Big Asteroid 2011 AG5 Could Pose Threat to Earth in 2040

by Leonard David, SPACE.com’s Space Insider Columnist

Scientists are keeping a close eye on a big asteroid that may pose an impact threat to Earth in a few decades.

The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide. It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it.

Talk about the asteroid was on the agenda during the 49th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), held earlier this month in Vienna.

A UN Action Team on near-Earth objects (NEOs) noted the asteroid’s repeat approaches to Earth and the possibility — however remote — that 2011 AG5 might smack into our planet 28 years from now.

Iran's Christian pastor alive, execution looming

By Lisa Daftari

The Christian pastor sentenced to death in Iran last week for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity was confirmed alive as of early Sunday, sources close to his attorneys told Fox News.

Iran’s government backtracked over the weekend, stating that no execution order had been announced for Youcef Nadarkhani, and that he was being held not for apostasy, but for rape and “other crimes,” according to the Islamic Republic’s state-controlled Press TV.

Nadarkhani’s attorneys believe the government toned down its rhetoric in response to an international outcry. The execution order, however, remained in effect, they said.

Supporters fear Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested more than two years ago on charges of apostasy, fear he may be executed at any time, as death sentences in Iran can be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

Others fear Nadarkhani will be used in broader political negotiations as Iran endures crippling sanctions and international pressure in response to its nuclear agenda and rogue discourse. The number of executions in Iran has increased significantly in the last month.

“If a human being becomes a bargaining chip for the ayatollah, that’s not a situation that will lead to anything positive,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a human rights advocacy group that has led international campaigns to free Nadarkhani.

“When it’s a high-profile case, they test the international community’s reaction to these stories and how they change as geopolitical priorities shift.”

Iran’s judiciary, fearing its ultimate decision will have far-reaching political implications, has been caught in a bind in determining Nadarkhani’s fate.

Should the court release the pastor, it will appear disrespectful of the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, which call for an apostate to be put to death. If it executes him, it will face increasing criticism from the international community that continues to petition for the Nadarkhani’s release.

Dozens of human rights groups along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 89 members of Congress, and leaders from the European Union, France, Great Britain, Mexico and Germany have condemned Iran for arresting Nadarkhani and have called for his quick release.

Last week, the State Department and White House put out statements condemning Tuesday’s execution verdict.

Congress has scheduled a vote as early as Wednesday on House Resolution 556, which condemns the Iranian government and calls for the pastor’s quick release.

Nadarkhani converted to Christianity at 19 and came under the Islamic regime’s radar in 2006 when he applied for his church to be registered with the state. He was arrested and soon released, according to sources.

In 2009 he went to local officials to complain about Islamic indoctrination in his school district, arguing that his children should not be forced to learn about Islam.

He was subsequently arrested and found guilty of apostasy by a lower court in Gilan, a province in Rasht, where he and his family live.

The court gave Nadarkhani a chance to recant and return to Islam, but he refused.

Death sentences for apostates in Shariah Law are prescribed both by fatwas, or legal decrees, and reinforced by Iran’s penal code.  Article 225 of the Iranian penal code states, "Punishment for an Innate Apostate is death," and "Punishment for a Parental Apostate is death.”

While all religious minorities in Iran, including Bahais, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians, have faced various forms of persecution and political and social marginalization, the government saves its harshest retribution for those who have abandoned Islam.

3 doomsaying experts who foresee economic devastation ahead

NEW YORK – Behind the mainstream Wall Street happy talk about more stable financial markets and an improving economy are grim warnings of tough times ahead from a small cadre of doomsayers who warn that the worst of the financial crisis is still to come.

Harry Dent, author of the new book The Great Crash Ahead, says another stock market crash is coming due to a bad ending to the global debt bubble. He has pulled back on his earlier prediction of a crash in 2012, as central banks around the world have been flooding markets with money, giving stocks an artificial short-term boost. But a crash is coming in 2013 or 2014, he warns. "This will be a repeat of 2008-09, only bigger, when it finally hits," Dent told USA TODAY.

Gerald Celente, a trend forecaster at the Trends Research Institute, says Americans should brace themselves for an "economic 9/11" due to policymakers' inability to solve the world's financial and economic woes. The coming meltdown, he predicts, will lead to growing social unrest and anti-government sentiment, a U.S. dollar with far less purchasing power and more people out of work.

Celente won't rule out another financial panic that could spark enough fear to cause a run on the nation's banks by depositors. That risk could cause the government to invoke "economic martial law" and call a "bank holiday" and close banks as it did during the Great Depression.

"We see some kind of threat of that magnitude," Celente, publisher of The Trends Journal newsletter, warned in an interview.

Robert Prechter, author of Conquer the Crash, first published in 2002 and updated in 2009, is still bearish. He says today's economy has similarities to the Great Depression and warns that 1930s-style deflation is still poised to cause financial havoc. Prechter predicts that the major U.S. stock indexes, such as the Dow Jones industrials and Standard & Poor's 500, will plunge below their bear market lows hit in March 2009 during the last financial crisis. The brief recovery will fail as it did in the 1930s, he says.

2 very different viewpoints

If he's right, stocks would lose more than half of their value. "The economic recovery has been weak, so the next downturn should generate bad news in a big way," Prechter said in an e-mail interview. "For the third time in a dozen years, the stock market is in a very bearish position."
These dire forecasts differ sharply with the brighter outlooks being espoused by the bulls, or optimists, on Wall Street. Recent stock performance and fresh readings on the economy also suggest a future that is less gloomy than the doomsayers predict.

The Dow, for instance, is in rebound mode and has climbed back to levels not seen since the early days of the financial crisis in May 2008. Tech stocks in the Nasdaq composite are trading at levels last seen in 2000. Data on auto sales, manufacturing and consumer confidence have been firming. Job creation is also on the rise. The unemployment rate dipped to 8.3% in January, its lowest level in three years.

As a result, stock market strategists such as Rod Smyth of RiverFront Investment have been raising their outlooks for 2012. Smyth raised his target range for the S&P 500 to 1250-1500. If the market hits the top of the range, stocks would have risen 10%. Similarly, Brian Belski, strategist at Oppenheimer, recently said he remains comfortable with his year-end 2012 target of 1400. That's up 2.5% from here. Bespoke Investment Group published research that shows the market, which is closing in on a new bull market high, has done well in the past once it breaks through old highs.
Bulls are betting that Europe's banking system will be stabilized, minimizing the risk of a severe credit crisis. Bulls are also encouraged by recent data from around the world that show modest growth and a pickup in economic momentum.

The causes of economic calamity

So what has the super-bears so worried?

Dent says the combination of aging Baby Boomers exiting their big spending years and a shift toward debt reduction and austerity around the world will cause the economy to suffer another severe leg down, making it more difficult for the government and Federal Reserve to avert a new meltdown. He has not always been bearish. In 1993 he wrote The Great Boom Ahead.

Celente, who as far back as 2008 has been warning of economic calamity, argues that the ballooning debt and the growing divide between the haves and have-nots has put the U.S. in a weakened state.
As a result, he says, the nation is more vulnerable to potential shocks. He worries about potential chaos caused by people all trying to yank their money out of financial markets at the same time. He also sees risk in the event there is a loss of confidence in elected leaders.

Societal unrest in the form of street protests and increased crime are possible, too, he adds. Markets could also be spooked by an oil price shock due to a military conflict between Israel and Iran, or a bad outcome to Europe's debt crisis.

"2012 is when many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and political trends that we have been forecasting and tracking will climax," Celente noted in his Top 12 Trends 2012 newsletter. In an interview he added: "When money stops flowing to the man on the street, blood starts flowing in the street."

While bulls are urging investors to get back into stocks, the doomsayers are advising a far different strategy. Dent's investment advice is simple: "Get out of the way." He recommends buying short-term U.S. Treasury bills and the U.S. dollar, which will benefit from safe-haven cash flows. He says stocks will fall sharply in value.

Celente's advice centers on survival. He says buy gold so you don't lose purchasing power when the value of the dollar plummets. He says buy a gun to protect your family against desperate people in search of food and money. He says plan a getaway to places with more stable finances and governments.

Prechter says to keep your powder dry and buy when things get really bad: "When things get really scary, as in early 2009, I get bullish."

The macabre concept of a 'euthanasia roller coaster' that thrills you... then kills you

By Julian Gavaghan

An engineer has come up with macabre rollercoaster concept where passengers are thrilled and then ‘killed’.

The chilling Euthanasia Coaster is a theoretical machine engineered to ‘humanely, with elegance and euphoria, take the life of a human being’.

It is designed to subject the rider to a series of unique experiences from euphoria to thrill and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness.

When travelling at 100m/s, the passenger would then pass away following a lack of oxygen reaching the brain.

The surreal structure is the brainchild of Lithuanian engineer Julijonas Urbonas.

Julijonas has been involved in the field of amusement park development since his childhood and describes himself as an architect and engineer whose work is ‘artistic and philosophical’.
He said: ‘Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.

‘Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this 'kinetic sculpture' is in fact the ultimate roller coaster.’

Julijonas' design is inspired by the words of John Allen, the former president of the famous ride maker, Philadelphia Toboggan Company.

Allen once said: ‘The ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead.’

However, the surreal concept has been criticised by a leading anti-euthanasia organisation which sees the ‘imaginative’ coaster as something which could be easily abused.

Dr Peter Saunders from Care Not Killing said: ‘Whilst appreciating the artist’s sense of humour and light-heartedness, we also need to remember that the life a human being cannot ever be taken ‘humanely with elegance and euphoria’ and with this method the last sensation would more probably be one of overwhelming vertigo and fright.

‘Euthanasia rightly remains illegal because any law allowing it could so easily be abused.
‘Vulnerable people - the sick, elderly, disabled or depressed - would feel under pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.

‘Let’s hope that this imaginative method never becomes legal.’

First contact... or the start of World War III? Amateur cameraman captures stunning glowing cloud in the skies over Russia

Not so long ago, an enormous fiery cloud in the skies above Russia could only mean one thing: The beginning of something very very bad indeed.

At the height of the Cold War, a vision like this would set off screams of terror and mass panic, rather than the soft gasps of wonder and awe-struck conversation that can be heard in the YouTube clip of this spectacular phenomenon.

But it's not the end of the world, nor is it the beginning of a fine friendship with alien neighbours.

Footage of the glowing circular formation - which hit YouTube yesterday - is one of the most stunning examples of a 'lenticular cloud'.

For obvious reasons, these rare cloud formations are also known as 'UFO clouds' - because of their spooky resemblance to the space ships we are all expecting to imminently arrive in the skies above us.

Sci-fi films as far back as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) - and more recently Independence Day (1996) - have depicted aliens camouflaging their craft in boiling cloud formations.

But this is little more than the wonder of nature creating an amazing sight.

The footage was taken in an unidentified city in Russia, and voices can be heard marveling at the awesome sight. You don't need to speak Russian to get the gist of the conversation.

What sets this footage apart from other examples of lenticular formations is the amazing glowing nature of the cloud.

Captured just at the right moment, when the sun is directly striking the bottom of the cloud - and light is refracted through the top of the cloud - it gives an amazing two-tone effect.
Lenticular clouds are usually formed by moist air rising over a mountain or range of mountains, forming standing waves of clouds as the air descends again.

The clouds are usually formed perpendicular to the direction of the airflow, and are usually avoided by aircraft pilots because of the turbulence associated with them.

Glider pilots, on the other hand, find lenticular clouds a welcome sight, because wave lift can produce high altitudes and long distances.

The clouds are formed by stable but moist air which has travelled across the Pennines, causing a standing wave to become established.

Lenticular clouds are said to be the single biggest explanation for UFO sightings across the world.
Bright colors (called Irisation) are sometimes seen along the edge of lenticular clouds.
These clouds have also been known to form in cases where a mountain does not exist, but rather as the result of shear winds created by a front.

Iran strike would be ‘catastrophic’: Putin

Russia is troubled by the growing threat of a military strike on Iran, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday, adding that fear of foreign intervention pushes other “nuclear threshold” states to acquire nuclear weapons, rather than dissuading them.

“Russia is alarmed by the growing threat of a military strike” against Iran, Putin said in a lengthy campaign article focusing on Russia’s foreign policy, published in the daily Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper ahead of presidential elections on March 4, which he is widely expected to win.
“If this happens, the consequences will be truly catastrophic, their real scope impossible to imagine,” Putin wrote.

Such a military strike is increasingly reported as being an option under consideration by Israeli and US military planners as Iran moves ahead with its uranium enrichment program. Western countries and Israel say Iran is trying to build atomic weapons. Tehran rejects that accusation and says its nuclear activities are solely for civilian purposes.

“We propose to recognize Iran’s right to develop a civilian nuclear program, including the right to enrich uranium” in exchange for placing the country’s nuclear activities under the tight control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the international nuclear safety watchdog, Putin said.

If this is achieved, then all sanctions against Iran, including unilaterally imposed by individual countries, need to be lifted, Putin said in the 6,000-word article outlining his foreign policy vision ahead of the elections next Sunday.

In the article, Putin lashed out at the West for excessive pressure on sovereign countries by means of sanctions and military interventions, clearly referring to the NATO-led military operations in Iraq and Libya.

“There is a feeling that increasingly often cases of crude and even violent interventions from outside the internal affairs of other countries may stimulate certain authoritarian regimes, and not just them, to acquire nuclear weapons,” Putin said. “Say, ‘if I have an atomic bomb in my pocket, no one will touch me because the cost of it would be too high’. And if someone has no such a bomb, he can expect some kind of ‘humanitarian’ intervention.”

Thus, the number of the so-called “nuclear threshold” states, or countries that can quickly develop military nuclear technologies, is growing rather than shrinking, Putin argued, in what increases risks of nuclear proliferation.

Speaking of North Korea, which has already conducted two tests of its own nuclear bombs, Putin said that Russia calls for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which should be achieved only through diplomatic efforts.

“But not all our partners share this approach… Any attempts to test the hardness of the new North Korean leader are not acceptable as they would essentially provoke counter-measures,” Putin said, referring to the 28-year-old Kim Jong-un who succeeded his deceased father Kim Jong-il at the helm of the Communist regime late last year.

Oil Price Rise Raises Spectre of Global Recession

By: Reuters

A jump in energy prices is jamming the slow-turning cogs of an economic recovery in the West, but that may be nothing compared to the economic shock an Israeli attack on Iran would cause.

Oil rose to a 10-month high above $125 a barrel on Friday, prompting responses from policymakers around the world including U.S. President Barack Obama, watching U.S. gasoline prices follow crude to push towards $4 a gallon in an election year.

Europe may have more to fear as its fragile economic growth falters and Greece, Italy and Spain look for alternative sources to the crude they currently import from Iran, where an EU oil embargo, intended to make Iran abandon what the West fears are efforts to develop nuclear weapons, comes into force in June.

In euro terms, Brent crude rose to an all-time high of 93.60 euros this week, topping its 2008 record.
"The West's determination to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is coming at a price - a price that might include a second global recession triggered by an oil shock," said David Hufton from the oil brokerage PVM. 

In dollar terms, oil prices are still some $20 a barrel short of their 2008 record of $147. But the latest Reuters monthly survey will on Monday show oil analysts revising up their predictions for Brent crude [LCOCV1  123.42    -0.75  (-0.6%)   ] by $3 since the previous month.  
Such a change is big in a poll of over 30 analysts, and last happened at the peak of the Libyan war in May. 

Ian Taylor, head of the world's biggest oil trading house Vitol, told Reuters this week prices could spike as high as $150 a barrel if Iran's arch-enemy Israel launched a strike at its nuclear facilities - an option Israel has declined to rule out. 

"I used to think this would never happen," Taylor said, "but everyone you speak to says the Israelis will have a go at striking at Iranian nuclear sites.  

"The day that happens, you have to believe the Iranians throw a few mines in the Strait of Hormuz and, for a few hours at least or maybe more, I cannot see a scenario where prices would not be at that sort of level ($150)."   

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday Iran had sharply stepped up its uranium enrichment, which Iran insists is solely for civilian purposes. 

Israel has warned that, by putting much of its nuclear programme underground, Iran is approaching a "zone of immunity", but it has also said any decision to attack is "very far off". 

Wall Street bank Merrill Lynch said this week that oil prices could climb to $200 over the next five years. 
So far this year, dollar prices for Brent crude have risen by more than 15 percent, pushed up mainly by fears about Iran. The loss of supply from three small and mid-sized producers suffering internal turmoil - Syria, Yemen and South Sudan - has added to the supply worries.
Weak Growth, High Prices

A stabilisation of the U.S. economy may explain some of the rise in oil prices, but the global economy is growing far more slowly now than at this time last year, yet crude prices are just as high. 
World equities and oil have typically been closely correlated since 2008 because both were driven by global demand. 

However, as oil prices start to respond to supply problems, the correlation is evaporating, and the global economy is already paying a high price. 

Data published this week showed unexpectedly weak activity in Europe's most powerful economy, Germany, and in France, sparking fresh worries that the region could tip into recession.

Few have forgotten that in 2008, within six months of hitting its all-time high, oil plunged as low as $35 a barrel with the onset of the global credit crisis. 

In the United States, demand for refined oil products is close to its lowest level in nearly 15 years, indicating that  motorists are cutting back their mileage.

"The price spike is going to be a challenge for politicians in the West running for re-election," said Olivier Jakob from the Petromatrix consultancy.  

He said developed countries would find it hard to justify a release of strategic oil stocks similar to what they did in 2011. 

Unlike a year ago, when Libyan oil exports were disrupted by a war, this year "there is ... instead a voluntary restriction on buying from a specific country", said Jakob. 

Other than a release of oil stocks, developed countries could resort to yet another round of monetary easing, to which  emerging markets will respond with quantitative tightening, price controls and subsidies, said analysts from HSBC.  

"In terms of fiscal health, it would seem that Asia is better placed than other regions to deal with an oil price shock," HSBC said in a note last week.

Smartphone users give total access to spying apps

Every time you use your smartphone app your personal information – emails, phone numbers and even photos – is sent off to dozens of Internet companies all over the world. And you are the one who is allowing them access.

­Most users are aware that Internet companies like to collect information on their clients so that they can target their adverts better. But the sheer extent of their spying is shocking. And it’s all buried in the small print of the license agreement few bother to read. Often the information collected has nothing to do with function of the application.

Despite being a social network, Facebook reads your text messages, while photo application Flickr raids your contact book. In turn, video portal Youtube can access and download all of the users’ photographs.

While it is bigger companies that get flak for the privacy policies, at least they are usually careful not to lose or sell their users’ private information. For less reputable outfits, this may not be a concern.

Chris Brauer, co-director of the Centre for Creative and Social Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London, told the Sunday Times many apps are mere “fronts” for data mining companies. Their main source of profit is selling personal information to advertisers.

Once the information passes down the chain, it is almost impossible to trace who will end up with it leaving smartphone owners open to anything from unsolicited advertising to identity theft.

While iPhone maker Apple at least tries to bind its application programmers with a common license agreement, according to Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, Android phone owners leave themselves in the greatest danger.

“Google’s name lends credibility to the Android market place, when in reality it is an unregulated Wild West with hugely intrusive applications being touted as innocent games,” he says.

Pickles points out that customer protection regulation lags years behind in a market that changes beyond recognition from year to year.

But even the most stringent regulation will not save users who voluntarily sign up to give away their most private data.

Scientists did not break speed of light - it was a faulty wire

Physicists who shocked the scientific world by claiming to have shown particles could move faster than the speed of light have admitted it was a mistake due to a faulty wire connection.

It was Albert Einstein who proposed more than 100 years ago that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claimed they had recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second.

Now it seems Einstein's reputation has been restored after a source close to the experiment told the US journal Science Insider that "A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame."

Scientists at CERN claimed that neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light.

The report in Science Insider said the "60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. "

"After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed," it added.

"Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos. New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis."

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, said at the time: “We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing.”

Scientists across the world agreed if the results were confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of physics.

John Ellis, a theoretical physicist, said Einstein’s theory underlies “pretty much everything in modern physics”.

The first doubt was cast on the findings In November when a team of physicists in Itlay conducting a separate study on the same beam of neutrinos at Gran Sasso claimed their findings "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation."

Rather than measuring the time it took the neutrinos to travel from CERN to Gran Sasso the second experiment, known as ICARUS, monitored how much energy they had when they arrived.

Tomasso Dorigo, a CERN physicist, wrote on the Scientific Blogging website that the ICARUS paper was "very simple and definitive."

He said it showed "that the difference between the speed of neutrinos and the speed of light cannot be as large as that seen by OPERA, and is certainly smaller than that by three orders of magnitude, and compatible with zero."

Prof Jim Al-Khalili, the University of Surrey, who threatened to eat his boxer shorts if the original OPERA result was proved right, said: "Usually we see this effect when particles go faster than light through transparent media like water, when light is considerably slowed down.

"So these neutrinos should have been spraying out particles like electrons and photons in a similar way if they were going superluminal – and in the process would be losing energy.

"But they seemed to have kept the energy they started from, which rules out faster-than-light travel."

To draw Iran into nuclear talks, Obama avoids ousting Assad

DEBKAfile  Exclusive Report

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal did not hide his anger before marching out of the Friends of Syria conference attended by 70 nations in Tunis Friday, Feb. 24 after they fell in behind US plans for avoiding direct action against Syria’s Bashar Assad. Filmed sitting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Saudi minister told a reporter that arming the Free Syrian Army was an “excellent idea” because they needed to defend themselves. Clinton remained frostily aloof on this obvious bone of contention.

As one of the world’s richest oil and financial powers, Saudi Arabia could buy and sell Iran several times over, and after seeing the ayatollahs get away with insulting America time and time again, the Saudi foreign minister did not pull his punches when he faced his US colleague. He was frank about Riyadh and the Obama administration being miles apart in their perceptions of current Middle East events; resentment over the US role in the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak remains a constant irritant.

This dissonance came to the fore when Saudi al Faisal accused Washington of reducing Assad’s butchery of his opponents to the level of a humanitarian issue and so saving his regime
Riyadh is no happier with Moscow than it is with Washington. 

Saudi King Abdullah is reported by Middle East sources to have banged down the telephone on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Wednesday, Feb. 22, when he called to invite the oil kingdom to align with Russia’s Syrian strategy against the West.

Tariq Alhomayed, the talented editor of the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, who is regarded as having a direct line to the king, wrote later: “This was undoubtedly a historic and unusual telephone call.” He reported that Abdullah rejected out of hand Moscow’s proposal of a two-hour ceasefire in Homs, the Syrian city bombarded now for three weeks. He retorted that this would give Bashar Assad’s killing machine a 22-hour day carte blanche.

Alhomayed did not refer directly to the clash of wills between the Saudi foreign minister and the US secretary of state, except for a snide dig: “He [the Saudi king] is also the one who, during the Arab summit in Riyadh, first described the US army in Iraq as an army of occupation.”

Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu’s is of one mind with Saudi rulers in his aversion to big power policies for handling the Assad regime: Washington though horrified by the Syrian ruler's violence is yet shy of taking the final steps for his removal, while Moscow showers arms and intelligence on the Syrian despot to preserve him from his enemies.

It may be said that the Saudis and Israelis share a distrust of President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, suspecting them both of keeping Bashar Assad in power to promote their divergent interests in Iran.

The Saudi king faults the “safe havens” plan under air force protection – the sum total of foreign intervention taking shape between Washington, Turkey, some European powers and Gulf emirates - because it excludes what he regards as the key component: Bombardment of the presidential palace in Damascus and the crushing of the Syrian army, the same treatment meted out to Muammar Qaddafi in Libya.

The Saudis therefore sees this plan as actually protecting Assad’s regime and not only his victims.
Underlying Obama’s restraint is his indefatigable quest for nuclear negotiations with Iran, which is impelling him to show Tehran he is even prepared to keep its ally Assad in power – albeit with clipped wings - for the sake of a negotiated nuclear accord.

The Saudis think the US president is dreaming if he reckons Iran’s rulers will be so grateful for Assad’s escape that they will be willing to give up their aspirations for a nuclear weapon.
They also think Obama misguided in aiming for Russian collaboration in making its political, military, technological and nuclear clout in Tehran available at some point for them to arrive together at agreed accommodations in both Syria and Iran.

Riyadh regards its case as proven beyond doubt by events of the past week.

Up until Monday, Feb. 20, Washington was bucked up by Iranian signposts apparently pointing to resumed talks with world powers on an eventual nuclear standstill and a freeze on uranium enrichment past five percent. Iranian emissaries in backdoor exchanges were forthcoming on US requests for gestures to confirm that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was serious about entering into diplomatic dialogue.

A rude awakening was not long coming.

Ten days ago, the Obama administration asked and received from Tehran final proof of goodwill, a promise that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would be allowed to view the Parchin military facility.

US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, when he first met Israeli leaders in Jerusalem Thursday and Friday (Feb. 16-17), accordingly informed them that since Tehran had agreed to open this suspect site to UN inspection and nuclear negotiations were soon to begin, Israel had no cause to attack its nuclear facilities.

Tuesday, Feb. 21, the UN inspectors arrived in Tehran, certain they would be admitted to Parchin – only to run into their second Iranian refusal this month. Their visit was cut short by IAEA Vienna headquarters.

Every attempt by Washington to find out what had gone wrong drew a blank. Iranian officials withdrew into total hush and let the entire diplomatic edifice so painstakingly constructed by Washington start falling apart.

But Obama the eternal optimist has not given up. He is treating Tehran’s latest spell of intransigence as no more than a hiccup symptomatic of the run-up to parliamentary elections on March 2, after which Khamenei will revert to the track leading to negotiations.

This approach is what put Saudi backs up. They accuse the US and Russia through their different polices of granting the Syrian ruler a license to keep on massacring his people, regardless of any safe havens or “no kill” zones the West may be planning.

Netanyahu is likewise opposed to the Obama administration’s interconnected policies on Syria and Iran. His White House meeting with Obama on March 5 is not expected to put this dispute to rest.

'Voice of God' to scare church roof raiders

Hundreds of churches are to have “voice of God” alarms fitted to their roofs deter thieves from stripping off lead and copper.

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

Special movement sensors are to be hidden in spires and finials triggering a booming voice to take intruders by surprise warning that they have been detected and that security guards are on their way.

The initiative, backed by the Church of England, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office, comes after the rate of metal thefts reached “catastrophic” proportions in some dioceses with an average of seven churches targeted every day.

An insurance company has donated £500,000 to pay for hi-tech alarms to be fitted in 100 churches in England, Scotland and Wales judged to be most at risk.

But organisers hope that hundreds of other parishes will raise funds themselves to fit the devices – adapting the traditional church roof appeal model to cope with the metal theft crisis.

The soaring cost of metal during the global economic crisis has helped fuel a surge in metal thefts, triggering chaos on the rail network when copper signalling cables are taken.

Last year an irreplaceable Barbara Hepworth sculpture was stolen from Dulwich Park in south London.

But churches in particular have been viewed as a soft option by thieves, often poorly guarded and situated in all of the most crime-ridden areas of the country.

Last year alone the insurance firm Ecclesiastical – which provides cover for 96 per cent of Anglican churches – received 2,600 claims for metal thefts, the highest ever in a single year.

The Church of England, which alone is responsible for almost half of all grade one listed buildings in Britain, has admitted the task of maintaining its buildings is becoming impossible.

Metal theft is now being viewed as a treated as a serious threat to Britain’s national heritage.

A security campaign called “Hands of Our Church Roofs” is being backed, in traditional style by an actress and a bishop: Liz Hurley and the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres.

The bishop said said: “Since the metal vandals have descended in such hordes over recent years our duty of maintenance has become nearly impossible.

“New Government legislation will undoubtedly help, but we all need to remain vigilant and try to get a step ahead of these well-organised raiders.”

Miss Hurley said: “Beautiful old churches are at the heart of so many of our communities and I find it truly shocking that anyone would steal lead from a church roof. I heartily endorse the campaign to have alarms fitted.”

North America could be hit with decades-long 'megadrought': scientist

By Emma Graney, Postmedia News

When a drought hit North America in the 1930s, creating a giant dust bowl and crippling agriculture from Saskatchewan to Oklahoma, it entered history as the Dirty Thirties.

But University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie St. Jacques says that decade-long drought is nowhere near as bad as it can get.

St. Jacques and her colleagues have been studying tree ring data and, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver over the weekend, she explained the reality of droughts.

"What we're seeing in the climate records is these megadroughts, and they don't last a decade—they last 20 years, 30 years, maybe 60 years, and they'll be semi-continental in expanse," she told the Regina Leader-Post by phone from Vancouver.

"So it's like what we saw in the Dirty Thirties, but imagine the Dirty Thirties going on for 30 years. That's what scares those of us who are in the community studying this data pool."

Tree rings provide the perfect historical record for researchers like St. Jacques, because trees are so sensitive to rain fall.

"If it's a good, wet year then trees have a thick growth band, but if it's a bad year, then there's only a thin band," she said. "By taking core samples we can get a record in parts of North America going back 2,000 years.

"Everyone was aware of droughts that hit very hard in their area, but it wasn't until recently when thousands of people pooled their data . . . and we all looked around at each other and said, 'Oh my God.'"

The big concern, she said, is that there's no reason a megadrought won't hit the continent again.

"When Europeans settled North America . . . we know from tree ring records that it was a very wet period, and so people's sense of what's normal is probably not correct," St. Jacques said.

"We're certainly very scared in the community, because there's no reason why these things shouldn't come back."

Two human cultures decimated by megadroughts were the Four Corner region — the area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet — and Cahokia, in the central Mississippi Valley.

It was one of the first and certainly one of the largest centres in the area, with more than 20,000 people at its peak in 1075.

"(Cahokia) rose, flourished, it was growing and had major cultural impacts throughout the Mississippi Valley and Midwest, but then they got caught by one of these megadroughts," St. Jacques said.

"Agriculture collapsed. You just can't go on when something like this hits."

While it would be nice to predict when a megadrought is going to occur, St. Jacques says that's just not possible.

"It's certainly a very lively area of research, everyone's very curious why they happen, but we see evidence of these droughts throughout the past 2,000 years in North America and we don't see why it's going to change," she said.

"They could get worse under global warming, for all we know. And that's just it — we don't know."

St. Jacques said her research into megadroughts has hammered home the role politics plays in being prepared.

"You can't cope with these things, or prepare for them, on an individual level," she said.

"You're either going to have to get people out or get aid in, and you need a functioning political system to do that.

"The important thing is to educate people that their sense of a 10-year drought being the worst they could experience, that's false. It could well be multi-decadal, and that's why it's important to keep political and social systems functioning and taking care of everybody."

Citrus fruits may reduce stroke risk in women

by CBC News

Increased consumption of flavonoid-rich foods such as certain citrus fruits may help reduce the risk of stroke in women, suggests a study by European and U.S. scientists.

For the study, published Thursday in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association, researchers analyzed the flavonoid intake of 69,622 women from the U.S.-based Nurses’ Health Study, which has followed nurses since 1976 to assess risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"What our study was showing that specifically that these flavanones present almost exclusively in citrus fruits seem to be associated with a reduction in risk of stroke," Aedín Cassidy, the study's lead author and professor of nutrition at Norwich Medical School in the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, told CBC News.

The total flavonoid intake of the 69,622 women was calculated after they completed food intake questionnaires collected every four years using a U.S. Department of Agriculture database. During 14 years of followup surveys beginning in 1990, 1,803 incidents of strokes were confirmed from the women.

The research found that women who ate high amounts of citrus products, which contain a specific class of flavonoid called flavanones, had a 19 per cent lower risk of ischemic (blood clot-related) stroke than women who didn't consume as much.

Women with the lowest intake of flavonoids took in about 150 milligrams a day or less, compared to more than 470 mg a day by women consuming the highest level.
A piece of citrus fruit normally contains 45 to 50 mg of flavanones.

While previous studies have shown increased consumption of flavonoid-rich fruits and vegetables (preferably five servings a day) may help protect against stroke, researchers conducting the study released Thursday found most of the antioxidant-rich products consumed by the women with lower stroke risk were oranges, grapefruit and their juices.

The women with higher total flavonoid intake also tended to:

* Smoke less.
* Exercise more.
* Have greater intakes of fibre, folate, fruits and vegetables.
* Have lower intakes of caffeine and alcohol.

Cassidy said flavonoids are thought to provide protection against stroke through several mechanisms, including improving blood vessel function and having an anti-inflammatory effect.

The researchers warn that further studies, which may include randomized trials of citrus-based foods, are needed to confirm their findings.

Other researchers in the study, supported with grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, are from the United States and Italy. A couple of the researchers have received funding from pharmaceutical companies to conduct studies on flavonoid-rich foods in the past.

WHITNEY GRAVE ROBBERS

By Aaron Tinney

ARMED guards are protecting Whitney Houston’s grave from bling-hunting robbers.

Fears that ghouls will plunder her resting place were triggered after it was revealed she was buried wearing up to £300,000 of jewels and designer clothes.

The singer, who died a fortnight ago in her LA hotel room after a drugs and booze binge, lies in a gold-lined coffin worth tens of thousands of pounds.

She is draped in a purple gown and also wears a diamond brooch and earrings and a pair of glittering gold slippers.

But the treasure-filled casket has caused alarm among the star’s family and friends.

And now minders have been ordered to watch over her grave-side at Fairview Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.

A source said last night: “There is a very genuine fear that her coffin will be targeted by grave robbers.

“It would be hard for them to actually dig her casket up, but that won’t stop psychotic fans or people who think it could make them money.

“The fact she was buried with such valuable jewellery is just an invitation to sickos.

“It’s ironic that Whitney, who was most famous for The Bodyguard movie when she was alive, has to have bodyguards even in death.”

Armed security men around Whitney’s final resting place have already turned away busloads of fans who have made “pilgrimages” to her grave.

The ghoul alert is the second trauma that Whitney’s family have faced over the past 48 hours.

They are still reeling after shocking photos of her body lying in an open coffin were published in the US magazine National Enquirer.

US, France, UK, Turkey, Italy prepare for military intervention in Syria

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Despite public denials, military preparations for intervention in the horrendous Syrian crisis are quietly afoot in Washington, Paris, Rome, London and Ankara. President Barack Obama is poised for a final decision after the Pentagon submits operational plans for protecting Syrian rebels and beleaguered populations from the brutal assaults of Bashar Assad’s army, debkafile’s Washington sources disclose.

This process is also underway in allied capitals which joined the US in the Libyan operation that ended Muammar Qaddafi’s rule in August, 2011. They are waiting for a White House decision before going forward.

In Libya, foreign intervention began as an operation to protect the Libyan population against its ruler’s outrageous crackdown on dissent. It was mandated by UN Security Council. There is no chance of this in the Syrian case because it will be blocked by a Russian veto. Therefore, Western countries are planning military action of limited scope outside the purview of the world body, possibly on behalf of “Friends of Syria,” a group of 80 world nations which meets for the first time in Tunis Friday, Feb. 24, to hammer out practical steps for terminating the bloodbath pursued by the Assad regime.

The foreign ministers and senior officials – Russia has excluded itself – will certainly be further galvanized into action by the tragic deaths of two notable journalists Wednesday, Feb. 22, on the 19th day of the shelling of Homs.

Preparations for the event are taking place at the Foreign Office in London. Wednesday, Foreign Secretary William Hague said: Governments around the world have the responsibility to act…and to redouble our efforts to stop the Assad regime’s despicable campaign of terror.”

Hague pointedly said nothing about removing the Syrian ruler. Nor did he spell out the efforts need to stop the campaign of terror. debkafile’s military sources note that he left these issues open because a decision by President Obama about if and how the US will act is pending until the Pentagon submits operational plans to Commander-in-Chief Obama.

The US president is also waiting for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s report on the mood at the Tunis conference. He wants to know in particular if Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and the UAR will support US-led Western intervention in Syria, both politically and financially.

The Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and the French Figaro video-photographer Remi Ochik died Wednesday in the heavy shelling of a fortified building which housed Western journalists making their way into Homs under the protection of Syrian rebels. Three other Western journalists were injured. Western military sources reported Thursday that this undercover Western press center was maintained by the rebels in tight secrecy. The building was practically gutted by a direct hit, suggesting that Syrian forces located it with the help of advanced electronic measures.

Another Western source noted that the journalists covering the atrocities in Homs from this hideout used coded channels of communications protected by anti-jamming and anti-tracking devices. The Syrians must therefore have called on Russian satellites or advanced Iranian electronic systems to locate it.

The authorities in Damascus decided to treat the press hideout as the first step in overt Western intervention in the Syrian conflict. It was accordingly razed totally with its occupants.

Iran court convicts Christian pastor convert to death

By Lisa Daftari

A trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict, ordering a Christian pastor to be put to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, according to sources close to the pastor and his legal team.

Supporters fear Youcef Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested over two years ago on charges of apostasy, may now be executed at any time without prior warning, as death sentences in Iran may be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

It is unclear whether Nadarkhani can appeal the execution order.

“The world needs to stand up and say that a man cannot be put to death because of his faith,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

“This one case is not just about one execution. We have been able to expose the system instead of just letting one man disappear, like so many other Christians have in the past.”

It is also feared that Nadarkhani will be executed in retaliation as Iran endures crippling sanctions and international pressure in response to its nuclear agenda and rogue rhetoric. The number of executions in Iran has increased significantly in the last month.

“This is defiance,” Sekulow said. “They want to say they will carry out what they say they will do.”

The order to execute Nadarkhani came only days after lawmakers in Congress supported a resolution sponsored by Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph Pitts denouncing the apostasy charge and calling for his immediate release.

“Iran has become more isolated because of their drive for nuclear weapons, and the fundamentalist government has stepped up persecution of religious minorities to deflect criticism,” Pitts, a Republican, told FoxNews.com. “The persecuted are their own citizens, whose only crime is practicing their faith.”

The ACLJ has been a major driving force in keeping Nadarkhani’s case in the international spotlight. Many other advocacy groups and human rights organizations also have mounted global campaigns and petitions against the Iranian government, and experts credit Nadarkhani’s international support for keeping him alive.

The ACLJ recently launched a Twitter campaign to publicize Nadarkhani’s case, asking participants to dedicate a daily tweet to “Tweet for Youcef,” stating the number of days he has been imprisoned (currently 863) and ending the tweet with “ViaOfficialACLJ,” sending readers back to the organization’s website where they could learn more about his case.

Tweets have reached 157 countries and over 400,000 people.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 89 members of Congress, along with the European Union, France, Great Britain, Mexico and Germany, have condemned Iran for arresting Nadarkhani and have called for his quick release.

Nadarkhani was arrested in October 2009 and was tried and found guilty of apostasy by a lower court in Gilan, a province in Rasht. He was then given verbal notification of an impending death-by-hanging sentence.

His lawyers appealed the decision under the premise that Nadarkhani was never a Muslim at the age of majority, and the case was sent to Iran’s Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision of execution, provided it could be proven that he had been a practicing Muslim from the age of adulthood, 15 in Islamic law, to age 19, which was when he converted.

The lower court then ruled that Nadarkhani had not practiced Islam during his adult life but still upheld the apostasy charge because he was born into a Muslim family.

The court then gave Nadarkhani the opportunity to recant, as the law requires a man to be given three chances to recant his beliefs and return to Islam.

His first option was to convert back to Islam. When he refused, he was asked to declare Muhammad a prophet, and still he declined.

Iran’s judiciary had delayed in issuing a final verdict, fearing the decision would have far-reaching political implications.

Sources say Nadarkhani has been advised by family members, lawyers and members of his church to remain silent throughout his ordeal, out of fear that authorities may use his statements against him, a strategy commonly employed by the regime.

Franklin Graham questions Obama’s Christian beliefs, calls Santorum ‘a man of faith’

By Elizabeth Tenety

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday raised questions about the sincerity of President Obama’s Christian faith.

When asked by “Morning Joe” panelists why he was willing to say that former House speaker Newt Gingrich was a Christian but expressed doubt that President Obama is, Graham said:

“All I know is that under Obama, President Obama, the Muslims of the world he seems to be more concerned about them than the Christians that are being murdered.”

Graham, who works as president and CEO of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also suggested that Obama became a Christian for strategic rather than spiritual reasons during his time working as a community organizer in Chicago.

Graham was asked by the “Morning Joe” hosts about his past controversial comments about the Muslim lineage of Obama’s father. “You’ve said in the past that since President Obama’s father was Muslim, that President Obama has ‘the seed of Islam,’ I believe you put it, in his blood.”

Here’s how Graham responded:

Graham: “Under Islamic law, under Sharia law, Islam sees him as a son of Islam because his father was a Muslim, his grandfather was a Muslim, his great-grandfather was a Muslim. So under Islamic law the Muslim world sees Barack Obama as a Muslim, as a son of Islam. That’s just the way it works. That’s the way they see it. But of course he says he didn’t grow up that way, he doesn’t believe in that, he believes in Jesus Christ so I accept that. But I’m just saying that the Muslim world, Islam, they see him as a son of Islam.

Morning Joe: But you do not think he’s a Muslim.

Graham: No.

Morning Joe: Categorically not a Muslim.

Graham: Well, I can’t say categorically because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama and we see the Arab Spring and coming out of the Arab Spring the Islamists are taking control of the Middle East. People like Mubarak, who was a dictator, but he kept the peace with Israel. The Christian minorities in Egypt were protected. Now those Christian minorities throughout the entire Arab world are under attack. Newsweek magazine last week, cover story, was the massacre of Christians in the Islamic world from Europe all the way through the Middle East, Africa, into Asia and Oceania. Muslims are killing Christians. And we need to be forcing, demanding, that if these countries do not protect their minorities, no more foreign aid from the United States. They are not protecting the minorities.”

Graham’s remarks came on the heels of comments by GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, accusing Obama of “phony theology.”

The Pew Forum’s polling has found that, despite the president’s candor about his Christian faith, 43 percent of Americans are unsure about his religion, and nearly one-in-five people believe he is Muslim.

At the time, Pew found that “beliefs about Obama’s religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing.”

On “Morning Joe” Graham also commented on the spiritual lives of three of the other potential Republican candidates:

— Rick Santorum: “A very sharp guy, as far as a Christian faith we would be more in line. . . .He is no question a man of faith.”

— Newt Gingrich: “I think Newt is a Christian. At least he told me he is.”

— Mitt Romney:“Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of
the Christian faith.”

Graham’s religious politicking might fit right into our current milieu, but in a 2011 interview with Christianity Today’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Franklin’s father Billy Graham expressed regret for getting too mixed up in politics during his heyday:

CT: If you could, would you go back and do anything differently?

Billy Graham: I would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.

'UFO' photo takes internet by storm

Watch Youtube Video

GLIDING slowly against a backdrop of a rain-sodden sky, it looks completely at odds with its surroundings.

Footage of a 'flying saucer' approaching and then landing at an industrial estate - supposedly near to the infamous Roswell alien landing site in New Mexico - has taken the Internet by storm.

It was recorded by a passenger in a car driving along a motorway. The exact location and time of the extra-terrestrial event is unknown.

However, all may not be as it seems, with many online conspiracy theorists claiming the landing is nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

The video was uploaded to YouTube by Stephen Hannard of Alien Disclosure Group UK.
He commented: 'Possible leaked footage of a UFO arriving then landing at an unknown location in New Mexico.

'Could be one of ours, CGI, or could be the real deal. As always you decide.'

The chief complaint from YouTube users unconvinced by the footage is that the terrain the UFO is hovering over looks distinctly like northern Europe, and nothing like the parched deserts of New Mexico.

The vehicles glimpsed in the footage also appear to be small European cars and lorries, as opposed to their larger American equivalents.

One viewer, 3492crusherdestroyer, writes: 'Can tell this is in the UK, British road signs on the road, European models of cars and trucks in the car park.

'So it's fake but it's well done and still cool.'

Enquirer Runs Whitney Coffin Picture

A photograph apparently showing Whitney Houston in her open coffin has been published on the cover of US magazine 'National Enquirer'.

The chilling picture shows the singer lying dead in her golden casket, clad in a regal purple dress and wearing what looks like a diamond brooch and earrings.

The weekly magazine has run the snap alongside a bold headline proclaiming: "Whitney: The last photo!"

It is understood the photograph was taken inside the Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, New Jersey, where her family attended a private wake last Friday (local time) on the eve of her funeral.

The magazine claims the photo was taken at the private viewing - although does not reveal who took the picture.

Carolyn Whigham, the owner of the Whigham Funeral Home, told MailOnline: "I have spoken with the family about this and they have asked me not to comment on the matter."

Iran cuts down to six weeks timeline for weapons-grade uranium

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Tehran this week hardened its nuclear and military policies in defiance of tougher sanctions and ahead of international nuclear talks. The threat by Iran’s armed forces deputy chief Gen. Mohammad Hejazi of a preemptive strike against its “enemies,” was accompanied by its refusal to allow UN nuclear watchdog inspectors to visit the Parchin facility, following which the IAEA chief cut their mission short.

Western and Israeli intelligence experts have concluded that the transfer of 20 percent uranium enrichment to the underground Fordo site near Qom has shortened Iran’s race for the 90 percent (weapons) grade product to six weeks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said Tuesday night, Feb. 21: “It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin.” This is the site were Iran conducts experiments in nuclear explosives and triggers.

This diplomatic understatement came amid three major reverses in the quest for a non-military solution to halt Iran’s drive for a nuclear weapon:

1.  Iran placed a large obstacle in the path of resumed negotiations with six world powers on which US President Barack Obama had pinned his strategy for averting a war to arrest its nuclear weapon program. This strategy depended heavily on Iran eventually consenting to making its nuclear projects fully transparent, as his National Security Adviser Tom Donilon assured Israeli leaders earlier this week.

The day after Donilon wound up his talks in Israel, the UN inspectors were sent packing empty-handed from Tehran, putting paid to any hope of transparency.

They were also denied an interview with Mohsen Fakrrizadeh, director of the Parchin project and also believed in the West to be the paramount head of Iran’s military nuclear program.

2.  The transfer of 20 percent uranium enrichment to Fordo is taken by Western and Israel intelligence experts to have accelerated  the pace of enriching large quantities of 20 percent enriched uranium to weapons grade and shortened to an estimated six weeks the time needed for arming a nuclear bomb after a decision in Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz explained to the US official that Israel cannot afford to live with an Iran capable of build a nuclear bomb in the space of few weeks.

3. The threat that Iran will not wait for “its enemies” – Israel and/or the US - to strike and will act first.

White House spokesman Jay Carney responded to these reverses by saying Tuesday night: “Israel and the United States share the same objective, which is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” adding, however, “There is time and space for diplomacy to work, for the effect of sanctions to result in a change of Iranian behavior.”

Seen from Israel, Iranian behavior has already changed - and for the worse. Its tactics in recent days have exacerbated the threat hanging over its head from Iran and brought it that much closer.

Senior Israeli military and intelligence sources said Wednesday, Feb. 22, that Israel’s strategic and military position in the Middle East has taken a sharp downturn. The failure of the IAEA mission and the threat of preemptive action from Tehran present the double threat of Iran’s earlier nuclear armament coupled with military action to sabotage Israel’s preparations for a strike on its nuclear facilities.

As one Israeli source put it:  “Since Wednesday the rules of the game have changed.”

World’s First Lab-Engineered Burger Just Months Away

A team of privately funded Dutch researchers have reached a benchmark in the science of bioengineering. Using only stem cells, they’ve managed to grow a strip of muscle tissue in a Petri dish with the aim of eventually developing techniques for the mass production of eco-friendly lab-engineered meat.

By October of this year, Dr. Mark post of Maastricht University hopes to have world-renowned chef Heston Blumenthal of England’s famous Fat Duck restaurant cook-up the world’s first lab-engineered hamburger for an as yet unannounced celebrity taste-tester.

At a total production cost of roughly $320,000, it promises to be the most expensive hamburger ever created.

The research has been sponsored by a single anonymous donor who hopes that the project will pave the way for a more environmentally sustainable approach to meat production, one that cuts down on the enormous resources required in raising cattle while simultaneously the greenhouse gas emissions that result from it.

A fact seldom mentioned in the discussion on global warming is the significant role played by the world’s livestock population in releasing methane gas into the atmosphere—a greenhouse gas that’s some 20 times more harmful to than the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels.

And with the inhabitants of up-and-coming countries like China quickly developing a taste for the luxuries enjoyed by their western counterparts, many fear that meat will become an increasingly expensive item available to an ever smaller percentage of the population.

“Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock,” explained Dr. Post in a recent news conference.

“You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don’t do anything meat will become a luxury food and be very, very expensive.”

Post explained that his team focused their research specifically on growing artificial beef because cattle require more resources per pound of meat than almost any other commercially raised livestock.

“Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more,” he explained to Ian Sample of The Guardian newspaper.

“If we can raise the efficiency from 15% to 50% it would be a tremendous leap forward.”

At the moment, the lab production of beef is still a long and grueling process. Using their current technique, Post’s team individually grew small sheets of muscle tissue, each 1.2 inches long, 0.6 inches wide and 0.02 inches thick. To make just a single burger, the team will have to combine some 3,000 of these sheets together with a few hundred sheets of similarly grown fatty tissue.

Moreover, Post concedes that they’re not yet sure how the meat will taste.

Still, like early computers that required entire rooms full of machines just to make simple computations, this method of meat production is still in its earliest phase. With the speed at which technology develops today, Post believes it entirely plausible that a few more years of research could make their current techniques thousands of times more efficient.

“I’d estimate that we could see mass production in another 10 to 20 years,” he told Sample.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver last week, Post noted that the significance of their burger would be largely symbolic, a “proof of concept.” What it shows, he told an audience of his fellow scientists, is that “with in-vitro methods, out of stem cells we can make a product that looks like and feels and hopefully tastes like meat.”

In addition to the environmentally friendly features of Petri-dish meat (which will, by the way, require some brilliant marketing to sell), it also has the potential to provide significant health advantages. Because the production of the meat is closely controlled at each stage, the scientists speculate that it would be relatively easy to develop meat with additional, targeted health benefits, such as lower levels of saturated fats and higher levels of heart-healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Moreover, the potential to experiment with previously unfamiliar meats is essentially limitless, giving even the most adventurous palettes something to fantasize about.

“We could make panda meat, I’m sure we could,” said Post.

Egyptian Government Daily: U.S. Striving to Divide Egypt into Four Countries

As part of Egypt's crackdown on civil society organizations receiving funding from foreign countries, chiefly from the U.S. – a move that has sparked a crisis in Egypt-U.S. relations – a judicial investigation of these organizations' activities is currently underway. In February 2012, Egyptian authorities announced that a raid on premises of these organizations had yielded maps attesting to a plot to partition Egypt.[1]

Subsequently, the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram published an article by journalist Muhammad Duniya claiming that 30 years ago, on orders from the U.S. administration, renowned scholar Bernard Lewis, FBA and professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, had concocted a plan to divide Egypt into four smaller countries and to partition all the Arab and Islamic countries in the region.

It should be mentioned that similar claims regarding an alleged plan by Prof. Lewis to divide Egypt were mentioned approximately two years ago in a sermon by Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Badi',[2] and a year ago on the Muslim Brotherhood's official website. Duniya's description of the plot, which he attributes to retired general Sameh Seif Al-Yazal, an Egyptian strategic expert, is strikingly similar to the one posted on the Muslim Brotherhood website; in fact, some portions are identical.[3]

Following are excerpts from the article:[4]

"External and Internal Hands are Currently Stirring the Pot in Egypt"

"Recently, several foreign media outlets attempted to revive the old notion of the dubious plan to divide Egypt. This Zionist-American plan aims to divide Egypt into four small countries: the first, in Sinai and the eastern Delta, will be under Jewish influence; the second, a Christian country with Alexandria as its capital, will extend all the way to southern Asyut; the third will be in Al-Nuba; and the fourth, called the barbarian state, will have Cairo as its capital. In the past, some thought that the warnings regarding this dubious plan... were meant to promote [certain] positions. However, the investigation [currently] underway by the Egyptian judiciary regarding illegal funding of civil society organizations has uncovered division maps at the headquarters of an American organization...
"This plan was leaked to the internet a long time ago under the title 'Dividing Egypt'... Several Middle East scholars and researchers decided to revive this idea and posted the division maps online, which indicates that external and internal hands are currently stirring the pot in Egypt...

"The seizure of the partition map of Egypt at the headquarters of an American organization proves the existence of this dubious plan. The basic idea belongs to the British Jewish Orientalist Bernard Lewis, who formulated the most serious plan to fragment the Arab and Islamic world from Pakistan to Morocco, which was published in the journal of the U.S. Department of Defense. But who is this Bernard Lewis?"

Bernard Lewis and the U.S. Department of Defense Conspired to Fragment the Arab and Muslim World

"The strategic expert [retired] general Sameh Seif Al-Yazal says: According to existing information, Lewis was born in London in 1916. He is a Jewish-Zionist Orientalist, and a British national with U.S. citizenship, who graduated from the University of London in 1936. He worked in London as a professor of Middle Eastern and African studies. He extensively researched the history of Islam and the Muslims, and is considered an expert on the topic. His writings insult Islamic history.

"In 1980, with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, [U.S.] National Security Advisor [Zbigniew] Brzezinski said that the dilemma that would face the U.S. from then on was how to spark a second Gulf War, in the wake of the first Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, which would enable the U.S. to consolidate the Sykes-Picot borders. After this statement, the Zionist conspirator historian Bernard Lewis, on orders from the U.S. Department of Defense (the Pentagon), began formulating his famous plan for dissolving the constitutional unity of the Arab and Islamic bloc, one country at a time, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and the North African countries. Each would be fragmented into several small countries according to ethnicity, religion, school of thought, and sect. To this detailed plan he added a set of maps prepared under his supervision, which include all Arab and Islamic countries destined to be fragmented."

One Egyptian Province "Will Be Under Jewish Influence, In Order to Fulfill the Jews' Dream [to Rule] From the Nile to the Euphrates"

"As for the details of Bernard Lewis's Zionist-American plan to fragment the Islamic world, Seif Al-Yazal added that it includes dividing Egypt into four small countries. The first, in the Sinai and eastern Delta, will be under Jewish influence, in order to fulfill the Jews' dream [to rule] from the Nile to the Euphrates. [The second,] a Christian country with Alexandria as its capital, will stretch from the southern part of the Beni Suef [Governorate] to the southern part of Asyut [Governorate], and will also stretch westward... to [the city] of Mersa Matruh. [The third,] a Nubian country, will be integrated with South Sudan, with Aswan as its capital... [This third country] will connect the southern part [of Egypt], which lies between Upper Egypt and North Sudan... to the Berber country, which will stretch from southern Morocco to the Red Sea. [The fourth,] Islamic Egypt, with Cairo as its capital, will include the remaining parts of Egypt. [Those behind the plan] want [this fourth country], too, to be under Israeli influence and become part of Greater Israel, to which the Jews aspire.

"According to the strategic expert [Al-Yazal], all this information clearly indicates that there are those who have been lying in wait for Egypt for years. [These] external elements exploited the violent events that took place after the revolution in an attempt to topple Egypt, realize this plan, and revive the notion of re-dividing Egypt...

"The notion [of partitioning Egypt] has already been discussed in the foreign media, and several conferences were held abroad which explored the possibility of achieving a critical [level of] political fomentation in the Middle East in general, and in Egypt in particular, [favorable] to eventually dividing the largest country in the region into small countries that cannot stand up to the current world blocs.

"Al-Yazal warned against being dragged into the realization of this plan. All groups in the Egyptian public, regardless of trend or stream, should be wary of these ideas, bring them out into the open, and do whatever it takes to stop them."

Oil price hits eight-month high on Iran-Israel war fears

Tensions with Iran have pushed the oil price to an eight-month high above $121 a barrel, and there are fears it could hit $150 before the end of the year.

By Helia Ebrahimi

Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil trader, gave the stark warning about the risk of a record price spike after unveiling its annual results.

The Swiss-based trading house - which is privately owned - said it had notched up record revenues of $297bn for 2011, putting it far ahead of rivals such as Glencore and Trafigura. Vitol’s sales were up 44pc from $206bn last year on volumes of oil, carbon and gas trade of 457m tonnes, up from 399m tonnes in 2010. The company’s results - which do not include profit numbers - are just $78bn shy of BP’s annual revenues.

Ian Taylor, Vitol chief executive, said the likelihood of an Israeli air strike on Iran had increased and was likely to push oil prices to $150 a barrel.

“I used to think this would never happen but everyone you speak to says the Israelis will have a go at striking at Iranian nuclear sites,” he said.

“The day that happens, you have to believe the Iranians throw a few mines in the Strait of Hormuz and for a few hours at least, or maybe more, I cannot see a scenario where prices would not be at that sort of level [$150 a barrel].”

Suspicions over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability have also provoked the US and Europe to ratchet up sanctions and impose tougher financial measures on Tehran. Western diplomats say sanctions aim to cut Iran’s oil revenues. Iran claims its nuclear programme limited to electricity generation - but this has not placated the international community, especially Israel.

The European Union declared it would embargo Iranian oil imports from July 1 - leaving about 500,000 barrels per day which need a new home. But Iran is defiant that it will find other customers to sell its oil to - and retaliated by ordering an immediate halt to oil sales to British and French companies.

Hedge funds and other money managers also jacked up their wagers on advancing oil prices by 14pc, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report.

For Mr Taylor, the price problem is exasperated in Europe by the decline in the value of the euro versus the dollar, which has risen the cost of dollar-denominated oil sales to EU countries.

“The Iranians now want the price as high as possible as they’ve got less volumes to sell. I reckon they are probably quite close to winning based on the numbers. That was what everybody in the industry always thought would be the likely result,” said Taylor.

“The politicians are all avoiding the subject at the moment but as you know oil is extremely expensive, especially in euros,” he said.

Brent crude traded just above $121 a barrel on Tuesday, up from $107 a barrel at the start of 2012 but below a record high of $147 in 2008. In euros, oil was near a record high of €91.8 a barrel last week, compared with a record €93.46 in July 2008.