The day the sky fell in

In the early fifth century, rampaging Goths swept through Italy. Inviolate for 1,100 years, Rome was sacked by the hordes in 410 AD. St Augustine's apologia, the City of God, set the tone for Christians for the next 16 centuries.
But the Rome of that era came close to suffering a far worse calamity. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump of cosmic detritus vaporised as it hit the ground. In doing so, it released energy equivalent to around 200 kilotonnes of TNT: around 15 times the power of the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in 1945.

Bush election drive to tap September 11 memories

The Republican party has scheduled its 2004 party convention unusually late in the year so that the climactic moment when President Bush's re-election campaign begins will nearly coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11 attack, according to a report yesterday.
The New York convention, in late August and early September next year, will mark the formal launch of the re-election campaign, but unofficially it has already started. With the war in Iraq barely over, the president has already begun holding rallies in key swing states.
Its central theme has already become clear: the conflict between Mr Bush's popularity as a wartime leader and the national ambivalence towards his domestic policies, a political chasm which the Democrats will seek to exploit.

Weapons of mass distraction: Breast-feeding in a time of war

Deborah Wolfe, a Canadian citizen who was just breast-feeding her son and changing his diaper while en route between Houston and Vancouver, says her "subversive" actions led to her being threatened with detainment, RCMP involvement and legal charges for terrorist action against a U.S. citizen in international airspace while on an American flight during a time of war.
She says a man got out of his seat, walked over to hers and stood staring at her. She says she approached him afterward and twice asked if he had a problem with her feeding her son.
"He marched past me and to the very back of the cabin to talk to the flight attendant," she wrote. "He told her, 'This woman just assaulted me.' ... He then explained that the asking of two questions by a 'foreign national' in international airspace made him feel the victim of terror and as such he wanted to file an assault charge."

Police Investigate Cattle Mutilations

Mike Benes, a Valparaiso farmer, made an eerie discovery in his field 10 days ago. Benes lost three cows and one calf, at a financial cost of around $6,000. But, according to Benes, the money doesn't bother him.
Benes said he is more disturbed by how they were killed and mutilated. According to Benes, some of the cattle's sexual organs were missing.
"Both the hindquarters of the calf was taken, deboned, and they left the pelvis and hipbone intact," Benes said.
Benes also said that a part of one of the cow's udder was cut off.

Where are they now?

225 thousand republican guards (vanished)
176 thousand regular army personnel (vanished)
100 thousand saddam fedayeen (vanished)
14 thousands of mojahideen. (Suicidally brave fighters)
Normal police (vanished)
Firefighters (vanished)
Prisoners........ (vanished)
POW's .... (Kuwaitits and Americans )
150 Fixed wing jet fighters...
All in less than 24 hours
These forces were not vanquished in combat, nor their weapons destroyed and/or captured. The enemy suddenly vanished into thin air.

Our military is still not claiming total victory. What is the strategy that called for these forces to simply disappear? Until we can account for these units, we must remain vigiliant.

Hail destroys 18 000 homes in China

Hailstones the size of eggs crashed into an eastern Chinese province, destroying 18?000 homes and injuring more than 100 people, said state press and local officials on Monday.
The hailstorm hit on Saturday afternoon in Zhejiang province and lasted for 10 minutes, said an official with the surname of Chen from the rescue section of the bureau of civil affairs in Wenling city.
"Forty-two villages from two townships were stricken," he said. "The hailstones were the size of eggs, some up to 45mm big.

Gene mutation behind mysteries of human evolution

By 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had evolved on the continent of Africa. For 50,000 years, they were confined there, and they behaved just like H. neanderthalensis then inhabiting parts of Europe and H. erectus living in Asia. Then their behavior changed dramatically - and anthropologists aren't entirely certain what happened.
Richard Klein, a professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford, has an explanation, albeit a controversial one: ''I think there was a biological change - a genetic mutation of some kind that promoted the fully modern ability to create and innovate.'' Klein told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver.

Researchers' discovery of electrostatic spin challenges century-old theory

In a discovery that is likely to impact fields as diverse as atomic physics, chemistry and nanotechnology, researchers have identified a new physical phenomenon, electrostatic rotation, that, in the absence of friction, leads to spin. Because the electric force is one of the fundamental forces of nature, this leap forward in understanding may help reveal how the smallest building blocks in nature react to form solids, liquids and gases that constitute the material world around us.

50 years on: global consortium spells out the 3 billion letters of the genome

Fifty years after the discovery of the structure of DNA, scientists from six countries announce today another landmark: they have sequenced the entire genetic code of a human being, to an accuracy of 99.999%.
Almost three years ago an international consortium funded by charities and governments, and a US private venture, simultaneously announced the completion of the "first draft" of the human genome.
It was likened at the time to the landing on the moon, the sonnets of Shakespeare and the invention of the wheel, but there was a problem: they had raced through the 3bn chemical letters of the code of life, leaving bits incomplete and regions strewn with errors.
The challenge was then to complete the entire text of a representative human, with an error rate of less than one in 100,000 letters, before April 25, the 50th anniversary of the publication of the double helix structure of DNA.

Possible michael moore dinner invite upsets white house officials

Fresh off his Bush-bashing speech at last month's Academy Awards, DirectorActivist Michael Moore may soon find his way in to the same room as President Bush -- at this year's White House Correspondents Dinner!
"We'd hope all invited guests remember it is a night to honor journalists covering the executive branch," a well-placed White House said.

UNIVERSAL JOINT

A Brief History of the Multiverse

Imagine you can play God and fiddle with the settings of the great cosmic machine.
Turn this knob and make electrons a bit heavier; twiddle that one and make gravitation a trifle weaker. What would be the effect?
The universe would look very different - so different, in fact, that there wouldn't be anyone around to see the result, because the existence of life depends rather critically on the actual settings that Mother Nature selected. Scientists have long puzzled over this rather contrived state of affairs. Why is nature so ingeniously, one might even say suspiciously, friendly to life?
What do the laws of physics care about life and consciousness that they should conspire to make a hospitable universe? It's almost as if a Grand Designer had it all figured out.
The fashionable scientific response to this cosmic conundrum is to invoke the so-called multiverse theory. The idea here is that what we have hitherto been calling "the universe" is nothing of the sort. It is but a small component within a vast assemblage of other universes that together make up a "multiverse."

Arab world dismayed at 'new colonialism'

The West may have watched the pictures of jubilant crowds in Baghdad with joy, but in the Arab world most people watched with dismay. Many turned their televisions off, unable to watch any more.
Many Arabs who opposed Saddam Hussein's regime saw in the television pictures not the toppling of a ruthless tyrant, but the conquest of Iraq by a foreign occupying army. The most telling moment came when American soldiers briefly draped a statue of President Saddam with a US flag. "This is a new colonialism," was one Palestinian's reaction.
It was a dichotomy that troubled Arabs across the Middle East. "The lesson should be clear for Arab regimes in other countries," one Palestinian journalist said. "There is a big distinction between the people and the regimes who control them with tyranny. The Iraqis understand that the Americans did not come as liberators but to take control of their oil."

Bush-Linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.
The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a ``completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center ``up to the day the buildings fell down."
It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.

Get ready to receive the Mark of the Beast

Money won't be around anymore in just a few years, according to trend watchers. And the same globalist taxers that are already trying to confiscate your hard-earned money can't wait for the cashless era to begin.
The cashless society now envisioned goes beyond that. It would involve a digital system of currency where people can exchange credits and debits by computer "just as they would pass a $20 bill from one wallet to another,” explained an article June 20 in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

CRG -- The CIA met Bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai

An article in the French daily Le Figaro confirms that Osama bin Laden underwent surgery in an American Hospital in Dubai in July.
During his stay in the hospital, he met with a CIA official. While on the World's "most wanted list", no attempt was made to arrest him during his two week stay in the hospital, shedding doubt on the Administration's resolve to track down Osama bin Laden.

Citizen's rights trampled by FBI

Americans are taught that the Constitution protects them against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and that their freedom and these constitutional liberties are what they are fighting for in Iraq and elsewhere, yet one of their citizens can be taken from his home or office and held without charge for weeks or months.

Maths gets into shape with superformula

For centuries scientists have sought to express natural forms in mathematical terms. One simple equation can generate a vast diversity of natural shapes, a Belgian biologist has discovered. The Superformula, as its creator Johan Gielis has christened it, produces everything from simple triangles and pentagons, to stars, spirals and petals.
"When I found the formula, all these beautiful shapes came rolling out of my computer," says Gielis, at University of Nijmegen, Holland. "It seemed too good to be true - I spent two years thinking 'What did I do wrong?' and 'How come no one else has discovered it?'" Having spoken to mathematicians, he reckons that he's found something new.
The Superformula is a modified version of the equation for a circle.

Controversial Proposal Would Boost Solar System's Planet Tally to 12

In the same week that the planetary community learned a mission to Pluto has been approved, a hot debate has re-ignited over whether the small world deserves planetary status at all.
This time the argument is fueled by a newly proposed definition for planets that would instantly boost the solar system's tally to 12 or more by including one large, round asteroid and at least two faraway and icy brethren of Pluto.

Jupiter's Moon Count Soars to 52 with Four New Discoveries

The tally of Jovian moons has soared to 52 with the discovery of four small moons added to eight that were previously revealed last week. The total may represent roughly half of all the giant planet's satellites larger than 0.62 miles (1 kilometer).

Twin prime number breakthrough

"It's a brand new technique that opens the door. A lot of the excitement is we don't know how far this thing is going to go. There are going to be a lot of applications, I think. It's an incredible breakthrough."
Dan Goldston's paper is called Small Gaps Between Primes, and co-authored with Cem Yildirim. It places mathematicians closer to the tantalizing goal of identifying the frequency and location of twin primes.

Why of course the people don't want war ...

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All?you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
-- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off'

An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family.
The children's father, who was also in the van, said US soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told them to "be safe", and they believed that meant getting out of their village to Karbala.
Bakhat Hassan - who lost his daughters, aged two and five, his three-year-old son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces aged 12 and 15, in the incident - said US soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through.

Bugger the ten commandments, let's read between the lines

When the admistration keeps saying that they have "credible intelligence" that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction...you really have to wonder exactly how they got that intelligence.
Among the hundreds of meetings and briefings that took place in the Pentagons bowels in the months leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, one earned the fleeting disdain of The New York Times, whose columnist, Bill Keller, sniffed that "several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time" had been "consumed [by a writer] who claims -- I am not making this up -- that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Emperor George and his thoroughly un-American war

Until now. George Bush has cast off the restraint which held back America's 42 previous presidents - including his father. Now he is seeking, as an unashamed objective, to get into the empire business, aiming to rule a post-Saddam Iraq directly through an American governor-general, the retired soldier Jay Garner. As the Guardian reported yesterday, Washington's plan for Baghdad consists of 23 ministries - each one to be headed by an American. This is a form of foreign rule so direct we have not seen its like since the last days of the British empire. It represents a break with everything America has long believed in.

Verichip's ID technology described

Made by Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), the VeriChip stores six lines
of text and is slightly larger than a grain of rice. It emits a 125-kHz
radio frequency signal that can be picked up by a special scanner up to
four feet away.
The company initially plans to market the chip in the United States as a
medical device that would allow hospital workers to simply scan a
patient's body in an emergency situation to access their health record.

ID chips in your clothes

A trend that could make you think twice before buying new clothes. Tiny specks capable of tracking virtually every single item are now being imbedded by manufacturers. This Orwellian technology, called RFID (radio frequency ID) will now be used by Italian clothing designer Benetton in the form of trackable chips woven into it's apparel. The chips, which function as itty bitty radio transmitters will be inserted when the clothes are made and will remain intact throughout the life of the garment. According to chip manufacturer Philips Electronics, the devices will be "imperceptible" to the wearer.

You didn't fire a warning shot soon enough, says US captain

A journalist's account of the killing of a car full of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers differs widely from the official military version, says The Guardian's Brian Whitaker. The invasion forces suffered another self-inflicted disaster in the battle for hearts and minds yesterday when soldiers from the US 3rd infantry division shot dead Iraqi seven women and children.

Volunteers stream into Iraq to help oust coalition

Despite American warnings, in the last few days Damascus has expedited the passage of volunteers wishing to join the Iraqis in their war against the Americans, Haaretz said Tuesday in an exclusive report, according to which thousands of volunteer, most of them Syrians, are thronging to the Mosul and Kirkuk regions in north Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Damascus of transferring weapons to Iraq, but did not mention the volunteers. On Monday the United States warned Syria and Iran again not to cooperate with terrorism and with Saddam Hussein's regime.