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Ferocious waterspout slams beach in Brazil

2015-03-03T11:42:00.002+01:00

Beachgoers scramble for cover; video screen grab

Beachgoers scurry for cover as a waterspout comes ashore at Grande Recife, tossing chairs and umbrellas; 'Even a child was thrown by the strong wind'

People enjoying an idyllic day at Brazil’s Candeias Beach were sent scurrying for cover Sunday as a ferocious waterspout spun ashore and raged across the sand.

Raw footage of the event in Guararapes, Grande Recife, shows palm trees bending, and umbrellas and chairs hurtling across the beach as terrified beachgoers scrambled to find safer ground. (The first video shows the waterspout as it’s hitting the beach, and the chaos; the second shows the funnel cloud’s approach.)

Though some reports implied that people also were tossed by powerful gusts, it remained unclear at the time of this post whether the brief storm caused serious injuries.
“It was scary,” Vanessa Quechua, a local resident, is quoted as saying by NE 10. “It picked up chairs, umbrellas… even a small child was thrown by the strong wind. Many people came running and screaming for help.”

The waterspout–the marine version of a tornado, complete with funnel cloud–developed as two complex storms approached the region.
Talitha Sampaio, another local, described the phenomenon as a “small tornado at sea” to News 9 Australia. “I was in Jaboatao, looking toward Recife, and there was a dark cloud. Suddenly, the clouds cleared and came here… and looked like a whirlwind into the sea from the sky.”

Waterspout approaches; video screen grab

Meteorologist Edvania Santos, of the Pernambuco Water and Climate Agency, said of the two storms: “The two bring more humidity and dense colds. This may have contributed to the occurrence of the phenomenon, because they generate strong winds. From the videos I’ve seen, this is a waterspout.”
To be sure, it was a day at the beach these people will not soon forget.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/skydiving-instructor-rescues-student-having-seizure-at-9-000-feet-191646686.html

Nemtsov's shaken girlfriend says she didn't see killer

2015-03-03T09:21:00.000+01:00

People hold flags and posters during a march to commemorate Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was shot …

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Boris Nemtsov's girlfriend has broken her public silence on the murder of the Russian opposition activist, saying she did not see the killer who gunned him down as they strolled across a bridge near the Kremlin.

Speaking largely without emotion in deadened monosyllables, Ukrainian fashion model Anna Duritskaya said she had little recollection of what happened in the moments after Nemtsov was shot dead on Friday night.

She told online news channel Dozhd that she had not noticed anything suspicious as the couple dined at a restaurant overlooking Red Square. It had not occurred to her that someone might be following them as they headed across the river towards Nemtsov's apartment.

"I don't want to answer questions about what happened on the bridge. I don't want to talk about this," she said.

"I am in a very difficult psychological condition and I cannot talk about this any more now. I feel bad ... I saw no one. I don't know where he came from, he was behind my back," she said of the killer or killers.

In this photo taken on Aug. 28, 2012, Anna Duritskaya poses for a photo for a modeling portfolio in …

Nemtsov, 55, was shot several times and killed instantly, becoming the most prominent opposition figure to be murdered during President Vladimir Putin's 15-year rule. Tens of thousands of Russians marched through Moscow on Sunday to honor the former deputy prime minister and anti-corruption fighter.

Duritskaya, who is 23 or 24, said she had been under constant guard since the murder and would probably be unable to attend Nemtsov's funeral on Tuesday. All she wanted to do was to go home to her mother in Ukraine.

"I have every right to leave the territory of the Russian Federation. I am not a suspect. I am a witness who gave full testimony and did everything possible to assist the investigation," she said.

"They are physically not allowing me to go anywhere without them," Duritskaya said, referring to law enforcement officials. "They have explained to me that this is for security reasons."

QUESTIONED WITHOUT LAWYER

Flowers and a portrait of Boris Nemtsov, a charismatic Russian opposition leader and sharp critic of …

Nemtsov, an opposition politician whose murder has deepened a divide between liberals and Putin supporters, will be buried on Tuesday at the Troekurovskoye cemetery in western Moscow, far from where Russia's top politicians are usually buried.

"I cannot go out. Most likely I will not go," Duritskaya said when asked if she would attend. She said she was now staying at a friend's apartment in Moscow.

Investigators had questioned her several times, gone through her belongings and taken data from her mobile phones. She said she was initially questioned for several hours without a lawyer or representative from the Ukrainian embassy.

Nemtsov had criticized Putin's annexation of Crimea and his support for pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine. He and Duritskaya had been dating for three years, she said.

The investigators say they are following several lines of inquiry and have come up with a number of possible motives. One is that Nemtsov may have been the victim of a jealous former lover, a version Duritskaya ruled out.

"I don't think anything. I cannot think at the moment. I don't know who did it," she said.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/nemtsovs-shaken-girlfriend-says-she-didnt-see-killer-150301641.html

Car Thief Throws a Brick, Mercedes Throws it Back

2015-03-03T08:53:00.004+01:00

They say that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. We’ll extend that warning to anyone within the vicinity of a Mercedes-Benz, thanks to this face-palmy closed circuit TV footage taken from outside an Irish pub.

According to the Irish Examiner, pub owner Gerry Brady and his business partner left work late one night to find a man passed out in the road next to his partner’s Mercedes E-Class Coupe. When he came to, the man was adamant that neither of the two call the police or an ambulance. Noticing the various damage to his partner’s car, Brady called the cops and reviewed his security footage to see what happened. Take a look.

After pelting the Mercedes’ windows with a few smaller stones, the thief then graduates to a large brick, but it’s quite obvious this Mercedes just isn’t giving up without a fight. The hurled brick bounces off the Mercedes and collides with the would-be crook’s face – knocking him out cold. His new nickname a la the Internet? ‘The Thick with a Brick.’

Now that’s what you call ‘karma’…or maybe it’s ‘car-ma’. Looking to reduce car thievery in your area? We have a simple solution. Take away all the rocks and pebbles in your neighborhood. Or better yet, just buy a Mercedes.

Original post found here: http://news.boldride.com/2015/02/car-thief-throws-a-brick-mercedes-throws-it-back/71464/

Netanyahu takes fight against Obama's Iran plan to Congress

2015-03-03T08:47:00.000+01:00

Washington (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for another round in an increasingly heated battle with the White House over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

In a landmark speech to Congress, Netanyahu will seek to mobilise lawmakers to oppose an emerging deal with Tehran which is backed by President Barack Obama.

Obama on Monday lashed out at his nemesis, pointing to Netanyahu's attacks on a previous interim US-Iran deal that paved the way for this week's ongoing talks in Switzerland.

"Netanyahu made all sorts of claims," he told Reuters.

"This was going to be a terrible deal," he went on. "This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true."

Netanyahu aides say that in his address he will present information proving that the shape of the deal being discussed in Switzerland this week presents grave danger.

A man holds a sign outside the Washington Convention Center where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne …

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf warned Monday that if the details came from US briefings to Israel, revealing them could mean there would be no more.

"We've continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context," she said.

"Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust."

"We want to keep talking in these settings, of course, but that would be a problem."

Netanyahu believes that in the talks with Iran the so-called P5+1 group is verging on striking a deal that will ease international sanctions without the ironclad safeguards the Jewish state says are essential to deny Tehran a nuclear bomb.

An Anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox Jew of the Naturei Kartra movement holds a Palestinian and American f …

The US administration says that is just not true.

"This president has made clear that he's not going to sign a bad deal," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday.

- Power: No nuclear arms for Iran -

Samantha Power, Washington's ambassador to the United Nations, weighed into the fight on Monday when she addressed 16,000 pro-Israel activists in the US capital.

"The United States of America will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, period," she said. Taking the podium shortly after Power, Netanyahu remained unswerving in his opposition to Obama's policy.

US President Barack Obama makes a statement to the press after a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of th …

"The purpose of my address to Congress tomorrow is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel," he said.

"My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama," he told the lobby group AIPAC's annual conference.

"Israel and the United States agree that Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons. But we disagree on the best way to prevent them from developing those weapons."

The row is not only about the core issues but also about the way Netanyahu and US Republicans are waging the battle.

He was invited by Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican, and he accepted with neither party informing the White House.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in …

Netanyahu himself is running for a third consecutive term -- which would be a fourth overall -- in an Israeli election on March 17.

"Our commitments to our partnership with Israel are bedrock commitments rooted in shared fundamental values cemented through decades of bipartisan reinforcement," Power said.

"This partnership should never be politicised."

The Israeli leader's lobbying expedition to Washington came as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Switzerland for talks with his Iranian counterpart on what would be an historic deal.

But Netanyahu denied that his action had harmed the traditionally close US-Israeli alliance.

"Reports of the demise of the Israeli-US relations are not only premature, they're just wrong."

Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met in a lakeside hotel for a series of sessions which are scheduled to stretch into Wednesday afternoon.

The pace of the negotiations meant to rein in Iran's suspected nuclear arms program in exchange for sanctions relief has gathered pace as a March 31 deadline nears.

Mark Heller, a political analyst at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies says that after years of warning about the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, it is hard to imagine what new angle Netanyahu will pursue on Tuesday.

"He's been over this ground before many times and expectations have been built up to the point where if he doesn't come up with something truly explosive, it's going to be a big let down," he told AFP.

"I think he's going to have to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat and reveal some information that's not out there in the public domain; otherwise he'll just be preaching to the converted."

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-pm-netanyahu-takes-off-historic-us-mission-132110917.html

Spacewalking astronauts finish extensive, tricky cable job

2015-03-02T09:12:00.001+01:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Spacewalking astronauts successfully completed a three-day cable job outside the International Space Station on Sunday, routing several-hundred feet of power and data lines for new crew capsules commissioned by NASA.

It was the third spacewalk in just over a week for Americans Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore, and the quickest succession of spacewalks since NASA's former shuttle days.

The advance work was needed for the manned spacecraft under development by Boeing and SpaceX. A pair of docking ports will fly up later this year, followed by the capsules themselves, with astronauts aboard, in 2017.

Once safely back inside, Virts reported a bit of water in his helmet again for the second time in as many spacewalks. He stressed it was "not a big deal" and said there was no need to hurry out of his suit.
Virts and Wilmore installed two sets of antennas Sunday, as well as 400 feet of cable for this new communication system. They unreeled 364 feet of cable on Feb. 21 and last Wednesday.
It was complicated, hand-intensive work, yet the astronauts managed to wrap up more than an hour early Sunday, for a 5 ½-hour spacewalk. Their three outings spanned 19 hours.
"You guys have done an outstanding job," Mission Control radioed, "even for two shuttle pilots."
Sunday's 260-mile-high action unfolded 50 years to the month of the world's first spacewalk.
Soviet Alexei Leonov floated out into the vacuum of space on March 18, 1965, beating America's first spacewalker, Gemini 4's Edward White II, by just 2 1/2 months. Leonov is now 80; White died in the Apollo 1 fire on the launch pad in 1967.
"It's amazing ... to see how far we've come from the very first steps outside," Virts said.
On Sunday — just like Wednesday — a little water got into Virts' helmet once he was back in the air lock and the chamber was being repressurized.
Virts said it seemed to be about the same amount of water, maybe slightly more, but dried quickly. He didn't need any towels this time when his helmet came off.
"I couldn't feel it on my skin. I could just see the thin film on the visor," he told Mission Control.
Engineers concluded last week it was the result of condensation during the repressurization of the air lock, and a safe and well understood circumstance that had occurred several times before with the same spacesuit.
Virts was never in danger either day, according to NASA, and no water leaked into his helmet while he was outdoors.
Wilmore's much newer suit functioned perfectly during the first two spacewalks, but on Sunday morning, a pressure sensor briefly malfunctioned before he floated out. A mechanical gauge, however, was operating fine. Mission Control instructed Wilmore to pay extra attention to how his suit was feeling.
To save money and stop being so reliant on the Russian Space Agency, NASA has hired Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the space station. The two contracts are worth nearly $7 billion. SpaceX already is delivering cargo under a separate agreement with NASA.
NASA expects to buy Russian Soyuz seats for its astronauts through 2018 in case the two companies miss their promised 2017 launch deadline.

As many as four more U.S. spacewalks will be conducted this year — beginning this summer — to make way for the Boeing and SpaceX capsules.

Original post found here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Ice age emperor penguins hit hard by the cold : study

2015-03-02T09:05:00.002+01:00

Sydney (AFP) - Antarctica's Ross Sea has been a rare safe haven for emperor penguins for thousands of years, even when temperatures were too harsh for their liking, a study released Monday suggests.

Researchers looking at how climatic changes have affected the highly cold-adapted penguin -- the tallest and heaviest of all penguin species -- over the last 30,000 years suggest that only three populations survived the last ice age.

Conditions were so severe that the number of emperor penguins on the frozen continent were seven-times less than they are today and in many fewer locations, said joint lead researcher Jane Younger.
"We hadn't really thought about the fact that it would be too cold for them in the past," Younger, a PhD student at the University of Tasmania, told AFP.
"They live through life in minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) now so they are pretty cold adapted."
By examining the genetic diversity of modern and ancient penguin populations, scientists from the universities of Tasmania, Southampton and Oxford in Britain, and the Australian Antarctic Division were able to estimate their numbers over time.
They found that numbers began increasing over the last 12,000 years when temperatures rose by an average of about 15 degrees Celsius and as the amount of sea ice around Antarctica began to reduce.
Younger said the warmer temperatures likely gave penguin chicks a better chance of surviving the winter -- when temperatures would have dropped to minus 45 degrees Celsius.
A reduction in sea ice would have allowed them easier access to the open ocean to feed.
"We were actually really surprised by this. What we had thought was that the ice age, because there was so much more sea ice which they need (to breed) and because they are so cold-adapted, that this would probably be a good thing for them," she said.
The researchers believe a population survived in the Ross Sea region because an area of ocean was always kept free of sea ice by wind and currents, according to the study published in Global Change Biology.
"The Ross Sea is probably really important," said Younger of the area on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica which is considered the world's most intact marine ecosystem.

"They have survived there for at least the last 30,000 years and even when the environment has been really unsuitable in a lot of other places the Ross Sea has been kind of a safe haven for them.

"The Ross Sea seems to come up time and time again as a really important part of the Antarctic ecosystem."

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/ice-age-emperor-penguins-hit-hard-cold-study-050630578.html

North Korea fires missiles in anger at South-US military drills

2015-03-02T08:58:00.002+01:00

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea fired two missiles into the sea on Monday and vowed "merciless" retaliation as the US and South Korea kicked off joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang as recklessly confrontational.

The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula, and analysts saw the North's missile tests as a prelude to a concerted campaign of sabre rattling.

"If there is a particularly sharp escalation, we could see the North orchestrating some kind of clash on the maritime border," said Jeung Young-Tae, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
The missile launches came with a stern warning from the nuclear-armed North Korean People's Army (KPA) that this year's military drills would bring the peninsula "towards the brink of war".
The South Korean defence ministry said the two Scud missiles were fired from the western port city of Nampo and fell into the sea off the east coast -- a distance of nearly 500 kilometres (310 miles).
UN resolutions prohibit any ballistic missile test by North Korea, and ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said Pyongyang appeared intent on triggering a "security crisis".
"We will respond sternly and strongly to any provocation," Kim told reporters.
The Japanese government said it had issued a strong protest to the North given the danger such missile launches posed to aviation and shipping.
Missile tests have long been a preferred North Korean method of expressing anger and displeasure with what it views as confrontational behaviour by the South and its allies.
- 'Brink of war' -
"The situation on the Korean peninsula is again inching close to the brink of a war," a spokesman for the KPA General Staff was quoted as saying Monday by the North's official KCNA news agency.
"The only means to cope with the aggression and war by the US imperialists and their followers is neither dialogue nor peace. They should be dealt with only by merciless strikes."
North Korea has threatened attacks, including nuclear strikes, on the US before, although it has never demonstrated a missile capability that would encompass the US mainland.
The largest element of the two South Korea-US drills that began Monday is Foal Eagle, an eight-week exercise involving air, ground and naval field training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 US troops.
The other is a week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill called Key Resolve.
Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defence-based in nature, but they are regularly condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.
In a statement later Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry labelled the start of the drills an act of "intolerable aggression" and said the North was ready to wage "any form of war" that the US chooses.
- Test moratorium offer -
North Korea has carried out three nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
In January, the North offered a moratorium on further tests if this year's joint drills were cancelled -- a proposal rejected by Washington as an "implicit threat" to carry out a fourth atomic detonation.
Analyst Jeung said Pyongyang was unlikely to conduct a fourth test just to protest against the exercises.
"Nuclear tests carry more significance than that," he said, noting that the North's testing schedule was primarily driven by technical development.
"On the other hand, there is the chance of a mid- or long-range missile test," Jeung told AFP.
"I would say that a demonstration that it could deliver a nuclear warhead would be more threatening to the world than an actual nuclear test," he added.
A new research report by US experts published last week estimated that North Korea could be on track to have an arsenal of 100 nuclear weapons by 2020.
In a further sign of rising tensions, the North Korean state-run website, Uriminzokkiri, warned Monday of a fierce response to any attempt by South Korean activists to float anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border by balloon.

"The response might not just be a few shots of gunfire but cannons or missiles," the website said.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/n-korea-vows-merciless-strikes-us-korea-drills-230340273.html

Frozen waves captured in Nantucket surf photos

2015-02-28T17:48:00.000+01:00

Frozen waves are photographed on Nantucket, Massachusetts. Photo by Jonathan Nimerfroh used by permission

Photographer was shocked to see ‘Slurpee waves’; a day later, ocean was frozen

The unusually cold winter of Massachusetts produced an incredible phenomenon 100 miles southeast of Boston on the island of Nantucket recently: frozen waves, or, as some are describing them, Slurpee waves.

Photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh had just finished a photo shoot when he decided to check out the beach, since they surf there in the winter.

He told GrindTV that the horizon had an eerie look to it, and upon closer inspection he discovered something very unusual.

“When I got to the top of the dunes, I could see that about 300 yards out from the shoreline the ocean was starting to freeze,” he told Shutterbug.com.

Waves were turning to slush, so Nimerfroh started taking photos of the Slurpee waves and the images started going viral Thursday.

Frozen waves are photographed on Nantucket, Massachusetts. Photo by Jonathan Nimerfroh used by permission

Frozen wave of Nantucket. Photo by Jonathan Nimerfroh used by permission

Frozen wave of Nantucket. Photo by Jonathan Nimerfroh used by permission

Frozen wave of Nantucket. Photo by Jonathan Nimerfroh used by permission

The high temperature of the day was 19 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was howling from the southwest, which would typically make rough or choppy conditions not good for surfing, Nimerfroh explained to Shutterbug.com.

“But since the surface of the sea was frozen slush, the wind did not change the shape,” he said. “They were perfect dreamy slush waves.

“What an experience to be absolutely freezing on the beach watching these roll in while I mind-surfed them. I wonder if a shaper can make me a special-designed slurfboard?”

The next day, Nimerfroh went back to see if the waves had melted and discovered another oddity: The same 300-yard stretch out into the ocean was frozen on the surface. It was 10 inches thick.

“No waves at all,” he told Shutterbug.com. “I’ve been asking all the fishermen and surfers if they have ever seen such a thing. This is a first, they all said.”

It fits in quite nicely to the Massachusetts winter of firsts, then.

Original post found here: http://www.grindtv.com/lifestyle/in-style/post/frozen-waves-captured-nantucket-surf-photos/

More Mysterious Craters Found in Siberia

2015-02-28T17:44:00.000+01:00

A Siberian hole that opened up mysteriously and was reported in July 2014

Last summer, the discovery of several new giant craters in Siberia drew worldwide interest, launching wild speculation that meteorites, or even aliens, caused the gaping crevasses. And now, scientists have found even more of them.

In July 2014, reindeer herders discovered a 260-feet-wide (80 meters) crater in northern Russia's Yamal Peninsula. Later that month, two more craters were discovered in the Tazovsky district and Taymyr Peninsula (also spelled Taimyr), respectively.

Now, satellite images have revealed at least four more craters, and at least one is surrounded by as many as 20 mini craters, The Siberian Times reported. [See Photos of Siberia's Mysterious Craters]

"We know now of seven craters in the Arctic area," Vasily Bogoyavlensky, a scientist at the Moscow-based Oil and Gas Research Institute, told The Siberian Times. "Five are directly on the Yamal Peninsula, one in Yamal autonomous district, and one is on the north of the Krasnoyarsk region, near the Taimyr Peninsula."

Now, two of the craters have turned into lakes, satellite images reveal. A crater called B2, located 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) south of Bovanenkovo, a major gas field in the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district, is now a large lake ringed by more than 20 smaller water-filled craters.

But Bogoyavlensky thinks there may be many more. He called for further investigation of the craters, out of safety concerns for the region. "We must research this phenomenon urgently, to prevent possible disasters," he said.

Trapped gases

Although the origin of these craters remains somewhat mysterious, many scientists think they were created by explosions of high-pressure gas released from melting permafrost, or frozen soil, due to the warming of the climate.

"In my opinion, it definitely relates to warming and permafrost," said Vladimir Romanovsky,a geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Romanovskythinks he knows how this occurs: Pressurized gas — mostly methane, but possibly carbon dioxide as well — exists beneath the permafrost. Since warming temperatures thaw the permafrost from the bottom up, an underground cavity forms, Romanovsky said. As the gas gets close to the surface, it deforms the ground above, creating a small hill. Finally, the pressurized gas erupts through the surface, forming a crater, he said.

In November 2014, scientists went on an expedition to study the Yamal crater, snapping some stunning photos. Vladimir Pushkarev, director of the Russian Centre of Arctic Exploration, actually climbed down into the crater on a rope to observe it from the inside.

"You can see from the photographs a very different structure," where most of the hole is caved in, but only the upper 16 to 23 feet (5 to 7 m) looks like a crater, Romanovsky told Live Science. "Only the upper several meters [of ground] was thrown away, but most of the hole was actually there before the eruption."

Dangerous explosions

The erupting methane may have even caught fire. Residents near the crater in the town of Antipayuta reported seeing a bright flash in the distance, according to The Siberian Times.

"Probably the gas ignited," Bogoyavlensky told The Siberian Times. Investigating the craters will be dangerous, because scientists don't know when the gas emissions will occur, he added.

How the methane would have caught fire is somewhat of a mystery, Romanovsky said. "It seems like it happened during wintertime, so there should be no thunderstorms, no lightning," he said. He thinks the methane probably erupted without igniting, just due to high pressure.

These craters should only form when the temperature is warm enough to melt the permafrost. "If the warming continues, we will see more and more of this phenomenon," Romanovsky said. It could happen anywhere there are enough sources of natural gas, including parts of Alaska and northwestern Canada, he added.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/more-mysterious-craters-found-siberia-120514819.html

Edge of space' tourism company World View just flew a balloon two times higher than we ever have before

2015-02-27T09:34:00.000+01:00

World View World View will have Voyagers gliding peacefully along the edge of space for a two hour sailing like experience (rendering) If you've always wanted to glimpse Earth from near-space, there's hope!

A private space tourism company called World View wants to gently float people almost 20 miles above Earth's surface in balloon-toted capsules, and they recently made an important stride to reaching that goal.

On February 20, the company operated a parafoil — a massive, rectangular parachute — more than 19 miles above Earth's surface, twice the previous record, World View chief engineer Sebastian Padilla told Venture Beat.

World View plans on carrying passengers to such great heights by the end of 2016 — at a price of $75,000 per person.

Each trip will involve a 90 to 120-minute ascent, a few hours at maximum altitude with access to a bar and internet connection, and a descent of 30 minutes.

The passenger-carrying capsule is lifted by a massive helium balloon.

In order to return to the ground, the capsule is detached from the balloon and guided down by the parafoil alone.

The balloon itself also falls to Earth, where it is recovered by a World View ground team.

World View The record-breaking event on February 20 proved an important point in this last process of safely bringing passengers back from such great heights, Padilla explained to Venture Beat. During the test, the capsule ferried a scientific payload from Montana State University and the University of North Florida.

"Before yesterday, there was a question of whether you could even fly a parafoil from these altitudes," Padilla said, because of challenges posed by the low air pressure and cold temperatures at that altitude.

Taber MacCallum, the company's CTO, said in a press release: "The successful flight of the parafoil at this altitude brings us closer to flying private citizens safely to the edge of space."

NOW WATCH: Seeing This Spectacular Sunrise From A Hot Air Balloon At The Edge Of Space Costs $75,000

Original post found here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/edge-space-tourism-company-world-211418482.html

'Jihadi John' killer from Islamic State beheading videos unmasked as Londoner

2015-02-27T07:54:00.000+01:00

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The masked "Jihadi John" killer who fronted Islamic State beheading videos has been identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British computer programming graduate from a well-to-do London family who was known to the security services.

The black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent was shown in videos released by Islamic State (IS) apparently decapitating hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians.

The 26-year-old militant used the videos to threaten the West, admonish its Arab allies and taunt President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron before petrified hostages cowering in orange jump suits.

Emwazi's name was first disclosed by the Washington Post, citing unidentified former associates. Two U.S. government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to Reuters that investigators believed Jihadi John was Emwazi.

Dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose and a holster under his left arm, Jihadi John became a menacing symbol of Islamic State brutality and one of the world's most wanted men.

Hostages called him John as he and other Britons in Islamic State had been nicknamed the Beatles.

Emwazi was born in Kuwait but came to Britain aged 6 and graduated with a computer programming degree from the University of Westminster before coming to the attention of Britain's main domestic intelligence service, MI5, according to an account given by Asim Qureshi, the research director of the Cage charity that campaigns for those detained on terrorism charges.

Emwazi, a fluent Arabic speaker, said MI5 had tried to recruit him and then prevented him from traveling abroad, forcing him to flee abroad without telling his family, Qureshi told a news conference in London.

Emwazi traveled to Syria around 2012, Qureshi said.

MI5 does not publicly comment on the identity of militants or their backgrounds while an investigation is still ongoing. The British government and police declined to confirm or deny Emwazi's identity, citing an ongoing security investigation.

"We don't confirm or deny matters relating to intelligence," said a spokeswoman for Cameron, who has ordered spy agencies and soldiers to track down the killer.

MOST WANTED MAN

"Jihadi John" rose to notoriety in August 2014 when a video appeared showing a masked man raging against the United States before apparently beheading U.S. citizen James Foley off camera.

A masked Islamic State militant holding a knife speaks next to man purported to be U.S. journalist J …

Intelligence services in the United States and Britain used a variety of investigative techniques including voice and facial recognition as well as interviews with former hostages to identify the man, intelligence sources said.

But security officials made great efforts to avoid publicly naming Emwazi, fearing that would make him more difficult to catch. Two intelligence sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were uneasy that the name had been revealed.

There was no answer at two addresses in west London where Emwazi was listed to have lived. Neighbors described the family as "normal people" and "friendly".

"This is the first time anything like this happens in this neighborhood," said Fatima Al-Baqali. "We have to be careful now. I didn't know this family and I usually know everyone here."

"JIHADI JOHN"

Qureshi, of the Cage charity which describes itself as having campaigned against the 'War on Terror' for more than a decade, said that although he could not be certain Emwazi was John, there were some "striking similarities". He declined to elaborate.

In a meeting with reporters in London, Qureshi painted a picture of a kind and thoughtful young man who faced harassment from MI5, which apparently suspected he wanted to join the Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab.

British authorities have linked Emwazi to another British militant killed in Somalia in a U.S. drone attack.

A British court ruling dated December 2011 reported that Elwazi was an associate of Bilal al Berjawi, a high-ranking leader of the Somali-based militant group al Shabaab, a person in possession of the court ruling said.

Reuters has not seen the original court ruling. Media reports said he helped supervise the recruitment and training of new Shabaab members.

Qureshi said British spies had tried to recruit Emwazi as a source but declined to provide specifics.

"There's one character that I remember, one kind person that I remember and then I see that image and there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the two," Qureshi told reporters.

"I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London..," Emwazi wrote in an email to Cage.

He felt like "a person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, (who) stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and my country, Kuwait".

Cage said Emwazi was detained in Tanzania, where he went for a safari holiday with two friends in August 2009.

He was deported to Amsterdam and interrogated by MI5 and a Dutch intelligence officer and then sent back to Britain, according to Qureshi.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the version of events given by the charity, which provoked criticism for shifting the responsibility for Emwazi's crimes.

"I think this is an attempt to deflect attention from Jihadi John," said Shiraz Maher, Senior Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King's College London.

"They're trying to lay the blame for this at the feet of the British government," he told Sky news.

The Cage charity, which also worked with the family of Michael Adebolajo, the Muslim covert who with an accomplice killed a British soldier in London in May 2013, said both men had been victims of undue pressure from the security services.

Britain's MI5 security service was not immediately available for comment on those allegations. MI5 has argued to British lawmakers that it would be damaging to national security to comment on allegations that is sought to recruit Adebolajo.

The British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said last year that MI5 had investigated Adebolajo five times, twice as a high priority, but had found no evidence that any attack was being planned.

The Committee said it had found no evidence that Adebolajo was harassed by MI5.

After becoming frustrated following three failed attempts to return to Kuwait, and changing his name to Mohammed al-Ayan, Emwazi left his parents' home and slipped out of Britain, according to Qureshi.

Four months later, police visited the family home to say they had information he had entered Syria. His family thought he was in Turkey doing aid work.

"Jihadi John" fronted gruesome Islamic State videos that showed either the killing or bodies of victims including U.S. citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, Britons David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese Kenji Goto and over 20 Syrian soldiers.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/bbc-names-jihadi-john-suspect-islamic-state-beheading-110602366.html

Scientists discover black hole so big it contradicts growth theory

2015-02-26T09:13:00.003+01:00

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies. (Smaller black holes also exist throughout galaxies.) In this illustration, the supermassive black hole at the center is surrounded by matter flowing onto the black hole in what is termed an accretion disk. This disk forms as the dust and gas in the galaxy falls onto the hole, attracted by its gravity. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Scientists say they have discovered a black hole so big that it challenges the theory about how they grow.

Scientists said this black hole was formed about 900 million years after the Big Bang.

But with measurements indicating it is 12 billion times the size of the Sun, the black hole challenges a widely accepted hypothesis of growth rates.

"Based on previous research, this is the largest black hole found for that period of time," Dr Fuyan Bian, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University (ANU), told Reuters on Wednesday.
"Current theory is for a limit to how fast a black hole can grow, but this black hole is too large for that theory."
The creation of supermassive black holes remains an open topic of research. However, many scientists have long believed the growth rate of black holes was limited.

Black holes grow, scientific theory suggests, as they absorb mass. However, as mass is absorbed, it will be heated creating radiation pressure, which pushes the mass away from the black hole.

"Basically, you have two forces balanced together which sets up a limit for growth, which is much smaller than what we found," said Bian.

The black hole was discovered a team of global scientists led by Xue-Bing Wu at Peking University, China, as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which provided imagery data of 35 percent of the northern hemisphere sky.

The ANU is leading a comparable project, known as SkyMapper, to carry out observations of the Southern Hemisphere sky.

Bian expects more black holes to be observed as the project advances.

Original post found here: http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-discover-black-hole-big-contradicts-growth-theory-182735953.html

Mom Angry After School Draws On Son's Head With Marker

2015-02-26T07:58:00.003+01:00

The mother of a middle school boy is demanding an apology after a school administrator drew on her son’s head with a marker.

Monica Esquival’s son, Kobi, has a haircut that his mother says is on-trend, according to Texas news station KCBD. “The style that’s coming out is the comb over,” she says. The cut features a shaved line in the side of Kobi’s head, intended to look like a part. Kobi has had the cut for five months, but Esquival says that last week, officials at Coronado Middle School in Plainview, Texas decided his hair was a distraction, and could be interpreted as gang-related.

As a solution, Esquival says the school’s assistant principal colored in the shaved line with a black marker, without her permission. “My son is not in a gang, he’s not trying to be in a gang. He dresses in khakis, a shirt, not in loose pants or anything, just real nice and casual,” Esquival told KCBD. She’s hoping the school will apologize to her son, and insists that his hair does, in fact, comply with school rules. “When I got copies of the dress code, on there it says, ‘designs shaved through the head,’ but I said it’s not a design, it’s the haircut.” She suggested that the school should consider updating the dress code.

Photo by KCBD.com

Officials at the Plainview Independent School District did not respond to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment, but Executive Director for Administrative Services, Greg Brown, addressed the incident at a recent school board meeting, according to the Plainview Daily Herald. “I can’t comment on the details of the specific incident you mentioned due to confidentiality,” he said. “Our dress code prohibits designs shaved into the scalp and this includes lines. The dress code is a part of the Parent/Student handbook that is made available to all students online and in paper form (if requested). Each year in the spring and early summer the handbook is edited and developed to get it ready for the next school year. The dress code is specifically looked at by the administration who makes any changes that need to be made. In its final recommended form, the handbook is presented to the School Board for approval, usually in July.”

After speaking to school administrators, Esquival told KCBD that Kobi will be given time to grow out his hair, and he won’t have to endure any more markers.Coronado isn’t the first school to punish a student for a haircut deemed inappropriate. Last January, a Florida school issued an in-school suspension to a boy who showed up with the Miami Heat logo and the city’s area code shaved into his head. In 2012, a Texas middle-schooler got the same punishment for showing up with the face of one of the San Antonio Spurs designed into his hair. And in 2013, a 5-year-old kindergartner with a mohawk was sent home for violating the school dress code. He was allowed to return once he shaved his head.

Original post found here: https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/mom-angry-after-school-draws-on-her-sons-head-112063547452.html

South Africa: National Security a Concern - Committee

2015-02-25T09:19:00.004+01:00

Reports regarding leaked spy cables, allegedly involving South African intelligence agencies, was a concern, Parliament's joint standing committee on intelligence (JSCI) said on Tuesday.

The committee remained concerned about maintaining national security, and assured that it would execute its mandate with this uppermost in its mind, chairwoman Connie September said in a statement.

"The JSCI's programme lends itself to dealing with matters of this nature, and that the JSCI would enforce its legal mandate to initiate an investigation and call all relevant people to account."

Earlier, Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier said the JSCI must be briefed about the spy cables expose.

Maynier said in a statement he had written to September asking for an urgent briefing on the so-called spy cables.

"Al Jazeera's investigative unit is in possession of a number of classified documents from intelligence services around the world, including the State Security Agency (SSA)," he said.

SSA spokesman Brian Dube said the agency would release a media statement later on Tuesday.

Maynier said the classified documents now in the public domain included two reports, classified secret. One of them was entitled "Operational Target Analysis of Iran", dated January 2010, and the other "Iranian Intelligence Activities in Africa", dated October 2012.

"These documents provide the first insights we have into the 'inner workings' of the State Security Agency," Maynier said.

"We have never come this close to seeing inside the bottom-drawers of the State Security Agency."

It was imperative the committee be briefed on the likely scope, origins and impact of the expose and whether it would likely reveal any wrongdoing by the SSA.

Al Jazeera reported on its website that the SSA allegedly spied on Iran.

According to the report, Al Jazeera had documents -- mainly exchanges between the SSA and its counterparts around the world -- showing South Africa was monitoring Iranian agents.

Al Jazeera stated South African intelligence agents reported that the Iranians were interested in technology used for satellite interception, online surveillance, and hacking.

South African security services were concerned at Iran's efforts to use official and unofficial channels in South Africa to beat western-imposed sanctions, Al Jazeera reported.

Al Jazeera had a copy of the 128-page report "Operational Target Analysis", written by South African spies and which profiled dozens of alleged Iranian operatives.

According to the report, British agents monitored Iran's activities in South Africa.

The agents profiled a number of carpet shops, publishers, and other small businesses they believed had links to Iran's intelligence agencies.

According to a separate report on Al Jazeera's website the United States' CIA was desperate to make contact with Hamas in Gaza in 2012 and asked South Africa for help.

Al Jazeera reported that the US listed Hamas as a terrorist organisation and had no contact with the group officially.

Classified South African documents also revealed that Israel's then-secret service chief, Meir Dagan, sought Pretoria's help in its efforts to scupper a probe into alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The probe was headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Original post found here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201502250229.html

Amnesty urges halting arms to Israel, others guilty of 'mass atrocities'

2015-02-25T09:12:00.000+01:00

An explosion and smoke are seen after Israeli strikes in Gaza City. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Amnesty International called on the global community to stop war crimes by halting arms shipments to countries such as Iraq, Syria and Israel that could use them to commit “mass atrocities.”

“Huge arms shipments were delivered to Iraq, Israel, Russia, South Sudan and Syria in 2014 despite the very high likelihood that these weapons would be used against civilian populations trapped in conflict,” said Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International.

“When ISIS took control of large parts of Iraq, it found large arsenals, ripe for the picking. The irresponsible flow of weapons to human rights abusers must stop now,” said Anna Neistat.

Amnesty issued this call in its annual report, “the State of the World’s Human Rights,” which examined human rights abuses in 160 countries.

According to the 414-page report, Israel was one of 18 countries along with Syria, Iraq and Libya where war crimes were committed by the government or armed groups, said researcher Marek Marczynski of Amnesty International.

Armed groups committed abuses in at least 35 countries in 2014, more than 1 in 5 of the countries that Amnesty International investigated, the report said.

“2014 was a catastrophic year for millions caught up in violence. The global response to conflict and abuses by states and armed groups has been shameful and ineffective. As people suffered an escalation in barbarous attacks and repression, the international community has been found wanting,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“The United Nations was established 70 years ago to ensure that we would never again see the horrors witnessed in the Second World War. We are now seeing violence on a mass scale and an enormous refugee crisis caused by that violence. There has been a singular failure to find workable solutions to the most pressing needs of our time,” Shetty said.

Amnesty had harsh words for the Syrian crisis, which in 2014, it said, “surpassed other such crises to become the world’s worst in terms of refugee flows and internally displaced people.

In the past four years, according to Amnesty, more than 200,000 people have died in Syria. Many of them were civilians who were killed by government forces. Around 4 million people from Syria are refugees in other countries More than 7.6 million are displaced inside Syria, Amnesty said.

The group also condemned ISIS, whose fighters “committed widespread war crimes, including ethnic cleansing of religious and ethnic minorities.”

Between January and October of last year, ISIS related violence caused the death of some 10,000 civilians and forcibly displaced almost 2 million people, Amnesty said.

The report gave the impression that Israel’s actions were akin to the other atrocities that occurred in the Middle East, by listing it with countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Amnesty mentioned briefly that Hamas had committed war crimes for indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel. But in its five page section on Israel and the territories it rarely referenced the actions of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. It focused almost exclusively on Israeli actions particularly during the conflict with Hamas in the summer of 2014.

“The July assault on Gaza by Israeli forces caused the loss of 2,000 Palestinian lives. The great majority of those, 1,500 were civilians,” Amnesty said.

It added that Israel’s policy during that conflict was “marked by callous indifference and involved war crimes.“

The international community can and should do more to prevent war crimes, Amnesty said. It urged states to ratify and adhering to the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the sale of arms to those who would use them for mass atrocities.

The London based organization also called on the five members of the UN Security Council - the US, China, Russia, Franc and the United Kingdom - to renounce their veto power to block resolutions against countries that have committed war crimes.

“This could be a game changer for the international community and the tools it has at its disposal to help protect civilian lives,” Shetty said.

“By renouncing their veto rights the five permanent members of the Security Council would give the UN more scope to take action to protect civilians when lives are at grave risk and send a powerful signal to perpetrators that the world will not sit idly by while mass atrocities take place,” said Shetty.

The Foreign Ministry had no comment on the report. But the group, NGO Monitor, charged that Amnesty call to halt arms sales and shipment to Israel denied the right of the Jewish State to self-defense.

The report did not mention the munitions that were brought to Israel to save the lives of its citizens such the Iron Dome anti-missile system, NGO Monitor said.

Nor did Amnesty condemn Hamas for its illegal and systematic placement of weapons in hospitals, mosques, and homes in Gaza, NGO Monitor charged.

“Unfortunately, many Amnesty officials and "researchers" are so deeply involved in promoting the narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli guilt, and remain blind to the requirements of universal human rights,” NGO Monitor said.

Amnesty International called on the global community to stop war crimes by halting arms shipments to countries such as Iraq, Syria and Israel that could use them to commit “mass atrocities.”

“Huge arms shipments were delivered to Iraq, Israel, Russia, South Sudan and Syria in 2014 despite the very high likelihood that these weapons would be used against civilian populations trapped in conflict,” said Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International.

“When ISIS took control of large parts of Iraq, it found large arsenals, ripe for the picking. The irresponsible flow of weapons to human rights abusers must stop now,” said Anna Neistat.

Amnesty issued this call in its annual report, “the State of the World’s Human Rights,” which examined human rights abuses in 160 countries.

According to the 414-page report, Israel was one of 18 countries along with Syria, Iraq and Libya where war crimes were committed by the government or armed groups, said researcher Marek Marczynski of Amnesty International.

Armed groups committed abuses in at least 35 countries in 2014, more than 1 in 5 of the countries that Amnesty International investigated, the report said.

“2014 was a catastrophic year for millions caught up in violence. The global response to conflict and abuses by states and armed groups has been shameful and ineffective. As people suffered an escalation in barbarous attacks and repression, the international community has been found wanting,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“The United Nations was established 70 years ago to ensure that we would never again see the horrors witnessed in the Second World War. We are now seeing violence on a mass scale and an enormous refugee crisis caused by that violence. There has been a singular failure to find workable solutions to the most pressing needs of our time,” Shetty said.

Amnesty had harsh words for the Syrian crisis, which in 2014, it said, “surpassed other such crises to become the world’s worst in terms of refugee flows and internally displaced people.

In the past four years, according to Amnesty, more than 200,000 people have died in Syria. Many of them were civilians who were killed by government forces. Around 4 million people from Syria are refugees in other countries More than 7.6 million are displaced inside Syria, Amnesty said.

The group also condemned ISIS, whose fighters “committed widespread war crimes, including ethnic cleansing of religious and ethnic minorities.”

Between January and October of last year, ISIS related violence caused the death of some 10,000 civilians and forcibly displaced almost 2 million people, Amnesty said.

The report gave the impression that Israel’s actions were akin to the other atrocities that occurred in the Middle East, by listing it with countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Amnesty mentioned briefly that Hamas had committed war crimes for indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel. But in its five page section on Israel and the territories it rarely referenced the actions of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. It focused almost exclusively on Israeli actions particularly during the conflict with Hamas in the summer of 2014.

“The July assault on Gaza by Israeli forces caused the loss of 2,000 Palestinian lives. The great majority of those, 1,500 were civilians,” Amnesty said.

It added that Israel’s policy during that conflict was “marked by callous indifference and involved war crimes.“

The international community can and should do more to prevent war crimes, Amnesty said. It urged states to ratify and adhering to the Arms Trade Treaty, which prohibits the sale of arms to those who would use them for mass atrocities.

The London based organization also called on the five members of the UN Security Council - the US, China, Russia, Franc and the United Kingdom - to renounce their veto power to block resolutions against countries that have committed war crimes.

“This could be a game changer for the international community and the tools it has at its disposal to help protect civilian lives,” Shetty said.

“By renouncing their veto rights the five permanent members of the Security Council would give the UN more scope to take action to protect civilians when lives are at grave risk and send a powerful signal to perpetrators that the world will not sit idly by while mass atrocities take place,” said Shetty.

The Foreign Ministry had no comment on the report. But the group, NGO Monitor, charged that Amnesty call to halt arms sales and shipment to Israel denied the right of the Jewish State to self-defense.

The report did not mention the munitions that were brought to Israel to save the lives of its citizens such the Iron Dome anti-missile system, NGO Monitor said.

Nor did Amnesty condemn Hamas for its illegal and systematic placement of weapons in hospitals, mosques, and homes in Gaza, NGO Monitor charged.

“Unfortunately, many Amnesty officials and "researchers" are so deeply involved in promoting the narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli guilt, and remain blind to the requirements of universal human rights,” NGO Monitor said.

Original post found here:http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Amnesty-urges-halting-arms-sales-to-Israel-and-other-countries-that-commit-mass-atrocities-392137

France says Russia would face more sanctions if Mariupol attacked

2015-02-25T09:05:00.003+01:00

A woman walks past a burnt-out a store at a residential sector affected by shelling in Mariupol, a city on the Sea of Azov, eastern Ukraine February 3, 2015.

Moscow would face more EU sanctions if pro-Russia separatists attacked Ukraine's government-held port of Mariupol, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday.

"The problem today is particularly around Mariupol. We've told the Russians clearly that if there was a separatist attack in the direction of Mariupol things would be drastically altered, including in terms of sanctions," Fabius told France Info radio.

"At a European level the question of sanctions would be asked again," said Fabius, who hosted on Tuesday a meeting with his Russian, Ukrainian and German counterparts in which they renewed calls for an oft-breached ceasefire agreement to be respected.

Kiev fears Mariupol, with its 500,000 people, could be the next major rebel target, its foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin said after the Paris talks.

Its capture could open a corridor to the south, including the already annexed Crimean peninsula.

Rebel commander Eduard Basurin said on Tuesday that the rebels still aimed to gain control of the entire territory of east Ukraine's two rebellious provinces, including Mariupol, but would seek this through "negotiations with the Ukrainian side".

Basurin denied Kiev's assertions that there were serious clashes in villages near Mariupol, saying there had been provocations from the Ukrainian side but no major incidents.

Original post found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/25/us-ukraine-crisis-france-idUSKBN0LT0JN20150225

UK security 'failed' to stop girls from going to Syria, family says

2015-02-22T14:33:00.002+01:00

Closed caption video of 3 London schoolgirls who left home possibly with plans to travel to the part of Syria controlled by the ISIS terror group.

The family of British woman suspected of encouraging three London schoolgirls to join the Islamic State in Syria said that officials “failed” to stop them from leaving the country.
Shamima Begun, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, and another girl reportedly joined Aqsa Mahmood, 20, in the country riddled by ISIS oppression. Mahmood, who reportedly went to Syria to b e a “jihadi bride” in 2013, had online contact with one of the girls last week before they left the country.
Mahmood’s family said in a statement that it was “full of horror and anger” that she “may have had a role to play” in recruiting the girls for the terror group.
"Aqsa's social media has been monitored since she disappeared over a year ago, yet despite alleged contact between the girls and Aqsa, they failed to stop them from leaving the UK to Turkey, a staging post for Syria."
The family’s lawyer told BBC that they want to know how the woman could have traveled to Turkey alone.
The three girls are close friends at Bethnal Green Academy in east London. They were last seen Tuesday morning after they left home, saying they were going out for the day.
But surveillance video revealed the girls traveled to London’s Gatwick airport and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight which landed in Istanbul Tuesday evening.
Police say the girls are close friends with another 15-year-old girl who fled to Syria in December.
"We are concerned about the numbers of girls and young women who have or are intending to travel to the part of Syria that is controlled by the terrorist group calling themselves Islamic State," Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton told Sky News.
"It is an extremely dangerous place and we have seen reports of what life is like for them and how restricted their lives become. It is not uncommon for girls or women to be prevented from being allowed out of their houses or if allowed out, only when accompanied by a guardian,” Walton told reporters.
Security checks for people departing from U.K. airports make it a "walk in the park for jihadis and girls like this" to leave, Former Metropolitan Police border control officer Chris Hobbs says.
"At the moment you go through security, you get on the plane, you might be checked by a private security guard," he said. “If you're on a watch list then you will ping the system. If you're not on the radar then the odds are you will get on the plane without too many problems."
The girls-- who are British nationals of Bangladeshi descent-- were all wearing Western clothes at the airport. Shamima was wearing black glasses and a hijab, Kadiza was also wearing glasses and a grey striped scarf, and the unidentified girl was wearing glasses and a black head scarf.
"The choice of returning home from Syria is often taken away from those under the control of Islamic State, leaving their families in the U.K. devastated and with very few options to secure their safe return," Walton said.
The number of Westerners who have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS is thought to be about 3,000, including as many as 550 women, according to the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Original post found here: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/22/uk-security-failed-to-stop-girls-from-going-to-syria/

Turkish military enters Syria to evacuate soldiers, relocate tomb

2015-02-22T14:30:00.001+01:00

Turkish tanks are pictured in the northern Syrian town of Kobani as they return from a military operation inside Syria February 22, 2015.

Credit: Reuters/Mursel Coban/Depo Photos

Turkish forces swept into Syria overnight to rescue about 40 soldiers who had been surrounded for months by Islamic State militants while guarding the tomb of a revered Turkish figure.
The Syrian government described the operation as act of "flagrant aggression" and said it would hold Ankara responsible for its repercussions.
The action, which involved tanks, drones and reconnaissance planes as well as several hundred ground troops, was the first such incursion by Turkish troops into Syria since the start of the civil war there nearly four years ago.
The military said no clashes took place during the operation although one soldier had been killed in an accident.
The 38 soldiers who had been guarding the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, were brought safely home. The tomb, which is on a site within Syria that Ankara considers sovereign territory as agreed in a 1921 treaty, was relocated.
Normally, the detachment is rotated every six months but the last one was trapped there for eight months by Islamic State fighters.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference that Turkey had not sought permission or assistance for the mission but had informed allies in the coalition against Islamic State once it began.
"This was an extremely successful operation with no loss to our rights under international law," he said, flanked by the chief of the military and the defense minister.
The Syrian government said in a statement that Turkey would be held responsible for its breach of the treaty after failing to wait for an agreement from Damascus before proceeding with the operation.
The Turkish government had informed the Syrian consulate in Istanbul about the operation but had not awaited Syria's agreement, it said, adding that the operation was a violation of the 1921 agreement.
A Turkish security source said the operation was conducted via the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani with the support of local Kurdish authorities. Kurdish forces, backed by U.S.-led air strikes, drove Islamic State from Kobani last month.
The Turkish foreign ministry said the tomb had been temporarily moved to a new site within Syria north of the village of Esmesi close to the Turkish border.
Davutoglu said about 100 military vehicles, including 39 tanks, were involved along with 572 military personnel including special forces commandos. Turkish fighter jets were on alert during the mission but did not need to be deployed, he said.
OPERATION "SHAH EUPHRATES"
Turkey has been reluctant to take an active role in the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State, partly because it wants to see the military action target Syrian government forces as much as the insurgents.
But the Turkish government said late last year that Islamic State militants were advancing on the mausoleum, perched on the banks of the Euphrates river and made Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when France ruled Syria.
Davutoglu had repeatedly said that Turkey would retaliate against any attack on the tomb, which was located 37 km (23 miles) from the Syrian border before being moved overnight.
"Countries which do not look after their historic symbols cannot build their future," he said on Sunday.
The Syrian government statement said the fact that Islamic State had not attacked the tomb "confirmed the depth of the ties between the Turkish government and this terrorist organization".
Syria accuses Turkey of supporting insurgent groups that have seized control of wide areas of northern and eastern Syria, including Islamic State.
Two operations were carried out simultaneously as part of what was dubbed operation "Shah Euphrates", Davutoglu said, one to Suleyman Shah and the other to secure the area around Esmesi. He said the remaining buildings at the original site were destroyed to prevent their use after the remains were removed.
Turkish soldiers raised the Turkish flag at the site where the tomb was relocated. Davutoglu said it would be returned to its previous location once conditions allowed.
Islamic State and other Islamist groups, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs to be idolatrous, have destroyed several tombs and mosques in Syria.
Suleyman Shah was the grandfather of Osman I who founded the Ottoman Empire in 1299. Traveling through modern-day Syria, he fell off his horse and drowned in the Euphrates near the site of the mausoleum, according to historians.

Original post found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/22/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSKBN0LQ03U20150222

Rebels order weapons pull-back as Ukraine say armor arriving

2015-02-22T14:27:00.000+01:00

A fighter with the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic army sits in front of a sign reading 'Ukrainian over all' at a check point in Debaltseve, February 20, 2015.

Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner

Pro-Moscow rebels said they would start to withdraw heavy weapons from the front line in eastern Ukraine on Sunday but the government in Kiev said armored columns had crossed the border from Russia to reinforce the separatists.
The Ukrainian military said the rebels were pressing on with attacks on government forces near Mariupol, a port in government hands that is seen as the rebels' next major target.
Spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a military train carrying 60 armored vehicles including tanks had arrived in the town of Amvrosiivka from Russia on Saturday. A convoy of military equipment had later crossed the border near Novoazovsk, east of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
He said fighting was in progress at the village of Shyrokyne, east of Mariupol.
"The fight continues. Our soldiers are holding their positions," Lysenko said, adding that there had been a total of 44 attacks by separatists across the conflict zone in the past 24 hours.
In the city of Kharkiv, three people were killed and 10 wounded on Sunday when an explosive device was thrown from a car into a crowd attending a peace rally, a Ukrainian regional prosecutor said.
The blast, which police called a terrorist act, occurred near a metro station as a crowd of participants in the rally passed by.
A pro-Russian rebel commander said the separatists were due to begin pulling back heavy weapons from the frontline in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, a sign that the rebels may be prepared to halt their advance as part of an internationally brokered peace deal.
Fighting has eased in many areas since a ceasefire came into effect a week ago, but the truce was shaken by the rebel capture on Wednesday of the town of Debaltseve, forcing thousands of Ukrainian troops to retreat.
HEAVY WEAPONS
But moves towards pulling back heavy weapons, together with the exchange of dozens of prisoners with Ukrainian government forces on Saturday, could indicate the rebels intend to observe the truce more fully, having achieved a military objective by seizing Debaltseve.
"The plan was signed last night ... Starting from today there are two weeks to withdraw heavy weapons," Interfax news agency quoted rebel commander Eduard Basurin as saying.
Another Russian news agency, TASS, quoted him as saying the pull-back was still being organized and that the actual withdrawal of weapons would take place from Tuesday.
For the Ukrainian side, Lysenko said there was no confirmation yet as to whether the rebels had started pulling back their weapons.
A Reuters witness saw a 20-vehicle convoy of separatist military trucks with anti-aircraft missile systems and howitzers leaving Debaltseve in the direction of Donetsk.
An attack on Mariupol, a city of half a million people and potentially a gateway to Crimea, which Russia annexed last March, would almost certainly kill off the ceasefire.
On Saturday, government forces and rebels exchanged nearly 200 prisoners, one of the first moves to implement the peace deal reached on Feb. 12 in the Belarussian capital Minsk after the French, German, Russian and Ukrainian leaders met in an attempt to end the 10-month-old conflict.
Both sides continue to accuse each other of violating the ceasefire.
The Ukrainian military said rebels had launched 12 attacks on government troop positions overnight, using artillery and mortar fire.
The town of Pesky near Donetsk had seen the most intense fighting, while separatist groups had attempted to storm Ukrainian positions in Shyrokyne, east of the port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, the military said on Facebook.
Kiev accuses the separatists of building up forces and weapons in Ukraine's southeast and has said it is braced for the possibility of a rebel attack on Mariupol.
The rebel press service DAN said Ukrainian troops had been shelling parts of Donetsk, reporting that artillery fire could be heard in the city in the early morning.

Original post found here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/22/us-awards-oscars-idUSKBN0LQ0FT20150222

Kate Hudson And Her Killer Abs Cover Shape Magazine

2015-02-18T20:05:00.003+01:00

Nothing to see here -- just Kate Hudson looking absolutely fanastatic in Shape Magazine's March 2015 issue. (Sorry, we had to.)

The 35-year-old teamed up with the publication for a playful photoshoot on the beach. Ever the good sport, Hudson looked adorable in a cropped baseball tee and glittering gold short shorts:

In the accompanying interview, the mother of two told Shape that she hates the idea of dieting.

“It puts so much pressure on people to lose weight quickly," she said. "Getting healthy is not a two-week process, it’s a change of lifestyle.”

For Hudson, her lifestyle change came after an encounter she had in a Parisian restaurant:

I was at my favorite French restaurant in Paris … eating everything I love … steak, fries, lots of wine. Then the dessert came, and I was having strawberries and cream pastries plus the wine. [Then,] a svelte, sophisticated woman approached [my] table. She pointed to my glass of wine. "This is your piece of cake. That’s how you should be thinking." And I always try to remember that: Everything in moderation!

For more with Kate Hudson, pick up the March issue of Shape, on newsstands Feb. 19.

Original post found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/18/kate-hudson-abs_n_6706018.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Close call: star whizzed past solar system at distance of a light year

2015-02-18T18:40:00.002+01:00

San José (United States) (AFP) - By the standards of outer space, it was the closest call yet recorded: a star that zoomed past our solar system 70,000 years ago at a distance of eight trillion kilometers, or five trillion miles.

An international team of astronomers said Tuesday the dim star probably passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, known as the Oort Cloud.

No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close --- five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri, said the team of researchers from the US, Europe and South America.

Their study was published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Analysis of the trajectory of this recently discovered star -- known as a red dwarf and christened with the name Scholz's star after its discoverer -- suggests it passed roughly 0.8 light years from our solar system.

Astronomically speaking, that is close.

The star is now 20 light years away, said Eric Mamajek, from the University of Rochester in New York and lead author of the study.

Using spectrographs and large telescopes in South Africa and Chile, researchers were able to go back in time and reconstruct its trajectory by calculating its speed.

They were also able to determine that it is now heading away from our solar system.

Until now, the top candidate for the closest flyby of a star to the solar system was the so-called "rogue star" HIP 85605. It was forecast to come close to our solar system in 240,000 to 470,000 years from now.

But Mamajek and his colleagues also demonstrated that the original distance to HIP 85605 was probably underestimated by a factor of ten.

Original news found here: http://news.yahoo.com/close-call-star-whizzed-past-solar-system-distance-161328741.html

France will stay on high alert after Copenhagen attacks: PM

2015-02-16T12:26:00.002+01:00

Paris: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday the threat of militant attacks in the country remained "particularly high" and that exceptional security measures would remain in place as long as needed after attacks in Copenhagen.

France has deployed some 10,000 military personnel to protect public sites and announced thousands of new hires in the intelligence sector after 17 people were killed in a series of attacks by Islamist gunmen in January.
Valls said two attacks at the weekend in Copenhagen, which targeted a synagogue and a free speech event involving an artist who had caricatured Mohammad, underscored the need for prolonged action against what he called "Islamo-fascism".
"We will prolong these measures as long as necessary, as long as the threat remains so high," Valls told RTL radio of a security plan involving deployment of troops and police in public places and near sensitive sites.
Separately, French police opened an inquiry on Sunday after more than 200 tombs were damaged in a Jewish cemetery near the northeastern city of Strasbourg.
Valls called upon French Jews to remain in France and promised the "strongest possible" legal response after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called anew upon European Jews to emigrate to Israel after the Copenhagen attacks.
"My message to French Jews is as follows: France is as hurt as you are and France does not want you to leave," he said.
Valls said authorities believed the cemetery attacks were the work of several people but there were no firm leads at present.

Original post found here: http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/france-will-stay-on-high-alert-after-copenhagen-attacks-pm_1547503.html

Italian coast guard in massive rescue operation of at least 1,000 boat migrants travelling from North Africa

2015-02-16T12:22:00.001+01:00

Migrants wait to disembark from a tug boat after being rescued in the Pozzallo harbor, Sicily, Italy

Better weather since last week has encouraged migrants to make the perilous journey from North Africa
The coast guard said it had plucked more than 130 people from two rubber boats about 110 miles south of the island of Lampedusa so far, and was working to save eight more vessels.
"We are certainly at more than 1,000 migrants" involved in Sunday's rescue operation, a spokesman for the coast guard in Rome told Reuters.
Better weather since last week has encouraged migrants to make the perilous journey from North Africa, where a breakdown of order in Libya has made it almost impossible to police the traffickers who pack people onto rickety boats.
More than 300 people died last week trying to make the crossing, which claimed 3,500 lives last year even before Italy closed its Mare Nostrum search and rescue mission in December.
The coast guard ship Fiorillo and several cutters were sent to the latest rescue, along with four merchant ships and two tug boats which were diverted to join the operation. One navy ship, two police patrol ships and a Maltese vessel had also been mobilised, the coast guard spokesman said.

Original post found here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italian-coast-guard-in-massive-rescue-operation-of-at-least-1000-boat-migrants-travelling-from-north-africa-10047607.html

ISIL video shows Christian Egyptians beheaded in Libya

2015-02-16T12:19:00.000+01:00

Fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have released a video purporting to show the killing of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians kidnapped in Libya.

The Egyptian government and the Coptic Church have confirmed the authenticity of the footage.

It showed the Egyptian workers, all wearing orange jump suits, being beheaded near a waterfront which is said to be located in the Libyan province of Tripoli.

The men were seized in two attacks in December and January from the coastal town of Sirte in eastern Libya.

In the wake of the video release, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for an urgent meeting with Egypt's top national security and declared seven days of mourning.

He said Egypt reserves the right to respond to the incident in a suitable way.

The Coptic Orthodox Church has issued a statement saying it is confident the killers will be brought to justice.

ALJAZEERA

Original post found here: http://m.gbcghana.com/1.1997260

Egypt launches airstrikes against ISIL in Libya

2015-02-16T12:15:00.000+01:00

Egypt launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in neighboring Libya on Monday, hours after militants there released a video purporting to show the mass beheading of Egyptian Christian hostages.
A spokesman for the Armed Forces General Command announced the strikes on state radio, and said they were "to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers," the Associated Press reported.
The statement said the warplanes targeted weapons caches and training camps before returning safely. "Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that protects them," it said.
It marks the first time Cairo has publicly acknowledged taking military action in Libya, where extremist groups seen as a threat to both countries have taken root in recent years.
A spokesman for Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni told the BBC that Egyptian jets had taken part in co-ordinated air strikes on the militant-held city of Derna.
Libya's air force said it had launched strikes in the eastern city of Darna, which was taken over by an Islamic State affiliate last year. The announcement, on the Facebook page of the Air Force Chief of Staff, did not provide further details.
Meanwhile, Bahrain said it deployed fighter planes to Jordan, a day after it announced plans to send troops to the kingdom.
Bahrain and Jordan are part of the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS.
On Sunday, a video purporting to show the mass beheading the hostages by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to ISIL was posted on social media. On Twitter, several accounts distributed links to the video carrying the title, "A Message Signed With Blood To The Nation Of The Cross."
Militants in Libya had been holding 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians hostage for weeks, threatening them with death. The makers of the video identify themselves as the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State group — the Islamic militant group that controls about a third of Syria and Iraq.
The video shows a line of men dressed in orange jumpsuits forced onto their knees and beheaded.
The Egyptian government and the Coptic Church based in Egypt both declared the video authentic. Egypt banned all travel to Libya by its citizens in response.
The Egyptian government declared a seven-day mourning period, and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi addressed the nation late Sunday night.
"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" Sisi said. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."
Contributing: Jane Onyanga-Omara, USA TODAY; Associated Press

Original post found here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/02/16/egypt-airstrikes-isil-libya/23482049/