US military's top secret X-37B shuttle 'disappears' for two weeks

AMATEUR astronomers are enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with the US military in keeping track of its secret space plane, the X-37B.

The X-37B was launched in April amid much publicity, but scant detail about its true use.

Built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, the X-37B program was originally headed by NASA.

It was later turned over to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.

Only a very select few in the US military know what it's for, but observers on Earth believe they're putting together the puzzle piece by piece.

Several sources claim quote arms control advocates who say it's clearly the beginning of the "weaponisation of space".

In May, avid skywatcher Ted Molczan studied the X-37B's orbit from his home in Toronto and said its behaviour suggested it was testing sensors for a range of new spy satellites.

Since then, the X-37B been arguably the least-secret secret project on the planet, as fellow backyard astronomers joined in the scrutiny, aided by how-to video guides and apps such as the Simple Satellite Tracker.

That is, they did until July 29, when the shuttle disappeared, causing all kinds of consternation and conspiracy theories about its fate.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/us-militarys-top-secret-x-37b-shuttle-disappears-for-two-weeks-changes-orbit/story-e6frfro0-1225909738276#ixzz0xeALET2X

Brawls at the Fed, as the System Comes Down

A senior Washington intelligence source reported this morning that a serious fight has erupted inside the Federal Reserve over hyperinflation, and that people close to the Fed are going to be leaking details, which means the fight will intensify and become more public. He added that that fight is now erupting inside this week's annual Jackson Hole economic summit of the Fed, whose host, Thomas Hoenig of the Kansas City Fed, has publicly dissented from Bernanke's hyperinflationary decisions at each of the last eight meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee. And indeed, sources at that Jackson Hole gathering report that it is an extremely interesting one, especially its off-the-record discussions.

Lyndon LaRouche responded, "I'm not surprised about the brawl in the Fed; for me it's not commentary. I know what's going on. If we don't get rid of this President, you're not going to have a country. We're talking about very short term. I think interpreting events is a mistake, because you're not interpreting the non-events, or the events which are happening but which are not being reported or not being referred to."

Returning to this topic, he added, later: "The break actually happened several weeks ago, and what you're seeing with this Jackson Hole meeting of the Fed, and things like that, is you're seeing reflections of the fact that anybody on the inside knows, without any statistical mumbo-jumbo, that this system is coming down fast."

Similarly, today's Wall St Journal reports that the Aug 10 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, whose decision to purchase hundreds of billions of Treasuries was part of the Weimar-hyperinflationary turn in policy that LaRouche had forecast, was the "most contentious" such meeting in "bubbles" Ben Bernanke's four-plus-year tenure as Chairman.

Click to read more...

WikiLeaks to release CIA paper

WIKILEAKS is preparing to release a leaked CIA paper, the whistleblower website said today.

"WikiLeaks to release CIA paper tomorrow," it said late yesterday in a Tweet also posted on its website, which is already locked in a dispute with the Pentagon over the leaking secret military documents on the Afghan war.

It published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan on July 23 and has said it will publish another 15,000 within the next couple of weeks.

The site, which has also previously leaked information leading to shocking revelations in places ranging from Iraq to Iceland, did not provide any further details about the CIA paper it planned to release.

WikiLeaks has been heavily criticised by US authorities and others for endangering lives with the Afghan leaks, and the site's founder Julian Assange has claimed the Pentagon could be orchestrating a smear campaign against him.

The 39-year-old Australian was at the weekend caught up in a media storm after Swedish prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of rape, only to retract the order hours later.

Authorities are still, however, investigating a separate claim of molestation against Assange, and the former hacker has reportedly hired one of Sweden's top defence lawyers ahead of a looming decision by prosecutors about whether he will be prosecuted.

U.S. Weighs Expanded Strikes in Yemen

WSJ

U.S. officials believe al Qaeda in Yemen is now collaborating more closely with allies in Pakistan and Somalia to plot attacks against the U.S., spurring the prospect that the administration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen.

Such a move would give the Central Intelligence Agency a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely be modeled after the CIA's covert drone campaign in Pakistan.

The U.S. military's Special Operation Forces and the CIA have been positioning surveillance equipment, drones and personnel in Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to step up targeting of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, and Somalia's al Shabaab—Arabic for The Youth.

U.S. counterterrorism officials believe the two groups are working more closely together than ever. "The trajectory is pointing in that direction," a U.S. counterterrorism official said of a growing nexus between the Islamist groups. He said the close proximity between Yemen and Somalia "allows for exchanges, training." But he said the extent to which AQAP and al Shabaab are working together is "hard to measure in an absolute way."

Authorizing covert CIA operations would further consolidate control of future strikes in the hands of the White House, which has enthusiastically embraced the agency's covert drone program in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Click to read more...

Marines find 72 bodies in northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Mexican marines found the dumped bodies of 72 people at a rural location in northern Mexico following a shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen that left one marine and three suspects dead, the Navy reported late Tuesday.

The cadavers of 58 men and 14 women were found at a spot near the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros. It appears to be the largest drug-cartel body dumping ground found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug trafficking in late 2006.

"The federal government categorically condemns the barbarous acts committed by criminal organizations," The Navy said in a statement. "Society as a whole should condemn these type of acts, which illustrate the absolute necessity to continue fighting crime with all rigor."

Mexican drug cartels often use vacant lots, ranches or mine shafts to dump the bodies of executed rivals or kidnap victims. The Navy did not give details on the victims' identities, who had killed them or whether the bodies had been buried.

The discovery of bodies came about when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in northern Tamaulipas state were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by cartel gunmen at a nearby ranch. The man was placed under the protection of federal authorities.

Navy aircraft were dispatched to the scene, and when the gunmen saw them, they opened fire on the marines and tried to flee in a convoy of vehicles.

Click to read more...

Why nobody wants to buy a house

With government bribe money gone, so is any sane demand

By MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Nobody wants to buy a house. Nobody in their right mind, anyway.

Oh, sure, a lot of gullible first-time buyers got lured into the market over the last 18 months to take advantage of an $8,000 federal tax credit (not realizing how little difference that money will make when the first property-tax bill hits at the same time the roof springs a pesky leak and the city hits you with a special assessment for sidewalk repair). But that tax credit has expired -- and, with it, any semblance of demand for homes.

The July data on existing-home sales show just how much the tax credit skewed the housing market in the months it was in effect. Sales plunged 27.2%, the biggest one-month drop on record, and inventories of unsold homes jumped to 4 million, a 12.5-month supply at the current sales pace, the worst level that measure has seen in at least 11 years. Read more on the plunge in existing-home sales.

Because of the original timing of the tax credit -- you had to sign a contract on a house by April 30 and close by June 30 (the closing deadline was later extended to Sept. 30) -- it was obvious that sales would get an artificial boost in June as buyers rushed to beat the deadline (since existing-home sales are reported once they close, not at the contract signing). And, by extension, there would be a big drop in July.

Click to read more...

Calderon says more drug war violence likely ahead

Reuters

Mexican President Felipe Calderon warned on Tuesday that more bloodshed will likely occur as his government continues its campaign to defeat violent drug cartels.

More than 28,000 people in Mexico have died in drug violence since Calderon launched his drug fight when he took office in late 2006, and gruesome attacks are on the rise.

Over the weekend, four decapitated bodies, their genitals and index fingers cut off, were hung upside down from a bridge in a popular getaway outside Mexico City. Another two bodies were dumped near the same bridge on Tuesday, police said.

But Calderon told a local radio station that escalating bloodshed was a sign that the cartels were on the run.

"I don't rule out that there might be more bouts of the violence we're witnessing, and what's more, the victory we are seeking and will gain is unthinkable without more violence," Calderon said. "This is a process of self-destruction for the criminals," he added.

Backed by millions of dollars in U.S. aid, Calderon has sent more than 45,000 troops and thousands of federal police to fight the cartels that are battling over smuggling routes into the United States and Mexico's growing local narcotics market.

Click to read more...

Mexican Govt Impotent: Headless Corpses Hung From Mexican Bridge

The headless bodies of four men were hung upside down by their feet from an overpass in Cuernavaca, an established, wealthy neighborhood outside of Mexico City.

The corpses in their macabre poses were found early Sunday in this area of rich, elite homes. The Morelos State Attorney General's office reports that the victims' heads and genitals were cut off, also missing from the victims were their index fingers.

Police report that the heads of the men were placed along the side of a highway with a hand written sign that stated: "This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdez Villareal".

The South Pacific Cartel which goes by the initials CPS, claimed responsibility for the Murders and beheadings. They are described by local authorities as a recently formed gang responsible for several other brutal and gruesome killings.

Problems Getting Worse

It is hard for some to believe, but the violence connected to Mexico's ongoing cartel drug wars is getting more deadly, more violent. President Felipe Calderon's push to fight the powerful cartels and rival gangs engaged in literal turf wars with police, has helped drive the death toll to unheard of numbers; since 2006, when Calderon took office, drug violence has claimed the lives of more than 28,000 people.

Click to read more...

State Department details Blackwater violations of U.S. law

The company formerly known as Blackwater violated U.S. export control laws nearly 300 times, ranging from attempts to do business in Sudan while that country was under U.S. sanctions to training an Afghan border patrol official who was a native of Iran, the State Department said Monday. 

The alleged violations were spelled out in documents released Monday by the State Department as part of a $42 million settlement with Blackwater that will allow the company, now known as Xe Services LLC, to continue receiving U.S. government contracts.

The agreement appears to spell the end of a three-and-a-half-year, multi-agency federal probe into Xe Services' unauthorized exports of defense technologies and services. While elements of the case were presented to a federal grand jury, the company and its currently serving officers have avoided criminal prosecution. 

The State Department said Monday that Xe Services' alleged violations, while widespread, "did not involve sensitive technologies or cause a known harm to national security." Additionally, it said, they took place while Xe "was providing services in support of U.S. government programs and military operations abroad."

Under the agreement with the U.S. government, the Moyock, N.C., company was levied a $42 million fine, but Xe is allowed to use $12 million of that to strengthen the company's export control compliance programs. Xe won't be barred from further U.S. government contracts, and a government policy of denying most of the firm's export control applications, in place since December 2008, will be lifted. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/23/99561/state-department-details-blackwater.html#Comments_Container#ixzz0xZvSyzZd

Click to read more...

DNA tests reveal 'Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated'

Adolf Hitler is likely to have been descended from both Jews and Africans, according to DNA tests.

Samples taken from relatives of the Nazi leader show that he is biologically linked to the 'sub-human' races he sought to exterminate.

Journalist Jean-Paul Mulders and historian Marc Vermeeren used DNA to track down 39 of the Fuhrer's relatives earlier this year.

They included an Austrian farmer revealed only as a cousin called Norbert H.

A Belgian news magazine has reported that samples of saliva taken from these people strongly suggest Hitler had antecedents he certainly would not have cared for.

A chromosome called Haplopgroup E1b1b (Y-DNA) in their samples is rare in Germany and indeed Western Europe.

'It is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews,' Mr Vermeeren said.

'One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,' adds Mr Mulders in the magazine, Knack.

Haplogroup E1b1b1, which accounts for approximately 18 to 20 per cent of Ashkenazi and 8.6 per cent to 30 per cent of Sephardic Y-chromosomes, appears to be one of the major founding lineages of the Jewish population.

Click to read more...

Job fears grip voters, Obama ratings crumble

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More Americans now disapprove of President Barack Obama than approve of him as high unemployment and government spending scare voters ahead of November's congressional elections, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

In the latest grim news for Obama's Democrats, 72 percent of people said they were very worried about joblessness and 67 percent were very concerned about government spending.

The unemployment rate of 9.5 percent and the huge budget deficit are dragging down the Democrats and eating away at Obama's popularity only 20 months after he took office on a wave of hope that he could turn around the economy.

Another bit of bad economic data arrived on Tuesday when the National Association of Realtors reported sales of existing homes plummeted in July to their slowest pace in 15 years.

Piling the pressure on Obama, the top Republican in the House of Representatives called on the administration's economic team to quit.

Obama's disapproval rating was 52 percent in Tuesday's poll, overtaking his approval rating for the first time in an Ipsos poll. Only 45 percent of people said they approved of the president's performance, down from 48 percent last month.

That number, coupled with a hearty 62 percent who think the country is going in the wrong direction, could spell trouble for Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Click to read more...

Record plunge for home sales could weigh heavily on economic recovery

The pace of home sales in the United States took a sharp turn for the worse in July, falling a record 27 percent from June and raising new concerns about the economy's health.

Sales of previously owned homes fell to an annualized pace of 3.8 million, down from 5.3 million in June and 5.1 million a year earlier. Sales volume fell in all regions of the country, while the median selling price was $182,600, similar to where it stood both in June and a year earlier.

What's surprising is less the decline itself – forecasters had expected sales to cool after the expiration of a special tax credit for home buyers – as the magnitude. Housing-market forecasters had expected about 4.7 million sales for July.

STORY: Existing home sales down. But six cities defy housing gloom.

The July surprise is bad news for the economy in two ways. First, the housing market tends to mirror conditions in the overall economy, and this report amplifies concern that momentum is slowing in the second half of 2010. The stock market sagged further on the housing news Tuesday morning.

Second, in a look further ahead, the news suggests that working through a glut of unsold homes and foreclosed properties may take longer, and weigh more on consumer confidence, than some economists predicted.

The plunge in sales activity raises a stark question: What will it take to bring buyers back to the market?

Click to read more...

Pont-Saint-Esprit poisoning: Did the CIA spread LSD?

BBC

On 16 August 1951, postman Leon Armunier was doing his rounds in the southern French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit when he was suddenly overwhelmed by nausea and wild hallucinations.

"It was terrible. I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms," he remembers.

Leon, now 87, fell off his bike and was taken to the hospital in Avignon.

He was put in a straitjacket but he shared a room with three teenagers who had been chained to their beds to keep them under control.

"Some of my friends tried to get out of the window. They were thrashing wildly... screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and the jumping up and down... the noise was terrible.

"I'd prefer to die rather than go through that again."

Over the coming days, dozens of other people in the town fell prey to similar symptoms.

Doctors at the time concluded that bread at one of the town's bakeries had become contaminated by ergot, a poisonous fungus that occurs naturally on rye.

Biological warfare

Click to read more...

Pre-crime: Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

ABC News

New crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation's capital should reduce not only the murder rate, but the rate of many other crimes as well.

Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.

In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.

If the software proves successful, it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts.

"When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is 'what level of supervision do you provide?'" said Berk.

It used to be that parole officers used the person's criminal record, and their good judgment, to determine that level.

"This research replaces those seat-of-the-pants calculations," he said. 

Technology Helps Determine Level of Supervision Needed for People on Probation or Parole

Murders, despite their frequent appearance on cop dramas and the evening news, are rare crimes. On average there is one murder for every 100,000 people. Even among high-risk groups the murder rate is one in 100. Trying to predict such a rare event is very difficult, so difficult that many researchers deemed it impossible.

Click to read more...

Stiglitz Says Europe at Risk of Double-Dip Recession

Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the European economy is at risk of sliding back into a recession as governments cut spending to reduce their budget deficits.

“Cutting back willy-nilly on high-return investments just to make the picture of the deficit look better is really foolish,” Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor, told Dublin-based RTE Radio in an interview broadcast today.

Euro-area governments stepped up efforts to cut their deficits to below the European Union limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product after the Greek crisis earlier this year eroded investor confidence in the 16-member currency union. While the economy expanded at the fastest pace in four years in the second quarter, the recovery is showing signs of weakening.

“Because so many in Europe are focusing on the 3 percent artificial number, which has no reality and is just looking at one side of a balance sheet, Europe is at risk of going into a double-dip,” Stiglitz said.

Growth in Europe’s services and manufacturing industries slowed more than economists forecast in August and German investor confidence slumped to the lowest in 16 months. Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday that “risks to economic growth are clearly to the downside” in the euro-region economy.

‘Weak Growth’

The average budget deficit in the euro area will probably widen to 6.6 percent of GDP this year from 6.3 percent in 2009, the European Commission forecast in May. The Greek government aims to pare its shortfall, the region’s second largest, from 13.6 percent of GDP last year to 8.1 percent this year and to within the EU limit in 2014, it has said. The country has cut wages and pensions and increased taxes to stave off a default.

Click to read more...

Bank of America sees US double-dip danger from `fiscal chicken'

Ethan Harris, the bank's chief North American economist, said early data for August suggest that "an already weak recovery is getting weaker" with a rising risk of a relapse into recession, yet the two parties seemed determined to outbid each other with austerity measures.

First US soldier killed in Iraq since withdrawal of combat troops

An American soldier was killed by a rocket strike near Basra today, in the first US fatality since the last combat troops left Iraq.

The announcement came amid growing concern that the withdrawal of combat forces will allow security in Iraq to further deteriorate. The past three months have seen a spate of bombings and shootings in the centre and north of the country .

Details of the incident were not released, but Basra airport base, which is still home to about 4,000 US forces, had experienced increased numbers of rocket attacks in recent weeks as the deadline drew near for the withdrawal of combat troops. Two soldiers suffered minor wounds in a rocket strike early last week, and rockets have hit the Green Zone in Baghdad almost daily for the past month.

Around 5,000 US troops will stay in the country until next year, focusing mainly on training Iraqi security forces, but the top US military commander in Iraq said today they could return to combat operations if needed.

General Raymond Odierno told CNN the remaining troops could move back to combat if there was "a complete failure of the security forces", or if political divisions split the Iraqi security forces. "But we don't see that happening," Odierno said.

The last US combat brigade in Iraq crossed the border into Kuwait on Thursday, fulfilling President Obama's pledge to end combat operations by the end of this month.

Click to read more...

Priest's link to IRA bombings covered up

A Catholic priest directed devastating IRA car bomb attacks in the Northern Irish village of Claudy in 1972 and his role was covered up by senior police officers, government ministers and the Catholic hierarchy, an official investigation has revealed.

The government said today it was "profoundly sorry" about the cover-up, while Northern Ireland's Catholic church said it accepted the findings, calling them "shocking".

Nine people were killed and more than 30 were injured when three vehicles exploded on the main street without warning on 31 July. It was one of the worst atrocities of the bloodiest year of the Troubles.

Three of the dead caught up in the mid-morning blast were children. No one was ever charged with the killings, and the IRA at the time denied responsibility.

The long-awaited report by the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, published today, confirms suspicions that Father James Chesney, a priest in the nearby village of Bellaghy, was directly involved in the IRA operation, and suggests his involvement was even greater than previously assumed.

Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives who investigated the attack, the report says, concluded "that the priest was the IRA's director of operations in South Derry and was alleged to have been directly involved in the bombings and other terrorist incidents".

Click to read more...

Government funding for stem cell research blocked by US court

US government funding for research using embryonic stem cells has been thrown into disarray after a judge ruled that it violates laws prohibiting the destruction of human embryos.

The effect of the temporary injunction, by district court judge Royce Lamberth, bars federal funding for studies on stem cells derived from human embryos that are later discarded, which had been allowed by President Obama's executive order last year.

The judge ruled that the research violated the Dickey-Wicker amendment first passed by Congress in 1995, which outlawed the use of taxpayer funds to carry out any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed".

The New York Times reported that the ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at medical research universities across the US: "Scientists scrambled Monday evening to assess the ruling's immediate impact on their work."

The injunction appears to set the scientific clock back to President Bush's executive order restricting federally-funded research to stem cells already in existence by August 2001. But some scientists fear that the scope of the latest ruling may even prohibit research on that basis, since the limited lines of stem cells allowed under the Bush regulations were also derived from human embryos.

The Bush-era policy was overturned by President Obama's executive order in 2009, allowing government funding for research on stem cells produced by privately-funded labs and derived from embryos that would otherwise have been disposed of after IVF treatment.

Click to read more...

N. Korean military exposed in document leak

WTOP

WASHINGTON - A confidential military manual has leaked out of North Korea for the first time, and it's exposing the inner-workings of one of the world's most dangerous rogue regimes.

According to South Korean media outlet Chosun Ilbo, the manual contains instructions on how to make and apply stealth paint that absorbs radar waves so that North Korean military assets can avoid detection during operations.

The 80-page handbook, printed in 2005, was recently smuggled out of the country and acquired by a religious organization.

It instructs infantry to move at one kilometer per hour or slower, and keep a distance of five meters between each other while moving in order to deceive South Korean ground-based radar in frontline areas.

The manual also says North Korea has created fake entrances that are 500 to 1,000 feet away from the actual entrances of its artillery positions.

The North has apparently set up various kinds of fake facilities, including command posts, foxholes, runways and fighter jet and naval bases.