MFS - The Other News

                     Morning Posting.

• Live broadcast info from Japan directly ! Here.

• Libya Live Blog - March 24. Here .(Al-Jazeera)And here (BBC). Latest here.

HT: The Big Picture - Libya: UN air strikes aid rebels - 33 pictures here.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world lots of seismic activity in Japan between 5.1 and 5.6 today. More info here.

• Updated : The wind directions over Japan. Here.

• Latest official Situation Update No. 58.On 24.03.2011 at 04:17 GMT+2.

• The Fukushima nuclear power plant was rocked with new tremors on Wednesday, leading to more tension for engineers who have been working nonstop since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit the country on March 11, causing the plant’s reactors to lose essential cooling mechanisms. Workers have diffused the situation somewhat in recent days by pumping seawater into the reactors, preventing what was close to becoming a serious nuclear disaster. The new quakes hitting the plant reached magnitudes of 6.0, but officials immediately downplayed fears of additional damage at Fukushima. Even though black smoke was seen coming out of the plant’s third reactor, the government claims the situation is not serious. Workers at the plant have restored power to essential lighting that will allow engineers to assess damaged equipment in the hopes of getting the plant's cooling systems back online. Once the cooling systems are functioning, workers can stop pumping seawater into the plant. The reactors will not be usable to generate nuclear energy and electricity because of the application of seawater, but damage to spent-fuel tanks and the reactors themselves need to be assessed and repaired to control radiation. Restoring essential systems could take days, warned international organizations. The seawater, while averting a nuclear disaster, could have caused corrosion and salt build-up that may slow down the process of getting the systems back online quickly.

Situation Update No. 57.On 23.03.2011 at 15:04 GMT+2.

WORK at the No. 2 reactor at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant was halted today after radiation levels of 500 millisieverts were detected. The work suspension came after two workers at the plant were injured while toiling on power restoration. External power was reconnected to all six reactors at troubled Fukushima earlier today, bringing Japanese engineers one step closer to restarting the facility's desperately needed cooling systems. However the continued leakage of radiation was proving a problem at the scene and much further beyond, with fears about continuing contamination of food and water. To put the 500 millisieverts detected at No. 2 reactor into perspective, background radiation levels of around 1.5 millisieverts every year are normal and poses no harm, according to the Australian Cancer Council. Nuclear workers are allowed exposures up to 20 millisieverts annually. "At 100 millisieverts exposure, there will be one additional cancer detected years later for each 100 people exposed," the Cancer Council said in a statement on its website, adding that the cancer risk due to radiation leaks at Fukushima was "minimal." Despite reassurances from authorities, concerns about the potential fallout from the nuclear crisis following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami continued.Source .

• Japan nuclear crisis: Fukushima Fifty pictures from inside nuclear power plant. Here.

• Speaker Boehner Letter to President Obama on Military Action in Libya   Here.

• High-Profile Conservative Group Files Lawsuit Against Obama Administration Over Health Care Waivers.On the first anniversary of President Obama's health care reform act being signed into law, the Washington based GOP super think tank known as Crossroads GPS plans to file a federal lawsuit Wednesday in D.C. District Court against the Department of Health and Human Services.Fox News has learned the group is seeking documents to better understand how HHS makes decisions to grant waivers to the new health care law.At issue is the Obama administration's criteria for granting 1,040 of the temporary health care reform waivers to businesses, labor groups and a handful of states.HHS data suggest more than 2.6 million people, or 2 percent of people with private insurance, will not be required to enter the new federal system.Crossroads GPS submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to HHS on Jan. 7, 2011.HHS acknowledged receipt that day but despite repeated attempts to get a reply, Crossroads says there has been no action taken even though there is a 20-day statutory limit for federal agencies to respond. The group wants to find out who makes the waiver decisions, and with what input and guidance.Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and others have complained about the lack of transparency in the waiver process."The Obamacare waiver program has all the same flaws as the underlying law: unfettered government power, federal bureaucrats picking winners and losers and the appearance, if not the reality, of favoritism to political cronies," said Crossroads President Steve Law. "Until President Obama is willing to grant the entire country a waiver from Obamacare, his administration needs to come clean on how they decide who wins and losers in the waiver lottery."A recent study by The Associated Press says the Obama administration has refused to release any materials in more than one out of three FOIA requests and when it did respond, the average wait times got longer not shorter. Only one out of five "urgent" FOIA requests, according to the AP, received replies in a timely fashion. That too is lower than the previous year.There were 544,360 FOIA requests last year, up nearly 41,000 from the previous year but the government actually responded to nearly 12,400 fewer requests than the year before.Hmmmm......Dictatorship or democracy?Read the full story here.

• Police targeted in Pakistan suicide attack.At least five people are killed and dozens injured in an attack on a police station in the northwest of the country. A suicide car bomber has killed at least five people in northwest Pakistan.Thursday's attack, which targeted a police station in Doaba town of Hangu district, left dozens wounded.Rashid Khan, a senior police official, said the dead included an officer and four passers-by.Hangu is part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province and lies near the troubled tribal regions along the Afghan border where al-Qaeda, Taliban fighters and local rebels have flourished.No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban fighters have regularly carried out attacks in northwest Pakistan in recent years.Fighters linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban have waged a campaign of bomb and suicide attacks across Pakistan, mainly in the northwest, after the military launched major operations against their strongholds near the Afghan border in 2008.Read the full story here.

• Lawmakers, Executives Slam Obama for Boosting Brazil's Offshore Drilling.Republican lawmakers and oil industry executives are slamming President Obama for offering to help Brazil expand offshore drilling while U.S. production struggles to get back on its feet in the wake of the BP spill. The president, on the first leg of his trip to Latin America, said in Brazil over the weekend that his administration wants to assist the Brazilian government "with technology and support" in developing its oil reserves -- a black gold mine he said could hold twice as much oil as U.S. deposits. "And when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers," Obama said. That message struck some at home as bizarre and misguided, considering the administration has stressed the need to wean the United States off foreign oil and move toward alternative fuels."We have abundant energy resources off Louisiana's coast, but this administration has virtually shut down our offshore industry and instead is using Americans' tax dollars to support drilling off the coast of Brazil," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said in a statement. "It's ridiculous to ignore our own resources and continue going hat-in-hand to countries like Saudi Arabia and Brazil to beg them to produce more oil." Fresh off a three-country visit to the region, Obama is trying to improve relations with the powerhouses of Latin America. Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski agreed it's better to encourage production in more reliable Brazil than in the "inherently unstable" Middle East. Still, he called Obama's announcement "puzzling," even "humorous." "More oil that is not concentrated in the Mideast is good for the world and good for America. It would be a lot better if we had the drilling here," Petrowski told Fox News. "And it seems a double standard and it seems somewhat hypocritical to a country that desperately needs jobs ... that we're encouraging other countries to create the jobs that we need." Republicans say the United States needs to develop all resources available, but emphasize domestic drilling and exploration. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., complained that, with his comments in Brazil, Obama is pushing to deepen U.S. dependence on foreign oil. "He appears to believe the answer is to shift our foreign energy dependence from one part of the world to another," he said. Democrats in oil-rich states have also chimed in. "President Obama didn't have to go all the way to Brazil to find a 'new, safe and stable' source of oil. Energy opportunities are right here in Alaska," said Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska.But Shane Guidry, CEO of rig towing company Harvey Gulf International Marine, said that, at a time of economic stress, the U.S. government should concentrate its energy investment inside the United States rather than Brazil. "If you're going to do something for one country, why not do it for yours?" he told Fox News.Hmmmm.....If he wanted to destroy America would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

• British Embassy officials withdrawn from Yemen 'with immediate effect'.Embassy officials in Yemen are being withdrawn from the country with 'immediate effect', the Foreign Office said.The department said only a 'small core' of staff will remain in the country, and it urged other British nationals to leave.A spokesman last night said: 'In light of the rapid deterioration in the security situation in Yemen and the high risk of increased tension in Sana'a and likely protests on Friday 25 March which might result in violent clashes, part of the British Embassy team in Sana'a is being temporarily withdrawn, leaving a small core staff in place.'This will take immediate effect.'The move comes as people have taken to the streets to protest against the regime.Tensions intensified yesterday as the country's parliament granted President Ali Abdullah Saleh's request for sweeping emergency laws that include new powers of arrest, detention and censorship to quash the popular uprising demanding his removal.It escalated the friction between Mr Saleh and a movement that now includes top military commanders, religious leaders and protesting youth.Rival factions of the military have deployed tanks in the capital, Sana'a. In the most brutal show of force against anti-government demonstrators, security forces shot dead more than 40 protesters on Friday.Hmmmmm......Read the full story here.

• Turkey puts F-35 order on hold over US refusal to share technology.Turkey has announced that it is putting the planned purchase of 100 F-35 fighter jets from the US on hold because the Pentagon refuses to share the source code used in the software designed for the aircraft as well as the codes that might be used externally to activate the planes. Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül said on Tuesday, following a meeting of the Defense Industry Implementation Committee (SSİK), that the negotiations over the F-35 procurement tender had not yielded “satisfactory results.” He said, “We will evaluate the order in the next meeting, in light of the progress made in the talks by then.” He said much ground had been covered in the talks in terms of technology sharing, but this was not enough for Turkey to accept the jets. He said the costs of the project had also increased but that the Turkish side had failed to secure the source code and the remote flight codes for the planes for which it will be paying $16 billion. Without the source code, Turkish engineers wouldn't be able to make any changes to the software that operates the jets. The external flight codes are equally important, if not more, as they can be used externally to navigate the jets.Hmmmmm......Erdogan"Now we build our own warplanes"?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheDailyCaller.Uncle Sam shelling out big bucks for government jobs, GOP says time to cut.If you’re one of the millions of Americans still looking for a job, the federal government is hiring, and (especially for the unemployed) the pay is excellent. While private sector job growth creeps along at a snail’s pace, the roster of available federal jobs is booming.The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they’ll pay up to $115,000 a year. Over at the Dept. of Defense, they’ll drop nearly 50k a year for a new mail room clerk, plus the glorious benefits that comes with government work.In Washington, D.C., there are more than 1,000 openings this month alone. These include a “student internship” program at the Federal Housing Finance Agency that pays the equivalent of $48,304 a year; a $155,000-a-year gig at the Peace Corps to ensure the agency is complying with Equal Opportunity Employment standards; and a similar job at the Dept. of Transportation that promises nearly $180,000 a year.Lots of good, high-paying jobs available right now. Sounds great, right?Well, not everyone thinks so.Republican policymakers looking for more ways to slash government spending think Uncle Sam is being mighty too loose when it comes to how he doles out the cash to his employees, and if the GOP has its way, the $115,000 taxpayer-funded Twitter gurus at the Dept. of the Interior could become a thing of the past.The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which held a subcommittee hearing earlier this month to address federal pay rates, is gearing up for even more action, with plans to release a study comparing public worker salaries to similar jobs in the private sector. According to Committee Chair Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the goal is to show the rest of the country just how good federal workers really have it.“It’s abundantly clear that many federal employees are being paid significantly more than their counterparts outside government service,” committee spokesman Ali Ahmad told The Daily Caller. “The committee is working to more fully expose the compensation divide by developing comparisons that don’t just look at salary but also the expensive benefits and job security federal employees have that is rarely found in the private sector.”Issa’s committee wouldn’t be the first to compare federal pay with the private industry. An investigative report from USA Today last year found that “in more than eight out of 10 occupations” federal employees “earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers” and that doesn’t include the government’s generous package of benefits.President Obama in November proposed a two-year pay freeze for nearly two million federal workers, but that would still allow them to collect bonuses and receive automatic pay raises when they move up the ladder on the General Schedule system.Taking the effort even further, Issa has inserted language into the House continuing resolution bill that would stop any pay raises for the rest of the year. The parties are currently negotiating exactly what will be left in the final bill when it reaches the president’s desk, but in this era of budget cuts, it could become increasingly difficult for federal agencies to justify six-figure salaries for Facebook posts.Hmmmm.....Read the full story here.

• HT:NewsRealBlog.Mother Jones Attacks Franklin Graham for Exposing Muslim Brotherhood in Obama Administration.By Lisa Graas.Christian evangelist and humanitarian Franklin Graham has come under attack from the socialist Mother Jones magazine for expressing concern about the Obama Administration’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. With overwhelming proof that Muslim Brotherhood front groups and Islamapologists in the White House are having an impact on America’s foreign and domestic security policy, Mother Jones opts to turn a blind eye, going after Graham for promoting a so-called “conspiracy theory“. At the White House, Graham is out, Islam is in…and Mother Jones is in need of a reality check.In an interview with Newsmax, Graham expressed grave concern for the well-being of Christians around the world who live in Muslim-majority countries, the very same concern shared by the Vatican.The Vatican formed a special committee late last year to address the flight of Christians and the rise of militant Islam in the Middle East. In his New Year’s message, Pope Benedict XVI said Christians suffer more than any other religious group because of their faith. Asked if President Barack Obama was doing enough to protect Christians at home and abroad, Graham says, “No. If anything it’s the opposite.”Graham specifically pointed out President Obama’s failure to speak for Christians in Egypt and other countries while the Muslim Brotherhood has been promoted as a legitimate partner in “democracy“. The Obama Administration stands clearly on the opposite side of the worldwide Christian community in regard to the Islamist vs. Christian struggle in Pakistan and the Arab world. As Christians face a horrific turning point in history marked by “near genocide” as one Iraqi archbishop put it, President Obama has opened his arms to the Muslim Brotherhood. But Franklin Graham? He’s a problem for Mother Jones.Criticizing a minister for saying that a religion that is diametrically opposed to his own is “evil” seems to classify as a new twist on Commandment # 3 of leftist reporting on Islam: Thou Shalt Keep Holy the Name of Islam.Yes, there’s a new Obama-Muslim conspiracy theory on the right: The evangelical son of one of America’s most famous evangelists says that President Barack Obama has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to become part of the US government and influence administration decisions.Hmmmm....'They don't trust me because of my middle name'among a million other things....yes.Read the full story here.

• Google, Yahoo, Skype targeted in attack linked to Iran.A malicious attacker that appears to be the Iranian government managed to obtain supposedly secure digital certificates that can be used to impersonate Google, Yahoo, Skype, and other major Web sites, the security company affected by the breach said today. Comodo, a Jersey City, N.J.-based firm that issues digital certificates, said the nine certificates were fraudulently obtained, including one for Microsoft's Live.com, have already been revoked. A fraudulent certificate allows someone to impersonate the secure versions of those Web sites--the ones that are used when encrypted connections are enabled--in some circumstances. The Internet Protocol addresses used in the attack are in Tehran, Iran, said Comodo, which believes that because of the focus and speed of the attack, it was "state-driven." Spoofing those Web sites would allow the Iranian government to use what's known as a man-in-the-middle attack to impersonate the legitimate sites and grab passwords, read e-mail messages, and monitor any other activities its citizens performed, even if the connections were protected with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. The attacker tested the certificate for "login.yahoo.com," but because it had been revoked, most browsers attempting to communicate with the site would see that it was not a trusted site, Comodo Chief Executive Melih Abdulhayoglu told CNET.The Iranian IP address was linked to the compromise of the European registration authority affiliated with Comodo on March 15, according to another Comodo blog post written by Vice President Philip Hallam-Baker. Several IP addresses were used, but mainly IP addresses were from Iran, a separate incident report says. If Comodo is right about the attack originating from Iran's government, it wouldn't be the first government to have done something like this. Late last year, the Tunisian government undertook an ambitious scheme to steal an entire country's worth of Gmail, Yahoo, and Facebook passwords. It used malicious JavaScript code to siphon off unencrypted log-in credentials, which allowed government to infiltrate or delete protest-related discussions.Many major browser makers already have revoked the fraudulent SSL certificates. Mozilla said last night that "we have updated Firefox 4.0, 3.6, and 3.5 to recognize these certificates and block them automatically." Google Chrome has been updated, and Microsoft said in a security advisory that it was contacted by Comodo on March 16 and "an update is available for all supported versions of Windows to help address this issue." Read the full story here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.What the US should do in Libya.If I were President of the United States.... No, I'm not President of the United States, and the current President won't do anything - particularly in Libya - without asking permission from the 'international community,' but if I were President of the United States, I would do send Special Forces to Libya to do two things. The second is actually more important than the first.Read the full story here.

• Dubai police foil bid to ship 16,000 guns from Turkey to Yemen.Shipment was heading to Saada, said Dubai Police chief.Dubai police have foiled a bid to smuggle 16,000 guns from Turkey to Yemen's northern province of Saada, a rebels' stronghold, Dubai Police chief Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim said Thursday.The guns were seized from a warehouse in Dubai."Dubai police has foiled a major attempt to smuggle arms from Turkey to Yemen," said Tamim, adding that "the shipment consititutes 16,000 guns" and "six Arabs residing in the United Arab Emirates have been arrested"."The shipment was heading to Saada, we can't say to which side, but definitely not to the government," Tamim told reporters.Hmmmm.......Turkey.......Iran.Read the full story here.

• HT:BigPeace.Iranians Chant ‘Death To the Dictator’ During Persian New Year Celebration.On the Persian New Year, March 21, Iranians gathered at the tomb of Hafez, Iran’s national poet. The crowd quickly started chanting “Death to the Dictator” and denounced Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.Read and see the full story here.

• And now for something completely different!60-year hunt for Russian Czars' missing Amber Room may be over after discovery in Germany.The hunt for the missing Amber Room of the Czars has taken a new twist with treasure hunters in a small town in east Germany about to break into a bunker they believe may hold one of the lost wonders of the modern world.The priceless room which once belonged the the King of Prussia Peter the Great was looted by Nazis during WWII and the original wallas have been missing ever since.But now Matthias Gluba, a civil engineer and hobby historian, has triggered the new frenzy after researching wartime records of the town of Auerswalde near Chemnitz.Auerswalde was the place where Hitler built the two biggest guns in history - Dora and Gustav - both mighty railway mounted monsters capable of hurling shells weighing tons.As he probed into the history of the cannons he discovered plans for secret underground workings.Gunter Richter, now 80, is an Auerswalde resident who told Glube that, as a child, he remembered in the Muna Forest outside the town a massive shelter built for munitions works employees that he went into as a boy.The shelter was 'massive,' he recalled, 'big enough for trucks to turn around in.' It vanished off of maps after the war but last week he and Gluba managed to find a ventilation shaft that leads down into a subterranean structure they believe is the old shelter.'If this shipment from Koenigsberg that was guarded by the S.S. was unloaded here, then we owe it to history to open it up and look in there,' he said. Planning permission for an excavation is due to be granted next month.The researchers are expected to enter the bunker in the coming days. It is unclear who will claim ownership of the vast treasure if it is discovered, with many experts putting the value of the room at at least £150m.Read the full story here ,more on the Amber room here.