1026: One sunspot is not enough to end the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century, but you've got to start somewhere. "Finally, a new sunspot!" says Paul Maxson who sends this picture from his observatory in Surprise, Arizona: Sunspot 1026 emerged yesterday to break a string of 19 consecutive spotless days.
It's about as wide as Earth, which makes it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has measured the spot's magnetic polarity and identified it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24.

SUNSPOT UPDATE: A second sunspot is emerging to join the one reported below: SOHO image. This is the first time in more than a year that two relatively-large sunspots have shared the Earth-facing side of the sun.

SACRED SHITE

Uluru being 'used as a toilet'

Tourists are defecating on the top of Uluru. It's a sacred site and one of Australia's natural wonders but Andrew Simpson, general manager of the Anangu Waai tour company, says that isn't stopping people from using it as a toilet.
"That's been going on for years," he said. "When people climb up the top of the rock there's no toilet facilities up there. They get out of sight ... (and) most of them have a toilet roll tucked away. They're shitting on a sacred site."
Mr Simpson claims come as the Federal Government considers whether to ban people climbing the 348m-high rock, which is sacred to local Aborigines.
The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park called for an end to people making the arduous trek up the monolith
earlier this year, citing cultural, environmental and safety concerns.

WAR CRIMES

Nazi deserter hails long-awaited triumph

For almost 20 years, Ludwig Baumann has been fighting for justice, determined to clear the names of all victims of Nazi military justice.

According to historians, around 30,000 people were sentenced to death for desertion or treason by Nazi military tribunals during World War II, and some 20,000 were executed.

Mr Baumann says the men who were described as "wartime traitors" were not traitors at all.

"They behaved humanely. Some hid Jews, others helped prisoners - they followed their moral conscience," he said.

CORRUPTION WATCH

Death threat sent to Heffernan

Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has told Parliament he received a death threat last week. Senator Heffernan made the revelation while talking about his decision to reject a million dollar bribe offered to him by a Sydney developer last year.

"There is a cost to not having a price. Last Thursday I got a death threat," he said. Mr Heffernan said the bribe offer was made by "people who are wanting develop things in Sydney".

The bribe is believed to be in connection with the controversial development of Sydney's Malabar Rifle Range.

GENETIC ANOMALIES

UFO puzzle: Alien baby or elaborate hoax?

In 2007, a baby 'alien' was found alive by a farmer in Mexico.

After three attempts he managed to drown it in a ditch out of fear, and now two years later scientists have finally been able to announce the results of their tests on this sinister-looking carcass.
At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out DNA tests and scans.

And in a further mystery, Lopez has since mysteriously died.
According to American UFO expert Joshua P. Warren (32), the farmer burned to death in a parked car at the side of a road.

OUR COSMOS

NASA:  “The golden bacteria growing in a dish are called Deinococcus radiodurans (D. rad).

Universe teeming with life ... get used to it

Probably one of the oldest surviving Earth life forms, D. rad was discovered by accident in the 1950s when scientists investigating food preservation techniques could not easily kill it. D. rad could live on another planet because in Earth labs, D. rad survives extreme levels of radiation, extreme temperatures, dehydration, and exposure to genotoxic chemicals.

Amazingly, D. rad bacteria even have the ability to repair their own DNA, usually within 48 hours. Known as an extremophile, D. rad is of interest to NASA because the resilient bacteria could help human astronauts survive on other worlds. A recent genome map of D. rad's DNA might allow biologists to augment its survival skills with the ability to produce medicine, clean water, and oxygen.

Already D. rad has been genetically engineered to help clean up toxic mercury spills.”
Image credit: Michael Daly, Dept. of Energy lab.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

GEOMAGNETIC MEGA-STORM

Northern Lights swept over Cuba and Hawaii.
Telegraph offices caught fire.
Earth's magnetic field shook for nearly a week.
150 years ago our planet experienced a "geomagnetic megastorm".

On Sept. 2nd 1859, a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into Earth's magnetic field. Campers in the Rocky Mountains woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that the glow they saw was sunrise. It was the Northern Lights. People in Cuba read their morning paper by the red illumination of aurora borealis. Earth was peppered by particles so energetic, they altered the chemistry of polar ice.Hard to believe?.

As the day unfolded, the gathering storm electrified telegraph lines, shocking technicians and setting their telegraph papers on fire. The "Victorian Internet" was knocked offline. Magnetometers around the world recorded strong disturbances in the planetary magnetic field for more than a week.

The cause of all this was an extraordinary solar flare witnessed the day before by British astronomer Richard Carrington. His sighting marked the discovery of solar flares and foreshadowed a new field of study: space weather. According to the National Academy of Sciences, if a similar flare occurred today, it would cause $1 to 2 trillion in damage to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery.

A repeat of the Carrington Event seems unlikely from our low vantage in a deep solar minimum--but don't let the quiet fool you. Strong flares can occur even during weak solar cycles. Indeed, the Carrington flare itself occured during a relatively weak cycle similar to the one expected to peak in 2012-2013. Could it happen again?

NASA: Severe space weather.

BLIND JUSTICE

Justice secretary acted unlawfully and "contrary to good administration"

A man serving a life sentence for a double murder has won a High Court victory to allow him to have cosmetic surgery on the NHS.
Denis Harland Roberts, 59, currently in a Durham jail for killing an elderly couple in East Sussex in 1989, will now have treatment to remove a birthmark.
The case may mean other inmates are considered for similar treatments.

An undisclosed policy operated by Justice Secretary Jack Straw had restricted non-urgent inmate treatment.
This included cosmetic surgery.
But Roberts' publicly-funded legal challenge led to the previously-undisclosed policy being revealed in full for the first time last week.
It operated despite the government publicly stating that prisoners were entitled to the same NHS treatment as the rest of the population.

On Wednesday, London's High Court declared that the justice secretary acted unlawfully and "contrary to good administration" in failing to disclose his full policy on medical appointments.
Roberts, who is a Category A prisoner, was represented in court by barrister Adam Straw - the justice secretary's nephew.

HIVE MIND

"Go to the ant thou sluggard. Consider their ways and be wise" (King Solomon)

During its 20-day stationary phase, an army ant colony scatters about 14 foraging raids directed 123° apart. The heavy line indicates the colony's path during the nomadic phase.

Army ants: a collective intelligence?

Put a hundred army ants on a flat surface and they will walk around in never decreasing circles until they die from exhaustion. But a colony of a million army ants is a sophisticated "super-organism." The colony carries out its legendary raids and can even keep nest temperatures constant to within a degree. An army ant colony seems en dowed with an intelligence far beyond that of any individual ant. N.R.Franks speculates thus:

"It seems that intelligence, natural or artificial, is an emergent property of collective communication. Human con-sciousness itself may be an epiphenomenon of extraordinary processing power...
It seems clear that all intelligence involves the rational manipulation of symbolic information. This is exactly what happens when army ants pass information from individual to individual through the 'writing' and 'reading' of symbols, often in the form of chemical messengers or trail pheromones, which act as stimuli for changing behavior patterns."

Remarkable is the systematic orientation of the raids in the stationary phase. These raids are separated by an average 123°, as diagrammed. This scattering allows time for new prey to enter the previously raided areas.
But how does the colony determine direction in the dense rain forest? Probably from polarized sinlight, thinks Franks. But here we have a problem: each army ant, instead of having multi faceted compound eyes like most insects, has just a single facet in each eye.

"The mystery is how the colony can navigate with each of its workers having such rudimentary eyesight. In my wildest dreams, I imagine that the whole swarm behaves like a huge compound eye, with each of the ants in the swarm front contributing two lenses to a 10- or 20-m wide 'eye' with hundreds of thousands of facets."
(Franks, Nigel R.; "Army Ants: A Collective Intelligence," American Scientist, 77:139, 1989.)

LUNAR MYSTERY

India loses communication with lunar satellite

India's national space agency said communications with the country's only satellite orbiting the moon snapped Saturday and that its scientists were no longer controlling the spacecraft.
Radio contacts with Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft were abruptly lost at 0130 Saturday (2000 GMT Friday), the Indian Space Research Organization said.
The agency's monitoring unit near the southern city of Bangalore is no longer receiving data from the spacecraft, spokesman S. Satish told The Associated Press by telephone from Bangalore.
The spacecraft had completed 312 days in orbit and orbited the moon more than 3400 times.
"We are studying the telemetry data and trying to figure out what is the problem," Satish said. The space agency had received a large volume of data from the spacecraft — which is slotted in an automatic orbit of the moon.

NASA - Bizarre Lunar Orbits

Be careful of the orbit chosen for a low-orbiting lunar satellite. "What counts is an orbit's inclination," that is, the tilt of its plane to the Moon's equatorial plane.
"There are actually a number of 'frozen orbits' where a spacecraft can stay in a low lunar orbit indefinitely.
They occur at four inclinations: 27º, 50º, 76º, and 86º" — the last one being nearly over the lunar poles.
The orbit of the relatively long-lived Apollo 15 subsatellite PFS-1 had an inclination of 28º, which turned out to be close to the inclination of one of the frozen orbits — PFS-2 was cursed with an inclination of only 11º.