U.S. Sends 2nd Aircraft Carrier To Persian Gulf As A Reminder To Iran
U.S. Sends 2nd Aircraft Carrier To Persian Gulf As A Reminder To Iran
Speaking to reporters after meeting with Mexican leaders Tuesday, Gates said heightening US critics of Iran and its support for terrorist groups is not a signal that the administration is laying the ground work for a strike against Tehran.
Still, he said Iran continues to back the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“I do not have a sense at this point of a significant increase in Iranian support for the Taliban and others opposing the government in Afghanistan,” Gates said. “There is, a best I can tell, a continuing flow, but I would till characterise it as relatively modest.”
5.2-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Northern California
A moderate earthquake hit a mountainous region of Northern California on Tuesday night. There are no immediate reports or injury or damage.
A magnitude 5.2 temblor struck at 8:03 p.m., centered about 11 miles southeast of the town of Willow Creek in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake originated about 11 miles below the surface on an unmapped fault, said USGS seismologist David Oppenheimer.
Because of its depth, few aftershocks were felt, scientists said. About three were recorded, with the largest measuring a magnitude 2.4, the USGS reported.
Officials in Shasta, Trinity and Humboldt counties said there were no immediate reports of injury or damage, although many residents said they felt the shaking.
The quake was felt as far north as Crescent City near the Oregon state line and as far south as San Francisco, 320 miles away, according to citizen reports posted on the USGS Web site.
Mary Daher, owner of the Bigfoot Motel in Willow Creek, said the quake lasted 10 seconds or less.
“It was pretty quick and it was pretty strong,” she said. “It wasn’t like one of those rolling earthquakes. It was just a jolt.”
She said she and her guests headed outside quickly but she was not aware of any damage. One guest said the quake sent his soda sliding across a table.
The town of 1,800 sits on Highway 299, the main conduit between Redding and Arcata, home of Humboldt State University. It has long been a draw for college students escaping the coastal fog to sunbathe along the nearby Trinity River.
The quirky hamlet, surrounded by thick forests, also markets itself as California’s “Bigfoot capital” and displays numerous wood carvings of the mythical creature.
Sex-change Therapies On Children Beyond the Pale
April 25, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Children’s Hospital Boston, a world-renowned center for pediatric healthcare, is being criticized by a Massachusetts-based pro-family group for offering sex-change therapy to patients as young as ten years old.
The Boston Globe recently published an article on Dr. Norman Spack, who last year started a new clinic at Children’s Hospital that, among other treatments, performs sex-change therapy on “transgendered” children. The Gender Management Service Clinic, as it is called, defines that group as “patients with no known anatomic or biochemical disorder who feel like a member of the opposite sex.”
Time For Americans To Stockpile Food?
April 25, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You’ve seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they’re a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
“Load up the pantry,” says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street’s top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. “I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn’t going to happen here. But I don’t know how the food companies can absorb higher costs.” (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
Russian Bombers Patrol Over Atlantic Ocean
Two Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers and two Il-78 aerial tankers are carrying out routine patrols over neutral Atlantic waters, a Russian Air Force spokesman said on Wednesday.
Interceptions of Russian combat aircraft by NATO fighters are becoming a common occurrence again, after Russia resumed strategic bomber patrol flights over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans last August, following an order signed by President Vladimir Putin
“During the flights the crews develop their flying skills in northern latitudes, over unmarked terrain,” Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.
He said the crews also perfect their in-flight refueling techniques, allowing the bombers to remain in the air for more than 24 hours and is considered extremely difficult “especially when the Russian planes are accompanied by NATO interceptors.”
“All Russian Air Force flights are performed…in strict accordance with international rules on the use of airspace over neutral waters without violating the borders of other states,” he also said.
Although it was common practice during the Cold War for both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to keep nuclear strategic bombers permanently airborne, the Kremlin cut long-range patrols in 1992. The decision came as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ensuing economic and political chaos.
However, the newly-resurgent Russia, awash with petrodollars, has invested heavily in military technology, and the resumption of long-range patrols is widely seen among political commentators as another sign of its drive to assert itself both militarily and politically.
New Studies Show Earthquake Danger Could Be Greater Than Earlier Predictions
New earthquake predictions for Oregon show a possible disaster more powerful than scientists had thought.
The U.S. Geological Survey published new nationwide hazard maps earlier this week and one of the changes centered on the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Oregon Coast.
Worries about quakes along the coast have been bandied about for years. But new research shows evidence the entire subduction zone could shake all at once resulting in a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey say the new maps also show the potential for an earthquake beneath Portland. Experts believe it would be similar to the Nisqually earthquake that hit the Seattle area back in 2001. That was a 6.8 quake that caused more than two billion dollars in damage.
Scientists say the last massive earthquake to hit the Pacific Northwest happened about 300 years ago.
The Unthinkable Consequences of an Iran-Israel Nuclear Exchange
Anthony Cordesman, a strategist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, has estimated the consequences if Tehran gets the bomb and a nuclear exchange with Israel ensues. He expects, writes Martin Walker of United Press International, some 16 million to 28 million Iranians dead within 21 days, and between 200,000 and 800,000 Israelis dead within the same time frame. The total of deaths beyond 21 days could rise very much higher, depending on civil defense and public health facilities, where Israel has a major advantage.
It is theoretically possible that the Israeli state, economy and organized society might just survive such an almost-mortal blow. Iran would not survive as an organized society. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term,” Cordesman notes. The difference in the death tolls is largely because Israel is believed to have more nuclear weapons of very much higher yield (some of 1 megaton), and Israel is deploying the Arrow advanced anti-missile system in addition to its Patriot batteries. Fewer Iranian weapons would get through.
Israel at 60 – State of Israel Turns 60
The story of Israel at 60 is the tale of a little town named Sderot whose children play indoors because of Palestinian rockets, of a world-class tech industry that pioneered Wi-Fi and instant messaging, of a nation filled with pride and fierce patriotism, yet living in fear of annihilation from abroad and of a demographic time bomb at home.
Six decades after fighting six Arab armies to realize the ancient dream of a Jewish return to Zion, Israel is still searching for its identity and place in the world, lacking recognized borders and a way of sharing the land with its Arab inhabitants, the Palestinians.
This existential struggle plays itself out every day in the Holy Land, whether in the furious construction of Israeli homes on disputed territory, or the touch-and-go attempts to make peace with moderate Palestinians while clashing daily with the militants in the Gaza Strip.
Geut Aragon has a piece of shrapnel permanently lodged in her brain from a rocket that struck her home in Sderot, the southern town near Gaza, three months ago. She keeps her two young sons indoors.
“Since they were born they know nothing else,” Aragon says. “Sirens, sheltered rooms — they don’t play like regular children.” Although she still suffers from headaches and dizziness, she vows to stay in Sderot and even plans to celebrate on independence day, May 8, the Jewish calendar date for Israel’s declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948.
Beer On Tap At New Church Held In Ohio Bar
April 22, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Another round and amen! Beer was on tap and a mechanical bull inspired the sermon as a new church held its inaugural service in a western Ohio bar.
The Country Rock Church drew about 100 people to Sunday night’s meeting at the Pub Lounge in Sidney, 35 miles north of Dayton.
The barroom church is an offshoot of Sidney United First Methodist Church, whose head pastor says he’s been looking for creative ways to reach people in unconventional places.
The church’s Web site for its new branch advertises “Top regional bands, pizza, wings, rowdy fun & a short message.”
The Rev. Chris Heckaman says people really seemed to enjoy themselves so he expects the Country Rock Church will meet weekly.
Heckaman’s sermon compared staying on the bar’s mechanical bull to learning how to get along in life.
Strange Red Lights Reported In Phoenix Sky
April 22, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Several Valley residents reported seeing strange red lights in the sky on Monday night.
One north Phoenix resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw four or five red lights lined up in a straight line and spaced apart evenly. The lights slowly moved east and became dimmer as the witness watched. He said the last light remained in the sky the longest. Then three jets came from the west and traveled in the direction of the red lights.
An Arizona Republic reporter who lives in Deer Valley reported seeing four lights in a square shape that eventually became a triangular shape. The lights were moving to the east and they disappeared one by one. She said the lights were visible for about 13 minutes.
An official from Luke Air Force Base stated that they do not have any aircraft in the sky tonight and that the lights are not part of any Air Force activities.
Muslim Leaders Want Mecca to Be Center of World Time Zones
Greenwich Mean Time GMT could be replaced by “Mecca Time,” if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.
At the conference, “Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice,” Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.
One geologist at the Qatar conference said Meccas longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884, the BBC reports.
Attendees of the conference also reviewed the “Mecca Watch,” an invention by a French Muslim which reportedly rotates counter-clockwise and displays Meccas direction from any point in the world, the BBC said.
The conference is part of a trend called “Ijaz al-Koran” or “miraculous nature of the holy text,” which tries to find precedents for modern science from passages in the Koran, the BBC reports.
But its critics say Ijaz al-Koran confuses spiritual truth — which depends on constant faith — with empirical truth, which depends on ever-changing science, the BBC said.
Bizarre Flooding Continues in Bellevue, Ohio
Beautiful weather, no river, no stream and yet hundreds of residents are flooded here.
No sudden thunderstorms or drenching rains can explain it. For some reason, the earth in Bellevue continues to heave up millions of gallons of water to the surface.
Against gravity and against logic, the flooding continues day after day. Homes and barns suddenly turned into islands trapped in muddy water.
No one knows why it began or when it will end. It is a disaster for every homeowner for miles around Bellevue. The residents north of town on state route 269 have especially been hit hard.
Mike Willis and his wife, Deb, are exhausted from battling the flood waters in their home.
“It’s been 24/ 7 of filling the pumps with gasoline every two hours,” Willis said. “It’s been our worst nightmare.”
A few hundred yards down the road, Lenora Adams has a stack of sandbags around her house.
“Right now it’s like we’re just maintaining,” Adams said. “There is not much else we can do but keep fighting.”
Neighbors need boots just to walk next door. The sump pumps in many basements are barely staying ahead of the upwelling flood waters.
Dean Instone has already lost the battle. The wooden stairs to his basement are now floating in six feet of water. Dean and his wife have been forced to live with family members in Bowling Green, Ohio. He returns every day to check on his home.
“It’s not good,” Instone said. “It’s been really tough for my wife. She’s in bad shape.
“I’m waiting for my basement walls to collapse any day now.”
Neighbors have volunteered the use of heavy equipment to try and dig a channel in the backyard fields that have become muddy lakes. So far, nothing has worked.
Because there are no lakes, rivers or streams nearby, none of the residents have flood insurance.
Scientists believe that underground artesian springs in the area normally drain toward Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie. There are large artesian springs at Miller’s Pond, Green Spring, and Castalia, Ohio.
Midwest Quakes Continue – Another Earthquake Near Mt. Carmel Illinois
Another earthquake measuring 4.5 has struck near Mt. Carmel Illinois.
Earthquake List for Map Centered at 38°N, 88°W
Perfect Storm – Food Crisis Grips Globe
April 21, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Hunger smashed in the front gate of Haitis presidential palace. Hunger poured on to the streets, burning tyres and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the countrys prime minister packing.
Haitis hunger, that has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, rising by as much as 45% since the end of 2006 and turning staples such as beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriskas children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said: “They look at me and say Papa, Im hungry, and I have to look away. Its humiliating and it makes you angry.”
That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
In Cairo, Egypt, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.
“Its the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. “Its a big deal and its obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think theres more political fallout to come.”
