The Mystery NEWS

Kenya: The Mystery of the Armenian Brothers Remains Unresolved

2006-06-10T17:50:00.001+05:30

Francis Openda
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
AllAfrica.com, Washington
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Nairobi:
The mystery of the two Armenian brothers Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan has continued to deepen since they emerged to make bribery claims against Lang'ata MP Raila Odinga and his Mwingi North counterpart Kalonzo Musyoka.
The Government on its part has added to the mystery by making contradictory statements about their nationality and nature of business.
When they "jetted in" from Dubai and addressed a press conference at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport VIP lounge, Immigration minister Gideon Konchella told journalists in Kisumu that the two men were Czech citizens.
He quickly followed this with a fax message to newsrooms retracting his earlier position and stating that the two were Armenian consultants in marketing, business development and finance on a valid two-year class H permits issued on January 28.
Konchellah later said there was an "untold story" about the two men and what their business in Kenya was.
He asked for patience as his ministry investigated.
"There is something fishy in the whole affair," he said but added that his ministry had records showing when the two men came in. But Margaryan later said they had been in Kenya for only four months.
The statement read by Environment minister Prof Kivutha Kibwana claimed it was the Orange Democratic Leaders who were recruiting mercenaries. The mystery deepened when on March 16, when Internal Security minister John Michuki said he could not tell whether the individuals were businessmen or hit men
Jun 10, 2006

Brothers in terror raid freed without charge

2006-06-10T17:50:00.000+05:30

Stephen Wright
Daily Mail
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London (UK):
Two Muslim brothers arrested in a terror raid were released without charge last night in a humiliating end to a week-long investigation.
The men were freed from top-security Paddington Green police station in central London where they had been quizzed over allegations they had plotted a 'poison bomb' attack in the capital.
The decision to free Abul Kahar Kalam, 23 and Abul Koyair Kalam, 20, is a major embarrassment to Anti-Terrorist Branch chiefs.
Last Friday's high-profile operation involved more than 250 Metropolitan Police officers, fire engines, ambulance staff and chemical experts from Porton Down.
The dramatic raid in Forest Gate, East London, came after an MI5 informant drew a sketch of a poison bomb and a vest or jacket that could have been used to smuggle it on to the Tube network or into a pub crowded with World Cup fans.
Abul Kahar was shot in the shoulder during the operation, prompting allegations of police heavy-handedness.
The overall cost of the raid - including officers' salaries and overtime, the bill for sealing off local streets and for ripping apart the terraced home at the centre of the alert - is believed to exceed £500,000.
The Metropolitan Police last night issued a humiliating statement confirming both men have been released without charge. It said the force would pay for the house to be 'restored'.
Police search teams and forensic experts have spent the last week desperately trying to find any trace of the chemical bomb.
As it became clear that the device was not at the property, a rift has developed between police and security services over who was responsible for authorising the raid.
Jun 10, 2006

S.Korean jet lands with no nose, no radar, no view

2006-06-10T17:49:00.000+05:30

Reuters
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Seoul (South Korea):
A South Korean jet with 200 passengers on board landed safely in Seoul after hailstones blew off the plane's nose, destroyed its radar and shattered the front cockpit windows, airline officials said on Saturday.
Asiana Airlines flight 8942 was pelted with hailstones late on Friday while flying to Seoul from the southern resort island of Cheju, a spokesman at the country's second-largest carrier said by telephone.
The hail wrecked the housing for the main radar system and also punctured its engine covers.
The cockpit windows of the Airbus 321 jet were made of safety glass and remained in place after shattering, but it was nearly impossible to see through the glass.Small side windows in the cockpit remained intact.
No injuries were reported. Among the passengers, were 177 elementary school students on a school tour, the spokesman added.
Jun 10, 2006

Mystery of missing MacKenzie millions

2006-06-10T17:47:00.001+05:30

Gethin Chamberlain
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Scotsman, UK
He was revealed this week as the perpetrator of Scotland's biggest-ever banking fraud. Yet friends of Donald MacKenzie find it hard to believe that the quiet man with a "nondescript" lifestyle could really have embezzled £21 million from his employer, the Royal Bank of Scotland - and no-one seems to have any idea why.
Asked to recall anything remotely interesting about his personal life, the best anyone could come up with was that his wedding rounded off with a chorus of New York, New York.
He was certainly not a high-roller or a man to throw money about. One former friend said the 45-year-old business banker would make sure he turned up late at events to avoid buying a round of drinks.
It was a complete shock to those who knew MacKenzie when police raided his modest Edinburgh home two years ago and detained him on suspicion of swindling the Royal Bank out of £21 million.
Anyone else might have indulged themselves a little - a new car, perhaps, a house in the country, a few holidays in exotic locations. But not MacKenzie.
Although his legitimate earnings amounted to a healthy £53,268 a year, he contented himself with a pleasant but unprepossessing house in a quiet neighbourhood and a light blue Ford Focus, which remains parked outside in the street. His wife still shuttles the children - aged six and three - about in a gold-coloured Toyota Yaris.
Yet over a five-year period, MacKenzie was responsible for moving around £69 million of the Royal Bank's money, nearly £50 million of which he used to cover the tracks of his fraudulent transactions.
The question everyone wants to answer is simple: why did he do it and what did he do with the money? If the Royal Bank knows the truth, it is not saying. It refuses to talk about the case in public or offer any explanation about how he got away with it.
Bank insiders say even behind closed doors, the name Donald MacKenzie is rarely uttered, such is the embarrassment felt by executives at having been so thoroughly taken in by a man they regarded as one of their highest fliers.
Jun 10, 2006

Teen's MySpace rendezvous in W. Bank thwarted

2006-06-10T17:47:00.000+05:30

David N. Goodman
Associated Press
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Detroit, Micigan (US):
A 16-year-old honor student from Michigan tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew off to the Mideast to be with a West Bank man she met on MySpace.com, authorities say.
U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded her to turn around and go home before she reached the West Bank. She was on her way home Friday.
The teen is a straight-A student, her father said. "She's a good girl. Never had a problem with her," he said.
The student, who lives with her mother about 80 miles north of Detroit, disappeared Monday after talking her family into getting her a passport by saying she was going to Canada with friends, sheriff's officials said. They said she apparently planned to visit a man whose MySpace account describes him as a 25-year-old from Jericho and whom she contacted about three months ago.
The FBI traced the teenager to a Wednesday flight from New York's Kennedy Airport to Tel Aviv. At a scheduled stop in Amman, Jordan, U.S. officials persuaded her to return home, the FBI said.
June 10, 2006

Robot with the human touch feels just like us

2006-06-10T17:42:00.000+05:30

Lewis Smith
Times Online, UK
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A touch sensor developed to match the sensitivity of the human finger is set to herald the age of the robotic doctor.
Until now robots have been severely handicapped by their inability to feel objects with anything like the accuracy of their human creators. The very best are unable to beat the dexterity of the average six-year-old at tying a shoelace or building a house of cards.
But all that could change with the development by nanotechnologists of a device that can “feel” the shape of a coin down to the detail of the letters stamped on it.
The ability to feel with at least the same degree of sensitivity as a human finger is crucial to the development of robots that can take on complicated tasks such as open heart surgery.
The touch device has been created by researchers in America who used nanoparticles to sense the contours of a coin. It is accurate enough to detect the outline of Abraham Lincoln’s face on a 1c coin and the letters TY in the word Liberty.
Vivek Maheshwari and Ravi Saraf, of the University of Nebraska, say: “Variation in stress distribution caused by the embossing on a 1c coin leads to significant change in local current density.”
The ability to feel an object, whether a coin or a scalpel, would enable robots to improve their ability to grasp items. It would allow them to detect the texture of an item and judge whether it was slipping or being held so firmly that it was being squashed.
June 09, 2006

Zarqawi's identity remains a mystery

2006-06-09T16:57:00.000+05:30

Lawrence Joffe
The Guardian, UK
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British people will forever associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed yesterday in his late 30s, with the kidnap and beheading in October 2004 of Ken Bigley. Zarqawi, the self-styled leader of "al-Qaida in the land of the two rivers", is also believed to have personally decapitated the 26-year-old American hostage Nick Berg earlier that year.
Yet increasingly his targets were Iraqis; the number of Shia civilians that his minions have slain since 2003 grotesquely eclipses the number of foreigners he is known to have dispatched. Despite this worldwide intelligence interest, Zarqawi's identity remains a mystery. He was probably born in Zarqa, an industrial town east of Jordan's capital, Amman. "Zarqawi" merely denoted his birthplace; his true name was likely Ahmad Fadil Nazal al-Khalayleh. Rather than being Palestinian - as was once believed - he probably hailed from the Bani Hassan, a Jordanian desert tribe.
He grew up in poverty, dropped out of school and took to heavy drinking, tattoos and fighting. Allegedly jailed for sexual assault, he embraced militant Islam and travelled in Afghanistan in 1989. With the Soviets already defeated, he was left to edit a magazine for demobilised mujaheddin. In Afghanistan he met bin Laden, and his penchant for expertly synchronised suicide bombings recalled al-Qaida's methods. Yet colleagues said relations between the two men cooled. By 2000 Zarqawi was running training camps for his Jund al-Sham (Levantine Soldiers) in Herat, hundreds of miles from bin Laden's bases.
In 1992 Zarqawi joined Bayat al-Imam (Loyalty to the Imam), a radical Jordanian clique led by another former convict, Issam Barqawi.
Reportedly jailed for possessing arms in 1993, Zarqawi became a taciturn loner; fellow prisoners recalled him intimidating inmates with a mere glare. Released in an amnesty in 1999, he was soon to be sentenced in absentia for plotting to bomb tourists celebrating the new millennium at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman.
In 2000, Zarqawi escaped with his ailing mother to Peshawar in Pakistan. Late the following year, he was apparently wounded during the US bombardment of al-Qaida's Afghan bases. Surgeons at Baghdad's Ibn Sina hospital operated on his leg in May 2002. American and Kurdish forces destroyed Ansar camps in April 2003, but Zarqawi slipped away.
Soon Zarqawi was back in Iraq, where he revived his group, Tawhid al-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War, or Unity and Struggle). Its epicentre was Falluja, where four US private security agents were killed in April 2004.
In February 2004 Washington raised Zarqawi's bounty to $25m - the same as it had put on Saddam and bin Laden.
Some detected the outlaw's hand outside Iraq. Spanish officials investigated his possible role in the train bombings that killed 191 in Madrid on March 11 2004. He took credit for car bombs that killed 60 in Najaf and Karbala in December 2004; rocket attacks on Israel and US navy vessels in Jordan the following August, and a triple attack on three Amman hotels which killed another 60 on November 9 2005. Most significantly - and curiously, in the light of his growing unpopularity - bin Laden accepted his oath of allegiance as recently as December 2004, in effect making him an al-Qaida brand franchise. In May last year he justified the collateral killing of Muslims, where necessary. The following month his website launched a slick 46-minute video, All Religion Will be for Allah. The man whose remoteness earned him the nickname al-Gharib (the Stranger) - a moniker he used to sign letters - was videoed that December cradling a gun, swathed in a suicide bomber's vest, and, for the first time, unmasked. It was another stake at self-promotion.
June 09, 2006

Young Star May Be Encircled by Diamond Studded Planets

2006-06-09T16:56:00.001+05:30

David McAlary
Voice of America
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Washington (US):
Astronomers have found a star where planets may be forming from sources extra rich in carbon. If so, experts believe such planets would be teeming with smoggy atmospheres, tar-covered terrain, and vast diamond deposits.
The planets that could be forming around the star Beta Pictoris might be a jeweler's dream, but inhospitable to life as we know it.
Beta Pictoris is nearly twice the mass of our sun, and relatively close to us in cosmological terms - 60 light years away, the distance it takes light to travel in 60 years. At less than 20 million years of age, it is relatively young.
Its carbon-rich environment is a surprise. Ever since astronomers discovered the gas and dust disk around Beta Pictoris 22 years ago, they assumed it had the same composition as the one from which our solar system formed. But they also wondered why the disk lingers when it should have been blasted away by light particles, called photons, in the intense radiation from the big, young star.
An answer now comes from a study in the journal Nature, using data from a U.S. space agency satellite called the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, or FUSE.
Space agency astronomer Aki Roberge says FUSE has detected an extreme abundance of carbon in the Beta Pictoris nebula - nearly 20 times as much as thought to have existed in our infant solar system. She says carbon resists the intense radiation pushing on it.
June 08, 2006

Greek mystery may have been solved

2006-06-09T16:56:00.000+05:30

Monsters and Critics.com, UK
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Athens (Greece):
Scientists say they may have solved the puzzle produced by the 1900 discovery off Greece of a bronze mechanism created in 80 B.C.
The 'Antikythera Mechanism' was discovered on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera, The Scotsman reported.
But now a team of British and Greek researchers report finding a hidden inscription on the machine that might determine the purpose of the shoe box-sized mechanism, which some scientists believe might be the world`s oldest astronomy computer.
The team believes the machine might have been used to predict the motion of the planets, although the mechanism involving more than 30 wheels and dials represents a technical prowess not to be replicated for thousands of years, The Scotsman said.
Xenophon Moussas, a researcher at Athens University, told The Scotsman the inscription indicates the machine was used to track planetary bodies.
June 08, 2006

UNESCO to take a look at Bosnia's mysterious pyramid

2006-06-09T16:55:00.000+05:30

Ethan McNern
Scotsman, UK
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Bosnia's mystery pyramid is to be investigated and inspected by a team of experts from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, it emerged yesterday.
Semir Osmanagic, an amateur archaeologist, has caused a stir with his find at Visocica hill in the centre of Bosnia, although local and European archaeologists denounce it as nonsense.
Geologist Aly Abd Barakat, an Egyptian researcher sent by Cairo to assist Mr Osmanagic's team last month, has said that the 2,300ft hill did appear to be a primitive man-made pyramid of uncertain age.
Mr Barakat said huge stone blocks found on the three sides of the hill used the same type of artificial cement as ancient Egyptian pyramids
June 06, 2006

Aussie rocks could be earliest life forms

2006-06-09T16:53:00.000+05:30

Ker Than
MSNBC
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They resemble upside-down ice cream cones or egg cartons, but a new analysis suggests that the odd sedimentary structures found in Western Australia are among the earliest signs of life on the planet.
Called "stromatolites," the structures are believed to be about 3.4 billion years old. Since they were first described nearly 30 years ago, scientists have see-sawed between attributing them to the work of ancient microbes or hydrothermal vent activity.
But in a new study detailed in the June 8 issue of the journal Nature, Australian researchers argue that the shapes of the stromatolites are too complex and diverse to have been formed by physical processes.
Abigail Allwood of Macquarie University in Sydney and colleagues analyzed a 6-mile stretch of the rock formations and identified seven different types of stromatolites.
Allwood said her team was able to recover a few scraps of organic matter from the site which they will begin analyzing soon. The sample is so small, however, that it is difficult to say much more about the organisms that made the stromatolites than that they were microbial, Allwood told LiveScience.
If the stromatolites do turn out to have a biologic origin, it could change how scientists think about life on early Earth.
If the stromatolites were formed by microbes, then life must have adapted to normal, non-extreme environments even as early in the planet's history as 3.4 billion years ago. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Furthermore, life by that time would have already diversified enough to form complex ecosystems.
June 07, 2006

Has Merapi volcano erupted or not?

2006-06-09T16:52:00.000+05:30

Heru Andriyanto
Xinhua
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Magelang (Indonesia):
The Indonesian government denied media reports Thursday that the Merapi volcano in Central Java has erupted, while thousands of villagers on its slope continued to flee the volcano, this time without hesitation.
"Merapi has not erupted yet. What is happening there is increasing volcanic activities as shown by gas clouds and lava, like what we have been witnessing over the last one month," Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie said at a news conference in Jakarta.
However, Bakrie said residents within a 7-km radius of the crater should leave immediately and unconditionally.
Metro TV reported earlier the "eruption" occurred at 09:05 a.m.(02:05 GMT) with a thunderous sound, followed by lava flowing into nearest rivers and gas clouds mushrooming from the crater.
Reports from the volcano monitoring office in Yogyakarta said gas clouds with a temperature of 175 Celsius degree flew down as far as 5 km, the longest range since Merapi was placed in the highest alert status on May 15.
The clouds burned forest trees and crops grown by villagers.
"For me, that was an eruption," said Wiryo Sumarto, who has been living on the Merapi slope since he was born 68 years ago.
June 08, 2006

5 skeletons found under French flats

2006-06-09T16:51:00.000+05:30

Susan Bell
Scotsman, UK
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Paris (France):
Detectives were yesterday investigating the mysterious discovery of five female skeletons buried beneath the courtyard of a nondescript block of flats in the French town of Meaux, near Paris.
The first skeleton was found last week by a workman renovating the property. It was lying on its back, arms by its side, in a shallow grave.
Police had already sent the remains to the Paris coroner's office for analysis when the same workman made another gruesome discovery only a few hours later. This time, the skeleton was that of a tall woman, her arms crossed over her chest.
Police recovered pieces of wood and several rusty nailheads from the earth surrounding both skulls, suggesting the remains had been placed inside coffins before burial.
Last Friday, the mystery deepened after the first results from the coroner's office showed that the second skeleton was composed of bones from three bodies. Further excavations uncovered two more skeletons. On Wednesday police brought in a mechanical digger and uncovered a fifth skeleton.
Police said yesterday they were unsure whether they were dealing with a serial killer or whether the remains were those of Benedictine nuns whose convent had occupied the site about 200 years ago.
June 09, 2006

Duane Faust wants to take the 'mystery' out of his project

2006-06-09T16:50:00.000+05:30

John Bumgardner
WZZM, MI
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Atlanta (US):
There's new information about a proposed development along the Grand River in Grand Rapids. A company called The Grand Rapids Development Corp. owned by Duane Faust sent the city a letter on May 19th expressing interest in 15.8 acres of city owned land.
Today Faust's company released documents they hope will support their claims of jobs and growth coming to the area because of the River Grand project.
“In addressing questions from the task force, we wanted to go a step further in ‘demystifying' The River Grand, and show the community the depth we can bring to Grand Rapids if selected to provide a full proposal,” says Faust.
Faust's company is seeking to develop 36 acres in downtown Grand Rapids. Under his proposal 25% would turn into housing, 25% would be office space, 35% allotted to retail and entertainment and 15% general development. The total investment promised by Faust is projected to be between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billon dollars.
June 08, 2006

Mystery as China bans Da Vinci Code from the nation's cinema screens

2006-06-09T16:48:00.000+05:30

Min Lee
Scotsman, UK
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Hong Kong:
China has ordered cinemas to stop showing the controversial blockbuster film The Da Vinci Code from today, media officials said.
Authorities said the withdrawal - an unprecedented move - was to make way for films produced in China, an industry executive reported yesterday.
"This is coming directly from the film bureau," she said, adding that it was the first time the government had pulled a foreign film from cinemas.
She declined to be named because she was not authorised to comment.
The film had been given the widest release yet for a foreign production in China, with 393 prints sent to cinemas, breaking the record of 380 set by King Kong last year, its distributor said earlier.
The official explanation appears to be contradicted by the release of another Hollywood blockbuster, Ice Age - The Meltdown in China today.
However, China does limit film imports to 20 a year in an effort to protect state studios.
Another possible explanation is that officials do not want the film to do well in China.
Having made £7 million there since its release on 19 May, it was on its way to becoming one of the highest-ever earning foreign films in China, the executive said.
The Da Vinci Code has been opposed by Christian groups because it suggests Jesus fathered children who continued his lineage. China's state-backed Catholic church urged followers to boycott the film, but few of China's 1.3 billion people are Christians. Estimates range from 16 million to 47 million.
June 09, 2006

Shooting mystery man in custody

2006-06-05T15:15:00.000+05:30

Stewart Paterson
The Herald
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London (UK):
A man who was shot during an anti-terror raid was yesterday transferred into police custody although he was still too ill to be questioned. Abdul Kahar, 23, was moved under high security from a London hospital to the city's Paddington Green police station. He was shot during the police operation at his east London home on Friday.
His solicitor, Kate Roxburgh, said last night: "It has all been about the doctor assessing whether my client is fit to be interviewed at the moment. The man's lawyers maintain he was shot in the shoulder by police officers during the raid but Whitehall sources have been reported as claiming he was shot by his 20-year-old younger brother, Abul Koyair, who has also been arrested. Official police statements on the incident have said a man received gunshot wounds but not who fired the shot and no-one has attempted to clarify who fired the gun. Lawyers for Abul Koyair say he did not shoot his brother and both men deny any involvement in terrorism.
June 05, 2006

China orders investigation after military plane crashes

2006-06-05T15:13:00.000+05:30

AP
Malaysia Star
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Beijing (China):
The weekend crash of a military transport plane in eastern China killed all 40 people aboard and prompted President Hu Jintao to order an investigation into its cause, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.
The Xinhua report late Sunday was the first official confirmation of the death toll from Saturday afternoon's crash. Villagers near the crash site in Anhui province described a gruesome scene, with bodies and body parts strewn across a mountain slope where the plane went down.
Immediately after learning of the crash, Hu, who heads the Communist Party commission that oversees the military, ordered an investigation team led by a senior general to the crash site to determine the cause, Xinhua said, citing unidentified sources from China's Air Force.
No other details about the victims or the flight have been released.
The Xinhua report on the death toll was released more than 30 hours after the crash. Newspapers on Monday carried brief, identical Xinhua dispatches about Hu sending condolences to families of the victims - an indication that the government was keeping a tight rein on media, all of which is state controlled.
June 05, 2006

Police question Rahul Mahajan inside ICU

2006-06-05T15:03:00.000+05:30

PTI
The Hindu
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New Delhi (India):
Rahul Mahajan, whose name is linked to a drug abuse case, was today questioned by the police at the Apollo Hospital about his mystery ailment and the death of his aide Vivek Moitra.
Hospital sources said that Rahul was being questioned inside the Intensive Care Unit itself after doctors said he was fit to give a statement.
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See Also:
Apollo Hospital in eye of suspicion in Mahajan case
Delhi Police arrest 3 Nigerians
Simple drug tests made to look complex: Experts
Sahil 'singled out' in Mahajan case
Sahil was a drug courier, says Delhi Police
Delay in action raises eyebrows
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A team of police officials led by Ram Kishan, Station House Officer of the Mandir Marg Police Station began recording the statement at about 11:00 am.
Doctors reviewed Rahul's situation this morning and found him fit to give a statement.
June 05, 2006

Indonesian embassy staff helping police with mystery man

2006-06-05T15:01:00.000+05:30

Radio New Zealand
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Staff at the Indonesian Embassy are assisting police trying to identify a man with critical head injuries who was dropped off at Tauranga Hospital on Friday night.
The man has since been transferred to Auckland City Hospital where he is in a critical condition.
Police believe he is an Indonesian national, who was working in a kiwifruit picking gang. He had a pair of kiwifruit picking gloves on him.
Police have spent the day trying to contact some of the 300 contractors who employee pickers on kiwifruit orchards throughout the Bay of Plenty.
June 05, 2006

Riddle of Saturn’s moon may have been answered

2006-06-05T15:00:00.000+05:30

Daily Times
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Scientists believe they can explain a mystery that enshrouds Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that could be the best bet for looking for life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Orbiting eccentrically in Saturn’s outermost ring, Enceladus is a strange and tiny world of white. It measures just 504 kilometres (315 miles) across, thus defying its name as a giant of Greek mythology, and has brilliant shell of ice that is pristine except for some odd-looking grooves and pockmarks from recent space impacts.
Just as its surface is a frigid hell, counter-intuitively, beneath the ice Enceladus seems to be relatively balmy. Flybys by the US probe Cassini have shown plumes of water vapour that vent from its surface, shooting crystal jets upwards for hundreds of kilometers (miles).
A pair of American space scientists believe they have the answer for this. Spinning bodies are most stable if most of their mass is close to the equator. Any redistribution of mass within a rotating object causes the axis of spin to become unstable.
In the case of Enceladus, the large blob of low-density material — either warm water or hot silicate at its rocky core — would cause the moon to roll over. The spin axis would remain fixed, but the blob, known as a diapir, would end up on the south pole.
June 05, 2006

Mysterious red cells might be aliens

2006-06-03T17:37:00.000+05:30

Jebediah Reed
Popular Science
CNN
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As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.
In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)
So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.
If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.
Last winter, Louis sent some of his samples to astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales, who are now attempting to replicate his experiments; Wickramasinghe expects to publish his initial findings later this year.
Louis's theory holds special appeal for Wickramasinghe. A quarter of a century ago, he co-authored the modern theory of panspermia, which posits that bacteria-riddled space rocks seeded life on Earth.
June 02, 2006

No cocaine found in Rahul Mahajan's blood samples

2006-06-03T17:16:00.000+05:30

Times of India
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New Delhi (India):
The blood samples of Rahul Mahajan, who is admitted to Apollo Hospital in a critical condition, doesn't contain cocaine and any other banned drug, hospital officials said.
The tests for all the toxic screen are negative including that for cocaine and ecstasy, the officials said.
The tests were done for 14 drugs, they said, adding the doctors were not in a position to comment, if he had taken any other drug, Dr Anupam Sibal of Apollo Hospital said.
Observing that when brought in, Rahul Mahajan was in a critical condition with "some kind of intoxication", Sibal said, "we cannot really say what it (ailment) was."
___________________
Conspiracy theories doing rounds
Rahul Mahajan's condition improves
Mahajan Jr case: Search on for missing 4th visitor
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"We are unable to identify what caused the clinical situation," he said adding all toxic screening done is negative and "we will not be able to say anything (if he has taken anything else) as tests are not available for everything."
Moitra's post-mortem report suggests poisoning
Traces of poison has been found in the body of late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan's secretary Vivek Moitra, sources in AIIMS hospital where the autopsy was conducted said on Saturday.
"There were traces of poison and we have sent the visra to Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory (CFSL) to determine the type of poison," they said.
Moitra died in wee hours on Friday after suspected poisoning while Mahajan's son Rahul was admitted to Appollo Hospital in New Delhi in a serious condition.
June 03, 2006

US video probe into 'new Iraqi massacre'

2006-06-02T18:14:00.000+05:30

Irish Examiner
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The BBC has uncovered video footage it says suggests US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians in March.
The broadcaster said the images appeared to challenge the US military’s account of events which took place in the town of Ishaqi.
US authorities in Baghdad said an investigation was underway, the BBC reported.
Iraqi police have already accused American troops of shooting 11 people, including five children, on purpose in a raid on a house in the town 60 miles north of Baghdad on March 15.
The US military reportedly said at the time that four people were killed during a military operation when a building collapsed under heavy fire.
But the BBC said its tape, which comes in the wake of the alleged massacre in Haditha in November, showed a number of dead adults and children at the site with gunshot wounds.
June 02, 2006

Tomb could hold Tutankhamen's widow

2006-06-02T18:13:00.000+05:30

Daily Telegraph, Australia
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London (UK):
It has been 84 years since Egypt's famed Valley of the Kings revealed its last great riches – the fabulous gold of Tutankhamen's tomb.
Now archaeologists believe they have stumbled across one final secret: The mummified remains of the boy king's widow buried 3000 years ago.
In a mysterious shaft less than 15m from Tutankhamen's burial ground, US archaeologists found seven coffins.
They believe one they have not yet been able to open may contain the remains of Queen Ankhesenpaaten.
The tomb – found by accident by Memphis University team leader Dr Otto Schaden – contained seven coffins stacked closely together and ringed by 28 clay jars, each decorated with a beautiful face mask. The coffins were buried about 1320BC.
A child-sized coffin – one of five so far raised – contained a small gilded ornamental sarcophagus of a quality that was usually buried only with royalty.
Ankhesenpaaten's link to the tomb was further underlined when a coffin seal was found with part of her name on it.
June 02, 2006

Teen's 'execution' murder mystery

2006-06-02T18:12:00.000+05:30

Sydney Morning Herald
_________________
Sydney (Australia):
The murder of Sydney teenager Matthew Di Losa will remain unsolved for now, after the NSW coroner found insufficient evidence to refer the matter to prosecutors.
Mr Di Losa died after being shot in the neck in what newspaper reports at the time called "an execution style" killing.
His body was found by the Cooks River canal at Enfield, in Sydney's west, on October 10, 1991.
NSW Coroner John Abernethy today delivered an open finding at the conclusion of the two-day inquest into the 18-year-old's death.
"This is an unsolved murder and I generally say little in such cases," Mr Abernethy told Glebe Coroner's Court.
"Sadly, the inquest has not taken this case much further."
But, he said, a $50,000 reward would be offered to any person who could provide information leading to the apprehension of Mr Di Losa's killer.
"I urge any member of the community with information to come forth," Mr Abernethy said.
The inquest had earlier heard how Di Losa was murdered just weeks after returning from a European holiday ended his trip early to recover $5,000 from a failed gun deal.
Mr Di Losa had been trying to buy 10 guns for $5,000 from a friend, Kevin Khaschan, shortly before his death.
02/06/06

Who is 'John Doe'?

2006-06-02T18:11:00.000+05:30

Barney Lerten, KTVZ.com
KTVZ, OR
_______
Eighteen months after a man's body, bundled up in a sleeping bag, was found along a Deschutes River walking trail, stumped Deschutes County sheriff's detectives released a computer-reconstruction photo Thursday in hopes of identifying the "John Doe."
Deputies responded around 10:40 a.m. on Nov. 27, 2004 to a report of a deceased male along the river near Meadow Camp, west of Bend. Deputies found the man, bundled in a sleeping bag, and detectives were called in.
The man appeared to be transient, and no identification was found on or near him, said sheriff's Det. Troy Gotchy. The medical examiner's office determined he had died of exposure.
Investigators tried to identify the man by sending his fingerprints to the Oregon State Police, to be compared with others in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, but no match was found, Gotchy said.
"Detectives have followed up on several leads, and identification still has not been made," Gotchy said in a news release.
The man's DNA also has been sent to a missing persons DNA database at the University of North Texas Health Center, but no match has been found, the detective said.
The unidentified man also has been placed on a Website called the Doe Network (www.doenetwork.org.) The page lists case histories, and both computer and clay reconstructions of missing and unidentified deceased people, Gotchy said.
June 01, 2006

Seeking answers in 'barn owl mystery'

2006-06-02T18:09:00.000+05:30

BBC News
_______
A Northern Ireland academic is seeking the public's help to find out the causes of poisoning in barn owls.
Dave Tosh of Queen's University is examining if rat poisons are turning up in animals which are not targeted.
He has appealed to the public in a bid to find out where barn owls roost and collect the pellets that gather there.
The number of barn owls in Northern Ireland is low and Mr Tosh is analysing their diet and if it is likely to expose them to rodenticides.
"Understanding the species' diet is important, as in the UK the vole is the most common prey item of the barn owl," he said.
"Unfortunately for the barn owl, the vole does not naturally occur in Ireland, so it must be eating something else.
"What that is, we don't know, but we could speculate that it is eating wood mice, house mice and brown rats.
"It is therefore possible that rodenticides used to target these species are indirectly affecting the barn owl through its diet."
The barn owl population is thought to have declined in the UK by as much as 50% in the past 50 years.
June 01, 2006

Saddam witness says "executed" people still alive

2006-05-31T02:04:00.000+05:30

Omar al-Ibadi and Fredrik Dahl
Reuters
______
Baghdad (Iraq):
A witness for Saddam Hussein appeared to dispute prosecution allegations that 148 people were executed after a failed assassination bid in 1982, telling the court on Tuesday that some of them were still alive.
The anonymous man, testifying from behind a curtain in the courtroom in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, suggested the survivors fled abroad after the attempt on Saddam's life but had returned after his overthrow in 2003.
"Some of the people, who it was said at the time were executed because of their role in the assassination attempt against Saddam, came back to Iraq after the American occupation," he said.
"Some of them came from Iran, others came with American tanks," he added.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are accused of crimes against humanity for bloody reprisals that the prosecution says led to the deaths of 148 men and teenagers after the attempt on his life in Dujail, a mainly Shi'ite Muslim town north of Baghdad.
If convicted they face possible death by hanging.
One of the defense lawyers told the court one of their witnesses had been killed a few days ago but did not elaborate.

Mysterious sheep killer puts wolf debate back in the crosshairs

2006-05-31T02:02:00.000+05:30

Gwen Florio
Great Falls Tribune, MT
__________________
On the morning before Easter, Jordan-area rancher Mike McKeever walked the quarter-mile from his house down to the sheep pens to check on his pregnant ewes.
One was dead, but untouched. Beyond it was a second carcass, and that's when McKeever knew he had a problem.
"She was hollowed out ... it must have munched through her ribs and went down through her body cavity. It pulled out her intestines and her lambs and ate them all," said McKeever.
He is among a handful of ranchers in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties who have lost about 100 sheep since the beginning of the year, most recently in mid-May, to a ravenous creature that dispatches 170-pound sheep with ease and ferocity.
And that creature is?
"A wolf," said McKeever.
"A wolf or wolf hybrid," said Carolyn Sime, the statewide wolf coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
"A dog or a hybrid," said Suzanne Asha Stone, the Boise-based Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife.
The forests of Yellowstone, thick with elk and deer, are more than 400 miles from the barren, windswept plains of eastern Montana. Stone said that's what makes it so unlikely that the sheep-slaughterer is a wolf.
"It's something perhaps more feral than wild .... It's very common for feral dogs to kill livestock," she said.
Kay Rene Whiteside said the mystery animal killed 21 of her sheep in January and injured another 40.
McKeever believes it's a wolf because it preys on adult sheep. Coyotes usually take lambs, and only one or two at a time, he said.

Study: global warming boosts poison ivy

2006-05-31T02:01:00.000+05:30

The Associated Press
Seattle Post Intelligencer
_________________
Washington (US):
Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday.
And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas - a chemical that traps heat similar to the way a greenhouse does - that's considered a major contributor to global warming.
Poison ivy's itchy, sometimes blistering rash is one of the most widely reported ailments to poison-control centers, with more than 350,000 reported cases a year.
Compared to poison ivy grown in usual atmospheric conditions, those exposed to the extra-high carbon dioxide grew about three times larger - and produced more allergenic form of urushiol, scientists from Duke and Harvard University reported.
Their study appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
May 29. 2006

New chief for mystery bodies probe

2006-05-31T02:00:00.000+05:30

Ismail Wolff
IHT ThaiDay, Thailand
________________
Justice Ministry permanent Secretary Jarupong Ruangsuwan has been assigned to oversee an investigation concerning the identification of more than 300 corpses that have lain in unmarked graves in the South for over a year, minister Chitchai Wannasathit said yesterday.
The move seemingly puts Jarupong in charge of the investigation previously headed by Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunan, director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science (CIFS), under the Justice Ministry.
Chitchai said Jarupong will go to cemeteries in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat to direct the investigative process.
Asked if that would undermine Khunying Pornthip’s role in the investigation, Chitchai simply said: “I have already assigned Jarupong to be in charge.”
The justice minister also stressed there was no evidence to suggest the hundreds of corpses were connected to the alleged kidnapping and disappearance of local Muslims at the hands of security forces in the region.
Police claim most of the bodies are those of foreign migrant workers murdered in crimes unrelated to the violent insurgency plaguing the southernmost border provinces since January 2004. However, Khunying Pornthip said yesterday she will finally proceed next month with exhuming the unmarked graves that were first discovered in July 2005.
May 30, 2006

Ghost ship with 11 corpses washes up in Barbados

2006-05-29T18:37:00.000+05:30

Mail & Guardian Online
________________
The white ghost ship rolled in the Atlantic swell as the rescue boats approached it 70 nautical miles off Ragged Point, one of the most easterly places on the Caribbean island of Barbados.
The yacht was unmarked, 6m long, and when Barbadian coastguard officers boarded it, they made a gruesome find. The boat's phantom crew was made up of the desiccated corpses of 11 young men, huddled in two separate piles in the small cabin. Dressed in shorts and colourful jerseys, they had been partially petrified by the salt water, sun and sea breezes of the Atlantic Ocean. They appeared to have come from far away.
The sea-battered yacht, identified by one local ship's captain as of French design, was towed into the port at Willoughy Fort, Bridgetown, and the bodies, by now wrapped in plastic bags, were heaved on to the quay.
In a part of the world where legends and myths have often been furnished by the sea, the mystery of the dead men soon provoked curious speculation.
An air ticket from Senegal Airlines and a tragic note written by one of the men as he was preparing to die have, however, helped investigators from several countries set about unravelling the mystery.
For, although the floating coffin appeared off the coast of the Americas, those on board had set off four months earlier from the Cape Verde islands, off the African coast, and had been heading for the European soil of the Canary Islands.
The evidence reportedly points to them having been cut adrift in the Atlantic and left to drift off to a slow, painful end. Barbados police have said the cause of the deaths was starvation and dehydration.
'Please excuse me'
"I would like to send to my family in Bassada [a town in the interior of Senegal] a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye. This is the end of my life in this big Moroccan sea," the note said, according to a Barbados paper, the Daily Nation.
The story of the 11 dead and about 40 other would-be immigrants from Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Gambia starts on Christmas Day last year at Praia, a port in the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde. There, for €1 300 each, they were promised a trip to the Canary Islands by a mysterious Spaniard.
Their boat was to be a motorised yacht, recently repaired but bearing no name and no flag. They paid to make the voyage, assuming that the Spaniard -- a mechanic based in the Canaries -- would be skippering the boat. At the last moment, however, a Senegalese man took over and the Spaniard disappeared. Several then refused to make the journey. One, according to the El Pais newspaper on Sunday, jumped from the yacht as it set sail. It is by no means clear what happened next.
Somewhere near the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou the yacht ran into trouble. Another boat was sent to its aid, apparently after the skipper had contacted the Spaniard. The yacht was towed but, at some stage, the line was severed. El Pais reported that it had been hacked with a machete. With no fuel left and food and water running out, the migrants' fate was left in the hands of the sea, the weather, and luck. The latter soon ran out.
The yacht drifted into the stormy Atlantic and, it is assumed, people were tossed or washed overboard as they died.
May 29, 2006

Mystery of Michelin tycoon killed at sea

2006-05-29T18:36:00.000+05:30

Charles Bremner
Times Online
__________
Investigators sent a robot probe into the waters of the Atlantic yesterday to hunt for clues into the sudden death of Edouard Michelin, 42, the billionaire boss of the world’s biggest tyre company.
His death while fishing in the treacherous waters off Cape Finisterre was a blow to the French institution that was founded by his great-grandfather 140 years ago, and triggered speculation as to who would lead the company.
M Michelin’s body was found floating among lobster pots last Friday. Yesterday a Navy mine-hunter found his 24ft (7m) fishing boat on the seafloor, 150ft down.
A Navy robot camera scouring the site near the island of Sein could find no sign of the body of Guillaume Normant, a friend and experienced fisherman who had taken the tycoon out in search of sea bass.
Police do not suspect foul play but a mystery remained over the sudden death of one of France’s richest men. M Normant was a local professional with long experience in the Atlantic. Maritime officials said that conditions were acceptable when the fishing boat disappeared on Friday, although fog had cut visibility to 200 yards (180m).
But Robert Bougueon, the head of a local fisherman’s association, quoted M Normant’s wife as saying that M Michelin had persuaded her husband to take the boat out against his better judgment. “He didn’t know how to say no,” M Bougueon said.
Jean-Marie Figue, a spokesman for the maritime authorities, said: “It is a dangerous area where only professionals can fish. There are rocks, currents — it’s a real whirlpool.
The company reassured its 130,000 workers that its future was secure under Michel Rollier, 61, who was co-chairman. But doubts continued about the succession because M Rollier is only a distant descendant of the founder of the company, also called Edouard Michelin.
The company has always been run by his direct male descendants, and no Michelin appeared qualified to take over. M Michelin’s six sons and daughters are too young, and only one of his brothers works for the company, in a middle-level job.
May 29, 2006

Father: Man Who Killed Boys, Self Troubled

2006-05-29T18:35:00.000+05:30

Newsday, NY
_________
Miami, Florida (US):
A doctor who killed his two young sons by throwing them over a hotel balcony and then jumped to his own death seemed to be hallucinating and sounded paranoid in a phone call two days earlier, his father said.
Oebele Van Dyk, 86, said he talked to his son the day before Edward Van Dyk flew to Miami to be with his wife and two sons, who were already staying at the Loews Hotel where the incident occurred. The boys were 4 and 8-years-old.
"He was very distraught. I think he was seeing things that didn't seem to be real," Van Dyk told The Miami Herald on Sunday in a telephone interview from his home in New York.
Van Dyk described his son as a "peaceful guy," who "never, never fought" and said his son did not have any history of mental problems.
Newsday, NY

Dark Energy mystery the focus of UQ astronomers' study

2006-05-29T18:33:00.000+05:30

UQ News, Australia
______________
Astrophysics researchers at The University of Queensland have received a massive 220-night allocation from the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) for a project to study Dark Energy.
The project will involve the largest-ever galaxy survey undertaken by telescope and will measure some 400,000 distant galaxies.
Project leader Associate Professor Michael Drinkwater said the technology at the AAT would allow the research to be undertaken in Australia, well ahead of any international competition.
“We will use the new AAOmega facility to survey galaxies in the distant universe and these measurements will enable us to test one of the major theories of Dark Energy," Dr Drinkwater said.
“Dark energy is a mysterious force which is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Its nature is completely unknown and it may require new laws of physics to be written.”
Dr Drinkwater said the allocation was approved last week under the AAT's inaugural "large project" grants.
He said running costs for a single night on the AAT were valued at $20,000 and the allocation represented an investment of $4.4 million.
May 29, 2006

Doctor Throws Sons To Deaths, Kills Self

2006-05-29T00:57:00.000+05:30

KWTX, TX
________
Miami Beach, Florida (US):
What could cause a man to throw his 4-year-old and 8-year-old sons to their deaths from a 15th-floor hotel balcony?
It happened Saturday in Miami Beach, Fla.
Police say the Illinois man, a cancer doctor who'd been visiting there with his wife and children, then jumped to his own death.
His wife heard the kids screaming, and then saw her husband jump.
She says they'd been having marital problems, but they hadn't argued right before the tragedy.
Other doctors at the Illinois hospital where Edward Van Dyk was head of the cancer center say he was quiet, intelligent and friendly.
A colleague, Dr. Ed Ragsdale, says Van Dyk dealt with patients who had severe forms of cancer.

NASA To Take A Closer Look At Mysterious Clouds

2006-05-29T00:55:00.000+05:30

Matthew Borghese
All Headline News
_____________
Washington, D.C.:
A new National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) satellite will help study some of the most mysterious clouds on Earth.
NASA's new mission will examine the Noctilucent clouds that appear 50 miles above the surface. Interest in the phenomenon has been peaked, with records leading researchers to believe the clouds are becoming brighter, more frequent, and appearing at lower altitudes.
James Russell from Hampton University, in Virginia, explains, "Noctilucent clouds were first seen in 1885 by a British amateur astronomer, Robert Leslie."
According to the BBC, Russell is the principal investigator on the AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) spacecraft, which will be lofted to 370 miles to make a detailed study of the clouds.
May 28, 2006

Mystery shrouds triple murder

2006-05-29T00:54:00.000+05:30

The Daily Star, Bangladesh
___________________
Mystery shrouds the Thursday's triple-murder at Uttara as intelligence agencies are not ruling out the killing's link with insurgents of a neighbouring country.
The investigators also found the family members of the dead to be very 'suspicious'. The investigating officer (IO) of the case termed the murders 'mysterious' and suspect the family was involved in illegal activities.
Meanwhile, the identity of one of the three dead was known yesterday. Victim Ajay Singh is the uncle of Sanjay, a student of Milestone School and College, who was also killed on Thursday. The identity of the male domestic help, the third victim, is yet to be known.
Law enforcers found the bodies of three men of Manipuri community at a house in Uttara Thursday night. All the bodies had their throat slit.
Police held Kuleswar Sinha, father of Sanjay, at Uttara Police Station for quizzing after he went there to receive his son's body yesterday evening. Uttara police also picked up three, Ashit Kumar, Jisair and Lipson, for quizzing.
Law enforcers held Kuleswar on May last year after six National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) insurgents were killed in an encounter with Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) in a tea estate in Kamalganj of Moulavibazar.
He was then held for allegedly providing shelter to the six insurgents. Intelligence agencies now suspect the three murders could have been committed by people connected with those six insurgents.
May 28, 2006

'Dead' climber heads to safety

2006-05-29T00:53:00.000+05:30

Evelyn Yamine
NEWS.com.au, Australia
_________________
Sitting half undressed with his legs dangling over a deadly precipice, Australian climber Lincoln Hall told the mountaineer who saved him from Mt Everest: "I imagine you are surprised to see me here?"
As a seriously-ill Hall began his descent to safety on the back of a yak yesterday, the first details emerged of his rescue after he spent a night alone in the mountain's "death zone".
After being abandoned by fellow climbers who believed he was dead, American climber Dan Mazur stumbled across Hall as he made his own ascent to the summit on Friday.
Barely alive and disoriented from cerebral oedema, an acute form of altitude sickness, Hall was found with his legs over a sheer drop "half undressed and without a hat".
Mazur abandoned his own summit attempt to help Hall, sharing his hot tea and oxygen, after alerting Hall's expedition leader, who sent eight sherpas to rescue him.
Despite severe frostbite and a chest infection, Hall, 50, was able to walk into advanced base camp, at 6500m, later that day.
Hall's ordeal began when he became ill after reaching the peak of the world's highest mountain on Thursday. With weather conditions worsening, the two sherpas trying to lead him to safety went snow blind.
Believing Hall was already dead, they were forced to abandon him to save their own lives.
Miraculously he survived some of the worst conditions on the planet.
May 29, 2006

Sailor receives tribute 38 years after mysterious submarine death

2006-05-29T00:49:00.000+05:30

Globe Gazette
__________
Ames, Iowa (US):
David Stone finally received the tribute his parents had anticipated for 38 years — a military-style funeral to bring closure to a mystery that may never be solved.
Stone was among the 99 crew members aboard the Navy submarine USS Scorpion when it mysteriously sank on May 22, 1968, in the Atlantic Ocean. The Navy, hesitant to recognize the destruction of a spy vessel, never told Stone's parents why the Scorpion and their 24-year-old son never made it home.
Stone's parents only received a grave marker, which they placed in the Ames Municipal Cemetery. No body was recovered and no funeral was held.
But last week the parents got some closure when a group of submarine veterans who never knew Stone put on a full military-style memorial service.
Taps was played. An American flag was given to the family. And for a few moments, on a chilly day, their son was remembered.
``This was much more than I expected,'' said Stone's mother Sybil. ``This was really special. We never really did have any kind of closing on this.''
Stone was a 1961 graduate of Ames High School. He attended Iowa State University before enlisting in the U.S. Navy in September 1963. The machinist mate second class served three years aboard the Scorpion, a nuclear attack submarine.
May 28, 2006

Want to be invisible? Theories see a possible way

2006-05-26T18:00:00.000+05:30

Maggie Fox
Reuters.uk
________
Washington (US):
New materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make objects invisible, researchers said on Thursday.
Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental "metamaterials" to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes.
Their work suggests that science-fiction portrayals of invisibility might be truly possible. Harry Potter's cloak or The Invisible Man of films and fiction might be a bit harder to emulate, however, because the materials must be used in a thick shell.
The concept begins with refraction -- a quality of light in which the electromagnetic waves take the quickest, but not necessarily the shortest, route. This accounts for the illusion that a pencil immersed in a glass of water appears broken, for instance.
"Imagine a situation where a medium guides light around a hole in it," Physicist Ulf Leonhardt of Britain's University of St. Andrews, wrote in one of the reports, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The light rays end up behind the object as if they had traveled in a straight line.
"Any object placed in the hole would be hidden from sight. The medium would create the ultimate optical illusion: invisibility, Leonhardt wrote.

Confusion over Aust climber's fate on Everest

2006-05-26T17:59:00.000+05:30

ABC Online
________
There are conflicting reports on the fate of Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall.
Earlier today, Mr Hall was reported to have died descending Mount Everest after reaching the peak.
A website associated with the expedition notified the death and friends of the climber confirmed they had been told of his death.
The website has since reported that Mr Hall has been found alive and is being brought down the mountain by a rescue team.
Australia mountaineer Duncan Chessell says he has been told by radio from Nepal that other climbers have found Mr Hall alive.
May 26, 2006

HIV originated from wild chimpazees: study

2006-05-26T17:58:00.000+05:30

Xinhua
_____
Los Angelse (US):
Genetic evidence from chimpanzee feces from the forest floors of Cameroon has confirmed that the HIV-1 virus, the cause of human AIDS, originated in wild chimpanzee populations, scientists reported on Thursday.
In a study published in the May 25 issue of the online edition of the journal Science, scientists from the U.S., Cameroon and Europe said they had found the ancestry of HIV by tracing genetic fragments in fecal samples of wild-living chimpanzees in west central Africa.
Together with earlier studies, these findings provided for the first time a clear picture of the origin of HIV-1 and the seeds of the AIDS pandemic, according to the research team led by Beatrice Hahn at the University of Alabama.
Scientists have long suspected that a virus most closely related to HIV-1, a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), could be an ancestor of HIV-1. But the SIV had only been found in captive chimpanzees before, shaking the hypothesis that the SIV could have evolved into HIV-1 in the wild.
In this new study, the researchers said they had detected SIV antibodies and nucleic acids in hundreds of fecal samples from wild-living chimpanzees that belong to subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes (P. t. troglodytes).
According to the team, the SIV infection rates in some chimpanzee communities in southern Cameroon have reached 29 percent to 35 percent. The genetic similarity between SIV in chimpanzees and HIV in humans are "striking," the researchers said.
May 25, 2006

Daily drinks good for men, not women

2006-05-26T17:57:00.000+05:30

Irish Health
________
Men who drink alcohol every day have a lower risk of heart disease, compared to those who drink less frequently. However this is not the case for women, the results of a new study indicate.
A team of researchers in Denmark studied over 50,000 men and women aged 50 - 65. Details on alcohol intake and drinking frequency over the preceding years were collected and the participants were then monitored for an average of five years.
During the study period, coronary heart events were recorded and the results were adjusted to take into account known risk factors, such as smoking, diet and physical activity.
The study found that women who drank alcohol on at least one day a week had a lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared to women who drank alcohol less than once a week.
In contrast, risks for men were lowest among the most frequent drinkers. Men who drank one day a week had a 7% reduced risk, while men who drank every day had a 41% reduced risk. This suggests that it does not matter how much men drink, as long as they drink every day.
However the researchers emphasised that the benefits of alcohol on coronary heart disease are 'by far exceeded' by the harmful effects of heavy alcohol drinking. They said that their findings should be viewed in this context when giving public health advice.
Details of this study are published in the British Medical Journal.
May 26, 2006

Top cop faces second sex trial

2006-05-26T17:56:00.000+05:30

Peter Williams
Advertiser Adelaide
______________
Auckland ( New Zealand):
A top New Zealand police officer who tearfully declared himself vindicated after acquittal of rape charges amid huge publicity in March is facing another sex trial.
Suspended assistant commissioner Clint Rickards and two former colleagues are accused of sexual offending in the 1980s against a different woman from their first trial.
The second trial to be held later this year has been made public in New Zealand for the first time after a Court of Appeal judge partially lifted suppression orders surrounding the three men.
Women's groups held protests after the March verdict and handed out leaflets to the public revealing suppressed information.
In the first trial, Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas accused Mr Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum of raping and sexual abusing her when she was a teenager in the mid-1980s.
The trio – all police officers at the time – admitted to having consensual group sex with Ms Nicholas and a jury acquitted them of all 20 charges.
Mr Rickards, once tipped to become New Zealand's first Maori police commissioner, was stood down in 2004 when the charges emerged and has not been reinstated since the Nicholas verdict. May 26, 2006

$135m in drugs smuggled from same port

2006-05-26T17:55:00.000+05:30

Elizabeth Binning
New Zealand Herald
______________
Authorities have seized $95 million worth of crystal methamphetamine - nearly enough to supply one million people with individual hits of the drug P.
The haul, the largest in New Zealand, was found in a shipping container and came within a week of a second container that carried $40 million worth of pseudoephedrine.
Police say both shipments of drugs would have been supplied to the local market by criminal networks throughout the country.
The drugs came from the southern Chinese port town of Shekou.
Detective Inspector Bruce Good said the drug busts followed an investigation that started early this year and involved dozens of people, including authorities in Hong Kong.
He said the result was an important disruption to an international drug network.
Six people are in custody after appearing in the Auckland District Court this week.
At least two of the people were based in Auckland and found at a Kohimarama address searched by the police on Monday night.
May 26, 2006

Search launched after UFO sea splash-down mystery

2006-05-22T17:34:00.001+05:30

Derrick Spies
The Herald Eastern Cape
__________________
Port Elizabeth (South Africa)
The aliens landed, or make that crash-landed, in the sea off Port Shepstone at the weekend.
This is what some people believed after they saw an unidentified flying object smack down into the water just behind the breaker line on Saturday.
NSRI Shelley Beach station commander Eddie Noyons said a number of reports had been received about a UFO, possibly an aircraft, crashing into the sea at about 12.20pm.
“Numerous eyewitnesses were interviewed, including teachers and pupils from Port Shepstone High School who were attending a sports event at the school, as well as other bystanders including local fishermen. They were all convinced they had seen an aircraft go into the water and said they had seen smoke and a splash.”
Some also reported seeing flames, and ripples on the sea.
Noyons said the NSRI, along with the South African Police Service, had gone out to investigate. They also alerted the Margate air traffic control and an aircraft was diverted to the scene to provide a fly-by visual of the area.
Noyons said there were no reports of activity in the area that could be related to the supposed crash, and no aircraft had been reported overdue or missing.
May 22, 2006

Suicide or murder? Sati mystery

2006-05-22T17:34:00.000+05:30

CNN-IBN
_______
Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh (India):
A bizarre controversy has erupted over the death of a woman in the Fatehpur district of Uttar Pradesh.
Thirty-eight-year old Vidayawati was burnt to death when she reportedly jumped into the funeral pyre of her husband last Thursday.
After the initial reports of a forced Sati, some villagers alleged Vidyawati had voluntarily jumped into the pyre and that it was a case of suicide.
The district police, too, ruled out Sati and did not lodge a complaint when the incident was reported.
However, the tale took a bizarre turn when the district administration lodged a case of murder against Vidyawati's brothers-in-law Vishal and Kartar, hinting foul play.
The police also registered a case of provoking for suicide under Section 306 of Indian Penal Code against 200 villagers present at the cremation venue.
"We have arrested the two brother-in-laws of the woman and registered a case of murder against them," Fatehpur's District Magistrate Girdhari Lal said.
Women's organisations, too, smelt a rat and forced the police to lodge a First Information Report (FIR) against the villagers allegedly involved in the case.
"She did not commit suicide. People threw her in the pyre and it reflects administrations laxity," Member, Congress Women Wing Fatehpur Santoshi Shukla said.
However, eyewitnesses told police that one of Vidyawati’s relatives did make an attempt to pull her out, but failed to do so, and she was consumed by fire before the eyes of scores of villagers.
May 22, 2006

Diet Linked to Twin Births

2006-05-22T17:32:00.000+05:30

Scientific American
_____________
Over the last 30 years, the number of twin births has nearly trebled. This rise seems to have followed the introduction of in vitro fertilization and a preference for having children later in life. But in the mid-1990s, doctors began limiting the number of transferred embryos and still the proportion of twin births rose. Now new research seems to show that growth hormone in the food supply may be responsible.
"The continuing increase in the twinning rate into the 1990s, however, may also be a consequence of the introduction of growth hormone treatment of cows to enhance their milk and beef production," argues physician Gary Steinman of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
Steinman and his international colleagues solicited answers on a questionnaire from mothers. He then compared the number of twin births from those who consumed meat and/or milk and those who consumed no animal products at all. The omnivores and vegetarians were five times more likely to have twins than the vegans.
Steinman argues that insulin-like growth factor, a protein released by the liver in response to growth hormone, may be the reason. Studies have shown that the protein increases ovulation and that it persists in the body after entering via digested food, particularly milk. Daily drinking of a glass of milk over a 12-week period raised levels of the protein in the body by 10 percent and vegan women have 13 percent lower concentrations of it in their blood.
May 22, 2006

Srinagar attack: Inside job suspected

2006-05-22T17:31:00.000+05:30

Indo-Asian News Service
Hindustan Times
____________
New Delhi (India):
The Govt suspected an "inside job" to sabotage a peace initiative of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Jammu and Kashmir.
This came came after seven people, including two terrorists, were killed in an attack on a political rally on Sunday.
"It was a huge security lapse. We suspect it could be an inside job (ahead of the Prime Minister's visit)," Home Ministry sources in New Delhi said of the attack on a Congress rally to commemorate the 15th death anniversary of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that also left 22 people injured.
Five civilians and two terrorists were among those killed.
The sources drew a parallel between Sunday's attack and that in Srinagar April 6, 2005, a day ahead of the launch of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service.
"The whole attempt is to derail the (ongoing India-Pakistan) peace process," the sources said.
Manmohan Singh will be visiting Srinagar on May 24-25 for a second roundtable conference with Kashmiri leaders.
Jammu and Kashmir Inspector General of Police K Rajendra and Deputy Superintendent of Police Shiekh Faisal Quyoom were among those injured in the attack at the Sher-e-Kashmir Park in the heart of the city when two terrorists lobbed hand grenades and fired indiscriminately from automatic weapons.
May 21, 2006

FBI says it recorded lawmaker taking cash

2006-05-22T17:30:00.001+05:30

Seattle Times
_________
Alexandria, Virginia (US):
A congressman under investigation for bribery was caught on videotape accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded, according to a court document released Sunday. Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer.
At one audiotaped meeting, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa.
As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might receive, the congressman "began laughing and said, 'All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking, as if the FBI is watching,' " according to the affidavit.
Jefferson, who represents New Orleans and is also the subject of a House ethics-committee probe, has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.
As for the $100,000, the government says Jefferson got the money in a leather briefcase July 30 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Va. The plan was for the lawmaker to use the cash to bribe a high-ranking Nigerian official — the name is blacked out in the court document — to ensure the success of a business deal in that country, the affidavit said.
All but $10,000 was recovered on Aug. 3 when the FBI searched Jefferson's home in Washington. The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil.
May 22, 2006

Louisiana Man Accused of Killing Wife, 4 In-Laws

2006-05-22T17:29:00.000+05:30

Doug Simpson
ABC News
_______
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (US):
A man gunned down four of his in-laws during a morning church service Sunday, abducted his wife and then shot her death before he was captured nearby, authorities said.
Church members wept as they watched investigators examine evidence and search for clues. Anthony Bell, 25, of Baton Rouge, was arrested at an apartment complex, where his wife was found dead, police said.
It was unclear whether Erica Bell, 24, was killed at the complex, police said. Her three children, including an infant, also taken from The Ministry of Jesus Christ church were found safe, officials said.
Erica Bell's mother, church pastor Claudia Brown, was wounded and was in serious condition at a hospital, police said, but would not provide further details.
Jeffrey Howard said his mother had been shot in the back of the head.
Anthony Bell faces charges of murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.
Police and relatives said those killed were Erica Bell's grandparents, Leonard Howard, 78, and Gloria Howard, 72; her great aunt, Deloris McGrew, 68; and a cousin Darlene Mills, 47.
May 22, 2006

Milat 'not only serial killer'

2006-05-22T17:24:00.000+05:30

Tara Ravens
AAP
NEWS.com.au
__________
Backpacker murderer Ivan Milat might not have been the only serial killer preying on young people in NSW in the 1980s, an inquest into the disappearance of two nurses heard today.
NSW Deputy Coroner Carl Milovanovich found that nurses Gillian Jamieson and Deborah Balken died a few days after they were last seen at Parramatta's Tollgate Hotel in 1980.
The two 19-year-old women, who shared a flat in the Sydney suburb of Dundas, left the bar with a man in dirty work clothes after telling friends they were going to a party in Wollongong.
At the time, Milat was working less than 2km away at the then Department of Main Roads.
The 60-year-old is serving a life sentence for the murder of seven backpackers between 1989 and 1992.
Detective Sergeant Ian McNab today named Milat as one of four men considered key persons of interest in the disappearance of the two nurses.
During a police interview at Goulburn Prison in 2004, Milat denied having met the women.
"He said he did not know them or about their disappearance," Insp McNab said, adding that Milat also told him he did not visit hotels and rarely drank.
After hearing a police brief of evidence compiled over 26 years, Mr Milovanovich told Westmead Coroner's Court "it is a reasonable finding" the women died soon after their disappearance.
But there was not enough evidence to satisfy a jury that Milat was involved in their disappearance, he said.
"Unfortunately, his name comes up in every missing person's case I deal with," Mr Milovanovich said.
22/05/06

Monkeys Found Using Primitive Linguistic Grammar

2006-05-20T17:46:00.000+05:30

Bjorn Carey
FOX News
_______
If you're a putty-nosed monkey and you hear a friend whoop out a loud "pyow" call, you know there's a leopard sneaking around and it's time to boogie.
Similarly, if you hear a "hack," it means you should watch out for a hungry eagle.
A new study reveals that these monkeys can mix the two calls into a "pyow-hack" sequence to broadcast other types of information.
The findings, reported in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, indicate that non-human primates can combine calls into higher-order sequences that have a particular meaning.
Putty-nosed monkeys, Cercopithecus nictitans, are about the size of a cat. They live among the trees in African rainforests.
If the male lets out a "pyow," the monkeys scramble away from the lower levels of the trees.
If they hear a "hack," they climb away from the canopy to avoid getting picked off by an eagle.
Researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland followed a group of putty-nosed monkeys for two months and recorded the lead male's calls.
They observed that the males sometimes let out a combination of "pyow-hacks," which on average gets the pack moving a little quicker and further — up to 100 yards in half an hour — than either call on its own.

Colorado researchers seek answers to 1870s murder mystery

2006-05-20T17:44:00.000+05:30

Kansas.com
________
Lawrence, Kansas (US):
It's one of the coldest of the cold case files.
Researchers from the University of Colorado were working against the clock Friday to gather clues that might solve an 1879 murder mystery.
Dennis Van Gerven was examining bone and teeth fragments exhumed from an unmarked grave in the Oak Hill Cemetery to determine whether they belong to John Hillmon or Frederick A. Walters.
That could solve the mystery of whether Hillmon faked his own death and murdered Walters for a $25,000 life insurance policy, or whether Sallie Hillmon was right in her claim that it was her husband all along.
Van Gerven reviewed the remains at a lab inside Fraser Hall at the University of Kansas. The bones must be returned to the cemetery on Sunday.
City spokeswoman Lisa Patterson said researchers removed teeth, pieces of skull, a bone from the left shoulder and a button. The items were removed after crews used a back hoe and hand tools to unearth the remains. The grave was unmarked, but cemetery records showed in which plot the burial took place.
"Their goal was to retrieve material to do a useful DNA sample. They were confident with the teeth that they could do a sample," Patterson said.
The sleuthing is the latest chapter in a mystery surrounding Hillmon's death. When he died, life insurance companies suspected Hillmon of fraud, alleging he and a companion killed Walters to collect on Hillmon's life insurance. Hillmon was 31 and Walters was 24 when the body was buried.
May 19, 2006

Edmund Fitzgerald mystery partly unraveled

2006-05-20T17:43:00.000+05:30

John Bumgardner
WZZM
_____
Meteorologists say they've unraveled part of the mystery behind the legendary sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
They say the ore carrier was in the worst place at the worst time when it sank during a storm off Whitefish Point in Lake Superior in 1975.
Experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the freighter faced 69 mile-per-hour winds and hurricane-force gusts.
They also say waves topping 25 feet high also hammered the side of the ship as it made a run to safe waters, helping to force it under.
May 19, 2006

After 64 years, a mystery is laid to rest

2006-05-20T17:42:00.000+05:30

Mike Barber
Seattle Post Intelligencer
_________________
Sixty-four years after he disappeared near Mount Baker while flying home on leave from battling Japanese warplanes in the Aleutian Islands, Lt. Kenneth Ambrose was laid to rest Friday morning.
The 8-week-old daughter the 24-year-old Army aviator was flying home to see, now Kathleen Edwards of Blue Bell, Pa., attended his memorial service, with full military honors, at Philadelphia National Cemetery on Friday.
His widow, Marguerite Ambrose Crowe, remarried and went on with her life. She died Easter afternoon in a nursing home near Norristown, Pa., at 86. Her daughter had been planning to tell her that remains found with Ambrose's shattered P-38 fighter plane in the Pasayten Wilderness east of Mount Baker in 2003 were identified as his.
Lt. Kenneth Ambrose disappeared in his P-38 on Nov. 28, 1942, near Mount Baker. Ambrose was missing for more than six decades.
Her mother, who suffered from Parkinson's disease, long ago made peace with Ambrose's disappearance and moved on, Edwards said.
May 20, 2006

No Sign Yet of Hoffa's Body, but F.B.I. Cites 'Credible' Tip

2006-05-19T18:07:00.000+05:30

Micheline Maynard and Nick Bunkley
New York Times
The Ledger
________
Detroit, Michigan (US)::
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, plenty experienced in searching for James R. Hoffa, said a "fairly credible lead" is what led investigators this week to still another potential burial spot: a horse farm aptly named Hidden Dreams.
Using cadaver dogs borrowed from the Detroit police, and aided by students and professors from Michigan State University, F.B.I. agents began a search on Wednesday of the 80-acre farm in Milford Township, Mich., northwest of Detroit, for signs of a crime involving Mr. Hoffa, the former Teamsters president. Daniel D. Roberts, the special agent in charge of the Detroit F.B.I. office, said the search could take weeks.
In fact, the search has taken more than 30 years, and has led investigators to trash dumps, construction sites and homes throughout the region. One theory even held that he was entombed under Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
At a news conference on Thursday afternoon on a dirt road at the farm entrance, Mr. Roberts said no trace of Mr. Hoffa had yet been discovered.
Nor would he give details of the search warrant, which was sealed by a federal judge in Detroit.
But, Mr. Roberts said, "This is probably a fairly credible lead" in Mr. Hoffa's disappearance. Mr. Roberts, who has been in his position for the past two years, added that it was "the best lead I've seen come across in the Hoffa investigation."
Numerous such leads in the past have failed to turn up the body of Mr. Hoffa, who disappeared on July 30, 1975, after failing to return for dinner.
The police, who had been contacted by his family, found his 1974 Pontiac the next day in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Mich., where he was supposed to meet two organized crime figures for lunch. Neither of those men showed up.
The restaurant is 17 miles east of the Hidden Dreams farm, whose entrance was swarmed Thursday by television crews, reporters and a few onlookers.
May 19, 2006

Mysterious mummy unearthed in Peru

2006-05-19T18:05:00.000+05:30

New York Times
AZ Central.com
___________
A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru.
She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.
But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said Tuesday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles but the other grave goods.
She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and two ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers, or sticks that propel spears. Those items have never been found before in the burial of a Moche woman.
Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler? Possibly.
"She is elite but somewhat of an enigma," said Dr. John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year.
May 18, 2006

Khalid linked to mystery flight

2006-05-19T18:03:00.000+05:30

Graeme Hosken
Independent Online, South Africa
_______________________
An aircraft, chartered by the South African Police Service to fly Pakistani national Rashid Khalid out of South Africa, took off secretly from the Waterkloof Air Force Base in Pretoria in the dead of night last November for an unknown destination.
The South African Air Force on Thursday confirmed that a plane chartered by the SAPS to fly Khalid out of South Africa had landed and taken off from Air Force Base Waterkloof in Pretoria during the early hours of November 6, 2005.
No flight plan was filed with the base and the aircraft's registration was not provided, said SAAF spokesperson Captain Ronald Maseko.
Khalid was arrested in November in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, for being an illegal immigrant. The department of home affairs says he was flown out of the country on November 6 to Pakistan. But none of his relatives in Pakistan has apparently seen him and his family say they fear he is in some kind of detention centre.
His lawyer Zehir Omar has claimed Khalid was handed over by the South African government to the British secret service following suggestions that he was a member of al-Qaeda.
Maseko said the Air Force had been requested by the SAPS, Home Affairs, Department of Justice and the Safety and Security Department to make the Waterkloof base available for a landing and take off early in the morning of November 6.
May 19 2006

Scientists Debate the Normalcy of Ancient 'Hobbits'

2006-05-19T18:01:00.000+05:30

Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post
____________
More than 1 1/2 years after discovering a race of ancient, "Hobbit"-like little people on a remote tropical island, scientists still do not know what to make of them. Are they a new species of human ancestor? Or were they modern humans suffering from a debilitating genetic deformity?
In dueling papers being published today by the journal Science, researchers offer fresh insights on both sides, seeking to explain how a 30-year-old female with a grapefruit-sized brain could have appeared 18,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.
A research team led by primatologist Robert D. Martin, provost of Chicago's Field Museum, argues that no human ancestor could reach a weight of 64 pounds with a brain size of only 23.2 cubic inches and be able to make sophisticated tools such as those found with the Hobbit remains.
The Martin team said the Hobbit must have been a modern human with microcephaly -- a condition, usually genetic, in which the brain fails to grow to normal size. "This brain is too small for any explanation besides pathology," Martin said in a telephone interview.
In a rebuttal to the Martin group, a second team led by Florida State University paleoanthropologist Dean Falk defended its earlier research, contending that the Flores skull was nothing like that of a microcephalic and that the remains most likely represent a previously unknown species.
May 19, 2006

Planet in Newly Found System May Have Water, Astronomers Say

2006-05-19T17:58:00.000+05:30

Bloomberg
_______
A solar system astronomers recently discovered near ours has at least one planet that may contain water, a requirement for supporting life, according to a report to appear in the journal Nature.
The three planets orbiting the star HD 69830, which is about 41 light-years away and visible with the naked eye, have masses 5 to 20 times larger than Earth and are about the size of Neptune, according to the report in tomorrow's edition of the journal.
The two planets closest to the star probably are rocky, while the outer planet is likely to have a gaseous atmosphere around a rocky core. The outer planet is the right distance from the star to have liquid water, the astronomers said.
``The architecture of this particular planetary system bears some intriguing similarities to that of our own solar system,'' including multiple planets in nearly circular orbits, Harvard University astronomer David Charbonneau wrote in an accompanying editorial.
May 17, 2006

Hamas official caught at border with more than $1 million

2006-05-19T17:57:00.000+05:30

CNN
___
Gaza City (Palestine) :
European monitors at a crossing between Gaza and Egypt caught a Hamas official Friday carrying about 900,000 euros, Palestinian officials said.
That amount is worth more than a million dollars.
The Associated Press identified the official as Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
International monitors have operated at the crossing in the wake of Israel's historic pullout from Gaza last year. The monitors are charged with checking for contraband, which sometimes includes weapons.
There was fresh violence Friday in Gaza as members of Hamas and Fatah clashed in the region. The two factions have battled frequently since Hamas won control of the Palestinian government earlier this year, ending decades of Fatah rule.
May 19, 2006

Mystery of Ben Nevis piano solved

2006-05-19T17:54:00.000+05:30

Martin Wainwright
The Guardian
__________
The mystery surrounding a piano unearthed by litter pickers on Ben Nevis was solved yesterday when a Scots woodcutter revealed he had carried it up the mountain 35 years ago in aid of charity.
Kenny Campbell, from Bonar Bridge, spent four days carting what was in fact a church organ to the 1,344-metre (4,408ft) summit near Fort William, mostly on his back.
"When I got there, I played Scotland the Brave," said Mr Campbell, who has also carried a beer barrel and a plough up the mountain. He plans another, so far unspecified, spectacular to mark his 65th birthday this year.
May 19, 2006

Indian panel says freedom hero dead, mystery alive

2006-05-18T04:20:00.000+05:30

Reuters
______
New Delhi (India):
It is one of the enduring mysteries of India's freedom struggle, but a long awaited report on the fate of charismatic leader Subhas Chandra Bose has failed to solve the riddle of his disappearance more than 60 years ago.
After a six-year investigation, the report published on Wednesday said Bose was dead but was not killed in a plane crash as widely believed.
But the report said it could not say how he died, and its conclusions were contradicted by the government, which backed the plane crash theory.
The investigation also said that the ashes in a temple in Japan were not that of Bose -- again rejected by the government.
"The government has examined the report ... and has not agreed with the findings that Netaji did not die in the plane crash and the ashes in the Renkoji Temple were not of Netaji," a government statement said without elaborating.
Bose, popularly known as "Netaji" or leader, led the rebel Indian National Army that fought British colonial rule in India in an alliance with the Japanese during World War Two.
Earlier, official reports said Bose died in a Japanese air crash in Taiwan in August, 1945 at the age of 48 and his cremated remains were sent to Japan.
But Taiwanese authorities denied this, saying there was no record of an air crash at the time, boosting the claim of those who believe Bose faked the crash to escape secretly to the former Soviet Union.
The debate raged for decades until New Delhi set up a panel headed by former Supreme Court judge M.K. Mukherjee in 1999 to investigate his mysterious disappearance and report his whereabouts if he was still alive.
May 17, 2006

Grand mystery surrounds piano on top of mountain

2006-05-18T04:18:00.000+05:30

Ireland Online
__________
A musical mystery today surrounded Scotland's highest mountain after a piano was discovered near its summit.
Volunteers clearing stones from the 4,418ft peak were astonished when they discovered the musical instrument on Ben Nevis.
An appeal has now been launched to find out how and why the piano came to be within 200 metres of the top of the mountain.
The piano was recovered at the weekend by 15 volunteers from the John Muir Trust, the conservation charity which owns part of Ben Nevis.
The squad was removing litter and stones called cairns from the summit plateau when they spotted the top of the piano.
“Our guys couldn’t believe their eyes,” said trust director Nigel Hawkins.
“At first they thought it was just the wooden casing but then they saw the whole cast iron frame complete with strings.
“The only thing that that was missing was the keyboard – and that’s another mystery.
He added that a biscuit wrapper with a best before date of December 1986 was found under the piano, giving a clue as to when it was taken there, but not why.
Volunteer group organiser Sandy Maxwell, of Glasgow, said this was the largest, heaviest and most unusual object they had found on the mountain.
May 18, 2006

Four dead in mine horror

2006-05-18T04:17:00.000+05:30

Michael Platt
Calgary Sun
_________
Kimberley (British Columbia):
Four people are dead today after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest at the decommissioned Sullivan mine in Kimberley.
A government official who didn’t want to be identified said it appeared someone working in the mine called 911 with a report of a person hurt in the shaft.
When paramedics arrived, they too were overcome and suffered suspected cardiac arrest, the official said.
A spokesman for Bill Bennett, minister of state for mines, said Bennett and Health Minister George Abbott would fly to the small mountain community.
“They’re flying in to oversee, just to find out what happened,” Jake Jacobs said from Victoria.
A spokeswoman for the B.C. Ambulance Service, Susan Dolinski, said she had no details except that an ambulance paramedic team had responded to a call from the mine.
Mayor Jim Ogilvie of Kimberley told CTV Newsnet “… there’s a very serious situation occurred at that particular point and several people have been transferred to hospital.”
He said he understood something happened with a pumping station that transfers acid water either into or out of the mine.
”I understand that there is someone who was in a very serious situation and three other people went to help him and they as a result of doing so are in serious difficulty,” Ogilvie said.
No one from Teck Cominco which owns the decommissioned mine, was immediately available for comment.
May 17, 2006

Gunman Opens Fire in Court, Kills Judge

2006-05-18T04:15:00.000+05:30

Selcan Hacaoglu
Associated Press
Guardian Unlimited, UK
_________________
Anakra (Turkey):
A gunman opened fire Wednesday in Turkey's highest administrative court, killing a prominent judge and wounding four others in an attack the suspect called retaliation for a ruling against a teacher who wore an Islamic head scarf.
Four of the justices, including Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, had voted in February against the promotion of an elementary school teacher who wore an Islamic-style head scarf outside of work.
The judges' photos were published by the pro-Islamic Vakit newspaper.
The attacker, who was detained and was being interrogated by anti-terrorism police, shouted ``I am the soldier of God!'' before opening fire. He said the attack was to punish the judges for their decision, said Tansel Colasan, deputy head of the administrative court, the Council of State.
The head of the court chamber, Mustafa Birden, was wounded in the liver and spleen and underwent surgery, said Dr. Ugur Erdener, of Hacettepe University Hospital. A sixth judge escaped harm by throwing himself onto the floor, reports said.
Birden reportedly had received death threats and the administrative court complained recently that its members could become targets, private CNN-Turk TV said. The TV station reported that the attacker, a lawyer, was being monitored by police for alleged ties to the radical Turkish Islamic group Hezbollah. The group bears the same name as the better known Lebanese group, but is unrelated.
Government-owned Anatolia news agency said the attacker told police during questioning that he was not linked to any terror organization.
May 17, 2006

Kovco details lost

2006-05-18T04:10:00.000+05:30

Shannon McRae and Gerard McManus
Melbourne Herald Sun
________________
The family of Private Jake Kovco has been devastated by yet another Defence bungle, in which a computer disk containing sensitive details about his death was left at Melbourne airport.
Defence Force chief Angus Houston was yesterday forced into an embarrassing apology to the family after an investigating officer lost the disc in the Qantas Club lounge.
The disk contained the draft findings of a probe into the botched repatriation of Pte Kovco's body.
A passenger retrieved it and passed it to radio host Derryn Hinch. Some of the report's details were aired on radio last night.
A livid Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has ordered a further inquiry into how the investigation of the body bungle was itself bungled.
Dr Nelson said it was inexcusable that the draft report, which he had not yet seen, had been leaked, and he was "angry and disappointed".
Speculation mounted last night that senior heads would roll.
Dr Nelson has ordered a crisis meeting next week of Defence chiefs.
"I will be seeking the outcome of the inquiry and what the Department of Defence, including the service chiefs, intend to do to see that this does not occur again," he said.
Shelley's mother, Lorraine Small, said the family was too upset to speak.
Mrs Kovco was yesterday being comforted by family and friends.
The disk was left in a computer terminal at the Qantas Club lounge by Brig. Elizabeth Cosson, who is heading the inquiry into the body bungle.
May 18, 2006

Fatal alligator attacks called 'unfortunate coincidence'

2006-05-16T18:28:00.000+05:30

Jamie Malernee
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Newsday, NY
_________
Dry weather has pushed them out of the Everglades and into backyard canals, where they concentrate in greater, hungry numbers.Mating season has made the males more territorial.
And then there are the people -- hundreds moving into Florida each day -- who have taken over what was once wildlife territory and, in some cases, are feeding the dangerous reptiles like pets.
All these factors, plus a heavy dose of coincidence, are likely to blame in the recent string of deadly alligator attacks across the state, wildlife biologists said Monday. There have been three alligator-related fatalities in the past week; before that, there had been only 17since 1948.
Allan Woodward with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called the string "an unfortunate coincidence" and a statistical fluke. He said most alligators are not aggressive. Between 1 million and 2 million of them live in Florida, but the state usually has only about six or seven nonfatal attacks a year.
"It just happens these all happened at once," he said.
"You have a perfect combination of events that make them act in this unusual way," said Frank Mazzotti, a Fort Lauderdale wildlife scientist with the University of Florida. "I don't ever remember a time when we've had this many fatal attacks."
Officials are advising people to stop feeding alligators and to stay away from the edge of canals, especially with children or dogs.
There are no witnesses to the gator attacks, which authorities note happened in different parts of the state in apparently different situations: to a 28-year-old woman jogging near Markham Park in Sunrise May 9 when, officials say, she was attacked and pulled into the water; to a Tennessee woman attacked on Sunday while snorkeling in Juniper Run in the Ocala National Forest; and to a 43-year-old woman found dismembered Sunday in a canal in East Lake Woodlands, just north of Tampa Bay.
may 16, 2006

Duke captain calls charges fantastic lies

2006-05-16T18:27:00.000+05:30

Associated Press
Toronto Star, Canada
_______________
Durham, North Carolina (US):
A Duke University lacrosse team captain became the third player indicted in the rape scandal yesterday and the first to speak out, blasting the charges against him as "fantastic lies."
"I look forward to watching them unravel in the weeks to come," said David Evans, a just-graduated 23-year-old from Bethesda, Md., who was one of four team captains.
At a news conference, Evans was backed by other players and his mother, Rae Evans, who is the chairwoman of the Ladies Professional Golf Association of Directors and founder and president of Evans Capitol Group, a Washington lobbying firm.
The charges followed a March 13 party at an off-campus house, where a 27-year-old black student at nearby North Carolina Central University told police she was raped and beaten by three white men after she and another woman were hired as strippers.
Evans also proclaimed the innocence of sophomores Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J., and Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y., who were indicted last month on the same charges.
Mar 16, 2006

Mystery Americans on the trail of bin Laden?

2006-05-16T18:26:00.000+05:30

Carlotta Gall
The New York Times
International Herald Tribune, France
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Chitral (Pakistan):
This quiet mountain resort, better known for its polo games and mountain treks, has become the latest site of interest in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, much to the outrage and bemusement of its inhabitants.
Chitral is the remotest northwestern territory in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, stretching along the Afghan border to the high mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs, following the Wakhan Corridor, the long finger of Afghanistan that reaches to the Chinese border.
It is here, in the largest town, also called Chitral, that four Americans from the U.S. Embassy rented a house last autumn, apparently preparing for a long stay, according to Siraj ul-Mulk, a member of the traditional ruling family here and the owner of the Hindu Kush Heights Hotel overlooking the valley where the four stayed.
But the house remained unoccupied until two weeks ago, when an American arrived with two carloads of furniture and equipment, provoking a local politician to object in Parliament and lead a street protest against the presence of what he termed an American "secret agency."
The American left three days before the demonstration took place, police officials said.
While there is no indication that more than one American came to the house this spring, the member of Parliament, Abdul Akbar Chitrali, insists that there were four and that they were up to no good.
"They were from an American secret agency - the FBI or CIA," he said. They were seen driving toward Chitral in an official consulate vehicle, he said, but switched to unmarked sport utility vehicles in a town called Dir, about 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, south of Chitral.
Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar declined to comment on the matter.
The registry of the Pamir Riverside Hotel shows that one American, Paul Aurdic, from the consulate in Peshawar, stayed for three nights starting on April 27, along with a Pakistani colleague, Muhammad Iqbal.
Caretakers at the house the Americans rented said the Americans had never stayed there but seemed to be preparing it for occupation. On Saturday, their belongings - fitness machines, furniture and a television satellite dish - could be seen stacked on the terrace, and a pickup truck was parked in the yard.
Maulana Chitrali, a member of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat i Islami, said the Americans were looking for bin Laden.
"They came on the basis of a very fabricated report that some Arabs came down from the mountains in a Jeep and visited the bazaar," he said, "and on that basis they established an office of the FBI because bin Laden might be hiding in that area."
May 15, 2006

NZ legs amputee conquers Everest

2006-05-16T18:25:00.000+05:30

CNN International
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Wellington (New Zealand):
New Zealand climber Mark Inglis, the first double amputee to reach the summit of Mount Everest, was congratulated Tuesday by Prime Minister Helen Clark, herself a keen climber.
Inglis, 47, reached the peak of the world's tallest mountain late Monday, phoning his wife Anne on New Zealand's South Island to say he'd made it and had returned to his party's base camp.
"As a very amateur climber myself with two sound legs and having got to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), I can appreciate what an amazing achievement this is and I offer him my full congratulations," Clark said.
She hopes to congratulate Inglis personally for his "absolutely incredible feat."
Mount Everest is 8,850 meters (29,035 feet) high and Inglis has spent a grueling 40 days on the mountain.
Anne Inglis said her husband had set out in his bid to reach the world's tallest peak on his prosthetic legs with an early morning start in perfect weather from Camp 4 -- less than 450 meters (1,500 feet) below the summit.
The original expedition party split into two groups with four members of the first group reaching the top earlier in the day, she said.
Inglis and his group of 20, including Sherpa guides, were in the second party.
The climber had both legs severed just below the knees after suffering frostbite when he was trapped by storms while climbing New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook, in 1982.
May 16, 2006

Police believe Vancouver fire was deliberately set

2006-05-16T18:23:00.000+05:30

Petti Fong
Globe and Mail
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Vancouver (Canada):
It had been a perfect Mother's Day, Adela Etibako told her friend by phone on Sunday night.
Ms. Etibako, a Congolese-born mother of five, had gone with her family to church, the Calvary Worship Centre, and heard a sermon about motherhood.
The younger children finished off the day visiting and playing with their friends outside in the family's east Vancouver neighbourhood.
But when a fire roared through their three-bedroom townhouse as they slept, leaving one adult and four children dead, there was no stopping the flames.
Police yesterday began a homicide investigation after determining that the fire that started in the Etibakos' unit just before 4 a.m. was deliberately set.
A young man, whom friends identified as one of Ms. Etibako's sons, is in hospital with serious burns after making it out of the apartment and running to a nearby restaurant for help.
"The person is suffering from fairly extensive burns," Vancouver Police Constable Tim Fanning said. "We have our major crime section investigating this."
Autopsies on the five bodies will be completed this week. It's unclear how many of the children inside the house were Ms. Etibako's. The police say they will not know until later who the victims were in the townhouse.
Friends of the family said two of the sons survived, but the youngest son died, along with two daughters and the mother.
Family friends identified the children in the family as Ornella, 18, his two younger brothers Bolingo, 16, and Stephane, 8, and two girls, Edita, who was to turn 15 this week, and Benedicta, 10.
Captain Rob Jones-Cook of the Vancouver fire department said a flammable liquid was used to start the fire, which began on the ground level and raced upward, scorching the rooftop and charring the side of the three-level building.
Because the fire was contained to just one unit, investigators believe it was deliberately set.
The townhouse unit is part of a three-block stretch of social housing. Nearly 700 seniors and low-income families live in the 230 housing units in the neighbourhood. Thunderbird Elementary, a school around the corner from the fire scene, was closed for the day.
Ms. Etibako, a single mother who moved from Congo to Canada about eight years ago, worked part-time as a cleaner.
Her friend, Ermany Lokombo, said she talked to Ms. Etibako on Sunday night and there was no indication that the family had any fears or had been threatened.
May 16, 2006

Keeper of the mysterious Merapi defies Indonesian warning

2006-05-15T15:29:00.000+05:30

Tomi Soetjipto
Reuters AlertNet
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Mount Merapi (Indonesia):
A pink bandana tied around his head and wearing a football T-shirt, 80-year-old Maridjan may cut an eccentric figure, but his views are key to whether people leave the slopes of Indonesia's most dangerous volcano.
Scientists say Mount Merapi could erupt massively at anytime and government officials have told residents in its vicinity to evacuate. But Maridjan is the spiritual keeper of the mountain and the cheery old man doesn't think the worst will happen soon.
Chain-smoking a Western brand of cigarette, Maridjan, often referred to as "Mbah" (leader), dismissed any suggestions the volcano -- already on the highest level of alert -- will erupt soon, despite huge clouds of hot gas billowing from the 3,000-metre (9,800 feet) volcano and the lava domes forming on its crater.
Maridjan is a symbol to villagers around Merapi, where Javanese mysticism and age-old traditions are defying logic and science.
He was assigned by the previous ruler of Yogyakarta, the late Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, as keeper of the mountain to look after the safety of villagers and Merapi's surroundings.
"Journalists have asked me 'When do you think Merapi will erupt' and I said why do you always expect the worst from Merapi. Why can't you hope for the best? Merapi is giving so much blessing to the residents," Maridjan told Reuters in Javanese, his mother tongue.
His village in Kinahrejo lies just about six km (four miles) from Merapi's peak, well within the mandatory evacuation area. But his refusal to leave has prompted other residents to stay in the village, where natural omens and spiritual insight from Maridjan are valued more highly than vulcanologists' findings.
May 15, 2006

Cry from the woods saves cyclist after black bear mauling

2006-05-15T15:28:00.000+05:30

Dave Ebner
Globe and Mail
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Calgary, Alberta(Canada):
At dusk Friday, on a wooded single-track mountain-bike trail just outside of Banff, a 41-year-old man riding alone encountered an underweight, young male black bear.
The attack was swift and ferocious, with the bear dragging his victim 20 metres off the trail, mauling his chest and arm.
But the man's cries for help were quickly heard by two other riders who, by good fortune, were on the same rugged trail and had found the victim's bike and broken blue helmet.
"I don't think there's any question if we didn't show up, it would have been a different story," Robin Borstmayer, one of riders, told reporters on the weekend.
"It was a cry for help from the woods," said Robert Earl, the other rescuer.
Concluding that the bear was between the victim and themselves, they scrambled for help and an RCMP officer and a park warden were soon on the scene, finding the victim in the woods conscious and bleeding, with the bear circling nearby.
The bear was shot and killed.
"The bear didn't move off when they approached," Ian Syme, chief park warden for Banff National Park, said yesterday in an interview. Such behaviour, he said, is unusual -- but does not indicate a trend, despite the incident and the fact a woman was killed by a grizzly bear last June outside Canmore.
May 15, 2006

'Earth is under attack - wet gel has landed'

2006-05-15T15:26:00.000+05:30

Nation Multimedia, Thailand
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Villagers believed the mysterious objects were aliens from outer space. Newspapers fanned the speculation. The result? Plenty of red faces.
Before the incident could become more embarrassing for the whole nation, experts yesterday pointed out that the unusually clear jelly-like rolls were not extraterrestrial beings but wet fever-cooling gel sheets.
"Definitely alike. For sure they are not a living thing and most likely they are fever-cooling gel sheets," Namchai Shevavivat, a scientist at the National Metal and Materials Technology Centre, said yesterday.
A team of scientists was testing samples of the rolls to find the chemical structure of them, he said.
After a Thai-language tabloid last week published a report of a mysterious object found in Uthai Thani, similar reports began popping up around the country, including Bangkok.
On Saturday, a resident in Bang Kapi found a similar object in a tub she had used to soak clothes before washing. Duangruedee Adam told a newspaper she had the impression that the object fell from above her house into the basin.
The object sparked excitement amongst neighbours as it gradually shrank when placed on the floor but expanded when soaked. As news of it spread, a massive number of people arrived to see for themselves.
May 15, 2006

Cheney's scribbled note adds twist to Plame probe

2006-05-15T15:25:00.000+05:30

Associated Press
The Herald, WA
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Washington (US):
The prosecutor in the CIA leak case said more than six months ago that he was not alleging any criminal acts by Vice President Dick Cheney regarding the leak of agency operative Valerie Plame's identity.
But now the prosecutor is leaving the door open to the possibility that the vice president's now-indicted former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was acting at his boss' behest when Libby allegedly leaked information about Plame to reporters.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is using handwritten notes by Cheney to assert in a new court filing that the vice president and Libby, working together, were focusing much attention on Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush administration critic.
Cheney's notes on the margins of Wilson's opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, reflect "the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president," Fitzgerald said in the court filing late Friday.
May 15, 2006

Formerly Conjoined Babies Begin Recovery

2006-05-15T15:23:00.000+05:30

Amy Forliti
ABC News
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Rochester, Minnesota(US)
For the parents of conjoined twins Abbigail and Isabelle Carlsen, placing their baby daughters on an operating table was one of the hardest moments.
But the daylong surgery worked. Doctors untangled their livers, repositioned their hearts and divided a shared intestine. The girls, who spent their first five months with their noses just inches apart, finally slept in separate beds Friday.
"We've had our prayers answered up to now," the girls' parents, Amy and Jesse Carlsen, wrote in a message posted Saturday on the family's Web journal. "And we will continue to pray for a perfect recovery."
The girls, separated by a team of Mayo Clinic surgeons, have a tough recovery ahead. On Saturday, they remained in intensive care under sedation, breathing with the assistance of ventilators, the Mayo Clinic said in a statement.
When the girls were born Nov. 29 to the Fargo, N.D., couple, they were joined at the diaphragm, pancreas and liver, and shared a common bile duct and part of an intestine.
May 13, 2006

Priest convicted of murdering nun

2006-05-12T17:21:00.000+05:30

Houston Chronicle
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Cleveland, Ohio (US):
A priest was found guilty on Thursday of murdering a nun 26 years ago in what another priest testified was a ritual intended to defile the nun.
The defendant, the Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, showed no emotion as the jury verdict was read in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in Toledo, Ohio. Judge Thomas J. Osowik sentenced him to 15 years to life in prison.
Robinson's lawyer said he would appeal the verdict, which the jury handed up after seven hours of deliberations.
The body of the nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, was found on April 5, 1980, in the chapel at Mercy Hospital in Toledo. She had been preparing the Eucharist for Easter services. Her killer laid an altar cloth across her body before stabbing her 31 times, including nine stab wounds to the chest in the shape of an upside-down cross.
The killing was committed by someone with deep understanding of church symbols and rituals, the Rev. Jeffrey Grob of Chicago, an expert on the occult, testified.
"All these things were done to have her die in the most humiliating, degrading way possible for a nun," said Dean Mandros, chief of the criminal division in the Lucas County prosecutor's office.
Prosecutors said Robinson was angry about Pahl's domineering personality and her complaints about how he had conducted a Good Friday service the night before the killing.
As the priest was being questioned by detectives two weeks after the killing, Mandros said, Deputy Police Chief Ray Vetter interrupted the interview and allowed a monsignor to escort Robinson out of police headquarters.
Vetter also requested that detectives give him their reports on the case, Mandros said. Some of those reports were never seen again. Within a month, the case was dropped for lack of evidence.
The investigation was reopened in 2003 after a woman from Toledo approached the Toledo Diocese with accusations that a number of priests, including Robinson, had molested her as a child in a series of rituals, Mandros said.

Bombers slipped through net of watching MI5

2006-05-12T17:20:00.000+05:30

Ian Cobain, Richard Norton-Taylor and Rosie Cowan
The Guardian
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A lack of resources allowed the July 7 bombers to slip through the security net, according to two reports published yesterday, and police and the intelligence services are highly unlikely to be able to prevent all similar attacks in the future.
Two of the four suicide bombers had come to the attention of the security service, MI5, time and again, yet the reports' authors concluded that there was no reason for the authorities to have known that they posed a threat.
While one report urged greater cooperation with intelligence agencies overseas, it also concluded that it "seems highly unlikely that it will be possible to stop all attacks", even if the UK authorities were to become more "intrusive" in the way they carried out their responsibilities.
Despite media reports based on leaks prior to publication, which suggested that the group had no links to al-Qaida, the reports from the Home Office and the cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) make clear that the four men were unlikely to have been acting unassisted.
The ISC report said the security service had come across two of the bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, a classroom assistant from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and Shezhad Tanweer, 22, from Leeds, while investigating other terrorism cases. They had also been observed in Pakistan, where it was "likely that they had some contact with al-Qaida figures", according to the committee.
They probably received expert bombmaking assistance from an unknown individual, and they also had a series of highly suspicious contacts with an unknown individual or individuals in Pakistan for several months before the bombings. However, 10 months after the attacks that killed 52 and injured more than 700, it is clear from the two reports that many questions remain unanswered.
Police and the security service still cannot be sure whether anyone else was involved, who they may have been, or the role that they may have played. In addition, the bombers probably carried out a test explosion but no one knows where or when.
May 12, 2006

They know who we're calling

2006-05-12T17:19:00.000+05:30

Richard Sisk
New York Daily News
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Washington (US):
A new furor over Big Brother tactics erupted yesterday when it was revealed that the Bush administration has been tracking nearly every phone call in the country over the past five years. The colossal secret database of phone calls, first reported by USA Today, prompted Democratic and Republican members of Congress to demand answers from the White House, and at least one Senate committee chairman promptly called for public hearings.
President Bush did not confirm the massive tracking program, but in a hastily arranged White House announcement tried to assure Americans he was protecting their privacy.
"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said.
"The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. ... The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," the President said. He did not take any questions.
Bush defenders on Capitol Hill confirmed that the National Security Agency began collecting records of landline and cell phone calls shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and condemned leaks on the project.
But Democrats and several Republicans questioned the program's legality.
After 9/11, the NSA secretly contracted with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth for the records on all calls made over the more than 200 million phones serviced by the firms. The Denver-based Qwest firm refused to turn over data on its 14 million phones.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino tried to downplay any sense of domestic spying.
May 12, 2006

Australian Town torn apart by mystery blast

2006-05-12T17:17:00.000+05:30

Verity Edwards and Richard Sproull
Australian
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A few hours after Brant Webb and Todd Russell emerged from the Beaconsfield mine shaft, five workers clocked on for Tuesday's shift at Quin Investments' explosives factory, near the South Australian township of Gladstone.
As with the two Tasmanian goldminers, the five men - Damian Harris, Matthew Keeley, Darren Millington, Cameron Edson and Damian John - were important cogs in the nation's mining industry.
Their work at Quin, 200km north of Adelaide, is fuelling a mining boom that enabled Treasurer Peter Costello to deliver billions of dollars into taxpayers' pockets, build new roads and increase benefits for families. High demand from mining companies would often result in Quin's plant running at full throttle night and day.
Just after midday on Tuesday, the explosive produced by the three men detonated. Locals recall a smaller explosion followed by a mammoth blast that annihilated the besser block building that housed the hopper that mixes and packages the sticks of watergel.
Ground zero is the size of a football field and windows were shattered in buildings up to 500m from the epicentre. Pieces of corrugated iron littered trees in the nearby Beetaloo Forest. Debris from the explosion also sparked a blaze in scrub more than 1.5km away. The explosion was felt up to 45km from the 320ha Quin precinct.
Edson and John had their backs to the blast. Their clothes were blown off. Edson was dragged from the site by fellow worker Danny Palmer. Edson had been working outside the factory near machinery and was found pinned under a front-end loader that had be thrown by the force of the explosion. He was bleeding and covered in burns. John was also seriously injured.
Two bodies have been recovered but neither has been positively identified. Police and emergency services workers have yet to find the third body and hold out little hope it will be located.
Three days on from the Gladstone explosion, police and WorkSafe officers remain unclear as to what triggered the deadly blast.
Explosives expert Kevin Drummond has visited Quin several times to deposit or pick up explosives and was surprised to hear of the industrial accident.
Drummond, who has years of experience in the industry through his company Demex Explosive Demolitions, says the size of the explosion correlates with a gas-producing explosive such as ANFO.
The key with ANFO is to ensure it remains inert. But if you create the wrong mix ratio it could have fatal consequences.
Speculation has been rife in the Gladstone community that there was a power surge up to 10 minutes before the explosion or a smaller explosion before the big bang. But ETSA Utilities denies this.
May 12, 2006

Australian miners found alive by chance

2006-05-12T17:16:00.000+05:30

Ed Johnson
Associated Press
Detroit Free Press, US
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Sydney (Australia):
Glenn Burns peered through the narrow opening he had chiseled through the rock. Staring back were Todd Russell and Brant Webb, their dirt-caked, bearded faces illuminated by the beam of his miner's lamp.
The two-week Herculean effort to rescue the two miners was drawing to a close.
"We just made eye contact; that was first," said Burns, 47. He quickly pushed through his calloused fist and shook the men by the hand.
While Webb and Russell were reunited with their families after being trapped for 14 days underground at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine in Tasmania state, the men who rescued them recounted details of an ordeal that riveted Australia.
"They couldn't even lay their legs out straight," said Burns, describing the conditions the pair endured. He was one of several miners whose accounts were published Wednesday in Australian newspapers.
The accident at the century-old mine was triggered by a 2.1-magnitude earthquake April 25.
After the quake, three men were missing -- Webb, 37, Russell, 34, and Larry Knight, 44. They had been shoring up a tunnel more than a half-mile below the surface. As Knight operated the controls, Webb and Russell stood in a steel basket attached to a hydraulic arm, fixing mesh to the walls and roof of the tunnel.
Knight was crushed under tons of rock as the roof crumpled, but Webb and Russell survived, sharing a cage for 324 hours.
Knight's body was discovered two days later at the end of the tunnel. Rescue crews did not discover that Webb and Russell were alive until April 30, when the shift boss crawled over a pile of rubble and heard voices in the darkness.
Mine officials began the grueling process of boring an escape shaft through 52 feet of solid rock from a neighboring tunnel. A narrow tube was drilled to the men's safety cage to deliver food, water, blankets, iPods and even flavored ice.
May 11, 2006

Suspect in prostitute killing appears in court

2006-05-12T17:15:00.000+05:30

CTV.ca, Canada
An Alberta man charged with killing an Edmonton prostitute smiled to reporters Thursday before entering a provincial court.
Police accuse Thomas George Svekla, of High Level, Alta., of killing 36-year-old Theresa Merrie Innes and using a hockey bag to transport her remains.
Police found Innes's body Sunday in Fort Saskatchewan, on the outskirts of Edmonton. She had been missing since last August, and was last seen 700 kilometres away in High Level in northern Alberta.
Inside the courtroom, Svekla, 38, looked upwards as his charges were read: second-degree murder and interfering with a dead body.
When he again met reporters outside the building, he raised a finger to his lips and motioned for them to be quiet.
Given the intense media coverage, Svekla's defence lawyer, Laura Stevens cautioned reporters to use restraint.
The lawyer's warning comes on the same day Edmonton Sun columnist and night city editor Andrew Hanon reported that Svekla contacted him in 2004, while Hanon worked as a reporter.
Svekla allegedly said the RCMP wrongfully considered him to be a person of interest in the disappearance of Rachel Quinney, a prostitute found dead outside Edmonton the same year.
"He asked me if I could help clear his name," Hanon told The Canadian Press.
Svekla is the first arrest connected to Project Kare, a police task force that investigates the deaths of "high risk missing persons," notably women involved in the sex trade.
The RCMP said Wednesday that Svekla has not been charged in the deaths or disappearances of any other prostitutes, and no connections should be made.
May 12, 2006

Women's Deaths Mystery Widens

2006-05-12T17:10:00.000+05:30

Andrew Bridges
AP
Forbes
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A rare germ that killed four California women who took the abortion pill RU-486 has been implicated in the deaths of even more women following childbirth or miscarriage, broadening the debate beyond abortion on the eve of a meeting to examine the bacterial mystery.
While the abortion link has grabbed the most attention, Clostridium sordellii has killed at least 11 other women, women's health experts said in interviews. That's more than twice as many as have died of infection after taking the abortion pill, also called Mifeprex or mifepristone.
The numbers suggest the bacterium's threat, while still limited, could be broader than previously thought.
"That's a critical question: Is this association between use of Mifeprex and infection with C. sordellii ... or is it something more general?" asked Susan Wood, the former top women's health official at the Food and Drug Administration. She thinks it's the latter.
Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and FDA are meeting Thursday in Atlanta to decide what research is needed to better understand the emerging threat posed by C. sordellii and a second bacterium, Clostridium difficile. The second germ is not linked to the abortion pill but is growing in prevalence in hospitals and nursing homes, and is increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
C. sordellii has been linked to four abortion pill deaths; a fifth is being investigated.
Opponents of the abortion pill have seized on those deaths - along with hundreds more complications after pill-induced abortions - to call for pulling Mifeprex from the market.
May 10, 2006

Hwang Woo-suk Indicted for Fraud

2006-05-12T17:09:00.000+05:30

Lee Hyo-sik
Korea Times
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The prosecution on Friday indicted disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk on charges of fraud, embezzlement and a breach of the bioethics law, without detention, ending a five-month probe into the research fabrication scandal.
Investigators concluded that Hwang's claims to have cloned human stem cells and developed patient-tailored stem cells were fraudulent.
They also said Hwang masterminded the fabrication of stem-cell research, but he was deceived by researcher Kim Sun-jong on the existence of cloned patent-specific stem cells.
According to the prosecution, Kim smuggled in-vitro fertilized stem cells into Hwang's lab, lying to his superior that he successfully created patient-tailored embryonic stem cell lines. Kim was under enormous pressure after his failure to cultivate them.
``Hwang instructed his research team to fabricate an array of data, including photos, the number of stem cells created and DNA test results, in the 2004 and 2005 papers published in the U.S. journal `Science- senior prosecutor Lee In-kyu told reporters on Friday.
Lee said Hwang also embezzled 2.8 billion won in state funds and private donations for his research, and bought human ova from donors in violation of the bioethics law.
May 12, 2006

Grandmother dies as police chase stolen car

2006-05-12T17:07:00.000+05:30

Daily Mail
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An independent inquiry was under way today after a woman was killed as police chased a stolen car.
And a mother and her two young boys are fighting for their lives after the car thief ploughed into all four of them as they crossed a busy road.
Police were following the driver of a silver Honda Civic which had been "carjacked" minutes earlier by an armed man.
The saloon was driven away from the scene of the hijacking in South Tyneside and the driver ploughed into two parked cars while being pursued by police.
Seconds later the car thief crashed into the mother, aged 28, the children, who were in a double buggy pram, and a woman in her 40s as they crossed Horsley Hill Road in South Shields.
Northumbria Police said the older woman, named in reports as Pamela Phinn, who was from South Tyneside, died following the crash.
It is understood Mrs Phinn was the injured children's grandmother.
Eyewitnesses were said to have seen Mrs Phinn try to shove the pram out of the way of the car which was believed to be speeding at up to 80 mph.
But the pram was said to have been thrown 20ft into the air as the grandmother took the full force of the crash. The incident happened at 2.10pm yesterday after a motorist was forced to leave his Honda Civic by an armed thief. The man brandished a weapon as he forced the driver from the car in the town's busy Western Approach.
A marked patrol car was alerted to the incident after the victim of the hijacking contacted police. As police followed the stolen car it collided with two parked cars in Westoe Road.
May 12, 2006

Up to 6,000 pandemic deaths expected in British Columbia

2006-05-12T17:06:00.000+05:30

Dirk Meissner
The Canadian Press
Hamilton Spectator
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Victoria (British Columbia):
Pandemic flu experts in British Columbia estimate up to 6,000 people could die over a two-year period, but say they aren't planning for doomsday.
"We're actually not looking at the worst-case scenario," Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s provincial health officer, said yesterday.
Instead, planners are focusing efforts on prevention, treatment and ensuring life in British Columbia stays as normal as it can under trying circumstances, he said. The Health Ministry and B.C. Centre for Disease Control are working to provide basic tips about an influenza pandemic, including how to stay healthy.
Health Minister George Abbott unveiled a comprehensive website to help families, communities and organizations prepare for a potential pandemic. He said in Victoria that such pandemics occur every 10 to 40 years. The last one was in 1968.
The website provides information and resources to help British Columbians plan, prepare and stay informed. B.C. has been preparing for a pandemic since 1999 and the government has already spent tens of millions of dollars, he said.
The government's pandemic influenza website can be found at health.gov.bc.ca/pandemic.
May 12, 2006

Darwinian mystery may have been solved

2006-05-12T17:05:00.000+05:30

PhysOrg.com
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U.S. scientists may have solved Charles Darwin's "abominable mystery" of flowering plants' rapid evolution after they appeared 140 million years ago.
The researchers from the Floral Genome Project at Penn State University, with an international team of collaborators, developed new statistical methods to analyze incomplete DNA sequences from 13 strategically selected plant species.
The scientists say they uncovered a previously hidden "paleopolyploidy" event -- an ancient whole-genome duplication that preceded the appearance of the ancestral flowering plant.
"We found a concentration of duplicated genes that suggests a whole-genome duplication event in the earliest flowering plants," said Claude dePamphilis, associate professor of biology and senior author of the paper. "A polyploidy event early in the history of flowering plants could explain their sudden evolution."
The research is presented in the June issue of Genome Research.
May 12, 2006

Three saved by SMS after 22 days lost at sea

2006-05-11T01:14:00.000+05:30

Ian Gerard
Australian
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Just a day after miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb walked free from their underground cage in Tasmania, a similarly miraculous tale of survival was unfolding in the country's north.
Father of six John Tabo, 38, his 20-year-old son John Jr and 16-year-old nephew Tom were reunited with their family yesterday after spending three weeks lost in a dinghy in the Torres Strait.
The three Murray Islanders survived their 22-day ordeal by eating raw squid, fish and clams, drinking rainwater and riding out the rough seas whipped up by Cyclone Monica.
The trio had been missing since April 17, when they left Murray Island in their 5m vessel for Yorke Island, about 70km away.
After an extensive air and sea search failed to find any sign of them, the hunt was called off on April 24.
But yesterday the three, suffering dehydration and exposure from their ordeal, were treated at the remote island's medical centre while the islanders celebrated their return.
Health authorities say the three each lost about 30kg.
An exhausted-looking Mr Tabo cuddled his granddaughters while he recounted the trio's amazing tale.
"We drank rainwater and ate squid and clams," he said. "We used a throw-net to catch the squid."
Cape York police inspector Russel Rhodes said the three became disoriented shortly after beginning their journey.
May 11, 2006

Women spot ideal fathers at a glance

2006-05-11T01:09:00.001+05:30

Julie Wheldon
Daily Mail - UK
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Women can work out whether a man will make a good father just by looking at his face, research shows.
Simply studying a photograph can give them subconscious clues that he likes children - and would therefore be a good long-term partner.
Scientists behind the discovery believe it adds an important dimension to knowledge about mate selection among humans.
Experts say women judge a man on his genetic quality and also his willingness to be a good parent for her offspring.
Studies have shown they use masculine features as a guide to genetic quality. When at their most fertile, they are particularly attracted to men with features such as strong jaws.
However at other times of the month, women prefer more feminine faces as softer features suggest a man will be a good long-term partner and help care for any offspring.
Researchers at St Andrews University have even come up with the face of the perfect man, whose softer feminised features reflected a more nurturing side.
By studying what appealed to women, they concluded that the ideal partner should have a symmetrical face, large deep and expressive eyes, with a straight nose and soft jaw.
This suggests that when it comes to father material, most women would chose Jude Law over the more rugged Arnold Schwarzenegger.
May 10, 2006

Women spot ideal fathers at a glance

2006-05-11T01:09:00.000+05:30

Chinese visa student admits to killing Cecilia

2006-05-11T01:08:00.000+05:30

CTV.ca
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The Chinese visa student who snatched nine-year-old Toronto schoolgirl Cecilia Zhang from her family home in October 2003 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Tuesday, in what is being described as a botched kidnapping attempt.
Min Chen, originally charged with first-degree murder in the schoolgirl's disappearance and subsequent murder, entered the surprise plea in a Brampton, Ont. courtroom in what would have been the first day of his trial.
Chen's defence lawyer John Rosen told reporters that each side had much to lose in a trial.
Neither Cecilia's parents nor Chen's were in the courtroom to hear the guilty plea.
In a victim impact statement played in court, Raymond Zhang expressed his grief over the loss of his daughter.
The Crown is seeking to have Chen serve between 17 and 20 years of his sentence before he is eligible for parole while the defence is asking Chen be granted parole no later than 12 years into his term.
According to an agreed statement of facts read in court, Chen admitted he killed Cecilia by placing his hand over her mouth as he carried the schoolgirl from her home.
The agreed statement of facts reveals that the murder was a kidnapping attempt that went wrong.
The gifted Grade Four student was snatched from her home in October 2003 as her parents slept metres away.
Court heard that Chen went to the home in October 2003 to kidnap Cecilia for ransom.
May 10, 2006

Teacher arrested in bomb discovery

2006-05-11T01:06:00.000+05:30

Tasmania Examiner
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Brisbane (Australia):
A Brisbane high school teacher has denied being a terrorist, telling a court a stockpile of explosives found at his home were for use in a television production.
John Howard Amundsen, 40, of Aspley in Brisbane's north, yesterday faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on one charge of fraud after allegedly obtaining 53kg of an explosive using false identification.
Police allegedly found the explosives - some manufactured into bombs with nails and razor blades embedded in them - at his home during a raid Tuesday night which forced the evacuation of about 30 surrounding homes.
Magistrate Lindy Bradford-Morgan refused Mr Amundsen bail on the basis he was a risk to public safety and adjourned the case until today.
Further charges are expected to be laid against Mr Amundsen.
Police will not rule out the possibility that four bombs and 10 detonators allegedly found at the home in Windrest Ave that Amundsen shared with his elderly mother were being stockpiled for a terrorist attack.
May 11, 2006

Miners: Long road ahead, trauma experts warn

2006-05-10T01:56:00.000+05:30

Sydney Morning Herald
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Although in excellent spirits and good physical condition, Todd Russell and Brant Webb have a long psychological recovery ahead of them, health professionals have warned.
That important recovery began yesterday with the difficult step of attending the funeral of their colleague Larry Knight, who died in the mine collapse.
Dr Stephen Ayre, chief executive of Launceston General Hospital, said the two men were in excellent spirits and a "very positive" physical condition.
A psychologist, Bev Ernst, said attending the funeral of Mr Knight was "absolutely vital" to their recovery.
Ms Ernst said the men and their families needed plenty of support in the coming weeks. "It's really important now for them … to have a couple of days without the media, without everyone, even friends."
Doctors will monitor Mr Russell and Mr Webb's psychological condition over the next few days.
Last week a spokesman for the Australian Psychological Society, Bob Montgomery, warned the men's high spirits were part of a survival state in which emotions were frozen.
He said the men may now experience feelings of shock, depression, anger, mood swings and possibly survivor guilt, along with nightmares and intrusive memories. Counselling would be important to let them know what they were in for, in terms of their emotions, Dr Montgomery said.
May 10, 2006

Miners walk free after 320 hours in hell

2006-05-10T01:54:00.000+05:30

Andrew Darby and Gary Tippet
Sydney Morning Herald
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In the rescue tunnel of the Beaconsfield mine, Glenn Burns tapped away at the crust above him with a hammer and iron bar.
The specialist miner, known as the Fox, cracked through into the space above, and looked up. His lamp caught the eye of Todd Russell, staring back. It was a happy eye, Mr Burns said. "A very happy eye."
Mr Burns made enough room so that he could put his gnarled hand up, and he shook one offered in reply. "I just said, 'Owyezgoin'? And they said: 'Orright'."
The trapped men, Mr Russell and Brant Webb, were saved. It was about 4am, or 320 hours after the cataclysmic rock fall that triggered this great mine rescue.
The two men came to the surface with surprising spring in their step. They strode from the mine lift almost like victorious footballers, grinning, joking and lifting their arms high in victory before sweeping their wives and families into their embrace.
At the Club Hotel the publican, Chris Rundle, threw open the doors when he heard the miners were about to be freed. The pub was packed after they had been taken to hospital, he said.
But the celebrations quietened while mourners attended the funeral of Larry Knight, the miner killed by the rock fall on April 25.
Mr Rundle, who has lived in Beaconsfield for 25 years and has run the pub for three, said it was the biggest celebration he had seen - beating the night the miners were found alive.
May 10, 2006

I lied, Moussaoui says; but guilty plea stands

2006-05-10T01:52:00.000+05:30

Detroit Free Press
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Alexandria, Virgenia (US):
Facing life in a so-called supermax prison, convicted Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied in admitting involvement in the Sept. 11 plot, but a judge Monday rejected his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who sentenced Moussaoui on Thursday after a jury spared him a death sentence, paid no heed to his argument that he now recognizes he can get a fair trial in America.
She denied the motion, filed Friday but made public Monday, under a rule barring a defendant from withdrawing a plea once he's been sentenced.
Moussaoui said he testified he was training to fly a hijacked plane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, "even though I knew that was a complete fabrication."
Moussaoui said he lied because he believed "it was the intention of the American justice system to put me to death."
May 09, 2006

German cannibal gets life

2006-05-10T01:50:00.000+05:30

John O'Donnell
Reuters.uk
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Frankfurt (Germany):
A German cannibal whose killing and eating of a willing victim shocked the nation received a life sentence for murder on Tuesday after a court overturned a previous manslaughter conviction.
In delivering the decision, Judge Klaus Drescher threw out the defence team's argument that Armin Meiwes had acted on his victim's request, a crime similar to euthanasia which in Germany carries a maximum prison term of five years.
"The defendant was fully conscious of his actions and could control them," Drescher told the court.
"This is not killing on request," he said. "He killed him because he wanted to slaughter and eat his flesh. He had achieved the biggest kick of his life."
Meiwes, 44, was standing trial for the second time after Germany's top criminal court ruled his 2004 conviction for manslaughter and eight-year jail sentence was too lenient. He showed no emotion as the sentence was read out.
Under German law Meiwes could be released after 15 years. The court rejected a request by prosecutors to deny his right to be released early, saying his victim had volunteered to be killed and eaten.
May 09, 2006

Blaine fails in underwater record attempt

2006-05-10T01:46:00.000+05:30

Mark Oliver and agencies
Guardian Unlimited, UK
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David Blaine's attempt to break the world record for holding breath under water ended in failure overnight.
The illusionist was pulled from a water tank in New York after blacking out. His record attempt had been the climax of his show Drowned Alive - a title the New York Times remarked had suggested "a certain pessimism".
Blaine managed to hold his breath for 7min 8sec - just under two minutes short of the 8min 58sec record.
He tried to set a new mark after an underwater endurance challenge that saw him spend seven days in a globe-shaped tank outside the Lincoln Centre for Performing Arts in Manhattan.
After two days, doctors warned he was suffering some liver damage and his skin was peeling badly, but he apparently rejected at least one attempt by his medical team to end the stunt.
ABC television last night broadcast a two-hour special programme culminating in the record attempt. During the programme, Blaine - wearing a diver's helmet with a two-way communication system - told reporters he would give it his "best shot".
He had planned to put on chains and handcuffs, remove his oxygen tube and then escape while holding his breath for longer than anyone had managed before.
But as Blaine's face contorted in pain and bubbles came to the surface, it was clear he was blacking out. Kirk Krack, his trainer and a diving expert, sent divers to release him and pull him from the tank.
May 09, 2006