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".