Former advertising executive Ed Haslam discussed how his investigation of the 1964 murder of a cancer researcher led him to a story which connects a massive contamination of the polio vaccine to our current cancer epidemic and even the JFK assassination. "When you look at the story, each piece fits in with each other piece, very cleanly and very logically," Haslam observed, "it's only when you stand back and look at it, that it looks as strange as it does."

While researching the mysterious death of Dr. Mary Sherman, Haslam discovered that polio vaccines created in the 1950's had been tainted with a cancer-causing virus. This contamination, he said, was detected after half of the doses, a staggering 100 million vaccines, had been administered to an unwitting public. Allegedly, the creators of the vaccine were afraid to admit the error and subsequently distributed the remaining half of the "medicine" as well. Having studied data on cancer diagnoses, Haslam noted that a "massive epidemic" of soft tissue cancers "erupts in the years following the polio vaccines." Making matters worse, he said, the cancer-causing virus could be transmitted sexually and has even appeared in grandchildren of people who received the compromised vaccine.

Realizing their grave mistake, Haslam said, those "in the know" about the widespread inoculation tried to develop a vaccine against it by mutating the virus using a particle accelerator. According to his research, it was during this process that they discovered that the radiation caused the virus to become even more aggressive. It was at that point, Haslam said, the project shifted over to weaponizing the cancer-causing virus. Eventually, the weaponized virus was so powerful that it would kill a human in 28 days. He claimed that this number was derived from a clandestine test of the virus on inmates from a Louisiana prison. The end result was a potent weapon that was virtually untraceable.

Making the story even more bizarre, many of the players in the cancer-causing virus story have connections to the JFK assassination. For instance, one of the researchers in the weaponization project had Lee Harvey Oswald as her bodyguard and handler. Additionally, one of the bases of operation for these studies was the home of longtime Kennedy assassination suspect David Ferrie. And, bringing the tale back to where it all started, on the very day that the Warren Commission began their investigation of the JFK assassination, Dr. Mary Sherman was murdered.

Listen to the full show at http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/haslam-ed/7206

Or, listen to all four hours at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHOg5H79QUg

by Michael Tsarion
◊ ◊ ◊
The Constitution Con
original article
Among my people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit - (Jeremiah 5:26)

Slavery by word and parchment idolatry.


The US Constitution was created on September 17, 1787, and was ratified (behind closed doors) on June 21, 1788. Thirty nine of the fifty five delegates who attended the Philadelphia Convention signed the document. Their con job is evident from the very first line penned. Legally, the "People" allegedly mentioned, are not sovereign. They are merely willing slaves who have been granted the illusion of freedom.

From an occult point of view, the Constitution was ratified on an Atonist festival day. It is a patently Solar Cult document. This is because the date of ratification was June 21st, the day when the sun ascends to its highest point in the zodiac.


Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, were three of the men who framed the infernal Constitution and pushed for its ratification.



Their document served the American aristocracy, not the people. In fact, the document was never put before the people for ratification. This is because it was openly opposed by the majority of men and women in the original thirteen states.

The Constitutionalists were guileful traitors whose attendance at the Philadelphia Convention was kept secret for an entire generation. Their document served to leave the "door" of America unlocked and ajar, so that the country's foreign enemies could surreptitiously re-enter in the days and years following the supposed War of Independence. The hypocrisy and duplicity of the Federalists is directly responsible for the present rise of fascism and advent of the New World Order. We consider these men little more than British agents, because King George himself - the man who declared eternal war on America - could not have done as much damage to America as their actions wrought.

Such a tyrannical future where property rights would be ignored, where a massive standing army would lurk unchallengeable, where Congressmen would hold office for life, where ruinous treaties would be commonplace, where Presidential powers would make Nero jealous, where gold and silver would vanish from circulation to be replaced by the worthless "notes" of a private banking conglomeration, where the States would be reduced to mere administrative departments of the feds, and where the grasp of taxation would actually reach into the common laborer's paycheck - all this was too fantastic to be even theoretically contemplated during the ratification debates - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

When the duplicitous Hamilton was questioned as to why he helped draft the Constitution, he guardedly replied:

My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast.

He was but one member of the Philadelphia Convention who secretly resented the independence of America. One perceptive dissenter realized this, and wrote:

The Continental convention...was composed of some men of excellent characters; of others who were more remarkable for their ambition and cunning, than their patriotism; and of some who have been opponents to the independence of the United States - (Dissenting Address of the Pennsylvanian Convention, 18 December 1787)

James Madison is considered the "father" of the US Constitution. He was heavily influenced, as were many American politicians, by the philosophy of French aristocrat Baron de Montesquieu, who believed in rule by monarchs. Madison was also influenced by the writings of the British empiricist philosopher John Locke, who was himself "a major investor in the English slave-trade through the Royal Africa Company." Madison was vehemently opposed to state independence and pushed the Constitution to keep power well and truly out of the hands of ordinary Americans. He openly advocated an anti-republican ideology, and explained how the illiterate masses should be divided and controlled:

Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure. In a republican government the majority, if united, have always an opportunity. The only remedy is to enlarge the sphere and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties that, in the first place, a majority will not be likely, at the same moment, to have a common interest separate from that of the whole, or of the minority; and, in the second place, that, in case they should have such an interest, they may not be so apt to unite in the pursuit of it - (Elliot's Debates, Vol. 5)

Madison was the only delegate to keep records of proceedings at the Convention. However, his notes were not made public until four years after his death. Before their release to the public, the notes had been thoroughly edited.

The con is evident from the Constitution's Preamble, as we said. In fact, the "People" referred to, are not the citizens of America, the rank and file. No! They are the elites who rule from within the quite separate precinct known as the District of Columbia. This district is under federal control, and the government operating from within it is, legally speaking, a foreign institution. "We the People" denotes this separate ruling elite. It refers to the imperious overlords who have granted the Constitution to the masses within the "United States of America," the non-sovereign nation under their control. Therefore, the entity mentioned in the first line of the Preamble is not the same entity mentioned in the last line. Let's read it and uncover the cunning artifice of its authors:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is what the Preamble subtextually infers:

WE THE RULING ARISTOCRACY, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution FOR THE SLAVES WITHOUT RIGHTS, UNDER OUR FEDERAL CONTROL.

Because "People" is capitalized it is a proper noun referring to a specific body of people - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

These facts explain why the word "for" is to be found in the last line, and not the word "of." Legally, there is a big difference between:

...do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

and:

...do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

The first rendering implies that the Constitution has been granted to one body by another. Ergo, the Constitution is nothing more than a totalitarian document, ratifying aristocratic control over the "United States of America," and its inhabitants. The elites are literally saying; "This document and its articles are for you." The point being, that it is not of you, meaning, it is not yours by natural right. The word "for" indicates that the matter of the document is bestowed by another. And of course, when a person gives someone something, they presumably want something in return. This was certainly the case for the Federalists who conceived the Constitution.

Suggestively, the word "of" does appear in a meaningful legal declaration. It appears in the text of the Presidential Oath:

I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

In this instance, the word "of" designates the President as a member of the aristocratic elite. He is, therefore, a ruler separate from the citizens in the states, and of the nation. The "for" does not apply to the President because, unlike the masses, he is not an outsider. He is part of the inner sovereign circle referenced by the word "of." The Constitution is "of" the ruling elite, but is "for" the masses. In effect, the Constitution is a schizophrenic document. There are two constitutions; one for the mass servant class, and one for the oligarchs ruling from within the District of Columbia. This is why the Preamble contains two different terms: the "United States" (denoting the oligarchy and their authority), and "United States of America" (denoting the non-sovereign masses on the receiving end).

If the Presidential Oath read as follows, there would be less cause for concern:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States of America, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

But then again, pigs might fly. Alarmingly, before it was dropped, the President's original title was "His Excellency."

Many critics and authors have pointed out these disturbing facts and rightly insist that the so-called "United States" is not the same thing as the so-called "United States of America." Nevertheless, due to deliberate misinformation and conditioning, most people do believe that the terms refer to one and the same entity. They are certainly not inclined to think of the "United States" (the U.S.) as a foreign corporation. Furthermore, the drafters of the Constitution intentionally saw to it that the term "United States" had more than one meaning. Specifically, they knew the term did not refer to citizens of a state. Once-upon-a-time, in America, you could have been a citizen of a state without being a citizen of the nation. This political idiosyncrasy did not suit the Federalists who have ingeniously manipulated the words and terms we have become familiar with. It is a old trick that serves the cause of totalitarians no end.

...not only were the poly meanings of "United States" intentionally and expressly used within the Constitution, but often in ways as to actually invite confusion. For such brilliant men to explain three jurisdictional concepts would, on its face, pose a great mystery - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

When members of the police or military swear to serve, uphold, and protect the Constitution, and the "United States," they probably imagine that their oath is sworn to the American people. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are, in fact, swearing to give their labor, and possibly their very lives, for the diabolical corporate executives of Washington D.C.
Oaths of allegiance are fine, as long as you know who or what your swearing them to.



Hologram of Liberty, by K. W. Royce. Probably the best book dealing with the con of the Constitution.


In short, the U.S. and the U.S.A., are not the same thing. The alleged "People" are not, therefore, free and sovereign members of a country, as they would have been under the Articles of Confederation that were drawn up after the War of Independence. No, they were, and still are, merely employees of a privately run corporation. They do not have rights, they have provisionally granted privileges. They have liberty, but do not have permanent and inviolable sovereignty or freedom.

The Constitution, as currently interpreted, now resembles what the Founding Lawyers truly desired in their aristocratic heart of hearts. Two centuries of history have lifted the veil from that picture of Dorian Gray, leaving us with the Hag of Hegemony - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

The State...both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him - Albert Jay Nock (Our Enemy, the State)

The duplicity served to strengthen Federal power. Because of the Constitution, the populace have been intentionally stripped of their sovereign rights. It is also because of this particular chicanery that Americans presently find themselves politically and economically compromised. The Federalist plan was nothing less than an act of war. It was the plan of agent provocateurs and fifth columnists. Only a very few authors have stated this in so many words. However, we are convinced that the early Federalists were ministers of the Crown. They accomplished with their pens what armed legions failed to do by open war. We believe that after the Constitution was ratified, Americans became, in effect, subjects of the aristocracy. The king who hated America, did not resend his army to attack with force of arms. He knew the country could be conquered and brought under British control by other means:

The phrase "direct and immediate allegiance" is something right out of feudal law...Americans who became "U.S. citizens" have transposed themselves from one system into another fundamentally different from the first...Americans have unknowingly joined a modern feudal system in which they must render a percentage of their toil to their federal master - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

The non-federal state Citizenship became virtually unknown as millions of state Americans were tricked out of their sovereignty and into federal citizenship - and thus into federal jurisdiction. Today, the states have been all but replaced by corporate, federal overlays...There's probably not enough left of the original states for Americans to resume state Citizenship - ibid

These facts show that the Constitution was not a progressive document. On the contrary, its cunning drafters concocted it knowing that it would help to usher in the kind of Merchant State system that flourished earlier in America, before the War of Independence, and shortly after the first settlers arrived, with their British system of law. As Albert Jay Nock explains:

The fundamental fact to be observed in any survey of the American State's initial development is the one whose importance was first remarked, I believe, by Mr. Beard; that the trading-company - the commercial corporation for colonization - was actually an autonomous State. "Like the State," says Mr. Beard, "it had a constitution, a charter issued by the Crown...it had a territorial basis, a grant of land often greater in area than a score of European principalities...every essential element long afterward found in the government of the American State appeared in the chartered corporation that started English civilization in America" - (Our Enemy, the State)

Nock goes on to emphasize the connections between the "Old World" system of control, and the so-called "New World" system:

...the system of civil order established in America was the State-system of the "mother countries"...the only thing that distinguished it was that the exploited and dependant class was situated at an unusual distance from the owning and exploiting class. The headquarters of the autonomous State were on one side of the Atlantic, and its subjects on the other.

The elites of Britain and Europe knew that remote control was only feasible for a short time. They knew they had to have their agents on site in order for the engines of exploitation to work efficiently. Consequently, in 1628, during the reign of Charles I, the oligarchs established the Massachusetts Bay Company in America. Many of the Constitution's most illustrious signers became wealthy from their memberships of corporations such as the Massachusetts Bay Company, which overflowed with agents of the British Crown. Business the American way is, it seems, business the British way.

While it is not surprising that America's Founding Fathers were mostly slave owners, a legal activity, it may be surprising to discover that they were often smugglers as well. Profits from drug running, smuggling, slave trading, and even piracy are directly responsible for the founding of several of the country's most important banks, which are still in operation today. New England's staunch insurance business was born and prospered through profits earned from insuring opium and slave ships. The large railroad system that was built throughout the continental United States in the nineteenth century was funded with profits from illegal drug smuggling. And one of the greatest opium fortunes would provide seed money for the telephone and communications industry - Steven Sora (Secret Societies of America's Elite)

Of course, there were clever men who knew what was going on. Even before the Constitution - the document of servitude - was signed and ratified, the warnings went out:

That investigation into the nature and construction of the new constitution, which the conspirators have so long and zealously struggled against, has, notwithstanding their partial success, so far taken place as to ascertain the enormity of their criminality. That system which was pompously displayed as the perfection of government, proves upon examination to be the most odious system of tyranny that was ever projected, a many headed hydra of despotism, whose complicated and various evils would be infinitely more oppressive and afflictive than the scourge of any tyrant - "Centinel" (Essay 12, 23 January 1788)

The anonymous author of this diatribe would not be in the least bit surprised to see the present state of decay, and neither would Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, or Andrew Jackson. They would simply know that their darkest fears were justified.

The rise of imperialist fascism in America is, as we said, the direct result of the door of America being deliberately left ajar. The enemies of America could creep in at any time. And creep in they did. They were confident that the country would eventually fall into their hands. They knew their agents were well ensconced within the country, and that they would use their positions of authority within government and big business to gradually undermine the Articles of Confederation, that did guarantee each and every American, regardless of class, the rights they deserved. They knew they simply had to continue employing the "divide and rule" tactic to further their nationalist interests. The lunatic tyrant King George III had adamantly proclaimed his utter hatred for the American rebels. He openly declared "eternal" war on America, and his word was law to his industrious lieutenants. True to form, agents of the British Crown have been waging eternal war on the country ever since their despicable master's day.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was America's true Constitution before it was cunningly derided and overruled by self-serving traitors known, in today's parlance, as Globalists or Internationalists.


The men who undermined the Articles of the Confederation, and who hustled the Constitution, have had statues and portraits raised in their honor. Volumes have been written about their deeds, but rarely has the truth been told. Throughout America and the world, the traitors are still lauded as great revolutionaries, thinkers, and humanitarians. Their ideological descendants now openly and unashamedly work hand in hand with British and European oligarchs. They still use fear and panic to further their agendas, and still work to erode what is left of the privileges once bestowed upon their slaves.

We have "federal sheriffs" beyond imagination. There are forty six civilian agencies of the Federal Government whose agents carry guns and have the power to make arrests. These "great insults on the people" have been allowed because there is little we can do about them, short of armed rebellion. And by the way, no laws authorizing "civil forfeiture" or other related measures of tyranny have been struck down by the federal courts - Kenneth W. Royce (Hologram of Liberty)

We have plenty of rights in this country, provided you don't get caught exercising them - Terry Mitchell (Editor of The Revolutionary Toker)

Patrick Henry was one patriot who understood what was going on. He did not attend the Convention in Philadelphia, and said: "I smell a rat." He was dead right. But there was more than one stinking human rat running loose at the Convention. The traitors referred to themselves as Federalists because they knew the people would tend to think of them as servants of America. And they were right. Their smokescreen worked wonderfully. Today, the misuse of words and terms continues. George Bush's "Patriot Acts," dupe the uninformed masses, and gives them the impression that it is patriotic to give up hard won rights and privileges in turn for government protection.

For centuries, pillage by invading armies was a normal part of warfare…Nowadays, at least in more civilized countries, we do not let armies rampage for booty. We leave the pillaging to men in suits, and we don’t call it pillaging anymore. We call it economic development - Brian Whitaker (The Guardian)

The Bushes did as their predecessors had done two hundred years ago. The Federalist traitors hurried the ratification process along, and gave the Convention delegates and American people little time to scrutinize the Constitution's articles. George W. Bush did likewise when it came to his scurrilous Patriot Acts. Moreover, he personally saw to it that the investigation into the causes of the September Eleventh tragedy was hampered and limited:

President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle…to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of September 11, Congressional and White House sources told CNN…The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders - Gore Vidal (Dreaming War)

George W. Bush's lack of regard for the Constitution is not unique. He is a Globalist, and does not serve America. He is one of many men who have used the Constitution as a stepping stone toward what might be described as an United World Super State. Nowadays the conspirators who have labored toward this utopian chimera, appear to be less inclined to conceal the reasons for their intrigue. As George W. Bush put it:

It is the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance - (Address to the UN General Assembly, February 1 1992)

The world can therefore seize the opportunity (the Persian Gulf crisis) to fulfill the long held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind - (State of the Union Address, January 29 1991)

Author Forrest MacDonald clarified the issue concerning the undermining of the Articles of Confederation. In his book entitled Alexander Hamilton: A Biography, he wrote:

What did determine the outcome were the rules of the contest, which Hamilton played an important part in formulating. The convention decided to disregard the amendment procedures prescribed in the Articles of Confederation and instead provided that each state should hold a special election for delegates to a ratifying convention...Had the rules of the Articles of Confederation been adhered to, the Constitution would never have been adopted.

The dissenters knew what lay in store, and they were very worried. Their warnings went largely unheard, and the ratification of the Constitution hurriedly commenced, regardless of the warnings of many perceptive critics:

It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again by by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority - "Brutus" (Essay 1, 18 October 1787)

Consider what you are about to do before your part with this Government. Take longer time in reckoning things: Revolutions like this have happened in almost every country in Europe: Similar examples are...ancient Greece and ancient Rome: Instances of the people losing their liberty by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few - Patrick Henry (Speech of 5 June 1778)

Does it not insult your judgment to tell you, Adopt first, and then amend?...Is your rage for novelty so great, that you are first to sign and seal, and then retract?...agree to bind yourself hand and foot - for the sake of what? of being unbound?...to go into a dungeon - for what? To get out? Is there no danger, when you go in, that the bolts of federal authority shall shut you in? - Patrick Henry (Speech to the Virginia ratifying assembly 1788)

I look upon the Constitution as the most fatal plan that could be possibly be conceived to enslave a free people - ibid



No sooner was the Constitution ratified, than the oligarchs began acting tyrannically toward the American people. British agent, President George Washington (who presided over the signing of the Constitution and who was a member of the Ohio Company of Virginia, the Mississippi Company, and the Potomac Company) sent thirteen thousand armed troops to violently stamp out the so-called Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. This rebellion was against heavy taxation.

The victims of government oppression soon discovered that they could not use the Constitution to receive justice. It contained little provision for the under-classes. It gave complete suzerainty to the courts and judges, not to the people or the states. To all intents and purposes, it was as if the War of Independence had never been fought.

The Constitution merely made it possible for agents of the British Crown to operate as if they served the citizens of America. In this regard, nothing has changed.

The facts about the American Revolution show that in the early days, in the mid 1770's, the colonialists suffered a series of defeats. Strategic secrets were being passed to the British. The facts also show that an American army general, Benedict Arnold, was a traitor who plotted to surrender the fort at West Point to the British and turn the tide of war against his own side. The facts link Washington with Arnold when it comes to Freemasonry and the facts show that the day the plot was discovered, Washington was due to meet Arnold at West Point...Washington has been working with Arnold and passing secrets to the British - Robert Cooper (Interview on Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol)

The tyranny continued in 1798, with the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made criticism of federal officials a punishable offence. The Constitution served to strengthen the powers of the wealthy aristocratic class in America. It possessed few benefits for the average citizen, and ultimately legalized widespread acts of confiscation and extortion. As Thomas Jefferson once remarked: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." The point is emphasized by Constitutional scholar and author Kenneth W. Royce:

If analyzed in contrast to history since 1787, it appears that the Constitution was purposely laden with several components designed to nearly guarantee the gradual expansion of the Federal Government - at the expense of the States and the people - (Hologram of Liberty)

The Founding Fathers may have referred to themselves as Federalists. But this was, as we said, yet one more cunning play on words. Master propagandists, such as Vladimir Lenin, probably learned tactics from America's faux Federalists.

Patrick Henry is known for his "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" speech. Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is remembered as one of the most influential (and radical) advocates of the American Revolution and republicanism, especially in his denunciations of corruption in government officials - (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia)


The original Federalists demanded a government of limited powers, and were for state power. Their needs were ably met by the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781. After the War of Independence (1775 to 1783), Americans had the Constitution forced upon them. Ever since then Americans have been duped about the prestige of the document. The people and representatives of the original thirteen states were not allowed enough time to decide whether the document was sound or not. Patrick Henry questioned the haste, and warned of the consequences of accepting the Constitution without due consideration and debate. He knew that state representatives needed at least a year to mull over the articles of the Constitution. He spoke out and said:

Why then tell us of dangers to terrify us into an adoption of this new Government? And yet who knows the dangers that this new system may produce; they are out of sight of the common people: They cannot foresee latent consequences: I dread the operation of it on the middling and lower class of people: It is for them I fear the adoption of this system...I see jeopardy in this new Government. I see none from our present one.

As we said, the Constitution's articles scandalously allowed the Supreme Court to possess almost unlimited legal powers:

No country has given its courts such extraordinary power. Not Britain, where an act of Parliament binds the co

Arizona Wilder conducted human sacrifice rituals for the Illuminati elite for decades. These included the British Royal Family, George Bush, Henry Kissinger, and a stream of world famous names revealed in "The Biggest Secret" and the video, "Revelations of a Mother Goddess", available through this website (http://www.davidicke.com) ~ see book and studio catalogs).

Since she escaped from her mind controlled confinement, she has dedicated herself to exposing what is happening. I received this letter from her dated May 25th 1999 in which she details the key points in the Illuminati ritual programme running up to the Millennium.

I should emphasize a few things for those who have not read "The Biggest Secret." The Illuminati, the clique which control the direction of the world, are genetic hybrids, the result of interbreeding between a reptilian extraterrestrial race and humanity many thousands of years ago. The centre of power is not even in this dimension -- it is in the lower fourth dimension, the lower astral as many people call it, the traditional home for the "demons" of folklore and myth. These fourth dimensional reptilian entities work through these hybrid bloodlines because they have a vibrational compatibility with each other. This is why the European royal and aristocratic families have interbred so obsessively, as do the so called Eastern Establishment families of the United States which produce the leaders of America. Every presidential election since and including George Washington in 1789 has been won by the candidate with the most European royal genes. Of the 42 presidents to Bill Clinton, 33 have been genetically related to two people, Alfred the Great, King of England, and Charlemagne, the most famous monarch of what we now call France. It is the same wherever you look in the positions of power.. they are the same tribe!

As well as an obsession with interbreeding with each other to preserve their genetic structure, the Illuminati are also obsessed with symbolism and ritual. Interestingly, conventional science has documented that the reptilian part of the human brain (the R complex as they call it) is the source of the following behavior traits: An obsession with ritual, cold blooded behavior, territorialism "this belongs to me", and an obsession with top down hierarchical structures. This sums up the Illuminati mentality perfectly and it goes that if you have more of that R complex, or that it is activated more than normal, you will manifest these traits far more profoundly.

But their ritual is not just for ceremonial purposes or gratuitous horror. The rituals are designed to rewire the energy fields and grids of the planet and therefore to fundamentally affect human consciousness. The rituals these bloodlines performed in the ancient world are the same as they do now. See The Biggest Secret for the background. They have a detailed annual calendar of events on which they perform their sacrifice rituals in line with key lunar, solar, and planetary cycles to harness that energy for their sick agenda to take complete control of Planet Earth in the very near future.

With that background, here is the full text of the communication from Arizona Wilder. I will add my comments in dark type where more background may be needed for those new to these subjects.

David Icke
David - This information needs to go out to everyone as fast as possible.

The Illuminati are conducting a ritual to be held at the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, on August 11, 12, and 13th, 1999. (Specifically the Mothers of Darkness-the top conductors of rituals, will officiate). This ritual is "The Rite to Open the Passage" (the Eye of Horus). This will open the passage for lower fourth dimensional energy to be directed into the leylines of the Earth. This will (is designed to) also close the 3rd eye (consciousness) of all on this planet that oppose the Illuminati. It will further shut down (is designed to) the other people who are not actively aware or opposing the Illuminati but feel uneasy about what is going on and cannot figure out why.

The solar eclipse which is to take place on August 11 (over the key Earth power centre of Cornwall, England) will also have a "Grand Square" which makes it extremely powerful. This eclipse is the beginning of a six month period in which there will be much activity of significance that pinnacles in The Rite of Establishment of the Age of Horus (Osiris reborn) at the Millennium.

This symbolism relates to the ancient Egyptian legends of Osiris (the father), Horus (the son), and Isis (the virgin mother), which later became the basis for the Jesus stories also. The New World Order, the takeover of the planet via the establishment of a world government, world army (NATO), world central bank and currency, and a micro-chipped population, is known by the Illuminati as "The Age of Horus". The symbolism of the murder of a pregnant Diana, Princess of Wales, with the Egyptian Dodi Fayed, relates to the arrival of "The Age of Horus". (See "The Biggest Secret").

This "Age of Horus" ritual will be held on December 31st from 12am to 3am at the Great Pyramid, at which time the top of the pyramid will be capped with gold and crystal. (George Bush has long been on the guest list of the Millennium "Celebrations" at Giza). Etched in the crystal will be the Eye of Horus on all four sides. (This relates to the All Seeing Eye symbol on the dollar bill and the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States). They will finalize this period of six months on January 31st/February 1st and start "preparing the ground for the sowing of their seeds.

Preceding the August 11 through 13 ritual, which by the way ends with the day of Hecate (one of their key deities),the bringer of chaos and death, is the July 28th lunar eclipse. This eclipse is also extremely unusual and powerful in that it also involves a Grand Square and the House of Aquarius goes direct - its effect is at full strength. The Moon on this date is a New Moon - a time to plan and cast spells for the plan.

During the solar eclipse, the next day and on the Day of Hecate (August 13th), there will be blood sacrifices and also literal sodomization of the intended sacrifices beforehand. This will signify opening the Eye of Horus, opening the passage for the lower fourth dimensional energy and the closing, the shutting down of the human 3rd eye - consciousness on the planet. They will remove the heart and consume it, signifying the taking away the vibrational chakra of love. They will also remove the liver (strength), the eyes (sight), and brain (knowledge, thought, action). They will consume the blood (life force for them). Their ritual acts all encompass and empower them for what they wish to spiritually do to us. What they do is to be given strength which is brought into actual physical being by the solar eclipse, the lunar eclipse, and the grand squares of their ruling planets with those particular energies accompanying the grand squares. The effect on the Earth if they succeed will be terrible.

Very much a part of this is the planned marriage of Sophie Rhys-Jones and Prince Edward of the House of Windsor at Windsor Castle on Saturday (Saturn's day) June 19th, 1999.Look at the date and year. The 19th is the number of the Sun. 1 is the beginning (alpha), 9 is the end (omega). The name Sophia = wisdom, which is Baphomet by the (code known as) the Atbash Cipher. On June 19th, 1999,Saturn is direct in Taurus at 13 degrees, releasing malevolent powers. This marriage has been arranged for this year to empower the rituals from August 11th to 13th and the ones starting at 12am on December 31st.

The Illuminati foresaw through astrological charting that Saturn turns at 17 degrees Taurus to square Uranus on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of July 1999. This results in an intense and upsetting period because people who are seeing the changes occurring now are going to be challenging the plans the Illuminati are ready to play. The marriage is a ritual to attempt to thwart those who plan against them. It does this by performing a ritual (marriage) that is heavily publicized and therefore constitutes a kind of "open" ritual. This is an attempt to communicate directly with the subconscious of the millions who read or hear about it, by means of a "twilight code" that does not require conscious understanding, but subliminal human processing. This ritual/marriage is part of a sequence of events that the Illuminati plan to use to imprint their design on the subconscious of the public group mind. This does not require people's conscious understanding. By using the energies manifested during this time and putting their intent behind this ritual/marriage, the House of Windsor plans to clear out elements of their agenda which are not working and ensure the Illuminati rituals of August 11th-13th 1999 and December 31st/January 1st are successful.

The timing of the marriage on June 19th is associated with the Oak Tree, a powerful occultic symbol in Druidism that is also often used by the House of Windsor. The Roman god, Janus, is associated with the Oak. Janus, the two-faced Roman god of change, and also the "beginning and the end", "the opening and the closing of the door". Since the wedding is close to the summer solstice, it is associated with St Johns' Eve, or Oannes (the Babylonian Nimrod) and is still celebrated as the "Festival of Aire" in Ireland. Aire, a goddess, is related to Air Soph (endless one) on the Tree of Life. Air Soph = Sophia (Sophie)= wisdom = Baphomet in the Atbash cipher.

The white horse, sacred to the Phoenicians in Britain (see The Biggest Secret), is also associated with the oak. On the Tarot, a naked child sits on a white horse. The child signifies "the fool", the "initiate".The nakedness signifies there is no longer anything to hide. Edward Windsor is the initiate. By this marriage he is initiated into wisdom/Baphomet, into the dark things that light does not pierce. The circle is closed in on the House of Windsor. The scene is set, Alpha to Omega. The serpent has swallowed its tail. It has become the endless one.

The marriage of Princess Diana to Charles was timed and located in the same way as part of Windsor-Illuminati ritual. St. Paul's Cathedral, where the marriage took place, is built on an ancient site of Goddess Diana worship at Ludgate Hill in the heart of the City of London-the Illuminati's epicentre at operational level. Diana also died in Paris on an ancient site of ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Diana, now known as the Pont d'Alma tunnel (see The Biggest Secret for the detailed story).

It is also worth noting how much Sophie, Prince Edward's bride, is a Diana look-alike and only in April 1999, one of the most famous television presenters in Britain, Jill Dando, a lady I knew at the BBC, was shot dead near her home in London by, according to reports, a "professional hitman'. Jill Dando is another Sophie look-alike with blond hair and blue eyes, and Jill Dando was a friend of Sophie. The Illuminati obsession with ritual leaves me in no doubt that Dando's death was connected to the sequence detailed here by Arizona Wilder.

The Sun also signifies "The Head". Jill Dando was shot in the head and killed on April 26th, 1999, This relates to the ritual wedding of her friend, Sophie Rhys-Jones and Edward. This date was also the first day of the "Grand Climax", a week long string of rituals preceeding and including Walpurgisnacht, April 30th, leading to Beltane, May 1st. Again Jill Dando shot in the head, the Oak, Janus, the Sun, the date of the wedding, are all connected.

The Illuminati began to prepare the way for so much on May 1st, 1999, Beltane. The energy they put forth in readiness for the August eclipse increases with the May 30th Full Moon; the June 13th New Moon; the June 21st Summer Solstice; June 28th Full Moon; July 13th new Moon; July 28th New Moon/Eclipse wit grand junction; August 1st Lughnasad ritual; August 5th height of Mercury stationary in Cancer. All this is to open the way for the dates of the solar eclipse/Day of Hecate, August 11, 12 and 13th.

In the Illuminati/Satanic method of "mirror or reverse" symbolism, the Day of Hecate, August 13th, is mirrored to August 31st for her day of sacrifice. Diana, Princess of Wales, died on that ancient site of Goddess Diana worship on August 31st - the day of sacrifice to Hecate.

From Dick Fojut
.fojut@worldnet.att.net

WHY THE MURDER TRIAL JURY CORRECTLY FOUND O.J. SIMPSON INNOCENT

-------------------

PLUS DETAILS OF SHERMAN SKOLNICK'S IGNORED, BUT NEVER CHALLENGED, CLAIM THAT LA POLICE FRAMED O.J. SIMPSON - WHILE THEY KNEW THE COMPETING YAKUZA OR MEXICAN HERRERA NARCOTICS MOBS HAD ACTUALLY SLAUGHTERED NICOLE & RON.

---------------------------------

From Dick Fojut in Tucson, AZ

Apparently most news-media people - and possibly most other Americans (especially those who never watched or listened to the original murder trial) - are totally convinced O.J. Simpson WAS guilty of murdering his wife and wrongly "escaped" justice. Angrily, they now demand "retribution" and want Simpson punished (perhaps with Life in prison) for the overblown fiasco in Las Vegas. For the reasons listed below, I suggest the "hang O.J." majority may be mistaken. In June of 2,000 I Emailed the following to several hundred establishment and alternative media people, with information about the OJ Simpson trial that most of them seemed ignorant about. (Only a few even acknowledged the Email.) Please read it and judge for yourself...

-----------------------

* Chicago private investigator Sherman Skolnick publicly contended that members of the narcotics-distributing Japanese Mafia, the YAKUZA - or - competing Mexican Herrera mob, slaughtered drug-dealing Nicole and Ron... Skolnick further claimed the murder was filmed by the DEA - and also watched by O.J.'s own detectives. None attempted to stop the murders. According to Skolnick, to cover up the role of the narcotics gangs, the crooked L.A. police framed Simpson...

(Controversial Sherman Skolnick, who died a few years back, was the famous, paraplegic Chicago private investigator whose earlier revelations about a bunch of corrupt Illinois Judges - including former Gov. Kerner - led to their convictions and imprisonment. Since the 1950s he had been producing a popular weekly public access TV show in Chicago.)

Further below in this Email, read Skolnick's essay about the above as presented years back on Chicago Public Access TV. I think you will also be amazed to read Skolnick's allegation that some giant American banks are (or were then) mostly owned by the Japanese Yakuza mafia; Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

-------------------

* At the O.J. murder trial, defense lawyer Lee Bailey's questioning of the two original investigating detectives (not Furman) demolished the prosecution's case against O.J. in the very first days of trial testimony! The detectives' testimony was never again mentioned by the media (or even by showy, but inept defense lawyer Johnny Cochran)... but it was REMEMBERED by the Jurors in the first trial.

On a single later network TV interview, several of the jurors said the early testimony (following) convinced the entire jury to vote O.J. innocent. Their TV interview comments were also ignored and not further repeated by the rest of the media.

(My wife and I watched on TV or listened on radio to the ENTIRE O.J. murder trial from the first day.)

But FIRST, recall the Prosecution's scenario... The waiting, but impatient (nearsighted) chauffeur, testified he saw a dark figure (obviously the panicked, blood spattered O.J. rushing from the murders) going in the front door of his house. In his upstairs bedroom O.J. washed off the evidence, stuffed his bloody clothes in a bag and rushed down to be driven off to the airport. A little "problem" there... The prosecution skipped over the fact that in what amounted to only a relatively few minutes, O.J came out of his house showered, spic and span, carrying some of his bags. And other of his bags were ALREADY sitting outside the house.

In early questioning of the 2 main detectives, F. Lee Bailey got them to admit some incredible things!

Following is THE testimony the jurors remembered that led them to find O.J. innocent....

* Detective Lange admitted to F. Lee Bailey, they could not find a trace of blood OR dirt on the white (or light covered), stairs or on the walls leading to O.J.'s upstairs bedroom.... OR on the white bedroom carpet OR in the bathroom. (The single dark sock with his blood spot went strangely "unnoticed" until days later.)

* The same detective then testified that they took apart ALL the plumbing in the bathroom but could not find one drop or flake of blood in the pipes! The media people present heard this but never later repeated that testimony!

Influential Radio Talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy DIDN'T hear it. They had decided Simpson was guilty BEFORE the trial began (and pronounced him guilty to their trusting listeners). But my wife and I heard it. And the Jurors heard it. And the Jurors remembered!

Is O.J. one of the world's greatest magicians?...

In faxes to (pompous) Rush and Liddy during the O.J. trial, I repeated the detectives' testimony. And I also suggested to them that O.J. must be one the world's greatest magician-murderers.... O.J. LEVITATED up the stairs into his bedroom... disintegrated his bloody clothes... bathed and dried in Ethereal water that disappeared.


Caused clean clothes to form around his body... all in just a few minutes of entering the house. Then (still levitated) he floated down the stairs to his front door. BUT the big dummy made ONE MISTAKE! He dropped one sock stained with a drop of his blood, on the bedroom floor!

And about Shapiro and the bloody Glove(s) that "didn't fit." Something Shapiro told to G. Gordon Liddy later is worth mentioning...

* Long after the first trial. SHAPIRO (no friend of O.J. Remember he suggested O.J. confess in a plea bargain) told Liddy during a radio interview that I heard, that he (Shapiro) had tried on the murder glove(s) the night before... He found them snug. Shapiro told Liddy that he went to see O.J. the next day and asked O.J. to put his hand up against Shapiro's hand.

When Shapiro saw how HUGE O.J.'s hand was against his own... Shapiro told O.J.: "TRY ON THE GLOVES!" (He did in court. Didn't fit.)

Certainly Liddy and Shapiro should remember that program. I certainly do! (Shapiro has also since died.)

-----------------------------------------


Following is just one of the incredible transcripts about WHO really killed Ron and Nicole according to Skolnick, from an earlier Sherman Skolnick broadcast, reprinted on the "Conspiracy Nation" website (also carried for a time on Sherman's own website archives). The story is outdated to them now and off their websites. Fortunately I saved it as a text file - along with 11 others, with even more Skolnick revelations on the O.J. trial and the crooked L.A. cops in league with the mobs.


According to investigator Skolnick, Nicole and Ron were distributing drugs through a chain of stores she got from O.J. as divorce settlement. And Skolnick also claimed the mob(s), after the trial, told O.J. that if he talks about them they will kill EVERY last member of his extended family. (Unfortunately, Skolnick died a few years back. But you may find more of his articles about the trial through a Google search.)


Skolnick's former website was http://skolnicksreport.com/


Details of the O.J. Simpson Affair

By Sherman H. Skolnick

Harsh realities need to be understood. Yet, the mainstream press seldom tells us. Just as if someone out there is saying, "Shut your mouth!"

A case in point is the O.J. Simpson Affair.

HARSH REALITY #1 -- SHUT YOUR MOUTH: To be a major sports star, do you have to get along well with criminal interests?

Does that make you a mafia crony, or just promoting your career in the face of the real world? Skeptics need to examine the federal case of Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom. The court trial, 1988-89, showed that known gangsters seemed to control sports agents who, in turn, controlled sports stars. (One of the mafia-dominated sports agents was later murdered.) Cynics point to the fact that a higher court judge, reportedly pals himself with mafioso, overturned the convictions of the sports agents charged with corruption and threats.

The major news organs are heavily into sports promoting. Some, like the Chicago Tribune, own a baseball team (The Cubs). The TV networks reportedly find it necessary to be cronies of criminal interests in promoting sports events. It is called avoiding financial hang-ups.

So if we conclude that O.J. Simpson, from early in his career, found it necessary to be a gangster pal, should we be sympathetic? Probably so. As a former sports hero, O.J. was sponsored by Hertz, the car rental firm. Going back into their history, one finds that they reportedly were no angels. Some savvy folks whisper that Hertz, in the past if not also the present, were reportedly close to criminals.

And O.J. reportedly was a sizeable owner in a nationwide storage firm reportedly started by an intelligence agent who was also close to foreign and domestic gangsters. (The founder was sent to prison for massive S&L fraud in California.)

The list of O.J.'s reported criminal links goes on and on.

O.J. reportedly owned several fast food stores. Sounds innocent enough. As part of the bitter divorce, ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson got control of some of those businesses. And into the picture were brought corrupt police brass as secret owners/operators. The places were reportedly turned into dope distribution centers, with the huge cash flow disguised as proceeds from business.

Remember: food stores, restaurants, and other large receivers of cash, are exempt from U.S. Treasury regulations requiring a report on where more than ten thousand dollars comes from, if deposited with a financial entity like a bank.

And the funds from the stores, as well as from some of the Hertz franchises she controlled, were washed through California banks -- most of which are owned by the Japanese, and a principal portion being the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza.

HARSH REALITY #2 -- SHUT YOUR MOUTH: Two major dope gangs distribute dope in California, and wash the loot through businesses and banks.

Gang #1 are the Herrera dope gang of Mexico, tight with the American CIA. For political survival, state and federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials know it is forbidden to start up with the Herreras. Safer to grab some street corner doper-nobody. To promote so-called "national security," the mainstream press knows it is generally forbidden to publicize spy agency confederates and CIA's dirty tricks.

Dope gang #2 are the Yakuza who, like the Herreras, are tight as well with the CIA. (See the book, "Yakuza" by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro.)

Prior to the double murders, O.J. reportedly told business associates that his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman, and their confederates, were dealing dope. O.J. reportedly said he told Nicole and Ron to stop it, or he would stop it, because the dope dealing was endangering his family and his other businesses. (Was that a threat by O.J.? Stop it? How?)

To keep track of this dope dealing, and because of his jealousy of his ex-wife Nicole, O.J. had detectives tracking Nicole (also tracking Ron?).

THE REPORTED SCENE ON THE NIGHT OF THE DOUBLE MURDERS: SHUT YOUR MOUTH! --

An undercover federal drug enforcement team, equipped with see-in-the-dark video, were tracking Ron. From past surveillance, they firmly believed he was part of a widespread homosexual dope gang, fronting for the Yakuza -- distributing the stuff *on* *credit* to fancy people, celebrities and such, contacted through waiters (like Ron) in fancy eating places like the Mezzaluna Restaurant where Ron worked. Ron's reputed sidekick and fellow waiter was MICHAEL NIGG. (Was Nigg also Ron's room-mate, or did Nigg have a girl friend as a "beard?")

THE PHONE CALL: SHUT YOUR MOUTH! --

On the night of the double horror, Nicole reportedly received a phone call from a friend, pleading that ex-husband O.J. has to come up, pronto, with several hundred thousand dollars -- or else -- to make good a dope debt.

THE BUTCHER JOB: SHUT YOUR MOUTH! --


Both the narcs and O.J.'s detectives reportedly witnessed Nicole and Ron cut up, Samurai-style, by a dope hit team. The video reportedly shows them as 3 or 4 hispanics or orientals. If the trial evidence is true, was that O.J.'s shoe-print at the murder scene, *after-the-fact*, alerted by his detectives reportedly having witnessed the bloodbath?

Naive people ask: Why didn't the narcs and/or the detectives stop the murders? For one thing, the narcs know their top dogs at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration are highly corrupt, and have given the Herreras and other major dope traffickers a pass. (See the book, "The Underground Empire," by James Mills.)

Also, both teams knew better than to interfere with the bloody turf wars between the Herreras and the Yakuza in California.

Insofar as the L.A. police later planted "evidence" implicating O.J., was this a type of police "logic"? "Well, O.J. is in with criminals anyway, so let's sink him one way or another."

THE ROLE OF THE JUDGE AND HIS WIFE: SHUT YOUR MOUTH! --

O.J. trial judge Lance Ito was reportedly in a position to know what the double murders were really all about. His wife, L.A. Police Captain Margaret York, has been in charge of investigating police department corruption. Captain York reportedly knew of the other police brass as the corrupt secret owners/operators of the fast food sites, formerly O.J.'s businesses (Did O.J. still retain an interest?).

Captain York reportedly also was the liaison to DEA and examined the files and records of the undercover narc team as well as the video.

The District Attorney was also in a position to know. O.J. defense team member, lawyer Robert Shapiro, is reportedly close with known major drug traffickers. Are they just "clients"? Did defense attorney Johnnie Cochran know? Judge Ito blocked Cochran from trying to bring up matters about a dope hit team or similar items.

SHUT YOUR MOUTH! OR YOU ARE DEAD --

Others who apparently found out inside details and the terrible secrets of the O.J. Simpson Affair apparently had to be snuffed out.

VICTIM #1: Judge Ito's courtroom bailiff in the O.J. case, Antranik Geuvjehizian, murdered in July, 1995. A TV network program in a notice in various TV guides, called it by the name of the series, "Unsolved Mysteries." But, it did not go on the air as scheduled for Friday, October 27, 1995. So the program has its own unsolved mystery.

VICTIM #2: Robin Clark, covering the trial for the Philadelphia Inquirer, a somewhat more independent and outspoken paper -- he apparently was murdered by having his car shoved into on-coming traffic.

VICTIM #3: His son disappeared during the trial. Was he kidnapped? The police did not accept the story when CBS reporter at the trial Dominic Dunne's son returned.

VICTIM #4: In September, 1995, about 3 weeks before the verdict by the jury, Ron Goldman's fellow waiter and reputed dope gang member, Michael Nigg, was murdered by assassins who shot him in the head.

Did any of these victims have inside data about the Mark Fuhrman details -- a bigoted L.A. detective who apparently planted "evidence" incriminating O.J.? The Fuhrman details -- him hating blacks and such -- was that intentionally put into the case by *both* *sides*? Defendants have been known to pay for prosecutors to corruptly sabotage the prosecution of a defendant, to save a defendant from jail. In law, errors in the trial that could on appeal of a guilty verdict invalidate that verdict, are called "reversible errors." Sometimes they are just accidental. Sometimes, they are corruptly arranged. Were the Mark Fuhrman bigot-revealing tapes arranged ahead of the time -- known ahead of time -- so that revealing that would throw out later a guilty verdict against O.J.?

HEY! CLINTON WHITE HOUSE, SHUT YOUR MOUTH! TELL THE DEA BOSS TO SHUT HIS MOUTH! --

In the criminal defense of O.J., supervising those detectives (different bunch than those reportedly at the murder scene) was a former New York cop, long reportedly on the mafia payroll. He was reportedly a silent partner in mafia gay bars and gay disco bars jointly with Mattie "The Horse" Ianello, now a jail bird.

Why was that ex-cop brought in to head the detectives of the defense team? Reportedly because he is an expert on gay violence and on *dope* *hit* *teams*. So that was apparently early-on known or suspected of what the double murders were all about.

And this reputed mafia-friendly ex-cop reportedly dug very, very deep into the dope business. And he came up apparently with a link to the California turf dope wars between the Herreras and the Yakuza, linked to the CIA-dope and guns operation throughout the southern states, starting in the 1980s. Among the links was to the CIA-dope brought in through the strange airport at Mena, Arkansas, arranged by Ollie North and George Bush. Clinton claims now that as governor he was told by the CIA to mind his own business, that it was one of their covert operations and he was not to interfere.

So, if the public now demands that the secret DEA records and video of the double murders be released -- well, the highly corrupt DEA bosses are inclined to withstand the pressure. And so also opposing public disclosure would be the Clinton White House. The DEA and Clinton are subject to blackmail, as a result of the digging reportedly by the ex-cop from New York.

Some at DEA reportedly claim that they would like to ask Ron's father, Fred Goldman, if he knew about his son's dope dealing. But Fred Goldman has mobilized public opinion to his favor and may be immune from hard questions like that.

This all may be the biggest or one of the biggest scandals of the 20th century -- the apparatus of state and federal government covering up a double murder.

(Note: Banks reportedly washing the Yakuza dope loot include California-headquartered Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank, major owner of Household International and Household Bank. The former O.J.-owned businesses reportedly dope dealing with the help of Nicole reportedly used these banks to launder the loot. Bank of America and Wells Fargo are principally owned reputedly by the Yakuza.)

(Note: Starting on August 18, 1996, was a series in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA causing the flood of dope into California. How does that series of stories relate to the DEA and the foregoing story about O.J. Simpson? Is there an overlap between the CIA, the California dope gangs, the Herrera dope gangs, and the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza?)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +


Mr. Skolnick, since 1963, has been founder/chairman of a public-interest group, CITIZENS' COMMITTEE TO CLEAN UP THE COURTS, researching and disclosing certain instances of judicial corruption and political murders. Since 1971, as editor of updates of the group's work, called HOTLINE NEWS, a 5-minute recorded phone message, changed several times per week -- a regular phone call -- (312) 731-1100. Since 1991, a regular participant, now moderator, of a popular, public access cable TV program, called "Broadsides", in Chicago and suburbs -- on most every Monday evening in Chicago, on Channel 21 cable, 9 p.m., available to some 400,000 households. His comments appear on Internet on several websites; archives of his stories can be pulled up and printed out. Also, on Internet, his stories appear on some five categories of news groups, such as alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater and alt.activism. Office (8 a.m. to midnight, 7 days): (312) 375-5741. 9800 So. Oglesby Avenue, Chicago, IL 60617-4870. Call before sending FAX. (After October 12, 1996, AREA CODE changes to 773.)

A few highlights of the group's work: Caused the biggest bribery scandal in U.S. history, the collapse of the Illinois Supreme Court, 1969. Investigation of the sabotaged Watergate plane crash,1972-73. 12 Watergate figures perished including Mrs. E. Howard Hunt, wife of the Watergate burglar. One of the first to comment on the Vice President Spiro Agnew bribery mess, resulting in his downfall, 1973. Investigation and disclosure causing the jailing for bribery of the highest level sitting federal judge in American history, Chicago Federal Appeals Judge Otto Kerner, Jr., 1973. Touching off "Operation Greylord," in which 20 local judges and 40 lawyers jailed for bribery, 1983-1993.

MORE ABOUT THE O.J. SIMPSON AFFAIR
==================================
By Sherman H. Skolnick

Is there a link between the Japanese mafia and the O.J. Simpson
affair? Some say yes.

Called the YAKUZA, it has installed top government officials in
Japan, including prime ministers, controls the loading of ships
and trucks, has an armlock on who appears in movies and on TV
there, and with the aid of the American CIA, has been a violent
force against the formation of unions in Japan. Major
corporations there have to pay hush money to the Yakuza who
threaten to disrupt stockholder meetings.

More numerous than the traditional Italian and Sicilian mafia,
the Japanese underworld is an even larger force in the dope
traffic. The Yakuza own major hotels and dominate real estate in
Hawaii. Experts point out the Yakuza have major bases of
operations in the U.S. in California and own one-half of the
high-rise buildings downtown Chicago built in the 1980s.

In California, the Japanese with large percentage Yakuza, own
most every bank headquartered in the state, including reportedly
WELLS FARGO BANK, and BANK AMERICA once Vatican-owned. According
to Italian press reports, Vatican-owned CONTINENTAL BANK of
Chicago is a criminal money laundry now owned by Bank America.
Wells Fargo is interlocked with HOUSEHOLD INTERNATIONAL and their
units HOUSEHOLD BANK, successor to the CIA-linked NUGAN-HAND BANK
of Australia.

Jointly with ultra-rights, the Yakuza are pressing for Japan to
again be a top military power in the world.

Background: in the book "Yakuza", by David E. Kaplan and Alec
Dubro.

Seldom mentioned: The Japanese underworld controls the dope
traffic in California. When NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON divorced from
O.J., she extracted a considerable portion of his fortune
including the reported ownership of fast food stores including
chickens. Corrupt police got into the picture as reputed
owners/operators, and it became a device for laundering dope loot
-- further washed through California-headquartered banks
dominated by the Yakuza.

O.J. Simpson was reportedly no stranger to gangsters in the
sports field being closely aligned with some in Buffalo, New York
(headquarters of a firm with reputed mob links, in the sports
stadium concessions industry).

A recent girlfriend of O.J.'s from Florida had reported close
ties to dope traffickers. She has been closely aligned with
President Clinton's pal DON TYSON and his CHICKEN processing
firm. The company has been accused in undercover drug agents
reports of being a major narcotics operation.

Some drug enforcement officials contend they *know* that the
double murder for which O.J. was unsuccessfully accused was done
by a dope hit gang, the butchering being a Yakuza specialty. Did
O.J. stumble on the scene but for the safety of his children is
silent? A friend of Nicole was deeply in debt to dope traffickers
-- and just prior to her death Nicole was trying to persuade ex-
husband O.J. to put up the pay-off or else.

Was the double murder a message to O.J. to shake him down? Does
O.J. still have a financial interest in the tainted fast food
stores and related businesses? Does he understand what it is all
about? Some think so.

Against this backdrop, is it just a coincidence the O.J. trial
judge was of Japanese descent? And is it just a coincidence Judge
KEN ITO's wife, MARGARET YORK, is a top official in L.A. Police
in charge of investigations of corruption in the police
department -- such as Yakuza dope traffic?

Judge Ito could claim *he* does not know what this is all about.
Certainly his wife knows.

So the jury released O.J. on reasonable doubt, but the O.J.
SIMPSON AFFAIR may not be finished. It could be one of the large
scandals of American history, reaching all the way to the CLINTON
WHITE HOUSE.

One day when i was driving home , it was around 9:00 p.m and the road was deserted. There was huge bend and the place was pitch dark. There was no street ligts and the there was no other building near by. Suddenly i saw white cloud of smoke arising and the smoke like effect was coming out of big pipe placed near the road. I went very close to pipe and saw why there was a big smoke arising out of the pipe. Later to my suprise i discovered that it was dog which was kicking up the sand.

I grew up in San Cristobal north of Taos 20 minuets away at age 14, I was settled in for the night as I lay my head down on my pillow I could hear a steady low frequent Hum that followed with a vibration that lasted just seconds I did not feel afraid I just dismissed it as the famously reported Taos Hum, my thought was WOW I just experienced the Hum. My experienced occured just once 24 years ago. There has been hundreds of reports of the Taos Hum from local and visitors, the reports have occured before I was born and continue to to be reorted today in Taos and around NM. Some believe it has much to do with goverment experiments and the cattle mutilation that also occurs during electrical storms.

This is absolutely amazing...

Very interesting video of magic tricks.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established in May 1927 as a non-profit corporation to promote the art of movie making. In the first year, the Academy had 36 members, with Douglas Fairbanks Sr as president. The first Academy Awards, now better known as the Oscars, were presented at a private dinner in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with less than 250 persons attending. Today, the Academy has over 6 000 honorary members - the Oscar Awards are viewed by more than a billion people on television.

The first television broadcast of the Oscars took place in 1953 - on black and white TV, telecasted throughout the US and Canada. Telecasting in colour begun in 1966, and since 1969, the Oscars have been telecast throughout the world. By the mid-1990s it was telecast in over 100 countries.

The first Oscars

At the first Acadamy Awards, held in May 1929, Best Director awards went to Lewis Milestone for Two Arabian Knights and Frank Borzage for 7th Heaven. The first award for Actor in a Leading Role went to Emil Jannings for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. The first Best Actress award was won Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise. The first Best Picture award went to WINGS. All those films were screened in 1927. Those were the days of the silent movies, thus WINGS was the only silent to have won a Best Picture Oscar. It also featured Gary Cooper in a minor role. Swiss-born Jannings grew up in Germany and had a heavy German accent which, with the advent of sound in movies, basically put an end to his Hollywood movie career.
The most popular night in the world

The Academy Award ceremony basically was a non-public affair in 1927 and 1928. But it had created such public interest that the Oscar Presentation Night was introduced in 1929. Until 1954 the Oscars were presented mostly on a Thursday. From 1955 to 1958, they were presented on a Wednesday. From 1959 until 1998 the Oscars were, with a few exceptions, presented on a Monday night. Only since 1999 did the Awards ceremony take place on a Sunday (in March). In total up to 2005, the famous statuettes have been handed out on 32 Monday nights, 21 Thursday nights, 8 Wednesdays, 6 Tuesdays, 2 Fridays, once on a Saturday (1948), and four times on a Sunday.

In 1930, the Academy Awards were held twice: on 3 April and on 5 November. No ceremony was held in 1933. Since 1940 people have been kept on the edge of their seats with the familiar phrase "The envelope please."
The Envelope Please

The record for most acting nominations without a single win is shared by Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton with seven. The most nominated actors for Best Actor and Best Supporting Roles are Jack Nicholson (11), Laurence Olivier (10), and Spencer Tracy (9). No male performer has yet won three Best Actor awards.

Only one actress has won the Best Actress award four times: Katharine Hepburn is the only actress to have won the Best Actress award four times, for Morning Glory (1932/3), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). In 1968 Katherine Hepburn was tied with and Barbra Streisand for the Best Actress award.

Anthony Quinn's performance as painter Paul Gaugin in Lust for Life (1956) is the shortest ever to win a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He was on screen for only 8 minutes. Judi Dench made the an equally short performance, winning Supporting Actress for her potrayal of Elizabeth I in "Sheakespeare in Love" (1999). More Oscar factoids

In 1997 James Cameron's Titanic received 11 Oscars, sharing the record of the most Oscars awards for a single film with William Wyler's Ben Hur (1959). The closest runner-up is West Side Story with 10 Oscars in 1961.

http://www.didyouknow.org/oscars.htm

Sept . 3, 2009

SALT LAKE CITY - A Salt Lake City woman who held a Guinness World Record for her long fingernails before they broke off in a car crash says it was the most dramatic event of her life.

But Lee Redmond, who lost the fingernails in February, says it's now much easier to do things and her hands seem to fly with the weight of the nails gone.

The 68-year-old won't grow her nails out again, saying it took 30 years the first time and she may not live for another 30.

Redmond hadn't cut her nails since 1979 and entered the Guinness World Records book in 2002 for longest fingernails on a woman.

The Guinness Web site says her nails measured a total of more than 28 feet long in 2008, with the longest nail on her right thumb at 2 feet, 11 inches.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32676597/ns/today-today_fashion_and_beauty/

2009-08-27 04:20

Power pistons: General Fusion's reactor is a metal sphere with 220 pneumatic pistons designed to ram its surface simultaneously. The ramming creates an acoustic wave that travels through a lead-lithium liquid and eventually accelerates toward the center into a shock wave. The shock wave compresses a plasma target, called a spheromak, to trigger a fusion burst. The thermal energy is extracted with a heat exchanger and used to create steam for electricity generation. To produce power, the process would be repeated every second.
Credit: General Fusion

General Fusion, a startup in Vancouver, Canada, says it can build a prototype fusion power plant within the next decade and do it for less than a billion dollars. So far, it has raised $13.5 million from public and private investors to help kick-start its ambitious effort.

Unlike the $14 billion ITER project under way in France, General Fusion's approach doesn't rely on expensive superconducting magnets--called tokamaks--to contain the superheated plasma necessary to achieve and sustain a fusion reaction. Nor does the company require powerful lasers, such as those within the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to confine a plasma target and compress it to extreme temperatures until fusion occurs.

Instead, General Fusion says it can achieve "net gain"--that is, create a fusion reaction that gives off more energy than is needed to trigger it--using relatively low-tech, mechanical brute force and advanced digital control technologies that scientists could only dream of 30 years ago.

It may seem implausible, but some top U.S. fusion experts say General Fusion's approach, which is a variation on what the industry calls magnetized target fusion, is scientifically sound and could actually work. It's a long shot, they say, but well worth a try.

"I'm rooting for them," says Ken Fowler, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering and plasma physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading authority on fusion-reactor designs. He's analyzed the approach and found no technical showstoppers. "Maybe these guys can do it. It's really luck of the draw."

The prototype reactor will be composed of a metal sphere about three meters in diameter containing a liquid mixture of lithium and lead. The liquid is spun to create a vortex inside the sphere that forms a vertical cavity in the middle. At this point, two donut-shaped plasma rings held together by self-generated magnetic fields, called spheromaks, are injected into the cavity from the top and bottom of the sphere and come together to create a target in the center. "Think about it as blowing smoke rings at each other," says Doug Richardson, chief executive of General Fusion.

On the outside of the metal sphere are 220 pneumatically controlled pistons, each programmed to simultaneously ram the surface of the sphere at 100 meters a second. The force of the pistons sends an acoustic wave through the lead-lithium mixture, and that accelerates into a shock wave as it reaches the plasma, which is made of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium.

If everything works as planned, the plasma will compress instantly and the isotopes will fuse into helium, releasing a burst of energy-packed neutrons that are captured by the lead-lithium liquid. The rapid heat buildup in the liquid will be extracted through a heat exchanger, with half used to create steam that spins a turbine for power generation, and the rest used to recharge the pistons for the next "shot."

The ultimate goal is to inject a new plasma target and fire the pistons every second, creating pulses of fusion reactions as part of a self-sustaining process. This contrasts with ITER, which aims to create a single fusion reaction that can sustain itself. "One of the big risks to the project is nobody has compressed spheromaks to fusion-relevant conditions before," says Richardson. "There's no reason why it won't work, but nobody has ever proven it."

He says it look longer than expected to raise the money for the prototype project, but the company can now start the first phase of building the test reactor, including the development of 3-D simulations and the technical verification of components. General Fusion aims to complete the reactor and demonstrate net gain within five years, assuming it can raise another $37 million.

If successful, it believes it can build a grid-capable fusion reactor rated at 100 megawatts four years later for about $500 million, beating ITER by about 20 years and at a fraction of the cost.

"I usually pass up these quirky ideas that pass my way, but this one really fascinated me," says Fowler. He notes that there are immense challenges to overcome, but the culture of a private startup may be what it takes to tackle them with a sense of urgency. "In the big programs, especially the fusion ones, people have gotten beat up so much that they've become so risk averse."

General Fusion's basic approach isn't entirely new. It builds on work done during the 1980s by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, based on a concept called Linus. The problem was that scientists couldn't figure out a fast-enough way to compress the plasma before it lost its donut-shaped magnetic confinement, a window of opportunity measured in milliseconds. Just like smoke rings, the plasma rings maintain their shape only momentarily before dispersing.

Nuclear-research giant General Atomics later came up with the idea of rapidly compressing the plasma using a mechanical ramming process that creates acoustic waves. But the company never followed through--likely because the technology to precisely control the speed and simultaneous triggering of the compressed-air pistons simply didn't exist two decades ago.

Richardson says that high-speed digital processing is readily available today, and General Fusion's mission over the next two to four years is to prove it can do the job. Before building a fully functional reactor with 220 pistons on a metal sphere, the company will first verify that smaller rings of 24 pistons can be synchronized to strike an outer metal shell.

Glen Wurden, program manager of fusion energy sciences at Los Alamos National Laboratory and an expert on magnetized target fusion, says General Fusion has a challenging road ahead and many questions to answer definitively. Can they produce spheromaks with the right densities, temperature, and life span? Can they inject two spheromaks into opposite ends of the vortex cavity and make sure they collide and merge? Will the acoustic waves travel uniformly through the liquid metal?

"You can do a good amount of it through simulations, but not all of it," says Wurden. "This is all very complex, state-of-the-art work. The problem is you're dealing with different timescales and different effects on materials when they're exposed to shock waves."

Los Alamos and General Fusion are collaborating as part of a recently signed research agreement. But Richardson isn't planning on a smooth ride. "The project has many risks," he says, "and we expect most of it to not perform exactly as expected." However, if the company can pull off its test reactor, it hopes to attract enough attention to easily raise the $500 million for a demonstration power plant.

Says Fowler, "Miracles do happen."

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23102/

18 Aug 2009

Researchers have found a genetic link between physical pain and social rejection, which means that breaking up with a partner really can be painful.

Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has a gene which connects physical pain sensitivity with social pain sensitivity.

The findings back the common theory that rejection 'hurts' by showing that a gene regulating the body's most potent painkillers - mu-opioids - is involved in socially painful experiences too.

Their study indicates that a variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection.

People with a rare form of the gene are more sensitive to rejection and experience more brain evidence of distress in response to rejection than those with the more common form.

Researchers collected saliva samples from 122 participants to assess which form of the OPRM1 pain gene they had and then measured sensitivity to rejection in two ways.

First, participants completed a survey that measured their own sensitivity to rejection. They were asked, for example, how much they agreed or disagreed with statements like "I am very sensitive to any signs that a person might not want to talk to me."

Then the emotions of 31 people among the group were tested when they were excluded during a virtual ball-tossing computer game.

Study co-author Prof Naomi Eisenberger said: "Individuals with the rare form of the pain gene, who were shown in previous work to be more sensitive to physical pain, also reported higher levels of rejection sensitivity and showed greater activity in social pain-related regions of the brain when they were excluded."

This is the first time that it has been proved that genes involved in physical pain are linked to mentally painful times like social rejection and breaking up with a lover.

Co-author Baldwin Way said: "These findings suggest that the feeling of being given the cold shoulder by a romantic interest or not being picked for a schoolyard game of basketball may arise from the same circuits."

Prof Eisenberger said this overlap in the neurobiology of physical and social pain makes perfect sense.

She said: "Because social connection is so important, feeling literally hurt by not having social connections may be an adaptive way to make sure we keep them.

"Over the course of evolution, the social attachment system, which ensures social connection, may have actually borrowed some of the mechanisms of the pain system to maintain social connections."

The research is published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6049700/
Why-a-broken-heart-really-does-hurt.html

A species of crustacean with no eyes and venom-injecting fangs has been discovered in an underwater volcanic cave in the Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa.

Researchers discovered the new animal during a diving expedition through the world's longest submarine lava tube, called the Tunnel de la Atlantida, or "tunnel to Atlantis." The divers were searching for specimens of a closely related crustacean species that they'd discovered 25 years ago in the same cave. But after capturing several of the sea creatures, the researchers noticed something peculiar.

"Some animals were much more active in swimming around than others in the small sample bottles," said marine biologist Tom Iliffe of Texas A&M University at Galveston, who was part of the team that discovered the new species. "On closer examination, and subsequently with DNA testing, we confirmed that they were actually two different species."

Their findings appear this month in a special edition of Marine Biodiversity. The new crustacean has been named Speleonectes atlantida, which means "cave swimmer of Atlantis." It's a very apt name, Iliffe said, because the creature is a very active swimmer, gliding through the water an undulating fashion.

Because the crustacean lives in near-total blackness of the cave, its body is almost transparent. Through its clear skin, 20 to 24 nearly identical body segments can be seen.


"These animals are crustaceans, but they look more like a centipede," he said, "with a highly segmented body and a well developed head with specialized appendages." These specialized mouthparts include a set of hollow-tipped fangs filled with venom. Although the poison is strong enough to kill small shrimp and other marine animals, Iliffe said it's not toxic enough to harm people.

The new crustacean is a member of the class Remipedia, which researchers think is one of the oldest groups of crustaceans on Earth. Because Remipedia have been found in the Atlantic, the Caribbean and also in Australia, scientists speculate that the animals may have originated when the continents of Europe, Africa and the Americas were close together.

"So it's thought remipedes could be at least 200 million years old," Iliffe said in a press release, "a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth." On the same expedition, Iliffe's team also discovered two new species of tiny worms, each smaller than a grain of rice.

http://www.paranormalstories.com/index.asp

Aug 26, 2009

LONDON - British police say they're on the trail of a burqa-clad bandit, or bandits, who robbed three different locations in the past two months.

Police said Tuesday that three armed men, one wearing a full-body veil, stole tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) worth of watches from a jewelers in Banbury, 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of London.

Monday's theft follows two incidents in which an assailant wearing a black burqa robbed travel agents in the English towns of Dunstable and Luton, both about 45 miles (70 kilometers) away.

The first robbery occurred in early July. Another occurred about a month later.

Detective Constable Steve Guerin says police aren't sure whether there's a connection between the robberies, but they seem "strikingly similar."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32572636/ns/world_news-weird_news/

SOUTHEAST, N.Y. - An 83-year-old driver chased a pickup truck for 15 miles from New York into Connecticut, helping police catch the drunken driving suspect who had rear-ended his car.

The incident last weekend started on Interstate 684 in Southeast, N.Y.

Frank Canale of Scarsdale, N.Y., pursued the man all the way to his driveway in Danbury, Conn., and stayed there until police arrived. He says he feared the man could kill someone.

His daughter, Lori Canale-Smith of Pleasantville, called police on her cell phone during the chase.

By the time they finished filing police reports in two states, the pair missed the wedding they were heading to when the accident happened.

Police say the truck's driver was charged with driving under the influence and driving without a license.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32579528/ns/us_news-weird_news/

Aug 28, 2009

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Colorado State University has withdrawn recognition of a sorority after an investigation into several alleged incidents of hazing, including being deprived of sleep and being made to eat cat food.

University officials on the Fort Collins campus temporarily suspended Zeta Phi Beta sorority in April and permanently withdrew recognition Aug. 5.

A police report obtained by The Rocky Mountain Collegian newspaper says pledges told authorities they were forced to eat cat food and perform "strenuous physical activity" that made one student seek medical attention.

Colorado State spokeswoman Dell Rae Moellenberg says university police investigated the allegations and contacted the district attorney, who won't file any charges.

A call for comment to the sorority's national office wasn't immediately returned. Zeta Phi Beta's Web site says the sorority was founded in 1920 by students seeking to depart from the traditional coalitions for black women.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32594722/ns/us_news-life/

North Korea has opened its first pizzeria after a decade of clandestine international research.

By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 9:41AM GMT 16 Mar 2009

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart - the nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria.

The launch of Pyongyang's first Italian restaurant meanwhile brings to fruition a ten-year effort by Kim Jong-il - a renowned gourmand and lover of western food - to create the perfect pizza and pasta in his homeland.

Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain "errors".

In the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants.

Despite the food shortages high-quality Italian wheat, flour, butter and cheese are being imported to ensure the perfect pizza is created every time.

"Our people should be also allowed to enjoy the world-famous food," the manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper.

The paper, which is often seen as a mouthpiece for the communist regime, added the restaurant had proved to be a major hit after it opened in the capital Pyongyang in December.

"I've learned through TV and books that pizza and spaghetti are among the world's famous dishes, but this is the first time that I've tasted it," Jung Un-Suk, 42, told the newspaper, "They have unique flavours," she said.

The news that Kim's dream of making genuine Italian food available in the capital has been realised comes as North Korea threatens to test-launch a rocket which the US believes is capable of striking America.

Last week North Korea notified international aviation and maritime agencies of its plan to launch a "communications satellite" between April 4-8, further heightening tensions in the region.

On Monday Japan and South Korea announced their intention to demand UN action against North Korea if it test-fired a Taepodong-2 missile in defiance of UN resolutions imposed after Pyongyang tested its atomic bomb in 2006.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/4999429/North-Korea-launches-perfect-Italian-pizza.html

19 August 2009

AHMEDABAD: A city-based restaurant
claimed to have made the world's longest dosa, 32.5-ft-long in less than 40 minutes.

"We have made the world's largest dosa, 32 feet and five inches long, in record time of less than 40 minutes," CMD of Sankalp chain of restaurants, Kailash Goenka, said.

"We already hold the Guinness record for making the world's largest dosa — 30 feet long in February 2006. Today we broke our own record and prepared a 32.5-feet-long dosa," Goenka said.

The dosa was named after "Quick Gun Murugun", an upcoming movie that highlights the merits of vegetarianism.

A team of 16 chefs
and eight helpers practiced for the past 10 days to get the correct length.

"In our team, we have 16 chefs who worked in tandem to prepare the dosa. It required proper coordination among the men for spreading the batter across the hot plate simultaneously," one of the chefs Swami Goda.

Another member of the team, Sajjan Singh, said it was difficult to handle the dosa on a 35-feet-long hot plate (tawa) and to maintain a steady temperature across the length.

Sankalp restaurant first entered the Guinness Book of Records in March 1997 by making a 25-feet-long dosa

Thu, July 23, 2009
By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese researchers have managed to create powerful stem cells from mouse skin and used these to generate fertile live mouse pups.

They used induced pluripotent skin cells, or iPS cells -- cells that have been reprogrammed to look and act like embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells, taken from days-old embryos, have the power to morph into any cell type and, in mice, can be implanted into a mother's womb to create living mouse pups.

Their experiment, published in Nature, means that it is theoretically possible to clone someone using ordinary connective tissue cells found on the person's skin, but the experts were quick to distance themselves from such controversy.

"We are confident that tremendous good can come from demonstrating the versatility of reprogrammed cells in mice, and this research will be used to... understand the root causes of disease and lead to viable treatments and cures of human afflictions," said Fanyi Zeng of the Shanghai Institute of Medical Genetics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

"It would not be ethical to attempt to use iPS cells in human reproduction. It is important for science to have ethical boundaries," she said, adding that their study was "in no way meant as a first step in that direction".

No one has ever cloned a human being and while many stem cell experiments in mice have been replicated in humans, not all have.

Led by Qi Zhou at the Chinese Academy of Sciences's State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Biology, the team created iPS cells, using mouse fibroblasts, which are cells found in connective tissue in the skin.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, giving rise to all the tissues, organs and blood. Embryonic stem cells are considered the most powerful kind of stem cells as they have the potential to give rise to any type of tissue.

But they are difficult to make and require the use of an embryo or cloning technology. Many people also object to using human embryonic stem cells and many countries limit funding for such experiments.

From the skin cells, the Chinese scientists created 37 stem cell lines, and of these, three generated live births.

"One line can generate such competent mice that the longest living one we have is nine months," Zeng told Reuters.

"It has generated now more than 100 of second-generation (mice) and more than 100 third-generation (mice). It really demonstrates how fertile and strong the system is."

The Chinese experiment generated questions and caution from other stem cell researchers not connected to the study.

"These investigators have, for the first time, unequivocally demonstrated that the iPS lines they have generated are truly pluripotent," wrote Andrew Laslett, group leader of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Technology at the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

Pluripotent is a term meaning the cells can give rise to all the tissues in the body.

"Moreover, the long-term stability of both the iPS cell lines and the long-term health of the mice generated using this procedure are yet to be reported. It will be interesting to see whether mice generated in this fashion have a higher propensity for tumour formation," Laslett wrote.

http://www.qualityhealth.com/news/chinese-experts-grow-live-mice-skin-cells-15670?utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reutersnews&rf=32471

Buck Wolf, About.com

This massive treat weighs 1,224 pounds -- which sets a new high-batter mark for giant baked objects, according to Guinness World Records. The previous biggest cupcake weighed "only" 151 pounds. The new champ, created by GourmetGiftBaskets.com, measured 4 feet tall and 10 feet wide. Proceeds from the sale of the cupcake went to Susan G. Komen's Passionately Pink for the Cure.

http://weirdnews.about.com/od/suggestedreading/ig/Weird-News-Photo-Extravaganza/cupcake.htm

By Matthew Moore
Published: 2:04PM BST 21 Aug 2009

The work currently stretches to more than 364,000 verses and could in theory go on forever – or as long as users of the micro-blogging updates keep posting.

While many of the lines come out as garbled nonsense ("goodnight my lovely, and good luck with that!/Just hanging out with the dog and cat") unworthy of a 1950s Beat poem, the juxtaposition of conflicting thoughts occasionally throws up some poignant rhymes.

For instance, one verse reads: "Open your heart and i'll make you smile/give her an inch and she'll take a mile".

Ever pairings that seem entirely unconnected can produce unexpectedly coherent thoughts, such as: "Trust in God gives joy and peace/wake up and smell the cork grease".

Andrei Gheorghe, the 22-year-old developer who created the program behind the project over a weekend, said that he does not consider himself an artist but aimed to set up a "playground" to tap into the creative consciousness of the internet.

"I found the lyrics to be sometimes interesting, other times weird. It is fully automatic so I just let it run, without any involvement from me," he said.

"I soon found that people were very excited to be part of this and consider it some form of artistic expression of the collective consciousness of Twitter."

He added: "The fact that it offers equal chances for anyone to be featured in the poem is one of its interesting points."

The Longest Poem in the World, as he has titled it, works by pulling in updates from the public Twitter timeline and attempting to match them with tweets that the program previously harvested.

"If it finds one, then both tweets are pushed to the poem. If not, the tweet is added to that database waiting for a 'brother' later on," he explained.

Mr Gheorghe, who works for the Romanian interactive web agency MB Dragan, consulted a pronunciation dictionary to draw up the program's rhyming rules.

He said he has no plans to curtail the poem, which is capable of producing around 4,200 verses a day and is constantly updating.

The longest single-author poem in English is reputed to be My Blah Story by US writer Nigel Tomm, which stretches to 23,161 lines. The early English epic poem Beowulf comes to just over 3,000 lines, while Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner runs to 625 lines.

Below is an extract from Mr Gheorghe's Twitter poem, the full version of which can be found at http://www.longestpoemintheworld.com/

The Longest Poem in the World

working on a group project at school right now... and feeling sleepy!!!
Getting my car washed. Incredibly claustrophobic and creepy.
contemplating going to rocks and ropes tomorrow...
loves this weather ........rain lightning and rain perfect combo.
Going to the inlaws. Swimming and food.
Take a bath and kill the sleepy mood
I have found my lost mind and it is driving me crazy. :-D
I'm lying in bed and can't get up because of lazy.
and now i'm full back in my thinking room with The Times on the air.
blah still some packing to do. and i don't even care
Prince Dance Group performing next... They're fully painted up and ready to go...
Back from Lincoln, nice to see the sun shine and sky and stuff! Good shoot though.
is being a real man and watching Deadliest Catch... :D
I just had brownies and tempe. Weird match.
Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Will Never Hurt Me
And Nancy's brother Positive Phillip =P.
Every morning I have more and more names. How do I stop this?
well f--- u i guess im going riding with petey and chris
Ice cream, bagels, peaches, and dates. Stuffing my face
At the studio wit hit boy and chase

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6067114/Longest-poem-in-the-world-written-on-Twitter.html

7-12-09
Daily Telegraph (London)

Japanese engineer Takuo Toda's paper airplane was certified in May as the Guinness Book record-holder for the longest flight from a single folded sheet of paper: 27.9 seconds. And in Witcham, England, in July, Jim Collins won the World Peashooting Championship, using a "traditional" instrument blowing at a target 12 yards away, but noncompeting ex-champion George Hollis once again drew the most attention with his homemade, gyroscopic-balancing, laser-guided peashooter, with which he won three previous championships.

http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw090816.html

Origins: The Reverend Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister who
became a social reformer and a ferocious advocate of healthful living, is the man who put the 'graham' into the treat we now know and love as graham crackers. Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) believed physical lust was harmful to the body and caused such dire maladies in the sexually overheated as pulmonary consumption, spinal diseases, epilepsy, and insanity, as well as such lesser ailments as headaches and indigestion.

He also thought too much lust could result in the early death of offspring, who would have been conceived from weakened stock.
Graham believed a strict vegetarian diet would aid in suppressing carnal urges; to this end, he advocated a regimen devoid of meat and rich in fiber as a way of combating rampant desire. His famed "Graham bread" was fashioned from the coarsely ground wheat flour he espoused and came to bear his name:

The Reverend Sylvester Graham, an eccentric Presbyterian minister from Connecticut, promoted a strict, abstemious diet that won him countless converts during America's health craze of the 1820s and 1830s. Convinced that eating meat and fat leads to sinful sexual excess, the good reverend urged total vegetarianism. He also warned that mustard and ketchup cause insanity, urged followers to drink only water, and recommended sleeping with one's windows open regardless of the weather. More reasonably, he touted the merits of a high-fiber diet and promoted the use of homemade unsifted wheat flour instead of refined white flour.1

Although Graham had his adherents during his lifetime, he was mostly regarded as a bit of a nut. Still, there were those who followed his recommendations and happily incarcerated themselves in "Graham boarding houses" in New York and Boston as part of the health craze he inspired. A high-fiber vegetarian diet wasn't the only thing he pushed; he was also strongly against the use of tobacco or alcohol and advocated fresh air, exercise, and a good night's sleep, all excellent components of a healthy lifestyle.

Who actually produced the first 'graham crackers' so named because they were made of the unsifted wheat flour that Sylvester Graham promoted is the subject of dispute. Some sources assert Graham himself invented the snack in 1829; others claim the graham cracker did not come into being until 1882, thirty-one years after Graham's death. (The latter date appears to be based on the year recipes for graham crackers started appearing in cookbooks.)

Many bakers tried to market the crackers, but it wasn't until 1898 that the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco) made any real inroads into the market with their Nabisco Graham Crackers product. Nabisco achieved even greater success with their Honey Maid line, introduced in 1925, which boosted the original graham flavor through the addition of honey.

Today's graham crackers are made with bleached white flour, a deviation that would have set Sylvester Graham to spinning in his grave he regarded refined flour as one of the world's great dietary evils.

http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/result/3387587/294684/

There is a book out very recently that claims the red color of strawberry milkshakes comes from a tropical beetle ground up for its red coloring.

Origins: Next time you're browsing the supermarket in search of the
makings of that night's dinner, pause a moment to read the ingredients labels of your favorite red-colored ingestibles and cosmetics. Chances are, you'll discover a notation for cochineal, carmine, or carminic acid, pigments whose origins might surprise and possibly disgust you.

Cochineal and its close cousin carmine (also known as carminic acid) are derived from the crushed carcasses of a particular South and Central American beetle. These popular colorants, which today are used to impart a deep red shade to fruit juices, gelatins, candies, shampoos, and more, come from the female Dactylopius coccus, a beetle that inhabits a type of cactus known as Opuntia.

Dactylopius coccus was the source of a red dye used by Aztecs and Mexican Indians for centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards. Those indigenous peoples would collect cochineal insects, briefly immerse them in hot water to kill the beasties and dissolve the females' waxy coating, and then dry them in the sun. The desiccated insects would then be ground to a fine powder.

The Spaniards immediately grasped the potential of the pigment, so these dried insects became one of the first products to be exported from the New World to the Old. Europeans took to the beautiful, bright scarlet colour immediately both for its vibrant hue and for its extraordinary colorfast properties, ensuring that boatloads of cochineal insects would make the trans-Atlantic trek.
Today cochineal has been surpassed as a dye for cloth by a number of synthetic pigments, but is still widely used as a coloring agent for a number of foodstuffs, beverages, and cosmetics (because many of those synthetic dyes proved dangerous to humans when taken internally or allowed to leach into the body through the skin). It takes about 70,000 insects to make one pound of cochineal.

While cochineal is used in a wide variety of foods, it is not found in kosher products because Jewish dietary laws prohibit the inclusion of insects or their parts in food. The "ewww!" factor nothwithstanding, cochineal is a safe food colorant aside from a few rare cases of allergic reaction.

Another red dye used in foods, FD&C Red Dye #40 (alternatively known as Red #40), is often mistakenly assumed to be a euphemism for cochineal or carmine. It's not it's bug-free and is actually derived from coal.

Our distaste at the thought of ingesting bugs is based on cultural factors rather than the properties or flavors of the insects themselves. Western society eschews (rather than chews) bugs, hence the widespread "Ewww!" reaction to the news that some of our favorite foods contain extract of beetle.

http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/result/3387587/294683/

Two Chinese women who work at the same factory were shocked to discover they were both married to the same man.

Cui Bin, 42, of Zhengzhou, has been jailed for three months for bigamy after the story came out, reports Dahe Daily.

He had first married Zhang Dandan and the couple had a daughter together - but he was desperate to have a son.

"I always wanted to have a boy, but due to China's one baby per family policy I had to find another woman secretly," he admitted.

He met Wang Na, married her and they had a son together - and he divided his time between the two households making up excuses for his absences.

Meanwhile, Zhang and Wang had become friends through a shared love of karaoke, never dreaming their were married to the same man.

Wang knew her friend had a daughter and that her husband was a builder who worked away from home. Zhang knew Wang Na was newly married but had not visited her home.

The truth came out when Wang grew suspicious after hearing her husband on the phone to another woman. She rang back the number and could not believe her ears.

"I called back the number and the woman who answered said she was Cui's wife. We recognised each others voices immediately on the phone and were quite outraged at Cui," said Wang.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3445017.html?menu=news.quirkies

Aug 21, 3:16 PM (ET)

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) - A southeast Missouri man was accused of biting off the ear lobe of a love rival. The Southeast Missourian reported that a 23-year-old man was charged with felony assault and burglary and was jailed on $50,000 bond.

Police said the suspect and the victim were arguing over a woman just before midnight Tuesday. The suspect allegedly displayed a butcher knife, but the victim and the woman pushed him out the door.

A fight allegedly began after the suspect knocked loudly at a window. Police said the two men fell to the ground and the suspect bit off the victim's ear lobe.

Police recovered the severed lobe, but doctors were unable to reattach it.

Some years back, an email began circulating about an anthropologist named Susan McKinley who came down with a rash after returning from South America. After seeing many doctors and receiving treatments that did not alleviate the pain in her breast, she was finally sent to a dermatologist with her breast bandaged up. The dermatologist, as well as Ms. McKinley was horrified to find larvae growing underneath her bandages. While this story is absolutely false, it is partially based on true accounts. The story stemmed from a medical article about a Nigerian woman who suffered from Furuncular Myiasis of the breast where the larvae of the Tumbu fly had buried itself.

http://purpleslinky.com/offbeat/five-true-urban-legends/

The Capital Times — 8/07/2009 8:35 am

A Madison police intern is in hot water Friday morning after he allegedly got drunk, accosted three men downtown while claiming to be a detective and threw one of the men to the ground before real officers arrived and took him to jail, Madison police reported.

Samuel Lehman, 20, was tentatively charged with impersonating a police officer, disorderly conduct and underage drinking following his arrest at about 12:30 a.m. Friday at Langdon and North Frances Streets.

Lt. John Radovan said Lehman was intoxicated and walking down Frances Street when he came upon three men.

"He pulled out his Madison Police Department intern identification, said he was an undercover Madison Police Department detective, pointed his index finger with his thumb up, like a gun, at the men, and ordered them to the ground," Radovan said in the incident report.

Lehman then pulled out his cell phone and called for backup before grabbing one of the men, throwing him to the ground.
"Shortly thereafter Lehman told them they could leave, saying they were lucky, and he'll let the situation go at this time," Radovan said.

Officers made contact with Lehman a short time later and took him to jail.

"It is anticipated his internship will be ending," Radovan said.

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/police/461165

As NASA celebrates the 40th anniversary of man's first trip to the moon, the space agency is taking some hits for failing to preserve the best historical record of the Apollo 11 flight.

NASA acknowledged on Thursday that the original TV footage of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, was accidentally erased. Someone wanted to make room on the videotape reel that stored the footage. So, did NASA's goof rob future generations from watching what was arguably mankind's greatest achievement?

Not hardly. Remember at NASA, failure is not an option.

A Hollywood post-production house was enlisted to lend some movie magic and restore the images by digitally stitching together copies of the flight retrieved from various sources around the world. The restoration undertaken by Lowry Digital, based in Burbank, Calif., is still under way and won't be completed until September. The first phase, however, was released on Thursday and Lowry's rescue work has won rave reviews.

The Associated Press reported that "some of the details seem new because of their sharpness. Originally, astronaut Neil Armstrong's face visor was too fuzzy to be seen clearly. The upgraded video of Earth's first moonwalker shows the visor and a reflection in it."

It must be noted that anyone who saw Armstrong's moonwalk will remember the images weren't that clear to begin with. TV sets back then didn't offer the sharpest images--at least compared with the picture quality offered today. Moreover, the pictures were transmitted from the moon at 10 frames per second, with 320 lines of resolution for the live telecast.

With the original one-inch videotape recordings "degaussed, re-certified, and reused" NASA had to do some sleuthing to dig up copies. The best were narrowed down to four sources, including one from a handheld camera that was pointed at a monitor within Mission Control, according to a statement from the company.

One of the biggest hurdles for Lowry's technicians to overcome was that all four source materials were in different formats, frame rates, and resolutions.

That means blending different levels of brightness, contrast, and clarity.

Lowry's technology uses temporal image processing that collects information from clips and uses them to determine the correct contrast, resolution, and noise level in each frame, the company said.

The process uses imaging algorithms that have been "fine-tuned over the course of more than 400 major feature film restorations" including "Casablanca," Lowry said.

At NASA's request, some flaws will be kept in the restored version. Dust particles on the lens of the camera that taped Armstrong coming down the lunar module's ladder were visible in the original telecast. NASA officials think they too should be preserved.

The idea is not to enhance the record of the landing, but to re-create it.

by Greg Sandoval

I had a dream once, that me and a few friends were out and about in a familiar place, a place we would sometimes sit wating on a taxi to take us home after a night out! Well anyway... in my dream we were there, looking about us! When suddendly i looked down, saw two men, in black(leather jackets) One in the passenger seat, and one in the driver seat... We didnt noticed at first, but the man in the passenger seat was pointing a bright red light at us... wasnt until a few seconds later we realised it was a lazer gun! My friends and I, started running as fast as we could but I got shot on the middle of my back! As soon as i got shot, my soul spirit or whatever shot away up in the air going extreamly fast, but suddendly stopped for a few seconds... Then i heard not one voice, but alot of voices saying to me "It's not your time yet, it's not your time" and then my spirit shot back down into body and i woke up and everyone crying around me!

It was a wierd dream, and ussally i wouldnt take any notice of dreams.. but this one freaked me out cause it felt so real!

March 20, 2008
http://jeannehannah.typepad.com

This is the week of bizarre divorce news, I guess. Yesterday, it was the $48.6 million award to Heather Mills [plus $70,000/year in child support, school tuition, and about $50,000/year for a nanny] in her divorce from Sir Paul McCartney. With all the rancor of that divorce, I foresee no happy co-parenting there!

Today, I read a report of a Connecticut divorce . . . something about 'til death do we part . . .

Karen Finnegan sued Joseph Finnegan for divorce in July 2007 after 26 years of marriage. Joe's defense was simple: He claimed that when his heart stopped in June 2004, his temporary death dissolved his marriage. His death was "temporary" because cardiopulmonary resuscitation revived him.

In fact, Joe claimed that he later died two additional times, in 2004 and 2005. He therefore filed a motion captioned "Motion to Dismiss on the Grounds that the Defendant is No Longer Married to the Plaintiff Having Been Previously Completely, Although Not Permanently Dead."

A Connecticut statute provides that a marriage is dissolved by the death of one of the parties.

Joe's motion failed. First, he provided no evidence, documentary or otherwise, to support his claim of being previously dead. Second, the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines "death" as "permanent cessation of all vital functions." Medline Plus, an online medical dictionary, defines "death" as "the irreversible cessation of all vital functions as indicated by the permanent stoppage of the heart, respiration, and brain capacity: the end of life." A statute included in the Probate Code defines "death" as "(1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem."

Since Joe's death wasn't permanent or irreversible, his motion was denied. I guess we'll have to wait for Finnegan's Wake.

From The Times
April 6, 2009
Richard Owen in Rome
http://www.timesonline.co.uk

Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years.

The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.

The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was buried, although the image only appeared clearly in 1898 when a photographer developed a negative.

Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.

However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.

Dr Frale said that among other alleged offences such as sodomy, the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a “bearded figure”. In reality however the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud.

They had rescued it to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of heretical groups such as the Cathars, who claimed that Christ did not have a true human body, only the appearance of a man, and could therefore not have died on the Cross and been resurrected. She said her discovery vindicated a theory first put forward by the British historian Ian Wilson in 1978.

The Knights Templar were founded at the time of the First Crusade in the eleventh century to protect Christians making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Order was endorsed by the Pope, but when Acre fell in 1291 and the Crusaders lost their hold on the Holy Land their support faded, amid growing envy of their fortune in property and banking.

Rumours about the order’s corrupt and arcane secret ceremonies claimed that novices had to deny Christ three times, spit on the cross, strip naked and kiss their superior on the buttocks, navel, and lips and submit to sodomy. King Philip IV of France, who coveted the order’s wealth and owed it money, arrested its leaders and put pressure on Pope Clement V to dissolve it.

Several knights, including the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake. Legends of the Templars’ secret rituals and lost treasures have long fascinated conspiracy theorists, and figure in The Da Vinci Code, which repeated the theory that the knights were entrusted with the Holy Grail.

In 2003 Dr Frale, the Vatican’s medieval specialist, unearthed the record of the trial of the Templars, also known as the Chinon Parchment, after realising that it had been wrongly catalogued. The parchment showed that Pope Clement V had accepted the Templars were guilty of “grave sins”, such as corruption and sexual immorality, but not of heresy.

Their initiation ceremony involved spitting on the Cross, but this was to brace them for having to do so if captured by Muslim forces, Dr Frale said. Last year she published for the first time the prayer the Knights Templar composed when “unjustly imprisoned”, in which they appealed to the Virgin Mary to persuade "our enemies” to abandon calumnies and lies and revert to truth and charity.

Radiocarbon dating tests on the Turin Shroud in 1988 indicated that it was a medieval fake. However this had been challenged on the grounds that the dated sample was taken from an area of the shroud mended after a fire in the Middle Ages and not a part of the original cloth.

After the sack of Constantinople it was next seen at Lirey in France in 1353, when it was displayed in a local church by descendants of Geoffroy de Charney, a Templar Knight burned at the stake with Jacques de Molay.

It was moved to various European cities until it was acquired by the Savoy dynasty in Turin in the sixteenth century. Holy See property since 1983, the Shroud was last publicly exhibited in 2000, and is due to go on show again next year.

The Vatican has not declared whether it is genuine or a forgery, leaving it to believers to decide. The late John Paul II said it was “an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age.” The self proclaimed heirs of the Knights Templar have asked the Vatican to “restore the reputation” of the disgraced order and acknowledge that assets worth some £80 million were confiscated.

The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ, based in Spain, said that when the order was dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1307, more than 9,000 properties, farms and commercial ventures belonging to knights were seized by the Church. A British branch also claiming descent from the Knights Templar and based in Hertfordshire has called for a papal apology for the persecution of the order.

Astonished surgeons have removed a two-inch long fir tree growing inside a patient's lungs.

Doctors thought Artyom Sidorkin, 28, had cancer when he began coughing up blood and complaining of agonising chest pains.

But as they operated to remove a tumour the medics were amazed to discover the perfectly formed spruce thriving inside the lung.

"I blinked three times and thought I was seeing things," said surgeon Vladimir Kamashev at Izhevsk Hospital in Russia.

Doctors believe that Artyom breathed in a tiny seed which then began growing in his lung and that the sharp pains were the plant's needle-like leaves digging into his lung.

"It was very painful. But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me," he explained.

(http://www.ananova.com)

By Jenny Hope
Last updated at 12:44 AM on 18th April 2009

Next time you find yourself drenched in an unexpected downpour, look on the bright side - it'll be a memorable experience.

While wet weather may make us feel gloomy, it sharpens the memory and improves our recall, psychologists say.

But those who feel in a good mood because it's a sunny day are able to remember less well, according to memory tests carried out by Australian researchers.
Enlarge cloudy weather

Heading for cover under threatening skies. Psychologists have found that people performed better in memory tests when the weather was bad

Professor Joe Forgas, who led the research, said: 'It seems counter-intuitive but a little bit of sadness is a good thing.

'People performed much better on our memory test when the weather was unpleasant and they were in a slightly negative mood. On bright sunny days, when they were more likely to be happy and carefree, they flunked it.'

The tests were carried out on shoppers at a store in Sydney, where researchers randomly placed ten small ornamental objects on the check-out counter.

They included plastic animal figures, a toy cannon, a pink piggy bank and four small matchbox-sized vehicles, including a red London bus and a tractor.

On bright sunny days when people were more likely to be happy and carefree, they did less well in the tests

On rainy days, sad music was played in the store including requiems or slow pieces by Chopin.

When it was bright and sunny, customers heard cheery music such as Bizet's Carmen and Gilbert and Sullivan tunes.

This was done to 'further influence them towards negative or positive moods', said researchers at the University of New South Wales School of Psychology.

After shopping, customers were asked how many of the objects they could remember.

Their scores were three times higher when the weather was bad and they were feeling grumpy, compared with those tested on sunny days. The results were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

A report on the findings said: 'They point to a growing body of evidence that the way people think, the quality of their judgments and the accuracy of their memory are all significantly influenced by positive and negative moods.'

Professor Forgas said: 'We predicted and found that weather-induced negative mood improved memory accuracy.

Shoppers in a negative mood showed better memory and higher discrimination ability.'

He said a worse mood helped to focus people's attention on their surroundings and led to a more thorough and careful thinking style, while happiness increased confidence and forgetfulness.

He said: 'Being happy tends to promote a thinking style that is less focused on our surroundings.'

'In a positive mood we are more likely to make more snap judgments about people we meet.

'We are more forgetful and yet we are paradoxically far more likely to be over-confident that our recall is correct.

'Mild negative mood, in turn, tends to increase attention to our surroundings and produce a more careful, thorough thinking style.

'Accurately remembering mundane, everyday scenes is a difficult and demanding task, yet such memories can be of crucial importance in everyday life, as well as in forensic and legal practice.

'Surprisingly, the influence of mood states on the accuracy of real-life memories is still poorly understood.'

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

07 May 2009 by Colin Barras

Anaconda, a giant rubber "snake" that floats offshore and converts wave energy to electricity, is a step closer to commercialisation. An 8-metre long, 1/25th scale version is currently undergoing tests in a large wave tank in Gosport, UK, and a full-size working version could be a reality in five years.

Harnessing the power of waves is an attractive proposition because they are much more energy dense than wind. But wave power remains the poor relation of the renewable energy sector due to the difficulties of cheaply operating machinery in the harsh marine environment. The world's first commercial wave farm only began operating last year, off the northern coast of Portugal.

A variety of other designs are in testing around the world, but none are as unusual as the Anaconda. The rubber snake is filled with freshwater – to help deter sea creatures from setting up a home inside – and sealed at both ends to create a semi-rigid balloon that floats at the sea's surface.
Wave pulse

The tube is anchored at one end and as waves wash along its length they exert pressure on the snake that is transmitted by the water inside. This forces Anaconda's walls to expand outwards into the wave troughs where they are under less pressure, forming "bulge waves" that travel along the Anaconda's length.

These waves are similar to those that pass through the human circulatory system and can be felt as the pulse in the wrist and neck, says Rod Rainey of Atkins Global, co-inventor of the Anaconda. When each bulge wave reaches the end of the snake it keeps a turbine spinning to generate electricity.

The snake is made from a rubber-based material similar to that used to make dracones – flexible containers that are filled with diesel or water and towed behind ships for quick and cheap transportation.

Other than the turbine, Anaconda has no moving parts and unlike other wave power devices it needs only one tether to the ocean floor. That lowers construction costs and reduces the need for maintenance – an expensive undertaking in offshore settings where corrosion and accessibility are problems, explains Rainey.
Full-size snake

Des Crampton, CEO of Checkmate Seaenergy, the firm commercialising the flexible wave harvester, says a full-size Anaconda 200 metres long could generate enough energy to power 1000 average homes. "Anaconda captures more energy than all existing wave energy devices," he says.

Rainey and retired physicist Francis Farley began work on the concept in 2007, and tested mini Anacondas last yearMovie Camera. The first full-size Anacondas could become operational in 2014.

That would leave Anaconda several years behind competing technologies, such as the Pelamis systemMovie Camera currently operational off the Portuguese coast. But paradoxically, Rainey thinks success for Pelamis will be crucial for the future of Anaconda. "It will deeply upset the investment community if Pelamis fails," he says.

(http://www.newscientist.com)

Monday, 18 May 2009

A skydiver from Staffordshire has survived a 6,000ft free fall in Russia.

James Boole, from Tamworth, said he was supposed to have been given a signal by another skydiver to open his parachute, but it came two seconds too late.

Mr Boole, who was filming the other skydiver for a television documentary, landed on snow-covered rocks and suffered a broken back and rib.

"I really thought that I was going to die - an incredible feeling of sadness and just how unfair that was," he said.

"What went through my mind was my wife and my daughter."

James Boole
Mr Boole said he could not make sense of his survival

Mr Boole, who has made 2,500 jumps, is now back at home in a body brace.

He said: "(The other flyer) took us so close to the ground where I thought I was dead.

"When I finally looked at the ground and realised how low I was, I knew there was no time for me to get a full parachute above my head.

"For the first 48 hours after the accident I thought maybe I am dead and this is some kind of after-life limbo, or some other reality, because I couldn't make sense of it - how I was still here to come through this?"

His wife, Kristina, who is also a skydiver, said: "For the moment I'm thinking just of him to recover, so not about jumping or anything like that.

"But yeah (I) would like him to stop doing that."

(http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Gloucester Daily times
June 02, 2009

By Ethan Forman
Staff writer

DANVERS — You've heard of snakes on a plane, but on Sunday there were about 10,000 bees on a plane at Beverly Airport.

A swarm of honeybees landed on the wing of a plane used for flight school training, parked on the tarmac of the airport's west side off Burley Street.

It was the type of landing the owner of Beverly Flight Center, Arne Nordeide, had never witnessed.

"I never saw anything like it," Nordeide said.

Nordeide called Danvers police, who put him in touch with a local bee removal expert, Al Wilkins of Middleton.

Wilkins arrived and used a specially designed vacuum to suck the bees off the wing and from the ground below the plane. Wilkins has relocated the bees to hives where they will produce honey.

"I thought they were crash-landed in the airport," said Wilkins, who has been removing bees from houses and structures since 1978.

Nordeide said the bees were spotted buzzing around the wing of the Piper Warrior aircraft around 11 a.m. This plane does not sit around much — it flies five to six hours a day.

"The plane had already flown around 8 a.m.," Nordeide said, "and all of a sudden, they (the bees) decided to land."

At first, the bees swarmed over the left side of the aircraft, then landed on top of the left wing. The weather was hot, Nordeide said, so that may be why they went under the wing.

At this time of year, Wilkins said, his phone is buzzing with calls to remove bee swarms, which happen when an old queen bee leaves the hive with a group of followers in search of a place to make a new nest. The queen leaves the hive to make way for a new queen about to hatch in special cells inside.

"That's how they propagate," said Wilkins, who estimated the swarm at 10,000.

Wilkins said the windy day may have forced the swarm down as it came across the airport. The queen, who is not used to flying long distances, may have stopped to rest, and the other bees congregated around to protect her. The bees usually have a destination picked out in advance.

Wilkins, the past president of the Essex County Bee Association, and his wife, Linda, live on Mill Street in Middleton, and in April their hives were plundered by a black bear. A motion-activated camera captured an image of the bear milling about their backyard. It destroyed about eight hives, costing them hundreds of dollars.

"This is replacing the hives (the bear) ate," Wilkins said of the bees he picked up in Danvers.

Wilkins, who also raises exotic birds, is not taking any more chances. He has relocated his hives from his yard to a farm in Boxford, to a location in Seabrook, N.H., and to the Essex Agricultural and Technical School in Danvers.

(http://www.gloucestertimes.com)

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — We humans prefer to be addressed in our right ear and are more likely to perform a task when we receive the request in our right ear rather than our left. In a series of three studies, looking at ear preference in communication between humans, Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University "Gabriele d'Annunzio" in Chieti, Italy, show that a natural side bias, depending on hemispheric asymmetry in the brain, manifests itself in everyday human behavior.

One of the best known asymmetries in humans is the right ear dominance for listening to verbal stimuli, which is believed to reflect the brain's left hemisphere superiority for processing verbal information. However, until now, the majority of studies looking at ear preference in human communication have been controlled laboratory studies and there is very little published observational evidence of spontaneous ear dominance in everyday human behavior.

Tommasi and Marzoli's three studies specifically observed ear preference during social interactions in noisy night club environments. In the first study, 286 clubbers were observed while they were talking, with loud music in the background. In total, 72 percent of interactions occurred on the right side of the listener. These results are consistent with the right ear preference found in both laboratory studies and questionnaires and they demonstrate that the side bias is spontaneously displayed outside the laboratory.

In the second study, the researchers approached 160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance and waited for the subjects to turn their head and offer either their left of their right ear. They then asked them for a cigarette. Overall, 58 percent offered their right ear for listening and 42 percent their left. Only women showed a consistent right-ear preference. In this study, there was no link between the number of cigarettes obtained and the ear receiving the request.

In the third study, the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers' right ear compared with their left.

According to the authors, taken together, these results confirm a right ear/left hemisphere advantage for verbal communication and distinctive specialization of the two halves of the brain for approach and avoidance behavior.

They conclude: "Our studies corroborate the idea of a common ancestry - in humans and other species - of lateralized behavior during social interactions, not only for species-specific vocal communication, but also for affective responses."

A group of Bulgarian women are suing a drinks firm over an ad which shows a woman in a bikini under the slogan: 'the watermelon season is here'.

The watermelon ad /Europics

The ad, featuring a model in a melon-coloured bikini, has infuriated women's groups who say the country's men are already bad enough without any encouragement.

Now a group of 13 women are suing manufacturers Peshtera.

"You can't walk down the street now without some a**hole shouting, 'Hey - nice watermelons' and trying to see if they are ripe," a spokeswoman said.

"The advert encourages sexism and is causing women real harm and humiliation," said one woman.

The claim has already been filed with local justice authorities.

"This advert deeply and permanently discriminates against us as women, illegally infringes our personal lives, and violates European law on equal treatment of sexes in the provision of services," it states.

19:00 02 July 2009 by Michael Marshall

Sheep living on a remote island off the coast of Scotland have been shrinking for 20 years. Now it seems shorter winters caused by climate change are responsible.

Soay sheep are a primitive breed of domestic sheep, which live on the island of Hirta, in the St Kilda archipelago, without human interference. From 1955 onwards, the population has been closely studied.

Over the last 20 years, the average size of the sheep has been getting smaller, but it has been unclear why – particularly as natural selection would tend to drive the development of bigger bodies.
Sheep stats

To explore the effects of environmental change and natural selection, Timothy Coulson of Imperial College London and colleagues modified the Price equation, which is used to describe how natural selection changes a population from one generation to the next.

Coulson's team extended the equation so that it could reproduce the effects of a variable environment: how weather and seasons have changed from one year to the next, for example. They also modified it so that they could split the population up into different age groups, and describe changes in them separately.

This modification allowed them to pin down the factors that have affected the size of the sheep.

Natural selection pushes the sheep to get bigger, as the smallest individuals tend not to survive through hard winters to reproduce, they found.

However, this size increase is largely offset by the so-called "young mum effect" – the tendency for female sheep in their first breeding seasons to have offspring that are smaller than they themselves were at birth. The study is the first to take this effect into account.
Dearth of deaths

Over and above these factors, the modelling revealed that one of the most powerful influences on size was the gradual warming of the climate, driven by changes to the North Atlantic Oscillation ocean current, which has led to shorter winters on the island. As a consequence, the vulnerable smaller sheep were more likely to survive the winter, pushing average size down over successive generations.

"Because fewer sheep are dying, I think that means the environment is getting better for them," says Coulson. "The winters are less harsh than they used to be."

Kaustuv Roy, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California San Diego, who was not involved in the study, is impressed. "Their results are really useful, because they tease apart the different processes. It's a really nice study," he says.

Roy adds the team's modification of the Price equation could be used widely. "They've come up with a new approach, which people will definitely apply to other systems," he says.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1173668 (in press)

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

"Ultimately we are trying to discover what underlying mechanisms allow for some animal species to live a very long time with the hope that we might be able to develop therapies that allow people to age more slowly," said Asish Chaudhuri, Professor of Biochemistry, VA Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas and the senior researcher involved in the work.

Asish and colleagues made their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining proper structure under extreme stress.

"Maybe Juan Ponce De León wasn't too far off the mark when he searched Florida for the Fountain of Youth," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "As it turns out, one of these bat species lives out its long life in Florida. ... this chemical clue as to why bats beat out mice in the aging game should point scientists to the source of this elusive fountain."

(http://www.sciencedaily.com)

A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.

But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.

Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear 'full pirate regalia' as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.

The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.

Pastafarians follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and believe that the world was created by the touch of his noodly appendage. Furthermore, they acknowledge pirates as being 'absolute divine beings', and stress that the worldwide decline in the number of pirates has directly led to global warming.

Pastafarianism gained wide attention when its key prophet, Bobby Henderson, wrote to the Kansas School Board during the height of the controversy over 'Intelligent Design' being taught in science classes. His letter, also published on his website, demanded equal time be given to the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as was given to ID and evolutionary theory.

Since then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has gained countless followers worldwide, although there are those who remain spagnostic.

The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=43272&in_page_id=2

When Colt Langstaff returned to his home in Cool, California, on Monday, the first thing he noticed was that his garden fence had been knocked down, there was an unfamiliar pickup truck parked on his drive, and his personal belongings were scattered over his lawn.

The second thing he noticed was the naked man wrapped only in a sheet coming out of his backdoor. The naked gentleman asked Langstaff what he was doing there. Langstaff pointed out that is was his home, at which point the naked man ran away.

It was at that point that things began to get really strange.

The Mountain Democrat ('California's oldest newspaper') gives some details from the police report, following the eventual arrest of the naked man, identified as Terence Michael Dean, 37. It is a tribute to what went on that day that the fact its protagonist is called Colt Langstaff and lives in a town called Cool is by far the most boring thing about this story (which we sincerely hope is true).

After the naked sheet guy fled, Langstaff went into his house to discover that all the taps were running, causing a small flood. Why were the taps running? It's unclear, but it was possibly something to do with the many packages of meat that Langstaff found lying in the sink and bath.

It was just after Langstaff noticed the bathroom meat that the police arrived.

Several other features of the crime scene immediately called attention to themselves. The trails of potting soil were one element. The first soil trail led to the front door, where a rudimentary shrine had been created, featuring a statue of the Bhudda on top of a bongo drum. The second trail of soil led to the suspect's truck.

The origin of the soil was quickly traced by the detectives to around 100 houseplants that had been ripped from their pots, and placed near the truck. The truck was also observed to contain a considerable amount of Langstaff's property, notably his toaster, some pictures, and of course a number of empty potting soil bags.

Now, at this point, readers familiar with this type of crime will probably be asking themselves, 'hey, shouldn't there be teddy bears on plant stands as well?' You will be relieved to know that no fewer than three plant stands holding teddy bears were also discovered in the vicinity of the truck.

Inside the house, the lit candles in the living room were perhaps less impressive than the contents of the kitchen – namely some burned matches, a bowl of unpopped popcorn, a bowl of water with Langstaff's car keys in it, and paper note floating in a cup of water that read 'I love Cherry.'

At this point, the sheriff's deputies were told that a naked man had introduced himself to one of Langstaff's neighbours, asking to be taken to a hospital. Upon arriving at the neighbour's residence, they identified a naked man wrapped in a towel and smoking a cigarette as the likely suspect, and arrested him.

Reassuringly, Dean has now been released on $25,000 bail.

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Mr. Wang’s body explodes in the cremation chamber! A Chinese man, killed by a weather rocket, was thought to have died from getting struck by lightning until his body exploded at his own funeral.Wang Diange was attending a wake in his home when an explosion took off half of his roof and left him dead in the wreckage. Because it had been a stormy day, family members and the police assumed that lightning was what killed Wang and left half of his home in ruins.

However, as Wang was being placed into the cremation chamber at his own funeral, his body exploded, causing the chamber’s oven doors to fly off their hinges. Only then, spectators discovered a small piece of twisted metal, which led them to what really killed Mr. Wang:

A small weather rocket filled with silver iodide—shot into the sky in order to break up hail into rain—failed to explode in the atmosphere, and instead had fallen through Wang’s roof and acted like a bullet, instantly killing Wang as it was lodged into his body.

Three years later, the Weather Bureau has only given the Wang family 80,000 yuan (approx. $12,000USD) as a compensation for their loss.

(http://allweirdnews.com)

German police confirm that they today have taken a seven month baby away from a couple in Bavaria and local child welfare investigators are looking into them after the couple put the child up for sale on Internet auction site Ebay. The description read, “Male baby almost 8 months old, sleeps well through the night and does not cry much.” “Good for infertile couple or single man/woman wanting a child.”

The baby boy was put on sale on Tuesday at a starting price of one euro (1.58 dollars) and was withdrawn from the site around two and a half hours later, police said. There had been no posted offers but the couple may have recieved numerous offers via email. The mother said it was meant as a joke, but police and state officials failed to see the funny side, putting the baby into state care and charging both parents for attempted child trafficking. Police cheif Wesley Offerman is quoted as saying, “We all find our kids annoying sometimes but selling them is not the answer.”

(http://allweirdnews.com)

The world's largest palace has 1788 rooms. It was built for the Sultan of Brunei.

The world's largest recorded gathering of people was at a Hindu religious festival in India in 1989. It was attended by about 15 million people.

Abraham Lincoln went to school for less than a year. He taught himself to read and write.

The longest recorded swim was 2938 km down the Mississippi River in 1930. The swimmer spend 742 hours in the water.

Humans are no match for some animals. The rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight on its back. The Emperor moth can detect smells 11 km away. The cheetah can run at 70 km/h. The Polyphemus moth eats 86,000 its own birth weight in 48 hours. The cries of South American howler monkeys can be heard 16 km away.

The longest jail sentence passed was in the United States - 10,000 years for a triple murder.

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. Try it!

Levi Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans in 1850. They were intended as work trousers for American miners looking for gold.

In Ancient Rome only important people wore purple clothes. This is because the purple dye came from a particular kind of shellfish and was very expensive.

(http://www.thatsweird.net)

It's the stuff nightmares and horror movies are made of.

A holidaymaker got a nasty shock when he learned that the strange bleeding bumps on his head were not bites or shingles, but live maggots.

Aaron Dallas, from Colorado, looked for medical help when the unusual lumps appeared on his scalp after a holiday to Belize during the summer.

One doctor thought they might have been caused by a gnat bite. Another believed his problem was shingles.

But then the bumps took on a life of their own and began to move.

A doctor discovered five bot fly larvae living inside Aaron Dallas's head, near the top of his skull. This was a few weeks after a mosquito had apparently placed them there.

"I'd put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head. I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy," said Dallas, of Carbondale.

Bot flies rely on mosquitoes, stable flies, and other insects to carry their eggs to a host - and in this case the host was Dallas.

"It was weird and traumatic," he said. "I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees."

After their discovery the parasites were removed by a doctor. Dallas's wife teased him about it afterwards, but didn't find the experience funny.

"It's much funnier to everyone else. It makes my stomach turn over. It was cruel,'' he said.

Bot fly infections are fairly routine in parts of Central and South America.

- July 20, 2007 (http://www.thatsweird.net)

A victim of horrific facial disfigurement - known as "the man with no face" - has been given new hope by the advancement of medical science.

Jose Mestre, from Lisbon, Portugal, has been losing his face to a huge growth for the past 35 years, distorting it out of all recognition - and it's still growing.

The tumor on 51-year-old Jose's face is a collection of blood vessels that have expanded, producing a raised red area on the skin.

Jose was born with a strawberry-coloured birthmark on his upper lip. At puberty it began growing, eventually smothering his lips, nose and one of his eyes. Now it is 33cm long and weighs 3kg.

But Jose's religious faith - as a Jehovah's Witness he refuses to accept a blood transfusion - has prevented him from having surgery to remove the growth.

Jose's rare condition was the subject of a Discovery Channel TV documentary 'The Man With No Face', part of the 'My Shocking Story' series.

It reveals how top medical experts in London have now held out hope of helping Jose, a well-known figure around the streets of Lisbon.

A leading British surgeon has offered to treat Jose using ultrasound waves to coagulate the blood before the operation.

This should remove the risk of heavy bleeding - satisfying his religious beliefs about blood transfusions in the process.

Dr Iain Hutchison, of St Bartholomew's in London, is confident an operation with a harmonic scalpel could make him look a lot more normal.

Discovery Channel said: "Surrounded by a loving family, it seems incredible that he has not been treated and his face was allowed to grow so big. However, through years of medical misinformation, some misdiagnosis, lack of finances, and reluctance to undergo treatment due to religious beliefs, the growth has continued to obliterate his face."

My Shocking Story follows Jose on a journey through Europe to seek medical advice for one last chance to stop his face from suffocating him.

In this journey of a lifetime he travels by train, via Paris, to Britain, to meet the top experts in London. He goes through a series of tests, consultations, and meets other patients with a similar affliction. In London he also spends time with his sister Guida and the rest of his family, enjoys being a tourist in London, while making the biggest decision of his life.

Jose's dream is to live a long and normal life. Following the showing of the Discovery documentary he continues to adhere to his 'no blood transfusion' religious principles. But he has agreed to go back to the London hospital in 2008, when doctors hope to carry out specialist surgery to begin removing parts of his tumor, without the need for blood transfusions.

- December 24, 2007. (http://www.thatsweird.net)

It must have been a driver's worst nightmare - cruising down the highway and suddenly running smack into millions of angry swarming bees.

The bees were on the loose in California after a truck in which they were being transported flipped on its side on the highway.

The California Highway Patrol said eight to 12 million of the honey bees escaped from the crates in which they were stored.

The truck was carrying over 400 beehives with 30,000 bees in each.

The bees stung police officers, fire crews, and tow truck drivers trying to corral them after the accident.

"People were being stung left and right. It was an ugly, ugly scene," one police officer said.

The great escape happened near Sacramento and the insects swarmed over an area of Highway 99.

For seven hours authorities brought in handlers who used smoke in a bid to calm the bees and coax them back into the hives.

Several beekeepers driving past the accident stopped to help the emergency services deal with the bees.

The highway had to be closed for a period.

Police did not know what caused the tractor trailer carrying the bees to flip over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Washington. But they said they believe the driver may have been driving too fast.

The bees had been used to pollinate crops in the San Joaquin Valley.

The honeybee is the world's premier pollinator and is invaluable to farmers for pollination.

But there has been a shortage of them in recent times because of "Colony Collapse Disorder". US beekeepers have been losing thousands of their bees, puzzling scientists. This has led to a rise in honey prices and has also threatened fruit and vegetable production.

After a seven-hour clean-up operation at Sacramento, police were unable to say how many bees remained unaccounted for. But they were not getting any calls from panicked drivers. "No news is good news," one officer said.

- March 28, 2008 (http://www.thatsweird.net)