http://mysteryskull.tripod.com/
In November 2001 a mysterious skull was found in Rodopi Mountain, Bulgaria. It has the size of a baby's head. A disk made of an unknown metal was found nearby the skull too. Scientists explored the skull and everyone of them was unable to identify it. There are possibilities that the skull is alien's, mutant's or artificial. Generally is this really a skull or another part of the skeleton? Here is what is certain: there isn't and there wasn't any normal animal with such a skull or part of the skeleton ever on the Earth.
Does a vague resemblance of a sheep's shankbone to the "Predator" constitute proof of alien life?
By Perseus Echeminada
Publish Date: [Sunday, February 24, 2002]
Ancient skulls bearing a single eyeball socket found in limestone caves have baffled tribal folk in the hinterlands of Bohol, Bukidnon and Agusan, reports said.
The existence of the skulls, which resemble those of the cyclops, a race of giants in Greek mythology with a single eye in the middle of the forehead, has triggered speculations that one-eyed ancient settlers once roamed the country’s southern islands.
The strange skulls were reportedly found in limestone caves in the hinterlands of Bohol, at Mt. Palaupau in Sumilao, Bukidnon, and in some parts of Agusan.
Tribal folklore has it that giants once roamed the plains of Central and Northern Mindanao, the most popular of whom, according to Bukidnon legend, was "Agyo" who fought against the first Spanish conquistadores.
Bukidnon’s tribal folk are reportedly keeping skeletal remains which they believe to be Agyo’s as an object of worship in a sacred cave.
Reports about the strange skulls had prompted archeologists of the National Museum to launch an excavation in Bohol and they, indeed, found one such skull.
Archeologist Rey Santiago said intensive study on the skull showed it belonged to an ancient settler.
He, however, theorized that limestone in caves where the "cyclops skulls" were discovered could have triggered a chemical reaction in the skeletal part, creating a new eyeball socket.
"Human bones and limestone have similar (composition)," he said.
Despite Santiago’s explanation though, tribal folklore maintain there were two races of giants in ancient times — the kapre who were associated with evil, and the one-eyed giants whom early settlers regarded as their heroes.
He's got his mother's eyes.
For the first time ever, researchers have gotten a brief look at living babies of the deep sea's most elusive known creature — the giant squid.
Though numerous groups have attempted the feat, an adult giant squid, Architeuthis dux , which can grow as long as a city bus, has never been seen alive, though countless dead ones have come up in fishing nets.
Steve O'Shea of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, in Wellington, decided to take a novel approach and hunt for baby, or juvenile giant squid. His team's efforts are chronicled in the upcoming documentary "Chasing Giants: On the Trail of the Giant Squid," which airs on the Discovery Channel March 11.
When their search for juvenile giant squid began, they used trawl nets in what seemed the most logical place, the deep ocean. But they found only one squid and it died quickly.
Then, the team mounted a new expedition early last year that focused on surface waters closer to New Zealand's shore. They hit a jackpot of 14 juvenile giant squid, some of which they were able to keep alive and observe in tanks onboard their ship.
Unfortunately, all had died by the time the ship reached port, but DNA analyses proved that the animals were in fact baby giant squid.
The search for an actual "documentary of giant squid" continues.
Friday March 1, 2002
The Guardian
The disfigured skyline of Manhattan will recover some of its lost dignity later this month when two vast beams of light fill the hole once occupied by the World Trade Centre - but only until 11pm each night, and not when the weather is foggy.
New York's mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has indicated he will approve the plan to project two 50ft-wide sets of searchlights miles into the night sky for 32 days from March 11, six months after the twin towers were destroyed.
"It would appear that it will be built," the mayor said after meeting six groups representing the relatives of those who died on September 11.
The Battery Park city authority, which owns the proposed site adjacent to Ground Zero, is expected to give the final approval in the coming days.
Gustavo Bonevardi, one of the architects who conceived the memorial, said he hoped that the project, Tribute In Light, might begin to fill the void in the city's identity.
"After spending that day just staring at the space where the buildings were, it was as if there was an after-image imprinted on your retina, and there's something of that in the towers of light," he said.
If the air were free of impurities and the weather never cloudy, the beams would barely be visible, he explained. Fortunately, in this context at least, the air in lower Manhattan is emphatically impure.
"It will change with the weather, appearing one way with clouds, one way when it's more humid," said Mr Bonevardi. "The light will seem to be alive,and I think that will make it more beautiful."
Mr Bloomberg said a strict lights-out rule would be enforced from 11pm, and that "when there's fog and very low clouds, it will be turned off, because the fusion of lights will keep everybody awake".
The federal aviation authority is demanding that the organisers of the memorial employ somebody to switch off the towers of light if pilots complain about the glare.
Isn't this going to confuse Batman?
Activated by White House to Serve in Case of Terrorist Strike
WASHINGTON (March 1) - A ''shadow government'' consisting of 75 or more senior officials has been living and working secretly outside Washington since Sept. 11 in case the nation's capital is crippled by terrorist attack, a senior government official says.
Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks and has evolved over time, said the official, who spoke Thursday night only on condition of anonymity.
The shadow government plan was activated out of heightened fears that the al-Qaida terrorist network might obtain a portable nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence has no specific knowledge of such a weapon, but the risk was great enough to warrant the activation of a plan, the official said.
Under the classified ''Continuity of Operations Plan,'' which was first reported by The Washington Post in its Friday editions, high-ranking officials representing their departments have begun rotating in and out of the assignment at one of two fortified locations along the East Coast.
The Post said the first rotations were made in late October or early November, a fact confirmed by a senior government official late Thursday.
Officials who are activated for the duty live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families, according to the Post. The shadow government has sent home most of the first wave of deployed personnel, replacing them most commonly at 90-day intervals.
A government official who spoke to The Associated Press said the groups usually number 70 to 150 people, depending on the level of threat detected by U.S. intelligence. He said President Bush does not foresee ever needing to turn over government functions to the secret operation, but believed it was prudent to implement the long-standing plan in light of the gathering war on terrorism and persistent threats of future attacks.
The team, drawn from every Cabinet department and some independent agencies, would seek to prevent the collapse of essential government functions in the event of a disabling blow to Washington, the official said.
The underground government would try to contain disruptions of the nation's food and water supplies, transportation links, energy and telecommunications networks, public health and civil order, the Post reported. Later, it would begin to reconstitute the government.
The government-in-waiting is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.
As next in line to power behind Bush, he would need help running the government in a worst-case scenario
''We take this issue extraordinarily seriously, and are committed to doing as thorough a job as possible to ensure the ongoing operations of the federal government,'' Joseph W. Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff, told the Post, though he declined to discuss details. ''In the case of the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the federal government would be able to do its job and continue to provide key services and respond.''
According to the Post, the backup government consists generally of officials from top career ranks, from GS-14 and GS-15 to members of the Senior Executive Service. The White House is represented by a ''senior-level presence,'' one official said, but well below such Cabinet-ranked advisers as Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Many departments, including Justice and Treasury, have completed plans to delegate statutory powers to officials who would not normally exercise them, the Post said. Others do not need to make such legal transfers, or are holding them in reserve.
The report said civilians deployed for the operation are not allowed to take their families and may not tell anyone where they are going or why.
The two sites of the shadow government make use of local geological features to render them highly secure, the Post said. They are well stocked with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies, and are capable of generating their own power.
Cheney: forefather of the Morlocks?
By Associated Press, 2/28/2002 06:23
KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) A Montana militia organization was planning to assassinate as many judges, prosecutors and police officers as possible, amassing a weapons cache that included 30,000 rounds of ammunition, a targeted sheriff said.
''It all certainly supports the theory that there was going to be big trouble,'' Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont said Wednesday. ''The last I heard, it didn't take 30,000 rounds of ammo to kill a turkey.''
He said the group, which called itself ''Project Seven,'' hoped to kill enough officials to force the state to call in the National Guard. The militia then hoped to kill enough National Guard troops to catch the federal government's attention, beginning an unchecked escalation, Dupont said.
Among the items in the group's arsenal were fully automatic weapons, survival equipment, booby traps, body armor and explosives materials, Dupont said. The militia group also collected ''intelligence files'' on the officials and their families, Dupont said.
Dupont said charges were expected, though it was unclear how many people belong to the organization.
He said the group was headed by 38-year-old Dave Burgert, who was arrested earlier this month after an armed standoff that lasted nearly seven hours.
Burgert had been awaiting trial on charges he assaulted a police officer in January 2001. He also faced charges of obstructing a police officer in a November 2001 incident.
Dupont said Burgert faked his own death and disappeared as a judge was ordering he be taken off house arrest and placed in jail. He was nabbed after an informant member of Project Seven led officers to the home of Tracy Brockway, where Burgert was hiding out.
Burgert and Brockway remain jailed.
Investigators said a search of property the two were sharing turned up ''hit lists'' containing the names of local law officers, a prosecutor and judges. The list included addresses, phone numbers and information on spouses and children. Dupont said he was among those on the list.
The group has circulated a ''wanted poster'' for the informant, but the man is safe and an investigation is under way by national law enforcement agencies, Dupont said.
Brockway, 32, is charged with obstruction of justice for harboring Burgert. She also is suspected of using her job as a cleaning woman at the Whitefish Police Department to gather information about officers and their families.
The militia's name refers to Flathead County license plates, which all begin with the number seven. A similar cell, called Project 56, is believed to be operating in adjacent Lincoln County.
Move to Rival From CBS Could Displace Ted Koppel And 'Nightline'
COOLUM, Australia (Reuters) - Prince Philip, famous for his gaffes, has stumbled during the queen's tour of Australia when he asked an Aborigine whether tribes still threw spears at each other.
During a visit to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Park in Cairns on the northern Queensland coast, Prince Philip met the leaders of several Aboriginal tribes on Friday.
"When he came to my dad, dad was the elder representing the Djabugay elders... he asked dad if he still threw spears at them (the other tribes)," park founder William Brim told reporters after the royal visit.
Australia's Aborigines are nomadic people and not renowned for tribal wars, but those few that continue to live a traditional life in the outback continue to use spears to inflict tribal punishment.
Brim said he and his father were not offended by Prince Philip's remark, and his father joked back to the Duke of Edinburgh that yes, Aborigines did throw spears.
"I'd call (the question) naive," Brim said. "To me he was just a bit of a larrikin (joker). Just observing him during the whole time down at the park, he seemed like a guy that would get on with anybody," Brim said.
Over the years, Prince Philip has offended a range of nationalities and ethnic groups with his off the cuff remarks.
The queen will open the biennial Commonwealth leaders summit at a luxury resort at Coolum on Saturday.
BRISBANE, March 1 AAP|Published: Saturday March 2, 12:57 AM
Security guards forcibly removed a heckler from a Brisbane charity dinner as it was being addressed by former United States president Bill Clinton tonight.
The man, a paid guest at the black tie dinner, was carried out of the function attended by 700 people at the Sheraton Hotel after a verbal clash with Mr Clinton.
Seven minutes into Mr Clinton's speech, the man stood up and began objecting to the former president's spin on the war against terrorism.
"There are two ways for this whole terrorist movement ... to succeed," Mr Clinton said.
"One is they can just win. They can whip us militarily. That's not going to happen.
"No terrorist movement in history has ever succeeded and this one won't."
But the man then rose to his feet and loudly reminded the 42nd US president of the Vietnam War.
"Hang on, North Vietnam beat you. They shot you down," he said.
Apparently unfazed by the interjections, Mr Clinton pointed out that the North Vietnamese had the fifth biggest Army in the world.
"The Viet Cong were the terrorists," he said.
"There's lots of terrorism associated with military campaigns but if they hadn't had an army they wouldn't have won."
As the heckling continued and other members of the guest list told the man to "sit down and shut up", Mr Clinton invited him to address the dinner in his place.
"I'd be happy for you to give this speech. I've been talking every night. I'm tired," he said.
Security guards moved in to take the heckler away, but Mr Clinton urged them to let him stay.
"Be nice to him. Listen, most of these things are highly predictable. Don't throw him out," Mr Clinton said.
"Let him sit down. Just sit down and have a good time. Relax, chill out."
But as the interjections continued, a group of security guards ended up carrying the man out.
Mr Clinton then continued: "Where was I?
"(Osama) Bin Laden is not going to win a military victory over America, over Australia, over anybody else - if we all stay sober."
If he gave me his paycheck i'd be happy to speak.
March 01, 2002
TONY BLAIR began preparing Britain for the second phase of the war on terrorism yesterday when he said that Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction was a threat to world stability.
In a heightening of the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein Mr Blair virtually lined himself up behind President Bush’s portrayal of Iraq as part of an “axis of evil”. “It is an issue that those who are engaged in spreading weapons of mass destruction are engaged in an evil trade and it is important that we make sure that we take action in respect of it,” he told Australia’s ABC Television shortly before leaving for the Commonwealth summit in Australia yesterday.
Mr Blair, who also spoke to Mr Bush on the telephone yesterday, will travel to Washington in April to see the President for what is increasingly being seen as a war summit.
Rumors of Blair seen carrying Bush's books denied.
2-28-2
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Big poultry producers have flocked quickly this month to rally behind the cause of food safety by banning use of an antibiotic for chickens and turkeys amid rising consumer concerns that it may harm humans.
Perdue Inc., the fifth-biggest U.S. poultry producer, this week became the third top U.S. poultry firm to announce it has stopped using the antibiotic fluoroquinolone, adopting a "zero tolerance" policy toward it.
The move follows similar action taken last week first by top grower Tyson Foods and the second-largest processor, Gold Kist Inc.
All three poultry companies said they each had greatly reduced the antibiotic's use over the past few years and that the new policy was a precaution to allay consumer concerns.
Livestock producers have long used antibiotics to prevent contagious diseases in food animals that are more and more raised in confined spaces.
The concern is that since fluoroquinolone is also used to treat human illnesses, its use in food animals is suspected of causing resistant bacteria that can be transferred to humans, medical sources said.
That's very nice of them to just go and do it off their own bat.
2-28-2
WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - Most "nontherapeutic" use in livestock of antibiotics commonly prescribed to humans would be banned under a bill introduced by US House Democrats Wednesday.
The "Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act of 2002" would phase out over 2 years the use of eight classes of drugs now commonly employed to promote growth and development in farm animals.
Oh.
(earthlink.net)
3-1-02
New evidence linking the owner of the Venice Florida flight school which trained Mohamed Atta to the Central Intelligence Agency surfaced earlier this month.
The new evidence adds to existing indications that Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre's flight training in this country was part of a so-far unacknowledged U.S. government intelligence operation which had ultimately tragic consequences for thousands of civilians on September 11th.
Far from merely being negligent or asleep at the switch-the thrust so far of allegations expected to be aired at joint Senate and House Select Committee hearings next month-the accumulating evidence suggests the CIA was not just aware of the thousands of Arab student pilots who began pouring into this country several years ago to attend flight training, but was running the operation, for still-unexplained reasons.
During a controversy over the awarding of a bid for an aviation maintenance facility in Lynchburg, Virginia, what had begun as a purely local spat took on national importance when it unearthed connections between Rudi Dekkers-the Dutch national whose Huffman Aviation trained both of the pilots at the controls of the airliners which crashed into the World Trade Center-and the CIA.
"Good-by Magic Dutch Boy; Hello Jerry Falwell"
The CIA's links to Dekkers surfaced when an unknown company called Britannia Aviation was mysteriously awarded a five-year contract to run a large regional maintenance facility at the Lynchburg Virginia Regional Airport.
At the time of the award virtually nothing was known about Britannia except that the company worked out of a hangar at Rudi Dekker's Huffman Aviation at the Venice, Florida airport.
But when Britannia was chosen over a respected and successful Lynchburg company boasting a multi-million dollar balance sheet and more than 40 employees, aviation executives there began voicing concerns to reporters at the local newspaper...
"There was some sentiment that there might be something suspicious about Britannia Aviation," stated business reporter Chris Flores of the Lynchburg News-Advance. "There was a clear feeling that nobody knew who these guys were, or where they were coming from."
The suspicion deepened when it was discovered that Britannia Aviation is a company with virtually no assets, employees, or corporate history. Moreover, the company did not even possess the necessary FAA license to perform the aircraft maintenance services for which it had just been contracted by the city of Lynchburg.
At a Lynchburg City Council hearing on the dispute there were vocal objections from observers baffled as to why a company with virtually no qualifications was being awarded a contract to take over a large regional maintenance facility designed for major carriers like Delta and USAir Express.
"It was as if someone with a learner's permit from the DMV got picked to drive Richard Petty's car at Daytona," explained one local aviation executive and NASCAR fan.
"It made absolutely no business sense that anyone could see."
"Be True to Your School."
When Britannia Aviation's financial statements were released after prodding by the local aviation community they revealed Britannia to be a "company" worth less than $750.
Paul Marten, a British aircraft mechanic who was the Britannia executive in attendance, rose to say it wasn't true. Britannia's assets, he was sure, amounted to more than $750, though how much more was a question he left unanswered.
A Lynchburg city official attempted to wave aside objections that Britannia was insolvent with a joke. "At least they have more on their balance sheet than Enron," said Lynchburg City Councilman Robert Garber.
Trying to save further embarrassment, Britannia executive Marten reassured those in attendance that at Huffman's hangar at the Venice Airport they had for some time been successfully providing aviation maintenance services for Caribe Air, a Caribbean carrier.
And that is how the world learned that under Rudi Dekker's FAA license Paul Marten's little dummy front company worked for a notorious CIA proprietary air carrier which, even by the standards of a CIA proprietary, has had a particularly checkered past.
Caribe Air's history includes 'blemishes' like having its aircraft seized by federal officials at the infamous Mena Arkansas airport a decade ago, after the company was accused by government prosecutors of having used as many as 20 planes to ship drugs worth billions of dollars into this country.
"What a coincidence, eh?"
Ironically, the company also made headlines a dozen years ago in a scandal in which one of the principals, Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, was reportedly killed just this past weekend.
A Caribe Air C130 had been shot down over Angola with the loss of everyone aboard, including a US Congressman's nephew. The plane was on a mission for the Angolan government, it was discovered, laden with a cargo of whiskey and cigarettes.
Observers at the time had noted wryly that, while the CIA had for years been covertly supporting the other side in the Angolan conflict, Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebels, it now appeared to be playing both ends against the middle.
At least when it came to planeloads of swag.
Though the Congressman with a dead nephew was not amused, the matter was quickly dropped.
Curiously enough, Caribe Air is today controlled by an offshore bank located on the Caribbean island of Dominica, Banc Caribe, a private bank that may be being investigated currently by authorities pursuing the names involved in Enron's secret offshore partnerships, many of which have the name "Caribe" in their title.
When four offshore bankers were arrested by United States law enforcement agencies in November and charged with money laundering, Banc Caribe Ltd., of Dominica was named in one of the affidavits filed.
This is no doubt merely the sheerest of coincidences.
When details of the Lynchburg controversy first reached Venice aviation executives they professed amazement. "No one here had ever heard of Britannia Aviation before," one told us. "And this is a very small airport."
After our inquiry he called a DEA source of his at the airport, this aviation executive told us, to ask what he knew about Britannia Aviation.
"This guy got all excited as soon as I asked," this executive stated. "He immediately wanted to know why I was so interested in Britannia. Finally he reluctantly told me that Britannia had a 'green light' from the DEA at the Venice Airport, whatever that means. He also said the local Venice Police Department (which has mounted round-the-clock patrols at the Airport since Sept.11) had been warned to leave them alone."
Paul Martens had no comment on the report when we dropped in on him at his office in a Huffman Aviation hangar at the Venice Airport. He was just an honest British businessman, he told us. He had ties to Lynchburg Virginia. He had met his wife there, while she was a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
Her father was a pastor for the Reverend Falwell.
"Jerry Falwell got bailed out in the early '90's by a Lynchburg businessman whose son is married to Billy Graham's daughter," a Lynchburg observer told us. "Since then he runs a missionary service called World Help, which flies all over the world."
Many of the flight trainers who had trained the Arab terrorist pilots had also flown missions out of the Venice and Sarasota Florida Airports for such Christian missionary services as televangelist Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing.
It was "Islamic fundamentalist" Osama bin laden who cloaked his covert activities under the cover of religious charities. Were we now discovering that our own government intelligence agencies used the same ruse?
What was going on here?
Christian-linked or not, why did a transparent dummy front company like Paul Marten's Britannia Aviation have a 'green light' from the DEA?
A green light for what?
STOP PRESS: Kevin Bacon "Linked" to Osama, CIA and "D.A.R.Y.L."
(WorldNetDaily.com via Rense.com)
2-28-2
WASHINGTON - An internal Federal Aviation Administration memo summarizing the Sept. 11 hijackings says a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11 was shot to death by a single bullet, WorldNetDaily has learned.
The FAA claims the memo, time-stamped Sept. 11 at 5:30 p.m., was written in error.
"It was a first draft," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown in a phone interview today. "There was no gun.
" She said a final draft of the executive summary, received by FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, does not include the account of a gun being fired aboard the plane, which slammed into the first World Trade Center tower not long after departing Boston.
Brown refused to release the final draft, however, arguing it is "protected information.
" WorldNetDaily has obtained a copy of the first draft of the memo, which can be
"The American Airlines FAA Principal Security Inspector (PSI) was notified by Suzanne Clark of American Airlines Corporate Headquarters, that an on board flight attendant contacted American Airlines Operations Center and informed that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B at 9:20 a.m.
"The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al Suqami. One bullet was reported to have been fired."
A 'first draft'? Wot, are we writing a script here?
More than 6 million shipping containers arrive here at Wando Welch yards in Charleston and other U.S. ports annually. Only 2% are inspected. The rest remain sealed as they are shipped throughout the country. It would be easy, some fear, to take a container, stuff it with explosives, a chemical weapon or a nuclear device and inject it into the nation's economic bloodstream.
Suppose, he wrote, Osama bin Laden loaded a biological weapon into a container and shipped it through foreign ports to the USA. The container, unnoticed in the day-to-day bustle of trade, could then be put on a rail car at Long Beach destined for Newark, N.J. Somewhere along the 2,800-mile route, it is detonated.
As bad as the destruction such an attack might cause, the chaos that would follow could devastate the nation's economy.
The nation's shipping system could shut down, as airports did after Sept. 11. ''The economic damage would be incalculable,'' Flynn says. ''It would accomplish what a terrorist group wants to do, which is to disrupt this country's economic structure.''
3-1-02
STANFORD, CALIF. - A "silent earthquake" in Hawaii caused a 190-square-kilometre slab of the Kilauea Volcano to slip nearly 9 centimetres into the sea.
A GPS device measures "silent earthquakes" in HawaiiAnd no one noticed.
No one, that is, except American researchers using global positioning system (GPS) devices to measure the slow earth movements.
Geophysicists with the U.S. Geological Survey and Stanford University recorded the silent earthquake on Kilauea's southern flank in November 2000.
The earthquake measured 5.7 on the Richter scale, but moved so slowly the ground didn't shake.
A mass of earth 19 by 10 kilometres in area, and eight kilometers thick, slid down the volcano about nine centimetres over a 36-hour period.
The researchers said a tropical storm that dumped a metre of rain on the Big Island of Hawaii may have triggered the slide.
The authors of the study, which appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, said their work could be used to model how a much faster massive land slide could occur.
In an article accompanying the study, geophysicist Steven N. Ward of the University of California at Santa Cruz said a land mass that size suddenly collapsing into the ocean would cause a massive tsunami that would threaten coastal areas in California, Chile and Australia.
A tsunami, or seismic sea wave, can travel up to 800 km/h on the open ocean and can build up to 20 metres high in shallow water.
But the sudden collapse of a volcano such as this occurs only about once every 10,000 years, Ward said.
The last such collapse in Hawaii occurred roughly 200,000 years ago.
Mon Feb 25,10:08 PM ET
WOLLONGONG, Australia (Reuters) - One day, a giant wave traveling at 125 mph across open water could crash into Sydney harbor, wipe out the beaches of California or plough across the golf courses of northeast Scotland.
Mega-tsunamis have happened with greater frequency than modern science would like to believe, and no coastline in the world is safe, says Canadian geologist-geographer Edward Bryant.
He said he had found signs of giant waves sweeping over 425 feet high headlands in southeast Australia, roaring down the U.S. West Coast and carving into the bedrock of the Scottish coastline north of Edinburgh.
"I believe St. Andrews golf course is a tsunami deposit," Bryant, head of geosciences at Wollongong University south of Sydney, told Reuters.
Over the past 2,000 years, tsunamis have officially killed 462,597 people in the Pacific region alone, with the largest toll recorded in the Japanese islands.
Of the top recorded events, the Lisbon earthquake (news - web sites) of 1755 is said to have triggered a 15-meter high wave that destroyed the port of Lisbon and caused widespread destruction in southwest Spain, western Morocco and across the Atlantic in the Caribbean.
Modern science blames the killer waves on earthquakes (news - web sites) and most countries believe they are immune.
But in his book, "Tsunamis -- The Underrated Hazard," Bryant argues that submarine landslides, underwater volcanoes and even the potentially catastrophic scenario of a meteorite impact must also be taken into account when evaluating tsunami risk.
That means a destructive tsunami moving at 250 meters per second in deep water, 85 meters per second across continental shelves and at 10 meters per second at shore could strike an unprotected coastal metropolis anywhere, killing thousands.
GEOLOGICAL DABBLER TO CATASTROPHIST
In 1989, Bryant was dabbling into the coastal evolution of rock platforms and sand barriers along the New South Wales coastline of eastern Australia when he noticed something strange.
Giant boulders, some the size of boxcars and weighing almost 100 tons, were jammed 33 meters above sea level into a crevice at the top of a rock platform sheltered from storm waves.
Further field work found gravel dunes on a 130-meter-high headland and other massive boulders more than 100 meters inland. Bryant then examined bedrock that had been savagely eroded and found that headlands carved into inverted toothbrushes, where a gap had been roughly gouged in the middle, existed from Cairns in the far northeast to Victoria state in the south.
This could not be explained by normal wave action or storms.
"But a tsunami could do this," Bryant said.
"From being a trendy process geomorphologist wrapped in the ambience of the 1960s, I had descended into the abyss of catastrophism," Bryant writes in his book.
Similar toothbrush headlands exist in northeast Scotland and gravel has been dumped up to 30 km inland in Western Australia.
To the scorn of many modern scientists, Bryant says it is "naive" to base what we know about tsunamis simply on documented history.
In North America and Australia, official history only goes back as far as white colonization. We may be ignoring the legends of the Indians of North America, the Aborigines of Australia or the Maoris of New Zealand at our peril, he said.
ORAL LEGENDS
"We ignore all oral record and it's probably a significant oversight," Bryant told Reuters.
One Aboriginal tale tells how one of the four pillars holding up the sky collapsed in the east and the sea also fell in.
The Maoris of New Zealand have long spoken of a time of fire that burned the land to a crisp.
A legend told by the Kwenaitchechat people of the U.S. Pacific Northwest tells of a great shaking of the earth that led to the sea receding and then coming back in a great wall.
Using dating techniques, Bryant argues there is evidence that eastern Australia was struck by a mega-tsunami around 1500, which would coincide with the Aboriginal tale of a "great white wave."
The Aboriginal accounts of fire in the sky mean a comet crashing into the South Tasman Sea could have been responsible.
Carbon dating indicates a great fire ravaged New Zealand at the same time, giving further weight to the theory of a comet.
And Bryant said Japanese researchers probing past tsunamis had found evidence of a massive earthquake off Oregon in January 1700 that would coincide with the Indian tales, and with a Pacific seismic zone where the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate grinds under the North American plate in a process called subduction.
"We now know the Oregon subduction zone goes every 300 years. 17002002?" he wonders with raised eyebrows.
Bryant's suspicions of meteor and comet impacts a relatively short time ago rile many in the scientific community who believe the chances of Earth colliding with space debris are tiny.
But Bryant says computer modeling suggests a meteor would not have to be a "dinosaur killer" to cause a mega-tsunami. A chunk 100 meters in diameter moving at 20 meters per second could theoretically produce a tsunami that is 27 meters high at source.
SUBMARINE LANDSLIDES
Focusing on extreme scenarios such as meteorite impacts may also underestimate the risk of a mega-tsunami.
Contentiously, Bryant argues that underwater landslides, which can involve thousands of cubic km (miles) of material, may have the power alone to generate the giant waves.
A 1998 earthquake off northwest Papua New Guinea has been blamed for a tsunami that killed around 2,000 people near Aitape.
But according to conventional scientific wisdom, the 7.1 magnitude was too small to be responsible for the 15-meter wave that at some points swept 500 meters inland.
Bryant says a submarine landslide was the likely villain.
Another landslide-induced tsunami may have been responsible for shaping the Scottish coastline, including the dunes of St. Andrews, 7,000 years ago.
Scientists have found indications of a large submarine landslide at Storegga off the east coast of Norway that Bryant says could have sent a wave originally measuring 8-12 meters roaring into the North Sea and across the Atlantic.
Worryingly, he says geologists at the University of Sydney have recently mapped around 170 submarine landslide zones off Sydney, Australia's largest city with four million inhabitants.
What's more, he has found signs that tsunamis have struck the New South Wales coast with alarming regularity every 500 years.
If you take the risk seriously, it does not take much to save human life from tsunamis.
Chile, Japan and Hawaii already have warning systems and evacuation drills. Seabed sensors can send tsunami warnings via satellite triggering bells, alarms and telephones within minutes.
"The only guarantee or prediction is that they will happen again, sometime soon, on a coastline near you," Bryant concludes.
"Tsunami are very much an underrated, widespread hazard. Any coast is at risk."
Ikeya-Zhang (C/2002 C1) was discovered Feb. 1 by famed Japanese astronomer Kaoru Ikeya (the same co-discoverer of the famous 1965 comet Ikeya-Seki) and Chinese astronomer Daqing Zhang. This comet is the first in a long while to pique the interest of astronomers worldwide because, since its initial discovery, Ikeya-Zhang has brightened immensely, signifying that its nucleus is richer in gases than dust.
Additionally, calculations made with the first few bits of data suggest that earthlings might have seen this comet before. Initial calculations place this comet's orbit in a path similar to comets that passed Earth in 1532 and 1661, but more detailed calculations place it in line with the comet of 1532. Further study will determine whether comet Ikeya-Zhang and the "famed" comet of 1532 are one in the same.
The 1532 comet's claim to fame is that it might have been the brilliant daytime comet seen by the Aztecs and Incas just as the Spaniards arrived in the New World. Such astronomical events were considered ominous, and at the time it was seen as a herald to the collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires.
A theory has been proposed which accurately predicts the orbits of our solar planets as well as the orbits of planets (and tiny stars) in nearby star systems. This theory postulates that our solar system was formed with the aid of a solar companion star which was named Vulcan by the ancients. A dark body which could be Vulcan has been detected by the IRAS satellite. The IRAS measurements and data from other sources have been utilized to determine an orbit and mass for Vulcan. Vulcan is estimated to orbit the Sun with a period slightly more than 5000 years and to have a mass 4.7% that of the Sun. The orbit is highly eccentric and inclined at about 49 deg. to the ecliptic plane. Vulcan pasted aphelion around 1969 to 1971, about 453 AU distant from the Sun.
It is postulated that comets drawn from the Oort cloud, Vulcan's rings or elsewhere could be orbiting in trajectories related to Vulcan's orbit. These comets, possibly composed of toxic compounds, could occasionally pass through the Earth's orbit with potentially disastrous consequences. Noah's biblical flood was likely caused by one of these comets striking Earth. It is suspected that a comet swarm may leave the vicinity of Vulcan when it is near aphelion and, on the second pass, a few may collide with Earth as they approach the Sun. The orbit period of the comets is estimated to be about two thirds that of Vulcan. Accordingly, the comet which may have caused Noah's flood left the vicinity of Vulcan at least two Vulcan orbit periods ago. It missed the Earth on its first pass but struck it on the second (around 3000 B.C.). Recent cometary activity (e.g. those striking Jupiter) may herald the beginning of an unprecedented and dangerous celestial period. The period of highest risk is between now and 2200 A.D. (earlier dates more likely). Only a concerted effort focused on detection and neutralization can avoid an impending environmental catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Who'd have thought he'd be the last to go? The number 1 funny man of all time? Woefully unknown in the US and Burundi.
"The Seven Daughters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes
From Wales to the South Pacific, we're all descended from seven prehistoric women, according to revolutionary new genetic discoveries.
Aug. 6, 2001 | Teri Tupuaki and Gwyneth Roberts are related, according to Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford University's Institute of Molecular Medicine. Initially, this may not sound noteworthy, but Tupuaki is a fisherman in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific, while Roberts serves the school lunches in a small town in Wales. Also, Sykes says their common ancestor was a woman who lived about 140,000 years ago somewhere in Africa. Even that is not so startling, in scientific terms; what is startling is that the distant but detectable genetic relationship between Tupuaki and Roberts is the most distant one that Sykes' research into mitochondrial DNA has yet uncovered between any two living human beings. In other words, the rest of us are related too -- and most of us much more closely than Tupuaki and Roberts.
Indeed, if Sykes' findings are correct -- and so far they have withstood a great deal of hostile scrutiny -- among all of us who are of European descent, the relationship is, in planetary terms, pretty much that of kissin' cousins. Sykes believes that about 90 percent of Europeans can trace their maternal ancestry back to one of seven specific women, the most recent of whom lived about 10,000 years ago and the eldest about 45,000 years ago.
Of course these proto-European women had ancestors too, who at some point traveled out of Africa and into the Middle East before splitting up and beginning to colonize the globe. Go backward only a few thousand years before the ancestor shared by Tupuaki-Roberts and you reach the individual woman geneticists have dubbed the "mitochondrial Eve," who belonged to what was probably a very small human society in Africa. The only thing we know for sure about the mitochondrial Eve is that she had at least two daughters who themselves had children. And that she is the direct ancestor -- the 10,000th or so great-grandmother -- of you and me and everybody else on Earth.
Sykes has become a superstar in the red-hot field of genetics since he began publicizing his research into mitochondrial DNA, a peculiar form of the famous double-helix chromosome that is passed intact from mother to child, so that in any given individual it can be used to establish a chain of female ancestry. He did not himself discover the importance of mitochondrial DNA in tracing ancient human evolution, and gives full credit to American biochemist Allan Wilson, who did (with two of his students), but Sykes has surely done more to advance the field than any scientist.
Sykes has identified living relatives of the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old frozen corpse found in the Italian Alps, and of Cheddar Man, who is not a statue made of cheese but a 9,000-year-old skeleton found in England's Cheddar Gorge. He has established to a near 100 percent certainty that the bones found in 1991 in a birch forest outside the Russian village of Ekaterinburg were indeed those of Czar Nicholas II and his family, and that Anna Anderson, the woman who long claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, indeed was not.
"The Seven Daughters of Eve" is full of such juicy tidbits. Sykes has both an ingrained sense of how to make headlines and an unforced ability to explain the technical side of his work in layperson's terms, both of which probably drive his scientific rivals nuts. From their point of view, however, the explosive aspects of Sykes' work developed from his idea that you could use mitochondrial DNA to analyze not merely relationships between individuals but between groups. This was based on his theory (originally controversial, but now pretty well accepted) that mitochondrial DNA mutates at a constant rate. If you and I have the same mitochondrial DNA, our shared maternal ancestor was relatively recent. If our mitochondrial DNA varies by one mutation, she lived about 10,000 years ago; if by two mutations, then she lived 20,000 years ago and so on. (So there were 14 mutations between Tupuaku and Roberts, the largest number Sykes has seen.)
So by tracking differences in mitochondrial DNA between living people, and comparing them to DNA extracted from archaeological specimens, Sykes arrived at both his seven-clans-of-Europe theory and at the mitochondrial Eve. Along the way, he adds, he solved one of the great mysteries of paleoanthropology, establishing genetically that Polynesians migrated eastward from Southeast Asia rather than westward from South America (and that, since they traveled against the prevailing winds, they must be ranked among the greatest mariners the world has ever known).
It's hard to overemphasize the effect Sykes' work has had on the study of early humanity. A large and influential group of physical anthropologists has long argued that the point of human origin in Africa lay millions of years in the past, and that modern Homo sapiens evolved gradually in many different parts of the world. According to this school, modern Europeans might be descended from Neanderthal man, modern Africans from the early species known as Homo erectus and modern Asians from similar ancestor species found in China and Java.
Certainly not all these anthropologists have changed their views, but Sykes -- who insists he came to this subject as an agnostic -- comes down decisively on the side of their opponents, often called the "replacement" school or the "out of Africa" school. These scientists have argued in favor of "a much more recent expansion of Homo sapiens" from its African origin, an expansion in which the Neanderthals and other precursor species were driven away, outcompeted or simply killed off.
Neanderthal DNA, according to Sykes, is nothing like ours; they were undoubtedly our distant cousins -- perhaps twice as distant as the relationship between Teri Tupuaku and Gwyneth Roberts -- but they were a separate human species, now extinct, and not our ancestors at all. It is by no means certain that Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens (known conventionally in Europe as Cro-Magnon man) could even interbreed, a question Sykes still hopes to solve.
Sykes admits to being a little surprised and disappointed by this conclusion (he doesn't discuss the Cain-and-Abel guilt we should perhaps feel on behalf of our genocidal ancestors), but the idea that humanity is a closer-knit family than we suspected is exciting enough on its own terms. Sykes' book focuses mainly on European ancestry, both for personal reasons and perhaps for marketing ones as well, but in no way does he argue that there is anything special or unusual about the DNA of European or so-called Caucasian people. Indeed, from the genetic point of view, he says, "objectively defined races simply do not exist."
The study of genetics and human evolution has sometimes been perverted to the service of bogus quests for "racial purity." What the science really tells us, in the words of Arthur Mourant, a pioneer in blood-group research, is that "the races of the present day are but temporary integrations in the constant process of ... mixing that marks the history of every living species." Sykes reports identifying unmistakably Polynesian DNA in an Edinburgh schoolteacher, Korean DNA signatures in Norwegian fishermen and African DNA in a white dairy farmer in rural England. Two fishermen on a remote Scottish island turned out to share Siberian ancestry -- but one by way of Finland, the other via Brazil.
I so thoroughly enjoyed "The Seven Daughters of Eve," with its combination of arrogance and humility and its detours into hamster genealogy (yes, really), the place of artistic creation in human evolution and bitchy scientific infighting, that it's painful to discuss one particular device Sykes resorts to: his "Clan of the Cave Bear" efforts to breathe life into his seven European foremothers. He has named all 33 of the clan mothers he has identified worldwide (there are undoubtedly more in Australia and Oceania), to remind himself that they were real people, he says. That is defensible, even charming. But the imaginative life histories we get of Xenia, Katrine, Jasmine, Helena, Velda, Ursula and Tara -- are these prehistoric women or this year's graduating class at Vassar? -- are highly unfortunate.
Sykes never seems fully comfortable with this material, which is simultaneously pedantic and purple ("Two gigantic tusks formed the door"), and one wonders if he felt pressured into it by Oprah-hungry publicists or tabloid journalists who demanded to know which of these hypothetical ancestors provided Jennifer Lopez's derričre. Speed-read through this stuff and it seems harmless enough: Neanderthals are banished, wolves are tamed, boats are created accidentally and seeds dropped on the ground are discovered to produce grain. Sykes' central lesson is so fascinating and indeed so urgent -- we are family, in the most tangible and literal sense -- that he can be forgiven a little hokum.
Here is Sykes' summary of his work through the 1990s: "My research over the intervening decade has shown that almost everyone living in Europe can trace an unbroken genetic link...way back into the remote past, to one of only seven women. These seven women are the direct maternal ancestors of virtually all 650 million modern Europeans. As soon as I gave them names -- Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine and Jasmine -- they suddenly came to life. This book tells how I came to such an incredible conclusion and what is known about the lives of these seven women."
How long before people say "I'm strong, adaptable and used to warm climates, just my Velda lineage"?
The study of goblin history is a complex and fascinating experience.Not the least because reliably written goblin history extends back over 20,000 years. (Far longer if the recent deciphering of ancient texts is correct). In fact, goblin civilization was already in decline before mankind began to settle the Nile delta.
It was originally thought that, as with humankind, the goblin race originated in Africa. However goblin scholars have recently made some progress with the ancient Black Stones of Mer'shokta,huge stone tablets made by the first goblins, the Gob'shan. The language in which the texts are written is known as Gob'sha and is extremely difficult to decipher.
It would appear the the goblin race originated in Australia and lived as hunter gatherers until the first civilization developed some 65,000 years ago on the shores of what is known today as the Murray River, somewhere north of the modern city of Adelaide.
Precise details of events have been lost over the span of many millennia. What is known is that the Gob'shan created a number of civilizations in ancient Australia. Then suddenly, some 60,000 years ago the Gob'shan were overcome by some unknown and completely devastating catastrophe. Its effects were horrendous, the vast majority of goblins were to die and the few survivors fled the continent. All goblin civilization was extinguished. Whatever the catastrophe was, its effect on the goblins was profound. Goblin civilization was not to rise again for almost 40,000 years despite goblins abandoning the Australian continent and fleeing to the four corners of the world.
Goblins call this time 'The Darkness'.
Virtually nothing is known of the time of 'The Darkness'. It remains to this day, a huge blank parchment in goblin history. Perhaps,in time we goblins will learn of our long distant history, perhaps it will always remain a mystery.
Slowly, our ancestors spread firstly throughout Asia, then Europe and Africa, reaching the Americas around 12,000 years ago. From the tiny fragments of the Gob'shan rose five great enduring goblin civilizations:
1. The Xian-gggwan (Sin-gwan) of the Yangtze River
2. The Vladoraggga (Vlad-o-rarg-a) or the Great Imperial Goblins of the Urals/Europe.
3. The Apaporis (Ap-a-por-us) are the third and most reclusive of the great goblin civilizations. Based in the Amazon Basin,buried deep in the jungle far from rest of the world.
4. The Mwanzaggga (One-zag-a) on the shores of Lake Upembu on the Katanga Plateau
5. The Ice Goblins of the Arctic region.
6. The Dark Goblins
It seems likely that, despite our great desire to explore and trade, there were certain areas of the world that the we never reached. Out of the way places such as Australasia, Japan, Madagascar were never reached by goblin explorers. Japan in particular could never be reached by goblins. It was a powerful troll stronghold,where attacks on the Xian-gggwan goblins were often launched.It is entirely likely that western North America, southern Africa and southern South America were rarely visited as well.
All six races survive to this day, including several smaller civilizations. However, we are a greatly reduced race, forced as we are to hide from humanity. It is the Great Goblin's hope that by introducing ourselves to the world as we do here, we will once again be able to show ourselves to the world.
By Igor Popov
In a Hollywood blockbuster, the Russian orbital station "Mir," having fallen into the Pacific Ocean, threatens mankind with a terrible virus that it has brought in from the space.
It is interesting that in 2001 a similar chilling plot moved from science fiction to the news. Shortly before the Russian space pride found its last resort in the Pacific waters, both Russian and western media started to scare their readers with the frightening reports about "the Mir danger." The alarm was caused by nothing else but. . . a virus!
To be more precise--viruses. And some other tiny organisms that occupied the station while it carried out its space duty. The character of these creatures was as malicious as the galactic monsters of science fiction.
According to the specialists from the Russian Academic Institute of Micro-Biological Problems, which took part in the Mir space research, the first microorganisms--bacteria and fungi--were found right after the station was placed into the orbit 16 years ago. They were carried on board together with the space cargo. Although both the space shuttles and the cargo had to undergo a thorough anti-bacterial test, complete sterilization was impossible.
Throughout Mir's life in space, the number of microorganisms grew continuously, one generation replacing another every 20-30 minutes. If in 1990 there were registered 94 species, in 2001 they numbered 140. But the real problem was not the species increasing in number but their growing aggressiveness: each new generation seemed to be more ferocious than the last.
Although the people who worked on the station suffered no serious harm (at least, if we believe the Russian Space Committee's official statements), the uninvited guests still gave the cosmonauts a lot of trouble.
Penetrating into every single corner of the station, they showed an enormous appetite and demonstrated their capacity to eat up even highly durable materials. A vivid example of the bacteria's' "outrage" is illustrated by what happened to the window of a transportation spacecraft that docked to Mir when piloted by its last crew. Some time after docking, the cosmonauts' attention was drawn to the rapidly deteriorating window glass. It was covered by a strange film, spreading "as quickly as in the horror movies," and became absolutely non-transparent.
The test results raised the researchers' eyebrows. It turned out the quartz glass and the titan, which framed it, were damaged by a large colony of bacteria. As experts explained later, these microorganisms exuded a metabolism product--an acid so strong that it could easily corrode the window the creatures had settled on.
Besides this case, which rightfully belongs in the microbiology textbooks, the little angry bacteria more than once ate up the metallic casing and destroyed the equipment on board the station. Their next victim was the control panel of a communication device, in which the parasites devoured the whole insulation. When the astronauts Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov sent the device down to the earth, one could see that it was entirely green inside!
These dangerous activities of the Mir microorganisms worried specialists. In the spring of 2001, about a month before it was clear that Mir would come crashing down to Earth, a press representative of Russia's Microbiological Institute Dmitry Malashenkov, in his interview with the newspaper Gazeta.Ru. put it straightforwardly that he did not know how the bacteria would behave after Mir's re-entry. He also confirmed that they posed a danger to the integrity of the station's hull.
Not less alarming were the rumors about 94 kinds of Mir bacteria being pathogenic and able to cause human diseases. This information contradicted claims by Russian scientific authorities. Yet some foreign experts, among them the Italian microbiologist Mario Pizzura, overtly accused the Russians of concealing the outbreaks of infectious diseases among the Mir crews.
In the meantime, unlike the level of threat the bacteria posed to the humans, the reason behind their aggressiveness presently raises no doubt.
Space mutations. Nothing else could change the descendants of the terrestrial microorganisms into sinister "metal eaters." Staying inside the orbital station and on its exterior and being exposed to radioactive space rays and sun flashes, their genetic changes went out-of-control.
Thus, it appeared Mir was attacked by mutes. Just like in another thriller.
But even more intriguing were the revelations of Russian space crewmember Anatoly Serebrov, who confessed that it was not merely microorganisms, which underwent mutations. Several Russian newspapers referred to him saying he had also seen mutating worms. "When one of the station's devices failed and I set to dissembling it, I found there a yellow worm more than a meter long… I have not seen anything of the kind on the Earth," Serebrov said.
On March 23, 2001 the glorious Mir station came to its end. However, the concerns around its mutating creatures have not ended. Scientists fear that once in the ocean, the Mir's changed bacteria may cause (and may have already caused!) negative changes in the Earth biosphere.
These allegations gave rise to a series of sensational news pieces last year. The stories held that, having come into contact with the local terrestrial species, the "space mutes" would start eating plastic, metal and glass and emit poisonous exhalations.
In an effort to claim these apprehensions, skeptics have held that any harmful substances would be burned to a crisp when the Mir fell through the Earth's atmosphere. The "alarmists" still keep saying that, being extremely tenacious of life, the mutes could not be killed by the high temperatures.
Pouring oil on the flames was the comment by the Deputy Director of the Russian Academic Institute of Astronomy, Boris Shustov, who, sharing his opinion with a Gazeta.Ru correspondent, said the high velocity of the falling Mir did not let its temperatures reach the point that microorganisms would start to disintegrate. As an example, the astrophysicist cited the case of a meteorite that fell in India in the mid-1950s. When the locals came upon the site, they saw a huge piece of ice.This would indicate that whatever was inside Mir at re-entry could well be preserved, too, said the scientist.
His colleague from the same academic establishment, Anatoly Mikisha, added that one could hardly make precise temperature calculations concerning each specific part of the station. Mikisha also stressed that there are well-known kinds of bacteria, which can live even in the volcano craters. The temperatures on "Mir" must have been lower, he said.
Anyway, nobody has given a definite answer as to what eventually occurred to the weird inhabitants of the Russian orbital station once it came to rest on the Pacific seabed. The experts merely advised that one should better not try to find the Mir's remains and steer clear from the area where it might be located.
But who knows, maybe one of these days the issue of the Mir mutes will once again make headlines. And in the process make a Hollywood scenario reality.
Just when you thought is was safe to go back in the whatever. The evil cousin of Spongebob Squarepants surfaces.
(Source:DailyGrail)
"We come in peace"? Ever see The Blob?
Germ warfare experts conducted secret trials on the London Underground to test how deadly bacteria could be spread through the Tube. According to official papers made public for the first time, scientists from the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton Down found biological warfare agents could carry 10 miles or more through the Underground tunnels.
All that was needed was a woman's powder compact filled with the bacteria to be hurled from a Tube train as it hurtled through the tunnels at 30mph. Scientists used harmless spores for two sets of trials in 1962 and 1964.
And for the 'other' sets of trails?
Including the poisoned shoe polish?
A suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease has been found at a farm at Hawnby near Thirsk, north Yorkshire.
Oh bugger! Are they sure someone (perhaps someone working for UK germ labs?) isn't chucking contaminated stuff at the cows?
Hmm, this story seems to have disapeared for some reason. Maybe it will come back?
April 9 — Here is a widespread farm animal disease to think about. This one causes diarrhea, wasting and death, primarily in dairy cattle. Some scientists are raising the alarming possibility that the microbe causing the illness may be passed on to humans via milk.
Preliminary results of two studies in Ontario suggest that MAP survives pasteurization, and could cause Crohn's disease in humans. The possibility that pasteurized milk contains viable MAP becomes a growing preoccupation of public health responsible authorities, and a potential nightmare for the marketing of milk and milk products.
Canadian public health officials and the dairy industry were so concerned about the potential repercussions of a publicity leak implicating pasteurized milk as a possible vector transmitting a human disease that a 1994 document discussing such risks was classified as "Protected, not for distribution."
Crohn's Disease
Described as a human scourge, over a half million Americans suffer from this devastating, lifelong condition with annual US medical costs in the billions. Crohn's sufferers experience profuse urgent diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and fevers.Because of the diarrhea, many people are unable to leave their houses; others drive around in recreational vehicles or mobile homes to keep a bathroom close at hand.The director of the National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease says the best way to describe the disease to non-sufferers if to have them think of the worst stomach flu they ever had and then try to imagine living with that every day.
What happens is that the immune system starts attacking the lining of the gut, which becomes swollen and inflamed. In extreme cases this painful embarrassing condition can affect any part of the digestive system from the mouth to the anus. This inflammation narrows the digestive tract and can result in excruciating pain during digestion as well as constant uncontrollable bowel movements. Added discomforts associated with Crohn's disease include severe joint pains, weight loss and lack of energy.
The intestines characteristically become so deeply ulcerated that they take on a "cobblestone" appearance. The ulcers can actually eat right through the gut wall and cause bleeding, abscesses, fistulas and perforation. Passing food, sometimes even just drink, through Crohn's damaged intestines can be excruciatingly painful. In the words of one colon-rectal surgeon, "Crohn's is a surgical disease. We wait until the patient can no longer withstand the pain anymore, and then we perform surgeryŠand repeated surgeries over timeŠultimately, as recurrences happen and intestinal damage occurs, we just cut and cut, in some cases, until there is no more intestine that can be cut out."
Tragically, Crohn's disease typically strikes people in their teens and early twenties--destroying their health. Children, adolescents, and young adults suddenly become faced with the harsh reality of a lifetime of chronic pain, in and out of hospitals their entire lives.
The disease is mostly found in the US, UK and Scandinavia. And it's on the increase. The incidence in the US, which has been increasing steadily since the 1940's--doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling--is now approaching that of an epidemic. The most rapid increase has been seen in children. In the 1940's and early 1950's there were no recorded cases of Crohn's in teenagers. Currently one in every six new cases diagnosed are under age twenty.
“When cows go to slaughter, there is also a risk of fecal contamination of the meat,” he said, adding that while the slaughterhouses now take great precaution in cleaning out carcasses of any potential contamination, it is not possible to get rid of all microbes in fecal matter.
And he concludes: “Most dairy cows with Johne’s disease are used for ground beef, so contamination of the ground beef is plausible.”
It is also plausible that MAP gets into in tap water. Cows excrete the bacteria, and it can run into streams and city water supplies. In fact, the water supply is thought to be the way that people with AIDS acquire intestinal infections with a bacterium, mycobacterium avium, that is the most closely related cousin to MAP. “Water is worth thinking about too,” Collins said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon has shut down a short-lived office that reportedly considered planting false news stories
abroad in support of the U.S. war on terrorism.
Ah, the power of the internet to force the powers-that-be to be more clandestine.
LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Britain unveiled a set of tough new measures in Tuesday aimed at cracking down on what it called "young thugs" and tackling spiralling levels of street crime.
Home Secretary David Blunkett said he was determined to send out a message to persistent young offenders that there would be no "untouchables" in the criminal justice system, whether or not they were merely teenagers.
Under the plans, young offenders as young as 12 will be forced to wear electronic tagging devices while on bail if they are suspected of having committed serious crimes.
"We're talking about thugs who are creating havoc in their local community. We get stories of them repeat offending over and over again," Blunkett told BBC radio.,
"People are sick and tired of them being put back on the streets, unsupervised, untagged, insecure and carrying on what they were doing before."
The scheme, which will apply to suspects aged from 12 to 16, will be run as a pilot project in six crime "hot spots" in April before going nationwide in June.
The government has come under increasing pressure to crack down on crime act after a dramatic and highly-publicised rise in street violence over the past year.
Figures from Scotland Yard for last month showed that street crime in London soared by 49 percent compared to January 2001.
In the past week alone in the capital, a 12-year-old girl was stabbed by muggers who stole her mobile phone, a boy was battered to death and then set on fire, and an 82-year-old woman was stabbed to death in her home.
Blunkett was due to visit a police station in North London on Tuesday, where he was elected to go out on patrol of the anti-robbery squad to se their work.
03:38 02-26-02
Feb. 27, 2002
Tiny Chips That Know Your Name (ABCNEWS)
It's 10 p.m. You may not know where your child is, but the chip does.
The chip will also know if your child has fallen and needs immediate help. Once paramedics arrive, the chip will also be able to tell the rescue workers which drugs little Johnny or Janie is allergic to. At the hospital, the chip will tell doctors his or her complete medical history.
And of course, when you arrive to pick up your child, settling the hospital bill with your health insurance policy will be a simple matter of waving your own chip — the one embedded in your hand.
To some, this may sound far-fetched. But the technology for such chips is no longer the stuff of science fiction. And it may soon offer many other benefits besides locating lost children or elderly Alzheimer patients.
"Down the line, it could be used [as] credit cards and such," says Chris Hables Gray, a professor of cultural studies of science and technology at the University of Great Falls in Montana. "A lot of people won't have to carry wallets anymore," he says. "What the implications are [for this technology], in the long run, is profound."
Indeed, some are already wondering what this sort of technology may do to the sense of personal privacy and liberty.
"Any technology of this kind is easily abusive of personal privacy," says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "If a kid is track-able, do you want other people to be able to track your kid? It's a double-edged sword."
The research — and controversy — of embedding microchips isn't entirely new. Back in 1998, Brian Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading University in London, implanted a chip into his arm as an experiment to see if Warwick's computer could wirelessly track his whereabouts with the university's building.
But Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. in Palm Beach, Fla., is one of the latest to try and push the experiments beyond the realm of academic research and into the hands — and bodies — of ordinary humans.
The company says it has recently applied to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin testing its VeriChip device in humans. About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip can be encoded with bits of information and implanted in humans under a layer of skin. When scanned by a nearby handheld reader, the embedded chip yields the data — say an ID number that links to a computer database file containing more detailed information.
Building a Built-in Digital Guardian
Keith Bolton, chief technology officer for ADS, says that VeriChip is only the beginning.
According to Bolton, the company has already started experimenting with combining the Verichip with another ADS product called Digital Angel. That pager-sized device allows caregivers and parents to monitor the health and whereabouts of seniors and children through the use of space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites.
"In the migration path, those two products that can be bundled together," says Bolton. The resulting product would be about the size of an American quarter coin and offer an improved way of monitoring patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, for example.
See How an Embedded Locator Chip Would Work
Safety Against Terrorists?
And the interest in testing embedded chips has been steadily increasing — especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Dr. Richard Seelig, a former surgeon but now a medical consultant for ADS, became the first to embed a VeriChip in his arm and hip on Sept. 16. He says his decision to become a willing guinea pig came when he saw World Trade Center rescue workers scrawl information on their skin as an identifying marker should they get hurt in the wreckage.
"There is a clear need for a more secure [form of] identification," says Seelig. "This was another useful application for VeriChip and to move the process along and [help] evaluate the possibility, I had the chips inserted."
And Seelig isn't the only one who feels this way.
According to ADS' Bolton, about 50 people have already signed up with the company to become part of the VeriChip experiments. Some volunteers, such as the Jacobs family in Boca Raton, Fla., believe that the technology will provide for a much needed additional security and safety.
TechTV: A Profile of the Jacobs Family
"What it does for me is give me a peace of mind because it speaks for you when you can't," says Leslie Jacobs, a journalist in Boca Raton, Fla. Her 14-year old son, Derek, had first heard of the VeriChip on a local newscast and had persuaded Leslie and her husband that this new chip technology would be the wave of the future. And after looking into the technology, she believes that her son was right. "I really think this could help make the world safer in the future," she says.
Chipping Blocks
But making the world safer or allowing missing children to be found easily won't happen anytime soon. In addition to waiting for FDA approval — a process that may take years — some experts point to many other obstacles that would need to be cleared.
Most embedded chip designs, such as ADS's VeriChip, are so-called passive chips which yield information only when scanned by a nearby reader. But active chips — such as the proposed Digital Angel of the future — will need to beam out information all the time. And that means designers will have to develop some sort of power source that can provide a continuous source of energy, yet be small enough to be embedded with the chips.
Another additional hurdle, developing tiny GPS receiver chips that could be embedded yet still be sensitive enough to receive signals from thousands of miles out in space.
In addition to technical hurdles, many suspect that all sorts of legal and privacy issues would have to be cleared as well.
Tien of the EFF is concerned that while embedded chip technology may be beneficial in locating lost loved ones, he worries that it could be easily abused. "Once this thing is in you, what's the guarantee that not just anyone won't be able to track you?" asks Tien.
Tien is also concerned that the "benefits" of being able to track people clandestinely may be forced upon others. "If it works here — finding lost loved ones — so then we'll use it for released prisoners and sex offenders," says Tien. "If the choice is offered to a person to either stay in prison for another year or to go on parole as long as they have this monitoring chip in them, then that's not really much of a choice in my opinion," he says.
And while the EFF isn't openly condemning embedded chip technology, "Our critique of proposed technology solutions — whether they be chip implants or national ID cards — is that people will abuse them," says Tien. "That's the fundamental issue of human nature."
Crawling Toward a Race of Cyborgs?
Such qualms over privacy, whether real or overblown, are likely to keep any mass "chipping" from happening in the near future. And that may be the ultimate problem for the technology overall.
"It's a chicken and egg problem," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a research firm in Menlo Park, Calif. "Hospitals and ambulances aren't going to invest in new detectors [for these chips] until people start using the chip, but people aren't going to use these chips until there's a wide availability of readers," he says.
Still, Saffo and others don't doubt that one day we may become a race of cyborgs — part man and part machine.
"We put all sorts of implants in [our bodies] today," says Saffo. "If we have metal hips, it only makes sense to have chips in, too."
"Sorry I'm late for work I got 'hacked' again"
Did "Imposter" get the release it deserved?
Philip K. Dick more of a prophet than Mohammed?
Why did Dan Ackroyd's Paranormal/Conspiracy show get shelved? Like it's difficult to get a show on the Sci-fi channel? Wot with Lexx, Sliders, and that dumb pyschic? Rubber biscuit?
Well, successfully hiding all the corruption takes billions of dollars, you see.
"There have been at least 20 CIA agents on the payroll of Enron for the last eight years," a source familiar with several ongoing Enrongate probes told the tabloid.
Using super-secret spy technology like Echelon, the agency was "able to provide detailed information on bids made by foreign companies on projects of interest to Enron.
"Using the CIA for economic intelligence began with President Bush Sr. and then exploded under President Clinton, when even the Commerce Department was infiltrated with CIA agents," the Washington insider told NE.
Sun 24 Feb 2002
CARAL, Peru (AP) — In a barren landscape that now looks like the moon, a mysterious culture built pyramids here nearly 5,000 years ago. Until a few months ago, not many archaeologists would have believed that.
The pyramids, apparently temples, loomed over sunken plazas and an amphitheater. Neighborhoods were scattered among them, split into rich and poor. An irrigated river nourished fields of cotton and squash that were traded with faraway cultures.
In short, a city thrived here, something that was not thought to have happened in this hemisphere until 1,500 years later.
``The evidence of Caral puts into question what had been accepted until now,'' said Ruth Shady, a Peruvian archaeologist from Lima's San Marcos University who has led the excavation of the site.
``The splendor of Caral — 2,600 years before Christ — is contemporary to the splendor of the Egyptian pyramids, the pyramids at Giza, and the cities in Mesopotamia.''
2-25-2
LONDON (Reuters) - A wreck discovered in the Mediterranean may be that of a British ship loaded with gold that sank more than three hundred years ago on a secret mission, Britain's Royal Navy said on Monday.
"There is a ship. It is a sovereign ship and it is probably the HMS Sussex," a navy spokesman told Reuters.
He said the navy was in talks with Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, which found the remains, over identifying the wreck and the fate of its valuable cargo.
A sovereign wreck remains the property of the government under maritime law.
HMS Sussex disappeared in the Straits of Gibraltar in 1694 laden with gold bullion now worth billions of dollars.
It was on a secret mission to try to buy the fluid loyalty of the Duke of Savoy as Britain battled France.
But the potential value of the ship's cargo is not the only reason identification of the HMS Sussex would be significant.
Historians suggest the failure of the bribe to arrive prompted the fickle duke to change sides, leading to a stand off between Britain and France and contributing eventually to the American Revolution.
Quel damage!
"I don't even bother looking for songs anymore, because all you have to do is type in `zip,' and there are like 2,000 matches," said a sophomore at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "All you do is open WinZip, and you have the whole CD. It's a joke."
Most music executives remain unaware of this new wrinkle in downloading. Fred Croshal, the general manager of Maverick Records, said he had never heard of fans exchanging albums as zip files. "The tech kids are moving much faster than we are," he said. "By the time we agree on anything, it's already seven years old."
Even officials at the Recording Industry Association of America, which led the music industry offensive against Napster, said the practice was new to them. Amy Weiss, the group's spokeswoman, said, however, that the organization was not surprised.
Few Internet users trade albums as zip files, but the practice appears to be growing quickly. Searches two weeks ago on the Audiogalaxy site, audiogalaxy.com, turned up 2,000 zip files; this week there are more than 3,000. These numbers, though, are minuscule compared with the hundreds of thousands of MP3 song files on Audiogalaxy. (The recording industry association has already threatened legal action against Audiogalaxy for allowing the transfer of standard MP3 files of copyrighted music.)
Of course when Napster started in the late 1990's, it was just the strange hobby of a handful of technology-savvy college-age fans. But ideas travel far and fast on the Internet. In just over a year six million people across the globe were Napster users.
Peter Paterno, a lawyer who represents Metallica and Dr. Dre, both of whom sued Napster, said he was surprised and angered to hear about the growing use of zip files. He added that downloading these zipped packets of songs could be dangerous, since a virus file could easily be bundled in with the other files.
"If I were in charge, I would put viruses everywhere on these services," he said. "That would stop Little Johnny from stealing this stuff."
Fans find complete albums on Audiogalaxy by typing the word zip in the search window. Audiogalaxy then retrieves a handful of song titles with zip in the title (like "Zip-a-Dee- Doo-Dah"), followed by hundreds of zip files of complete albums, from the obscure to the popular, from Judy Collins to Metallica. (Every one of Metallica's albums is there.)
A fan then runs a program like WinZip, which most computers use to unpackage downloaded programs, and presto, there's the full CD. Fans feeling particularly ambitious can even burn the songs onto a CD, print out the artwork, and slip the whole thing into a jewel case.
For those who put the CD's online in the first place, zip files are not as easy to create as standard MP3's. Users must load every song onto a hard drive as an MP3 file, scan the CD artwork (or find it online) and then run all this through a program like WinZip, which packages the MP3's and the image files together. And since Audiogalaxy exchanges only music files, the zip file must then be disguised to look like an MP3. Judging from past Internet experiences, if the use of zip files grows, it won't be long before someone spreads a free program made especially for converting entire albums into zip files.
But some fans of file-trading services say that zip files will never approach the popularity of MP3's, chiefly because some like their music one song at a time
"Never-ending" ski slope planned for Wales (NewScientist)
A giant revolving ski slope could be built in Wales within a few years, if a UK company is granted planning permission. But not everyone is convinced by the design.
I dunno this sounds like my kind of skiing. Just stand their as the world turns around you. If the welsh maintain use of their legs after implementing the thing below.
A test track for a revolutionary new transport system is being launched in Cardiff Bay on Thursday.
The ULTra (Urban Light Transport) scheme involves driverless cars taking passengers around the capital on a dedicated track.
Wouldn't it be quicker just to get on the bike?
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