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0 Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert

Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.

As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.
On the 52 days it rained in the region throughout July and August, forecasters did not predict rain once.
While fascinating, this is not the first time scientists have attempted to mess with Mother Nature. China has been tinkering with cloud seeding for years, not always successfully.
But the idea that countries in the Middle East could actually create rain in this water-poor region could go a long way to solving the area's problems with drought and is considered to be cheaper than desalination. But how controllable the weather can be is still in doubt, and the consequences of meddling with nature at this level are yet to be seen.



Do you still think all these "convenient disasters" happening worldwide are "natural"??

0 Did last year’s flu jab open the door to swine flu?

Large number of "young professionals" getting swine flu is a big mystery

The return of swine flu seems to have taken the health authorities by complete surprise – witness the Government's less than elegant U-turn on reinstating the 'Catch it, Bin it, Kill it' advertising campaign.
Numbers of flu victims were rising steadily through the last weeks of 2010. But it isn't just a question of statistics that is now beginning to worry some of Britain's most accomplished virologists – there's also a mystery which could have profound implications beyond the present epidemic.
Some doctors have spotted that an unusual group in the population has been hit particularly hard by the present outbreak. As one senior virologist put it just before Christmas, "They're the aspirational, professional young middle-aged. They're the sort of people who would have probably had the flu jab the last time round – in order to keep on working, come what may."
The question he and colleagues are now urgently asking is whether last year's jab could have made them more vulnerable to this year's attack by the H1N1 swine flu virus.
"The injection last year could have allowed the current strain an ‘easy entry' to the patient's system in this outbreak," my source said. "Of course, this is a very delicate issue – and could have huge implications for the whole national immunisation strategy."

0 BREAKING: BMJ calls Andrew Wakefield a fraud

This is HUGE: The BMJ, an online medical journal, has accused Andrew Wakefield — the hero of the modern antivaccination movement — of being "a fraud".
 

The skeptic and medical community have been hammering Wakefield for years; his study linking vaccines and autism was shaky from the start, and he suffered a series of humiliating defeats last year: the Lancet medical journal withdrew his paper, he was struck off the UK General Medical Council’s register, and was found to have acted unethically.
Of course, the word "fraud" implies intent; when writing about Wakefield I had my suspicions, but always wrote as if he were just wrong, and not deliberately lying to vulnerable parents.
But deliberate fraud is what he’s now accused of. Brian Deer, an investigative journalist, has written a multi-part series on the BMJ site which slams Wakefield. Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, also writes about this… and just to be clear, she uses the word "fraud" nine times in her editorial. Not surprisingly, it’s been picked up by several news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC.
Deer has been on Wakefield’s case a long time, and has been critical in exposing Wakefield’s shenanigans. Wakefield and the antivaxxers have attacked Deer many times, but their accusations are as hollow as the claims of links of autism to vaccinations. And let’s be clear: vaccines don’t cause autism.
Deer has long shown that Wakefield had a lot of financial incentive to create a fear of vaccines, including lawyers paying him to find a link to autism, as well as Wakefield developing his own version of a measles vaccine. From CNN:
According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers. Godlee said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine and three never had autism.
"It’s always hard to explain fraud and where it affects people to lie in science," Godlee said. "But it does seem a financial motive was underlying this, both in terms of payments by lawyers and through legal aid grants that he received but also through financial schemes that he hoped would benefit him through diagnostic and other tests for autism and MMR-related issues."
 FULL STORY HERE: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/05/breaking-bmj-calls-andrew-wakefield-a-fraud/

0 New Ferrari biometric technology 'reads driver's mind' to adjust car stability

Mind reading apparently is no longer reserved for psychics: it may soon trickle down to automobiles. 

According to global patent applications recently submitted by Ferrari, the sports car manufacturer is developing technologies aimed at monitoring a driver’s mental and physical state, and subsequently adjusting traction and stability controls to suit.
"Drivers tend to miscalculate -- in particular, overestimate -- their driving skill and, more importantly, their psychophysical condition, with the result that driver-selected dynamic vehicle performance simply reflects the driver's wish, as opposed to the driver's actual psychophysical condition and proficiency," Autocar.co.uk quoted Ferrari's application as saying.

The Europe-wide and global patent applications show how Ferrari expects a range of sensors to provide the cars of the future with data on the driver, allowing it to adjust its set-up accordingly.

The application continues, "The biometric sensors may comprise a piezoelectric measuring device for measuring the driver's respiration, a device for measuring the driver's blood pressure and heart rate, a television camera for monitoring the driver's eyes (blink rate) to determine the driver's alertness, a device for monitoring the electric activity of the driver's brain, a device for recording the driver's surface temperature and a device for recording the conductivity of the driver's skin (to determine the degree of perspiration)."

A diagram indicates that sensors would be mounted in the cabin ceiling, dashboard, steering wheel and driver's seat area.

It also includes a manettino dial, indicating that Ferrari intends to continue offering the race-based driver control system.

Ferrari said, "The dynamic performance may be modified to enhance driving safety in the case of a tired or unresponsive driver, and also to enhance driving pleasure and/or performance in the case of an alert, responsive driver."

0 Nintendo warn that it's new 3DS Games May Damage Kids' Eyes

As gamers eagerly await the release of the Nintendo 3DS, a portable console featuring glasses-free 3D technology, the company has issued a warning to consumers.

Nintendo stated that viewing images in 3D may cause damage to the eyes, especially in children younger than six years old.
The disclaimer was posted to Nintendo's Japanese website along with guidelines for proper use of the 3DS device, Fox News reports.
According to a translation of the warning (via Google Translate), Nintendo says that young children's eyes are not fully developed and that prolonged exposure to 3D images could interfere with proper growth in a ways that might not affect an adult's eyes.
Engadget has details: "Nintendo [...] says that children under six shouldn't use the 3D mode at all, since their eyes are still developing, and that parents can use controls built into the 3DS to lock it into 2D mode for children."
Nintendo's warning also informed adult gamers on proper 3D gameplay. "[P]layers are advised that 3D gameplay causes eye fatigue more quickly than 2D gaming and are told to take a break after 30 minutes of play -- and you should quit immediately if you get ill," writesEngadget.

In July, Sony warned of similar issues with its PlayStation 3, amending its terms of service to offer a stark warning for users.
Some people may experience discomfort (such as eye strain, eye fatigue or nausea) while watching 3D video images or playing stereoscopic 3D games on 3D televisions," read Sony Online's amended terms.
The Escapist is now reporting that young children will be barred from using the 3DS console at the upcoming Nintendo World event, which will showcase the device.
Ophthalmologist Michael Ehrenhaus told Fox News that children as old as eight years old may be at risk of developmental damage, but he also said that Nintendo's warning may be a bit extreme. "I don't foresee it as a major issue," Ehrenhaus conceded. "[Nintendo are] just being overly concerned."
In a related report 

0 Shift of Earth's magnetic north pole forces closure of Tampa airport

Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.

The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north pole.
The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of South Tampa.
The busiest runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.
Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signage to their new designations.
The Federal Aviation Administration required the runway designation change to account for what a National Geographic News report described as a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet.

Ref: Tampa Bay Online.

1 Two million UK homes to get British Gas smart meters by the end of 2012

British Gas is to install two million dual fuel smart meters in UK homes by the end of 2012, ahead of the government’s own smart meter roll-out

The race is on. Utility companies across the world are rushing to roll out smart meters to millions of consumer homes and business premises. Across the pond in the US, for example, six per cent of the population has a smart meter. Closer to home, Italian trailblazer Enel, Europe's third-largest energy supplier by market capitalisation, had deployed smart meters to its entire 27 million customer base by 2005. The UK has caught on too, with plans to install a smart meter in every home by 2020 – or three years sooner, if new prime minister David Cameron gets his way. This may all come at a cost: security experts claim that the utilities' haste to deploy smart meters ahead of rivals means that important security implications may have been overlooked.
The type of meter installed will vary from country to country and from one vendor to another, but in essence they will have certain key characteristics: they will measure how much energy a household or business uses, information which will then be fed back in real-time to the utility provider via a GPRS connection. The basic premise is that smart meters allow customers to monitor their own energy use, enabling them to make reductions in consumption and carbon emissions.
A noble intention indeed, but this is not to say that consumers' hands won't be forced somewhat: in fact, meters will be compulsory. “You don't actually have a choice,” explains Joshua Pennell, founder and president of security company IOActive. “If and when the utilities decide to deploy a meter, you cannot ask them to not install one.”
Pennell cites cases in the US where customers tried to discourage their utility provider from installing a meter in their home. “The utility basically said, ‘if you don't allow us to install one, we'll simply remove the old meter and you'll have no power to your home'.”
  

And it's no wonder that the utility companies are so keen to deploy them. The information they collate will be used to devise a series of tiered pricing models. This means, for example, that they can price energy higher at times of peak use, to encourage consumers to use less electricity or gas at these times.

As a result, thrifty customers will save money by opting to use their high-energy appliances, such as washing machines and dishwashers, at off-peak times. It could spell good news for the Government too – if consumers respond to the incentives and use less energy, it may not be necessary to build new power stations. No wonder prime minister David Cameron pledged to commit £1bn to the smart grid project in his manifestos for both the European and UK elections.
This isn't the only benefit for utility companies. It will also cut their costs on two fronts. First, they won't have to foot the bill for staff to go out and read the meters. Second, as first:utility, the Midlands-based energy company discovered, more than 80 per cent of the queries handled by its call centres used to be about billing queries. Now, with smart meters installed, “that figure just falls off a cliff”, according to Mark Daeche, chief executive of first:utility. “The customer can see how much they're using and when they're using it, so it really has reduced the number of disputes quite dramatically,” he adds.
 But it is this detailed information that is at the centre of concerns about privacy. If the energy consumption data collated by a smart meter fell into the wrong hands, it could be useful to burglars, as they would be able to easily deduce whether a property's occupants were likely to be at home or not.
Remote control of your heating
“This is where I see issues of security on the roll-out of smart meters,” admits Daeche. “We know how important it is that this information stays private.” To reduce personal data theft, first:utility, which has more than 20,000 smart meters installed in the UK, encrypts information at the ‘head-end' servers that manage the data collection before it is sent via an SMS packet. It is then decrypted when it reaches the utility provider's system, which manages and monitors the meters.
Trevor Niblock, who is head of security for British Gas smart metering, agrees that privacy is “a really big challenge. We have the potential to collect a lot of information about our customers,” he admits. That could be the least of his worries. By Niblock's own admission, attacks on the head-end system are also a pressing concern. They could cause wide-scale outages – a denial-of-service attack. “If someone were to take control of the head-end, the potential is there to turn off a number of meters,” he says.
British Gas, and parent company Centrica, has gone to some lengths to help mitigate such threats. It employs two full-time staff with experience in security dedicated to the project, as well as a central policy and governance team that establishes the policies and practice standards Centrica has to conform to. It also partners with Deloitte & Touche, which helps the company with things such as penetration testing and risk assessment of its supply chain.
Concerns around security become even more pressing as the proliferation of smart meters paves the way for the implementation of a national ‘smart grid'. “For me, the main concern is that whole areas of countries or cities could be taken out,” explains security expert – and a Jericho Forum founding director – David Lacey. “Not only would the amount of disruption caused be massive, but it also makes you very vulnerable to other forms of attack.”

A main cause for concern is the remote connect/disconnect feature. It pretty much does what it says on the tin: it will allow the utility companies to turn the power on and off without actually having to access the property, as would have been the case previously. And because UK providers want to have this feature across all three main utility services – electricity, gas and water – that will mean all three services can be shut off remotely via a communications channel (such as GPRS) that has been plagued with security issues in the past.

further reading:
http://www.energyhelpline.com/fri/fri/domesticenergy/news/article/800325042
http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/03/two-million-homes-to-get-british-gas-smart-meters-208159/

0 Crocodile Dundee star to sue Australian government for £51 Million

'Crocodile Dundee' star Paul Hogan is to sue the Australian government over accusations of tax evasion.

The actor, who has been investigated for five years by the authorities over claims he has used off-shore bank accounts to conceal his earnings, has blamed the government for damaging his reputation. 

His lawyer Andrew Robinson said, "His earning potential and reputation has been decimated."

The case by the Australian authorities was eventually dropped late last year. Hogan is now reportedly seeking up to £51 million for loss of earnings.

"We already have a film producer and financier who are prepared to testify Mr Hogan's loss of income during the period of investigation has been in the range of $10-15 million (£6.4 - 9.6 million) per annum," added Robinson.

Hogan previously called on the Australian Crime Commission to publicly apologise for branding him "a criminal, a fraud, a money launderer and tax evader".

0 Dogs don't care if their owners are a little nutty

A new study shows that a pet dog doesn't care if its owner is nutty. Researchers at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and at Harvard University have claimed that dogs don't really pick up on rationality.
 
Tell that to these guys
Behavioural researcher Claudio Tennie and his colleagues said that previous experiments that proved dogs can differentiate between rational and irrational behaviour assumed that dogs are able to learn by copying behaviours, which is not at all proven. 
"There doesn't seem to be any social learning in dogs. We couldn't find imitation in dogs. Dogs completely failed to do that," Discovery News quoted Tennie as saying.
 
His team have tried to find such behaviour in dogs - like whether a dog can learn a dog-human ball game by watching - but found none.
 
To examine the matter more closely, Tennie and his team duplicated an earlier experiment to see if it was just the presence of a ball-a highly interesting object to most dogs-that was actually causing dogs to seem to distinguish between rational and irrational acts.
 
"(Tennie and his colleagues) have convincingly shown that ...it is the sight of the ball, rather than assessing rationality of choice of means as a function of the context, that primes the mouth action," said Gyorgy Gergely of Central European University's Cognitive Development Center in Budapest.
 
They then tested whether dogs could distinguish between a human pointing to food with their toe or fingers, with and without hands free (rather like the original experiment with human children).
 
What they found is that the dogs didn't notice the rationality of the act, but took the clue in a more pragmatic way and found the food either way.
 Their experiments are reported in the January issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

0 9/11....What Hijackers?....the alive ones mabey? (VIDEO)



This very well produced video thoroughly examines the FACTUAL reasons the " Official 9/11 story" will never add up, the fact that most of the Hijackers of the planes that day are very much ALIVE and WELL today.

It also goes on to examine a video the world were told (by the CIA) was of  Bin Laden " Accepting Responsibility"  for the attacks...
in reality he NEVER HAS he was in fact only talking about the event.

Further Reading: 
http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/september-eleven/hijackers-alive.htm

0 Bloomfield Police Seek Man In Theft of Nuclear Device...from pizza delivery man.

Police have made one arrest and are seeking a second man in connection with the holdup of a pizza delivery man last week that also netted the bandits a nuclear device.
Bloomfield police are looking for Vaughn Gresham, 19, of 685 Blue Hills Ave., Hartford, in connection with the Dec. 29 robbery.

Gresham and a 17-year-old are accused of robbing the man, then taking his car, which had in it a nuclear density gauge. Police recovered the car and the gauge Dec. 30.

The pizza delivery man was working a second job when he was robbed Wednesday night. His primary job was with MT Group LLC, which owned the nuclear density gauge. The company, concerned radiation would be released if the gauge was tampered with, offered a reward for its return.

Bloomfield police have an arrest warrant charging Gresham with first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, third-degree robbery and carrying a dangerous weapon. Police are asking anyone with information about Gresham's whereabouts to contact them at 860-242-5501, ext. 0.

Police charged the 17-year-old, whose name was not released because he is considered a juvenile, with first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, third-degree robbery, carrying a dangerous weapon and second-degree assault.



http://www.courant.com/community/wallingford/hc-bloomfield-nuclear-pizza-0106-20110105,0,3784759.story

Expect this to happen alot more often in the future.....

0 Another US missile test seen in Guilf of Mexico? (VIDEO)

Missile? seen off Texas coast - 1-2-2011

0 Mass Bird & Fish Die-Offs Go Global, Spark End Times Panic

Brazil, Sweden and New Zealand hit with strange phenomena as speculation rages
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, January 5, 2010

The mass bird and fish die-offs that have affected parts of the U.S. over the last week have now gone global, with Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand becoming the latest countries to experience a phenomena that has sparked both scientific intrigue and apocalyptic panic in equal measure.
Following the sudden deaths of thousands of birds that fell over Beebe Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, in addition to 100,000 dead fish found along a 20-mile stretch between the Ozark Dam and Highway 109 Bridge in Franklin County, 500 dead blackbirds and starlings were subsequently discovered in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.
The mass bird and fish die-offs that have affected parts of the U.S. over the last week have now gone global, with Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand becoming the latest countries to experience a phenomena that has sparked both scientific intrigue and apocalyptic panic in equal measure.


Following the sudden deaths of thousands of birds that fell over Beebe Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, in addition to 100,000 dead fish found along a 20-mile stretch between the Ozark Dam and Highway 109 Bridge in Franklin County, 500 dead blackbirds and starlings were subsequently discovered in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.

Large numbers of dead birds were also found in Kentucky around Christmas and more were found in the following days. Earlier this week, tens of thousands of small fish were found washed up in the Chesapeake Bay area. Despite their deaths being blamed on a cold snap, experts are bewildered that the fish didn’t swim to warmer waters as would be their normal response.

In a separate report emailed to us by an Alex Jones Show listener, more dead birds were seen near St. Louis, Missouri.

“I just wanted to let Alex now that I encountered over a hundred blackbirds killed on Christmas Day. This was about 30 miles south of St. Louis, MO near highway 55. The intersection was covered with them,” states the email.

The phenomenon has now gone global, with dead jackdaw birds falling to their deaths across central Sweden shortly before midnight on Tuesday.

In New Zealand, hundreds of dead snapper have washed up on Coromandel beaches. The fish looked fat and healthy, ruling out the weather or starvation as a cause of death.

“People at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay, on the north-east of the peninsula, were stunned when children came out of the sea with armfuls of the fish and within minutes the shore was littered with them,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, 100 tons of fish (sardine, croaker and catfish) have turned up dead off the coast of Parana over the course of the last week.

“Apart from Paranagua, (Edmir Manoel) Ferreira said the dead fish are starting to appear in other coastal towns,” reports Parana Online. “The dead fish are going to Antonina, and Guaraqueçaba. We need an urgent solution to this,” he warned.

The number of different cases of dead birds and fish around the U.S. and globally has been matched by the myriad of different explanations as to the cause of their demise. While some theories are rooted in scientific verbiage, others have taken on an altogether more spiritual and apocalyptic context.
Large numbers of dead birds were also found in Kentucky around Christmas and more were found in the following days. Earlier this week, tens of thousands of small fish were found washed up in the Chesapeake Bay area. Despite their deaths being blamed on a cold snap, experts are bewildered that the fish didn’t swim to warmer waters as would be their normal response.
In a separate report emailed to us by an Alex Jones Show listener, more dead birds were seen near St. Louis, Missouri.
“I just wanted to let Alex now that I encountered over a hundred blackbirds killed on Christmas Day. This was about 30 miles south of St. Louis, MO near highway 55. The intersection was covered with them,” states the email.
The phenomenon has now gone global, with dead jackdaw birds falling to their deaths across central Sweden shortly before midnight on Tuesday.
In New Zealand, hundreds of dead snapper have washed up on Coromandel beaches. The fish looked fat and healthy, ruling out the weather or starvation as a cause of death.
“People at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay, on the north-east of the peninsula, were stunned when children came out of the sea with armfuls of the fish and within minutes the shore was littered with them,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, 100 tons of fish (sardine, croaker and catfish) have turned up dead off the coast of Parana over the course of the last week.
“Apart from Paranagua, (Edmir Manoel) Ferreira said the dead fish are starting to appear in other coastal towns,” reports Parana Online. “The dead fish are going to Antonina, and Guaraqueçaba. We need an urgent solution to this,” he warned.
The number of different cases of dead birds and fish around the U.S. and globally has been matched by the myriad of different explanations as to the cause of their demise. While some theories are rooted in scientific verbiage, others have taken on an altogether more spiritual and apocalyptic context.

Read full artical here :PRISON PLANET
 

0 Very Strange Happenings is Arkansas

Jan 1st...2,000 black birds fall from the sky in Arkansas, 
Then today 100,000 Dead Drum fish fill local rivers.








2 US drones alone killed 2,043, mostly civilians, in Pakistan during last five years

Islamabad, Jan 2 As many as 2,043 people, mostly civilians, were killed in US drone attacks in northwestern parts of Pakistan during the last five years, a research has revealed.

The yearly report of Conflict Monitoring Centre (CMC) has termed the CIA drone strikes as an 'assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign', and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year ever of causalities resulted in drone-hits in Pakistan. 
According to the report, 134 drone attacks were reported in Pakistan's FATA region in 2010 alone, inflicting 929 causalities. December 17 was the deadliest day of 2010 when three drone attacks killed 54 people in Khyber Agency.

Regarding civilian causalities and attacks on women and children, the report said: "People in the tribal belt usually carry guns and ammunition as a tradition. US drone will identify anyone carrying a gun as a militant and subsequently he will be killed."

"Many times, people involved in rescue activities also come under attack. The assumption that these people are supporters of militants is quite wrong," The Nation quoted the CMC report, as stating.

The document cited the Brooking Institute's research, which suggested that with every militant killed, nearly ten civilians also died.

It also mentioned a related research report of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), which underlined that at least 2,100 civilians were killed and various others injured during 2009, in the ongoing war on terror and drone attacks.

 

"It is unclear whether CIA counter-checks human intelligence with other available sources or not. Because in Afghanistan and Pakistani tribal belt people use to settle their personal enmity by accusing their opponent as militant and passing wrong information to US forces," it stated.

The CMC report also revealed that Pakistan and US were deliberately concealing civilian deaths, and that they lacked any proper mechanism to ascertain civilian deaths, and it also accused the FATA Secretariat for overlooking civilian causalities.
 "Civilian casualties were deliberately overlooked to avert the public reaction," the report said. 
http://newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/198413