HONOUR BOUND

Teen girl buried alive by family members

An autopsy has found that a 16-year-old Turkish girl was buried alive in her family's garden.
She was reportedly killed by her family for having male friends.

Dozens of so-called honour killings take place every year in Turkey, despite efforts by the government to stamp out the practice.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Forbes magazine appears to be on drugs

Forbes has declared Monsanto “Company of the Year,” calling criticism of the notorious company “vicious” attacks against a company that “has been working to make humanity better fed.”

What’s more, Forbes claims that the attacks come because Monsanto has close to a monopoly in some seed markets, which Forbes argues is because they are making “seeds that are too good.”

You read that right. Apparently, Monsanto’s decades-long attempt to control the seed market -- which has led it lawsuits against small farmers and genetically modified plants that never regerminate, forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year -- is apparently just a result of their being “too good.”

I encourage you all to BOYCOTT Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Mysterious Segmenting Snake-Like Creature Reported On Pennsylvania Roadway

At about 3:45 pm, on a beautiful, clear and sunny afternoon a woman, her husband and child were in their car driving along the country road.
Suddenly, the woman seated behind her husband yelled out, “watch out for that snake.” The man slowed down as they focused on a black snake about four feet long that was slowly moving across the road ahead of them from right to left. The head of the reptile was in the center of the roadway. The fellow told me that while the creature looked like a snake, it did not slither like a snake, but instead, was “gliding real slow.”

Suddenly, something happened that the witnesses are still trying to explain. As the couple watched, the body of the snake broke apart into approximately eight individual creatures. The man related that this happened quickly, almost as if it exploded. Each creature was about four inches in length, but stretched up to approximately six inches as they moved. They were tubular shaped, with no tail, and charcoal black in color. The fellow said he was unsure if there was hair, but what might have been hair was of a “shiny wet” texture.

Each creature seemed to have four feet, two on each side of the body. The feet were hard to describe, since they were black, the same color as the body. They did not notice any eyes. The wife told her husband that she could see the mouth of one creature, which was wide open. The vehicle stopped about ten to twenty feet from the creatures, which were “moving individually, erratically, and extremely fast in the road.” The creatures moved like inch worms with the back hunched up and then stretching flat, growing at least two additional inches in length each time they moved.

NON-HUMAN PEOPLE

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” said Lori Marino, a researcher and zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

AUSTRALIA FIRST

 

Darwin revealed as world's biff capital

A Northern Territory surgeon says Darwin has the highest rate of broken jaws in the world and that can be attributed mostly to alcohol-related violence. Royal Darwin Hospital surgeon Mahiban Thomas says the hospital sees about 350 cases of broken jaws and noses every year.
"(This) puts us at about 17 per 10,000 population, which is well above anywhere else in the world," he said.
Dr Thomas says most assaults occur outside pubs and nightclubs on Thursday and Friday nights.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Double agent's bait too good for CIA to refuse

The Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA employees in an Afghan suicide attack had been working with Jordanian intelligence.

It is understood he had already been to the CIA base in Afghanistan half a dozen times, and on this last occasion, when he went through three layers of security, local guards were told not to search him.
Seven CIA employees, including the station chief and two men who were private contractors from the security company formerly known as Blackwater, died when he detonated his explosives.

The Outfit Formerly Known as Blackwater

Some of your employees are facing manslaughter charges. Your biggest customers just yanked your contracts. How do you repair your image and your reputation? Simple: change your name and cover your tracks.

The Outfit Formerly Known as Blackwater, the huge military contracting and consulting firm, made its bones and its less-than-salubrious name in Iraq. And now it wants to unmake its notoriety. It is changing its name to Xe (pronounced Zee). In a memo to employees, Blackwater/Xe president Gary Jackson says the switch "reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security".

[To providing what now, exactly? Cupcakes?]

CODED DATA

The image of Color C Code on a CD cover decodes off-line as a 40 second music clip.

Color Code Technologies Targets Network Operators

Color Construct Code enables the transmission of large amounts of data and does not require an internet connection to decode and display digital formats such as such as text, images, music and video. A password and/or expiration logic may also be encoded in each code.

The code can be printed onto paper and stickers thereby reducing the costs of printing information. The code is also suitable for storing data, securing documents, preventing forgery, and managing products. The technology is completely compatible with Symbian systems, the current standard operating system for smartphones with an 85% market share of the world’s handset manufacturers.

THEY'RE HERE

Respected scientist says aliens are among us

A leading astrophysicist who has worked on space missions claims that he and his colleagues are in contact with extraterrestrials who are "living among us." And they don't like what they see.

"We sent (the aliens) 30 questions about global problems," said Filipov, who was vague about how he actually conveyed the queries. "And now we have some answers." The "answers" came in the form of pictograms in crop circles.

He said the aliens have told him SETI doesn't work, owing to a confusion about communication through "magnetic fields."
They also said there is some truth in the 2012 predictions, having something to do with volcanoes in Mexico.
Further, more prosaic revelations include that the aliens are angry about global warming, disagree with in-vitro fertilization and don't like cosmetics. Apparently, Filipov's aliens are grumpy Republicans.

SOLAR NEXUS

FLASHBACK: (December 2008)

Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field

NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist.
Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms.
But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.
"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
"This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."

AGAINST THE TIDE

23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
(saharareporters.com)

Father warned US about plane bomb suspect's behaviour
The father of a Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day had voiced concerns to US officials about his son, it has emerged.The father, a top Nigerian banker, warned US authorities weeks ago about 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's extreme views.
Officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, told news agencies that Mr Abdulmutallab's name had been added to a security watch-list of more than half a million individuals, known as Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (Tide).

Homeland Stupidity
The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control,” said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean.
”TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to “horror stories” of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
"TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. “What’s the alternative?” Travers said. “I work under the assumption that we’re never going to have perfect information — fingerprints, DNA — on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I’m all ears.” — Washington Post.

SEA OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Wilkins went somewhere far distant from Sherman, who, at intervals, was supposed to "see" and describe the locale of where Wilkins was, what he was doing, and what was going on around him.

Sherman recorded his telepathic impressions three nights a week, and promptly mailed copies of them to a Mr. Samuel Emery, identified as a "resident of the City Club of New York," and to Dr. Gardner Murphy at Columbia University. Sherman’s "impressions" were therefore in good hands long before any confirmation of them could be achieved.

Sherman’s success rate and the specificity of many of his hits was extraordinary.
In his introduction to the Studies in Consciousness reissue of the book, renowned remote viewer Ingo Swann said he’d been “amazed and staggered” by Sherman’s accomplishment, which he originally stumbled upon in a used book bin in 1970.


THOUGHTS THROUGH SPACE, Sherman, Wilkins. First published by Creative Age Press, New York, in 1942. A revised paperback edition was later published by Fawcett Publications, New York, 1971.]

Real Story: Chapter 55

TIMES NARROW

Image credit: cguu.com.

Physicist Proposes Solution to Arrow-of-Time Paradox

Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics.

Loschmidt’s paradox:
1. Physics says universe is time-invariant. That is, laws still hold if time is reversed.
2. Second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases or is static but never decreases.

COP OUT

Eyewitness: How China sabotaged climate talks

"I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks in every corner of the world," he wrote in the The Guardian.
"The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful 'deal' so Western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.

[ CENSORED ]

Computer says no: Google slams filter

In a post on Google Australia's official blog, the company said the plan raised concerns about censorship.

"At Google we are concerned by the Government's plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst Western democracies," the post said.

"Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide."

While Google accepted there must be some limits on internet content, it condemned the Government's filtering approach as heavy-handed.

THE QUICKENING

Climate changing faster than expected: scientists

Twenty six international scientists have collated the most recent data and observations, and they have found that climate change is accelerating beyond expectations.

Most of the 26 scientists are authors of reports published by the IPCC. They have updated the panel's latest scientific projections and their observations show an acceleration of change.

According to their research, the Arctic may be ice-free by the summer of 2030 and sea levels could reach the upper limit of 2 metres by the turn of the century.

www.copenhagendiagnosis.org

THE QUICKENING

Antarctic icesheet losing mass

A new study has found the east Antarctic icesheet, which sits behind Australia's Casey Station, has lost billions of tonnes of ice in the past three years.

Researchers from the University of Texas have been studying the ocean-icesheet interaction in Antarctica for the past seven years. They have found that since 2006, the east Antarctic icesheet is losing more ice than it is gaining.

THOSE CAZY ALIENS

Tutu-wearing Alien Spotted in Winchester

A UK councillor has had an out-of-this-world experience with a ‘ballerina-like alien’

He says he saw the ballerina-like alien under the city's Guildhall clock five years ago but has only now come clean about his strange encounter.
'It was staggering – I am not usually lost for words but I was that day,' he said.
She was a humanoid walking with a penguin-like gait. 'She had very large oval eyes and was twirling her hands in a circular motion. She was laughing and seemed to be enjoying herself. She was human enough to get away with it,' he added.
And the intrigue doesn't end there. Mr Hicks, who has spent £400 perfecting an artist's impression of the alien, believes she is linked to covert US and British military operations at a nearby base.

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.