MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan today: 5.1 , Panama 5.4 ! More info here.

• Japan - Nuclear disaster - Situation Update No. 141 - .Source .

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• House GOP Passes ‘Cut, Cap and Balance’ Plan; Trims Spending by $6 Trillion.(BigGovernment).From the Associated Press:Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to rising support at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation’s looming debt crisis.President Barack Obama and a startling number of Republican senators lauded a deficit-reduction plan put forward earlier in the day that would include $1 trillion in what sponsors delicately called “additional revenue” and some critics swiftly labeled as higher taxes.The president said he hoped congressional leaders would “start talking turkey” on a deal to reduce deficits and raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit as soon as Wednesday, using the plan by the so-called Senate Gang of Six as a roadmap.Wall Street cheered the news of possible compromise as well. The Dow Jones industrials average soared 202 points, the biggest one-day leap this year.Treasury officials say that without an increase in U.S. borrowing authority by Aug. 2, the government will not be able to pay all its bills, and default could result with severe consequences for the economy.But a few hours after Obama spoke at the White House, supporters of the newly passed House measure breathed defiance.“Let me be clear. This is the compromise. This is the best plan out there,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, head of a conservative group inside the House known as the Republican Study Committee.The legislation, dubbed “Cut, Cap and Balance” by supporters, would make an estimated $111 billion in immediate reductions and ensure that overall spending declined in the future in relation to the overall size of the economyIt also would require both houses of Congress to approve a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and send it to the states for ratification.Read the full story here.

• Congressman King Sets Third Hearing on Radical Islam.(Vinienco).The third in a polarizing series of hearings on Islamic terrorism will address the threat posed by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) announced Tuesday.King, who reclaimed the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee in January, made headlines in March with a hearing focused solely on the threat posed by Islamic radicalization within the U.S. Last month, the committee examined the threat posed by convicts converted in prison to twisted interpretations of Islam. Part three is scheduled for next Wednesday, July 27.Fundamentalist Islamic group Al-Shabaab has expanded since 2009 to control most of the southern half of Somalia, fighting the coalition of pro-union forces that control the northeastern portion of the country at the Horn of Africa.Since 2007 the civil war has attracted at least 21 radicalized men from Minnesota’s Somali-American community to emigrate and fight with Al-Shabaab. Most are now back home and on trial for supporting the group, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 2008.“This coordinated and ongoing recruitment and radicalization of young Muslim men in the U.S. is a serious and growing threat to our homeland security and simply cannot be ignored,” King said in a statement announcing the hearing.Terror experts fear the convergence of Al-Shabaab and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based directly across the Gulf of Aden in another lawless country ravaged by civil war: Yemen. The hearing will also examine that phenomenon, King said.AQAP, which counts among its ranks American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki and Saudi bombmaker Khalid Al-Asiri, was behind the 2009 Christmas Day plot against a Detroit-bound airliner and last October’s “printer plot,” in which terrorists sought to blow up air freight shipments over the U.S.Read the full story here.

• Man's call for Obama assassination is free speech, not crime, court rules.(LATimes).A La Mesa man who posted racial epithets and a call to "shoot" Barack Obama on an Internet chat site was engaging in constitutionally protected free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in overturning his criminal conviction.Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against a major presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 a.m. on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama's impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time.A divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that conviction Tuesday, saying Bagdasarian's comments were "particularly repugnant" because they endorsed violence but that a reasonable person wouldn't have taken them as a genuine threat.The observation that Obama "will have a 50 cal in the head soon" and a call to "shoot the [racist slur]" weren't violations of the law under which Bagdasarian was convicted because the statute doesn't criminalize "predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president," said the majority opinion written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt.Read the full story here.More here.

• UN looking to destroy the Jews.(YourJewishNews).The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a decision calling on Israel to immediately cease all archaeological works in the Old City of Jerusalem. In particular, UNESCO, one of the UN’s most prominent and influential agencies, attacked the renovation of the Mughrabi Bridge that links the Western Wall plaza and Temple Mount. The decision, initiated and promoted by Arab states, was adopted by consensus of the Western members of the commission. Indeed, the vote is the latest anti-Jewish initiative launched by the UN office meant to promote culture, education and science around the world. In fact, UNESCO’s robber barons are sanctifying the current global campaign aimed liquidating the legitimacy of the Israeli regime. In 2009, UNESCO designated Jerusalem as “capital of Arab culture,” working with Palestinian Authority officials and key Arab figures to protest against what they described as “the Israeli occupation of Holy Jerusalem.” Other cities granted the title over the years were Algiers, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, Amman, Beirut and Khartoum. The Arabs find it difficult to convincingly portray Israel as usurper of the land as long as the world believes there is a huge connection between the people of the Bible and the land of the Bible. UNESCO is denying this connection by depicting Jewish history in the Middle East as no more than an insignificant, brief sojourn by arrogant colonizers. UNESCO appears to deny that the Jewish people has laid its roots in Israel more than 4,000 years ago, or that 1,000 years before Christ, King David made Jerusalem the Jewish city par excellence, never entirely abandoned even in times of deadly persecution. The City of David in Jerusalem, a major target of UNESCO’s anti-Jewish fury, is now the hottest open archaeological site in the world, with biblical artifacts, ancient burial spots and royal seals. There, UNESCO is using archeology to bash Israel and treats Israeli archeologists as nationalistic martinets.In recent years, UNESCO increased its collaboration with ISESCO, the cultural body of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. According to ISESCO’s propaganda, the Biblical story and the Jewish temples are only fiction, Jewish monuments are Islamic treasures stolen by the Zionists, and Israeli archeological works are criminal acts against Muslims. UNESCO’s ideology portrays the Jews as no more than invading colonizers, while the Muslims who invaded the country and ravaged it in the Seventh Century are, by some inexplicable leap, the descendants of the so called "indigenous Canaanites." In 2010, UNESCO decided that Rachel’s Tomb and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs are “Muslim mosques.” Western countries didn't raise any protest. UNESCO never mentioned that in addition to the famous Tomb of the biblical Patriarchs, Hebron contains also the tomb of the first judge (Otniel Ben Kenaz), the tomb of generals and confidants to Saul and David and the tombs of Ruth and Jesse, David’s great-grandmother and father. There is also no word by UNESCO about the fact that Rachel’s tomb is unanimously revered as the burial site of one of the Bible’s great women, the wife of Jacob, the Jewish blessed mother.In 2001, UNESCO promoted the “Cairo Declaration Document for Jerusalem Antiquities Preservation,” which falsely accused Israel of destroying Islamic antiquities on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem’s Old City in an attempt to divert attention from Palestinian crimes against archeology and history. When the United Nations celebrated its 50th anniversary, UNESCO refused to mention the Shoah in its World War II resolution, intentionally ignoring Israel’s request to include a reference to the destruction of European Jewry. On a final note, a recent UNESCO report on science, Jewish physician and theologian Maimonides is classified as a Muslim named “Moussa ben Maimoun.” So the Rambam - for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon – has been forced to “convert” to Islam by the UN’s revisionist historians. During the Middle Ages, the French Inquisition confiscated and burned Maimonides's books. From the elegant Parisian boulevards, UNESCO’s inquisitors are now following the same dreadful solution of rendering history and the Holy Land Judenrein”Hmmmm.......The 'Vichy Regime' is alive and kicking.Read the full story here.

• Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) blasted Obama last week for his “stupid Social Security tax holiday,” (TheHill).Liberal Democrats are stepping up their attacks on President Obama for his plan to extend a payroll-tax break by a year.Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) blasted Obama last week for his “stupid Social Security tax holiday,” arguing that the money would be better used on more stimulative spending.He and other liberal lawmakers fear the extended tax holiday might make a permanent cut more likely, thus slashing Social Security’s primary funding stream and threatening future benefits.“It’s a unique tax break,” DeFazio said Friday. “You don’t just give away money, you have to borrow money to give away money, to restore the Social Security trust fund. If you’re going to borrow $110 billion, spend it on infrastructure [and] put 4 million people to work instead of pissing away 25 bucks a week, which is what we’re doing now.”With unemployment hovering above 9 percent — and with Obama facing a tough reelection campaign — the White House is hoping that an extension of the payroll-tax holiday will help jumpstart the sluggish recovery. The provision is being viewed as perhaps the only stimulative measure capable of passing as part of a larger package to increase the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit. Republicans who supported the payroll-tax break in December are balking at extending it. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), for instance, said it would be an economic “sugar high” without any long-term benefit.“People notice their change in income, but they don’t necessarily know why,” Pollack said. “It’s horrible politics — because you want to take credit for [putting] more money in people’s paychecks — but pretty decent policy.”Both Pollack and Baker hammered the notion of extending the payroll-tax break to employers, arguing that it would do little to encourage businesses already flush with cash to hire new workers.“They’re already sitting on tons of money,” Baker said. “Why, if you gave them more, would they hire people? “You’re just throwing money away.”Hmmmm........Welcome to the land of the Wizard of  O?Read the full story here.

• Thousands of tax dollars funded a study on penis size in the gay community.(DailyMail).As the country plunges further into debt and with the small task of securing a multi-trillion dollar deal still on the cards, it has emerged that thousands of tax dollars were wasted on a study examining the correlation between a gay man's penis size and his sex life. The study was among several backed by the National Institutes of Health who granted almost $900,000 in one year on this and other studies.The institute has come under scrutiny from a group claiming the agency is wasting valuable tax dollars at a time when the country is trying to control its debt.The Traditional Values Coalition drew attention to the report as part of a six-month investigation into NIH grants for examples of 'institutional waste'.It has not been ascertained how much of the $900,000 grant went to he 2009 report, called The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men, but the coalition release stated that at least $9.4 million went to a ten-year study that included the penis-size research.According to Fox, the grant was administered by NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, and went first to a group called Public Health Solutions and a researcher with the National Development and Research Institutes before going to individual researchers. It compiled data from a survey of more than one thousand gay and bisexual men at events in New York city held for the gay community.Those who participated were given a free movie voucher.Jeffrey Parsons, a professor with Hunter College, said: 'The data were not collected using taxpayer funds. NIH funds were not used to measure anyone's penis size.'He said that the report referenced a much broader 'post-doctoral training programme' of which the penis-study funding was a 'small' part.He said: 'To suggest that $9.4 million dollars was spent to study penis sizes is factually inaccurate and simply designed to create news.'Hmmmmm......In 2012 the seize of the amount of money blown on useless studies will matter.Read the full story here.

• Google Sounds Alarm on Malware Problem.(WSJ).Google said late Tuesday that it will use its search engine to respond to an outbreak of malicious software, or malware, that the company recently uncovered.Writing on Google’s blog, Damian Menscher, a security engineer, said the company discovered “unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers.” After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending the data traffic, he said, Google concluded that the computers associated with the traffic were previously infected with a particular strain of malware.A Google spokesman said the company believes more than a million computers were affected by the malware strain. The malware appears to have been downloaded by people who were fooled by online scams that offered them anti-virus protection but were really malware in disguise.The malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called “proxies,” Menscher wrote. Google plans to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies to help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections, he said.Starting Tuesday, Menscher said, some people will see a prominent notification stating that “your computer appears to be infected” at the top of their Google Web-search results. The notification includes a link to help people “learn how to fix this” by running a system scan of their computer, updating their antivirus software and remove the infections, he wrote.Google’s move against the malware outbreak comes on the heels of incidents such as its public warning that China-based hackers were targeting the Gmail accounts of prominent U.S. officials and human-rights activists, fooling them into giving up their usernames and passwords.Hmmmmm.......What's the next step .......Google preventing you to surf the web when infected?Read the full story here.

• Iran claims to have shot down U.S. drone 'spying on nuclear facility for the CIA'.(DailyMail).A U.S. drone has been shot down while flying over a nuclear facility in Iran, according to Iranian media reports. Ali Aqazadeh Dafsari, a member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told Iran's Fars news agency the unmanned spy plane was flying near the Fordo nuclear enrichment plant in Qom province when it was brought down by Revolutionary Guard soldiers.He did not say when the alleged incident took place.Mr Dafsari claimed the drone was trying to gather information about the nuclear facility for the CIA.The agency also said Iranian military officials had claimed to have shot down 'several enemy drones' in January.'We have experienced similar incidents many times in the past and there have even been drones belonging to the occupying Zionist regime (Israel), the U.S. and Britain which have been shot down in the Persian Gulf during the past seven years,' a senior military officials said at the time.Iran is locked in a dispute with the U.S. and its allies over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme, which the West believes aims to develop nuclear weapons.Iran denies the accusations, saying its nuclear programme will generate electricity and produce isotopes to treat medical patients.A long-held secret, the Fordo site is built next to a military complex to protect it in case of attack.Iran only acknowledged its existence after Western intelligence agencies identified it in September 2009. The facility is reportedly 295ft underneath a mountain.The country has said it is planning to install advanced centrifuges at Fordo to speed up its nuclear activities.Nuclear experts said by increasing enrichment level and its stock of nearly 20 per cent low-enriched uranium, Iran could reach a 'break out' capability that would allow it to make enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon.Hmmmm........Real 'peacefull' country.Read the full story here.

• Prominent Belgian Jewish figure resigned from Brussels University Board to denounce anti-Semitic incidents.(EJP).Jacques Brotchi, internationally renowned neurosurgeon and a member of the Belgian Senate: “I asked if the university of free-examination has not become the university of free anti-Semitism.A prominent figure of the Jewish community of Belgium has resigned from the Board of Free University of Brussels (ULB) after denouncing several grave anti-Semitic incidents within the institution.Jacques Brotchi, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and honorary professor at the ULB, told EJP: “I resigned from the Board of the University Foundation which collects funds for research because I deeply deplored the absence of a strong and appropriate reaction from the university authorities to a succession of anti-Semitic incidents.”In his letter of resignation addressed to the ULB Rector, he wrote: “I don’t feel at home anymore at ULB.” He added, “I asked if the university of free-examination has not become the university of free anti-Semitism.”The Belgian Senate voted last week a resolution tabled by the Socialists urging the Belgian government to recognize a Palestinian state. Jacques Brotchi and two other Senators from the MR (Liberal) party abstained. “We abstained because the resolution doesn’t condemn the political objective of Hamas which is to destroy the state of Israel”, Brotchi explained.The incidents, which have been repeatedly denounced by the Union of Jewish Students of Belgium (UEJB), included the staging of an Israeli military checkpoint on the university campus, the invitation of anti-Semitic French comic Dieudonne to a conference and the absence of reaction to the comments he made, a Nazi-style student feast and the publication of an article in the magazine of Solvay, the economics and management school, in which the author used anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices comparable to those of the Protocols of Elders of Zion.As one student put it, “the situation at the university has become particularly difficult for Jews.”The Union of Jewish Students urged the academic authorities to take measures against the “deteriorating climate” on the campus.Brotchi, who is also a member of the Belgian Senate for the Liberal party, has met the university authorities to explain his decision but he didn’t had the impression they understood the gravity of the situation.“I explained them that I know Jewish families who prefer to send their children study at UCL, the Catholic university,” he told EJP.In an interview published last month by the Belgian weekly Le Vif-L’Express, the Rector, Didier Viviers, flatly denied that his university has become anti-Semitic “because of several regrettable incidents”, and spoke of a ”smear campaign.”According to Brotchi the situation at Brussels University is not isolated. ”It is comparable to what is happening in other universities in Europe and elsewhere with the academic boycott of Israel campaigns where anti-Zionism takes the form of anti-Semitism.” “But this is no reason to stay without reaction,” he added.Read the full story here.

• Egyptology Gains As 'Pharao' Zahi Hawass is Fired.(TundraTabloids).Egypt’s antiquities minister, whose trademark Indiana Jones hat made him one the country’s best known figures around the world, was fired Sunday after months of pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of having been too close to the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Zahi Hawass, long chided as publicity loving and short on scientific knowledge, lost his job along with about a dozen other ministers in a Cabinet reshuffle meant to ease pressure from protesters seeking to purge remnants of Mubarak’s regime.“He was the Mubarak of antiquities,” said Nora Shalaby, an activist and archaeologist. “He acted as if he owned Egypt’s antiquities, and not that they belonged to the people of Egypt.” Despite the criticism, he was credited with helping boost interest in archaeology in Egypt and tourism, a pillar of the country’s economy. But after Mubarak’s ouster on Feb. 11 in a popular uprising, pressure began to build for him to step down.Hmmmm.......Remember the dynamited Afghan Buddha statues? Read the full story here.

• Iranian Ayatollah Ahmad Janati:"Bahrain should be conquered by Islam and Muslims".(AlArabiya).The secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Monday delivered a protest note to Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia over an Iranian cleric’s remarks on Bahrain, a GCC statement said.Abdullatif Zayani gave Ambassador Mohammed Rasuli a note of “official protest from the Gulf Cooperation Council, totally rejecting the provocative and false claims in the Friday sermon of... Ayatollah Ahmed Janati against the kingdom of Bahrain,” the statement said.The note also termed Janati’s remarks “blatant and unacceptable interference” in Bahrain's internal affairs, and called on Iranian officials and the government to “stop issuing false and inflammatory statements” about Bahrain, saying this could harm “good, neighborly relations.”Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said during a Friday sermon on July 8 in Tehran that “the number of the prisoners is increasing day by day. The academics and physicians are fired... what does Bahrain want?”“Their motto is each person a vote. Why should they be killed? The reconciliation meeting is a misdirection ploy. These plans bear no fruit,” he said of a national dialogue in Bahrain.The Shiite Muslim majority in the tiny Gulf kingdom is ruled by the Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa dynasty. The Islamic republic is mostly Shiite.“Bahrain should be conquered by Islam and Muslims, and a day should come when Bahrain is ruled by Islam,” Mr. Janati said.Read the full story here.

• France says Qaddafi could stay in Libya if quits politics.(AlArabiya).Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi could remain in Libya if he quits politics, the French foreign ministry said on Wednesday, under a ceasefire deal to end the conflict with the Paris-backed rebels. “One of the possibilities being considered is that he stay in Libya but on the clear condition that he steps aside from Libyan political life,” the minister, Alain Juppé, told LCI television.“That is what we are waiting for before we start the political process for a ceasefire,” Mr. Juppé said.Two members of Libya’s rebel Transitional National Council were due to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Wednesday. France was the first country to publicly recognize the council and first to launch air strikes against Qaddafi’s military machine when now NATO-led operations began in March.Meanwhile, Russia on Wednesday was to host Mr. Qaddafi’s foreign minister in Moscow as it presses ahead with mediation efforts to end the conflict between his regime and rebel forces.Foreign Minister Abdelati Al Obeidi will be the highest-ranking Qaddafi official to visit Moscow since the conflict with the rebels erupted and is expected to hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.His visit was revealed in a statement by a Russian foreign ministry official to state news agencies a day earlier but formal details of the meetings have yet to be announced.Along with the African Union, Moscow has positioned itself as a potential mediator in the crisis and President Dmitry Medvedev’s envoy has held talks in both Tripoli and the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.“We will continue to search for a compromise,” Mr. Medvedev said on Tuesday while on a visit to Germany. “In my opinion it is reachable.”Mr. Medvedev has strongly backed Western calls for Mr. Qaddafi to quit but Russia has also denied speculation it could be ready to offer the Libyan leader sanctuary.Meanwhile, the pro-Qaddafi Libyan ambassador to Moscow rejected the idea that Wednesday’s meetings could be aimed at finding a formula for Mr. Qaddafi to quit power.“The political future of our country is an internal matter of Libya,” Amir Al Garib told the Moskovskie Novosti newspaper in an interview. “Not one foreign state has the right to interfere in our affairs.”“I assure you that the leader of the Libyan revolution Muammar Qaddafi has no intention of leaving the state and will not discuss any proposals about this.”He said that the main aim of Mr. Obeidi’s visit to Moscow was “finding peace.”Read the full story here.

• Enough weapons 'to start and win a small war' go missing from Italian navy yard.(DailyMail).A massive arsenal of weapons seized by the Italian navy following a tip off from British secret agents has mysteriously ‘gone missing’, it emerged today.The haul, which was described by one military expert as ‘enough to start and win a small war,’ included 400 missiles, 30,000 AK47’s, 5,000 Katuscha rockets, 11,000 anti-tank rockets and 32million rounds.All of the Russian-made weapons had been seized in 1994 by the Italian navy acting on intelligence from British intelligence who had been tracking the vessel they were on following undercover work by a spy.The Italian navy intercepted the freighter Jadran Express as it sailed off the coast of Italy towards the Balkans which was then the scene of bitter fighting as the former Yugoslavia fell apart.Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation and eight people were put on trial in Turin accused of arms trafficking but they were eventually cleared – among them was Russian oligarch Alexander Zhukov whose daughter Dasha is the partner of Chelsea supremo Roman Abramovich.Following the trial an order was signed for the weapons to be destroyed but it has now emerged that they were shipped to a secret naval bunker on the Italian island of Sardinia, which was formerly used by the American navy.Two months ago the weapons were shipped to the Italian mainland on commercial passenger ferries – a massive risk – with the final destination rumoured to be Libyan rebels.Today prosecutors in Sardinia, as well as local MPs, investigating the final destination were told that no information was available as the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s office had slapped a ‘state secret order’ on the weapons.During the original trial in Turin, the court heard how the Maltese registered freighter had been intercepted off the Italian coast and escorted into the port of Taranto.In a tale worthy of any James Bond movie, the trial was told that a secret agent had planted a tracking device on the ship and its movements were being monitored via satellite by British intelligence.Today a spokesman for Sardinia-based prosecutor Riccardo Rossi said: ‘All attempts to get any information from the Ministry of Defence in Rome have proved fruitless as we have been told the episode is covered by State Secret.‘All we want to know is where the weapons are now, were they removed safely and was there any risk to the passengers and crew of the ferry when they were shipped.’Three Sardinian MPs Gian Piero Scanu, Giulio Calvisi and Elio Lanutti have also tabled questions asking the whereabouts of the weapons but have been given no answer.A spokesman at the Ministry of Defence in Rome said: ‘Sorry, we cannot talk about that - there is an embargo of secrecy from the Prime Minister's office which forbids any information.’One Italian military expert who asked not to be named said: ‘With that amount of weaponry you could start and win a small war. It is very odd that they were kept despite an order for them to be destroyed.‘The fact that an order of secrecy has been placed on the whole affair is also very intriguing - you have to wonder if the government has spirited these weapons out of the country.’Read the full story here.

• Syria warns US, French ambassadors not to leave capital.(Emirates24/7).Syria warned the American and French ambassadors Wednesday not to travel outside the capital without permission, two weeks after they angered the regime by visiting a city that has become the center of the country's four-month-old uprising.If the US and French envoys disobey the order, Syria will ban all diplomats from leaving Damascus, Foreign Minister Walid Al Moallem said during a lecture at Damascus University."We did not evict the two ambassadors because we want the relations to develop in the future and in order for their governments to review their stances toward Syria," Al Moallem said."If these acts are repeated, we will impose a ban preventing (diplomats) from going more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) outside Damascus," he said.Syria has come under withering international criticism and sanctions for its crackdown on dissent, which activists say has killed some 1,600 people, most of them unarmed protesters.The regime has banned nearly all foreign media and restricted media coverage, making it nearly impossible to independently verify events on the ground.Read the full story here.

• German Conservatives Welcome Erdogan's EU Threats.(Spiegel).The ongoing dispute over divided Cyprus may escalate problems between Turkey and the European Union after Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan threatened to freeze EU relations when the Greek Cypriots take on the rotating presidency in 2012. The move only serves to further disqualify Turkey's plans to join the EU, German conservatives say.Greek southern Cyprus, a European Union member since 2004, is set to assume the EU's rotating presidency in July 2012. But if the Greek Cypriots don't agree to a deal ending the three-decade division from the Turkish northern part of the island, Turkey will refuse to recognize their EU leadership, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday."Nobody should expect us to consider the administration of Southern Cyprus as an interlocutor," Erdogan said during a press conference after meeting with Dervis Eroglu, the president of northern Cyprus. "We will never consider them as (an) interlocutor and sit at (the) table with them."But Turkey's threats may seem hollow when it comes to the process of joining the EU. Negotiations have been stalled for some time, with no real movement in more than a year. The country formally began talks to join the EU in 2005, but key members have major reservations about accepting the Muslim-majority nation. Germany is among the countries skeptical of Turkey's EU qualifications, and conservatives in the southern state of Bavaria were quick to accept Turkey's threat, saying it showed the country was not ready for membership anyway. "Those who refuse to hold talks with a member state are snubbing the entire EU," said Stefan Müller, a senior member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Erdogan has proven that "he doesn't shy away from attempts at blackmail in the interest of political power," Müller told the daily Rheinische Post. He said that fact further disqualifies Turkey's plans to join the bloc."They can never be an equal partner in the EU," he said. Hmmmmm.........Compare Erdogan and Ahmadinejad who's the most power hungry of both?Read the full story here.

• Hamas in Gaza: Militants prepare for ‘armed uprising’.(JustJournalism).Egyptian broadsheet documents preparations by Gaza Islamic factions for third intifada, as Hamas and other groups reportedly increase training and weapons smuggling. The Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm has reported on preparations by various Islamic militant groups in Gaza, including Hamas, for a third intifida against Israel. According to the in-depth article, these preparations include increased training, mass importing of weapons, and the construction of a network of tunnels throughout the Palestinian territory.‘Special from Gaza: Factions vow imminent armed uprising’ by Sandor Jaszberenyi, is based on first-hand accounts from a variety of sources, including Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum. Barhum admits that the Fatah-Hamas unity process has been suspended until after the Palestinian bid for UN recognition of statehood in September, at which point he envisions a ‘political vacuum’ that will lead to a third intifada:‘“They [Fatah] realized the bilateral talks led them to nowhere. This is why they will try a unilateral move with the UN,” says Barhum. “We have agreed to delay the real reconciliation and the forming of the transitional government until the general assembly is over. The US will veto our request for sure. This will generate a vacuum in our political options. The chances for a third intifada are high, ” he adds.’According to another source, Hamas and other militant groups have been preparing for this intifada since the reconciliation was agreed in May. Stating that the ‘majority of significantly armed factions in the Gaza Strip, like the Naser Salahadin Brigades and Islamic Jihad, agree with Barhum’s assessment’, Jaszberenyi quotes a journalist affiliated with UNRWA, the UN body responsible for refugees in Gaza:“In spite of all the efforts of Israel, Hamas and its allies managed to get weapons through smuggling,” says Walla Karaja, a journalist working for the UNRWA. “Since the reconciliation, the military trainings have increased in the Strip, and, we heard, that huge quantities of weapons arrived from the outside.”’The suggestion that Hamas have recently bolstered their weapons smuggling is endorsed by a Palestinian operator of several commercial smuggling tunnels. Quoted under the pseudonym Omar, he notes the increased activity in Hamas-controlled tunnels:“But one thing is for sure…Hamas reintroduced the taxing of cigarettes and other luxury products from Egypt, because they badly need money. There is a huge movement in their tunnels at [night time] as well.”Militants who have been training abroad have also been returning to Gaza in anticipation of a conflict. ‘Abu Seiar’, the alias of a leader of the Nasser Salahadin Brigades, describes how he recently returned from Syria – where his military training included the use of anti-tank weaponry – in order to assist in the construction of a network of strategic tunnels throughout the area:‘“I was called home because I’m an expert in building non-commercial tunnels,” says Abu Seiar, whose job now is to strengthen the existing tunnels and attach new strategic exits. “Others have returned from Lebanon and Iran. Everyone knows that something is going to happen.”’If a third intifada does break-out, it is likely that militants will once again deliberately target Israeli civilians. Khaled al-Batch, from Islamic Jihad, states that everyone in Israel is a target:‘“There are only valid targets over there,” he says, in response to a question about the possibility of attacks on Israeli civilians.’In May, Osama Hamdan, head of Hamas’ international relations department, stated that ‘armed confrontation’ would remain ‘the backbone of the resistance’. Earlier that month, Ismail Haniyeh, de-facto prime minister of Gaza, argued that ‘the Zionist project in Palestine must end’, while a Hamas cleric claimed that:‘In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.Hmmmm......The Obama administration their 'peacepartners'.Read the full story here.

• Marine Le Pen: "France must reach out to the Wallonia".(Fdesouche).Press Release Marine Le Pen, President of the National Front :The political crisis in Belgium is getting worse, not find a solution and cast Walloons and Flemings in a terrible uncertainty. No one welcomes this situation in France and everyone shares the concern of the Belgians.On the eve of National Day of Belgium, it is nevertheless the responsibility of France and the French to reach out to the Walloons. If Belgium were to burst, if Flanders took his independence assumption more credible, the French Republic would be honored to welcome in its midst Wallonia. Historical and brotherly ties between our two peoples are too strong for that France abandoned Wallonia. It is obvious that these important decisions for the future of our peoples can not be taken only after consultation by referendum of the French and Walloons.Poll : Do you agree with the proposal of Marine Le Pen to annex Wallonia (post referendum) in case Belgium burst? Preliminary results of the poll shows a 60% in favor.Hmmmm.....And the Flemish "Separately or Going with The Netherlands?Read the full story here.(GoogleTranslate).

• Turkish female footballer offered newscasting role in Germany.(HurriyetDaily).Filiz Koç, a female Turkish football player who appeared twice for the national team, has been offered a position hosting a sports show on Germany's Sky television channel, daily Milliyet reported on its website Monday.Carsten Schmidt from Sky television said they believed Koç had great potential and that they wanted to train her as a sports newscaster.Koç previously appeared in the TV drama "Tatort" in Germany, where she played the character of Fadime Gülüç, a Turkish football player who is then murdered.Koç was born in Ankara in 1986 but grew up in Hannover, Germany. She followed in her father Savaş Koç's footsteps, also a professional football player, and played at Mellendorf TV, which climbed to German football league's second division.Read the full story here.

• Al-Qaida magazine 'Inspire' 6 Features Guides for Weapons Training and Explosives Manufacturing.(Memri).The "Open Source Jihad" section of the sixth issue of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) English-language magazine, Inspire, released July 19, 2011, offered illustrated guides in weapons use and bomb making.The "Open Source Jihad" section included two parts: the final installment in the "Training with the AK" series and an illustrated guide for preparing acetone peroxide, a primary high explosive. In the latest installment of the "Training with the AK" series, writer Abu Saleh provides illustrations and explanations on various shooting positions. In conclusion, he expresses hope that the series has been helpful to the mujahideen and writes that the next installment of the Open Source Jihad will cover handguns.Hmmmm.....Brought to you by the 'misunderstanders of Islam'?Read the full story here.

• Beam me back Scotty! William Shatner has his Google+ account deleted for 'violating standards'.(DailyMail).William Shatner is no doubt setting his phaser to stun after having his Google+ account deleted for 'violating standards.'The veteran actor had boldly gone where few are yet to venture (i.e. away from Facebook) only to find himself banned from the search engine's burgeoning social network. 'My Google+ account was flagged for violating standards,' Shatner told his 646,327 followers on Twitter this morning. 'Saying hello to everyone apparently is against the rules maybe I should say goodbye?'Google+ is still in beta phase so glitches should be expected. But TechCrunch for one has suggested the ban could have been down to users reporting Shatner's profile as - whisper it - a fake.Of course the fact that Google+ has very strict rules when it comes to user profiles could also be a factor.Rather than allowing people to register an account under a pseudonym, the network insists all profiles must use the name the person goes by in daily life.Either Google realised who they were dealing with or the glitch was quickly resolved because Shatner was back on Plus in time for lunch.'I am back plusers,' he posted on his account.'I still do not know what happened but I will refrain from saying hello again for a while just in case. My best, Bill.'Read the full story here.

• Era of concessions over in Cyprus, PM Erdoğan says.(TodaysZaman).Turkey is no longer prepared to accept the concessions it has agreed to in order to help with the reunification of Cyprus in line with a UN plan back in 2004 and the Turkish side will accept nothing short of recognition of a two-state solution on the island, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.Erdoğan, speaking to a group of Turkish Cypriot journalists ahead of a Tuesday trip to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), said 2012 was a final deadline for a settlement on the island. “We will see if this is resolved by 2012 or not. If it is not, we will have to find solutions ourselves,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency on Tuesday. The news conference took place on Monday.Turkey backed the UN plan, named after former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to reunite the island. The plan, however, failed because it was rejected by Greek Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots, on the other hand, approved the plan in a simultaneous referendum.Erdoğan said the Greek Cypriot side was still expecting the Turkish side to agree to even broader concessions than the ones in the Annan plan, but made it clear that the circumstances have changed. “The Annan plan conditions have changed. We will be coming to [the negotiating] table differently. They [the Greek Cypriots] are still thinking of what more they get can get besides [concessions stipulated in] the Annan plan. Well, excuse us, but the time [of concessions] has passed,” said Erdoğan.The prime minister said Turkey no longer agrees to the return of Güzelyurt (Morphou) and Karpas (Karpaz) to the Greek Cypriots, as envisioned in the Annan plan. “Güzelyurt entirely belongs to Turkish Cyprus. As for Karpaz, the slightest change in its status is unacceptable,” Erdoğan told Turkish Cypriot journalists, although he said the Greek Cypriots would be welcome to visit holy areas in Karpaz.Responding to the question on Maraş (Varosha), which has been fenced off since the Turkish military intervention in the island in 1974, Erdoğan also signaled that there would be no change in the Turkish position as long as the Greek Cypriots maintain “bad faith.” Varosha has been closed to anyone except the Turkish military and UN personnel, deployed on the island on a peace-keeping mission. The Annan plan had provided for the return of Varosha to Greek Cypriot control.Erdoğan dismissed once again withdrawing troops from the island. “We had agreed to withdraw troops under the Annan plan. They [the Greek Cypriots] did not accept it. So, they lost [their chance].”“We speak clearly and firmly. A bi-zonal structure of two states with equal status must be accepted. Whether or not to accept it is up to them,” said Erdoğan.The prime minister also appealed to Turkish Cypriot families to help increase the Turkish Cypriot population of the island. The daily Milliyet, whose reporter in the KKTC was among the group of journalists that met with Erdoğan, reported that the prime minister asked journalists about how many children they had. When a female journalist revealed that she had been married for seven years but had no child, Erdoğan said: “You don't have babies and you also oppose us sending people [from Turkey to the KKTC]. If you don't want us to send people, you need to have babies.”Erdoğan, who has repeatedly called on Turkish families to have at least three children, argued that Turkish Cypriot families must have at least four children.Hmmmmm......."If we can't remove them, than we will breed them out"?Sounds like Erdogan wants the whole of Cyprus.Read the full story here.

• Pro-Christian bill at US Congress mobilizes Turks in Washington.(TodaysZaman).The prospects of adopting a recently introduced bill which blames the Ottoman Empire for “intentional destruction” of its Christian population and which calls on the Republic of Turkey to “safeguard its Christian heritage and to return confiscated church properties” have mobilized both Turkish officials and the Turkish community living in the US capital.Members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs are set to amend the State Department authorization bill with language similar to that of H.Res.306 -- the “Return of Churches” resolution spearheaded by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Howard Berman (D-CA), both members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.In order to be adopted, the amendments need to be approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Observers say even if the House approves the bill, the amendment concerning Turkey is likely to be rejected by the Senate. Still, with both Ankara and Turkish-Americans not wanting to take any chances, an intense lobbying campaign against the bill has been set in motion.Turkish, Azerbaijani and other Turkic-American groups have been holding talks with members of the Congress, while the Turkish Embassy in Washington has mobilized its official lobbyists to lobby against the bill.A number of Armenian and Greek-American groups have, however, been lending strong support to the bill.The resolution, which has been included in the State Department authorization bill, urges the Turkish government to “allow the rightful church and lay owners of Christian church properties, without hindrance or restriction, to organize and administer prayer services, religious education, clerical training, appointments, and succession, religious community gatherings, social services, including ministry to the needs of the poor and infirm, and other religious activities; return to their rightful owners all Christian churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties, including movable properties, such as artwork, manuscripts, vestments, vessels, and other artifacts; and allow the rightful Christian church and lay owners of Christian church properties, without hindrance or restriction, to preserve, reconstruct, and repair, as they see fit, all Christian churches and other places of worship, monasteries, schools, hospitals, monuments, relics, holy sites, and other religious properties within Turkey.”Hmmmmm........."Interfaith dialog in it's 'natural habitat'?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completely different.Captured on film: Is this Alaska's own Loch Ness monster?(DailyMail).A large creature, 20 to 30ft long with humps on its back, moves menacingly through the waters of an Alaskan bay.Filmed by a local fisherman in 2009, the unidentified creature has, of course, already drawn comparisons to Scotland's infamous Loch Ness Monster.Scientists, however, believe that the Alaskan creature could be a Cadborosaurus - a type of sea serpent that got its name from Cadboro Bay in British Columbia and is said to roam the North Pacific.The video is being aired tonight, Tuesday, on Hillstranded, a new Discovery Channel special.Paul LeBlond, former head of the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia, told Discovery News: 'I am quite impressed with the video.'Although it was shot under rainy circumstances in a bouncy ship, it's very genuine.'The Cadborosaurus willsi, meaning 'reptile' or 'lizard' from Cadboro Bay, is an alleged sea serpent from the North Pacific thought to have a long neck, a horse-like head, large eyes, and back bumps that stick out of the water. Sightings have been reported for years. In 1937, a supposed body of the animal was found in the stomach of a whale captured by the Naden Harbour whaling station in the Queen Charlotte Islands, a British Columbia archipelago.Samples of the animal were brought to the Provincial Museum in Victoria, where curator Francis Kermode concluded they belonged to a fetal baleen whale. The animal's remains, however, later disappeared. James Wakelun, a worker at the whaling station, last year said that he saw the creature's body and 'it wasn't an unborn whale.' Like other cryptids, animals whose existence is suggested but not yet recognised by scientific consensus, the Cadborosaurus has existed only in grainy photographs and eyewitness accounts.The 2009 video, therefore, 'adds to its authentication,' said Mr LeBlond, co-author of the book Cadborosaurus: Survivor From The Deep.John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, agrees, describing the video as being 'important.' He said: 'The fishermen simply don't know what they have got in terms of the creatures in this video.' Some scientists have arged down the years that the Cadborosaurus is actually a frill shark or a large eel.LeBlond argues that it cannot be a fish because of the way Cadborosaurus moves. He said: 'It must be a mammal or a reptile, since it oscillates up and down in a vertical plain, which eliminates sideways-oscillating fish.'Andy Hillstrand, star of the Deadliest Catch television show, believes he may have seen a Cadborosaurus while filming Hillstranded.'We saw a big, long white thing moving in the water. We chased it for about 20 minutes.'Spray came out of its head. It was definitely not a shark.'A giant eel may be possible, but eels don't have humps that all move in unison. I've never seen anything like it before.' He speculates that whales, following salmon, might be pushing the animals closer to shores and in the view of humans.While Mr Hillstrand is acutely aware of the controversy and skepticism over such sightings, he believes the fishermen who have reported seeing the animal 'are not a bunch of fruitcakes. These are people who are familiar with the local marine life.'Read and see the full story here.