0 E.L. Rothschild LLC Acquires a Majority Stake in Weather Central, LP

E.L. Rothschild LLC, a private investment company led by Chairman Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and CEO Lynn Forester de Rothschild, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire a 70% interest in Weather Central, LP (www.wxc.com). 

The world's leading provider of interactive weather graphics and data services for television, web, and mobile, Weather Central's highly accurate and personalized forecasting offers businesses and consumers a truly unique suite of science-driven weather information products. The company will continue to operate under CEO and founder, Terry Kelly, as well as current management. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. 

Lynn Forester de Rothschild CEO, E.L. Rothschild LLC

Founded in 1974, Weather Central is a global provider of professional on‐air, online, print, mobile, and enterprise weather solutions and forecasting. With 180 employees, including 70 meteorologists, Weather Central provides dynamic weather graphic systems, proprietary forecast models, and dedication to high-quality customer service. Weather Central has secured a leading 46% market share of North America's weather information delivery market for broadcast and media delivering content to hundreds of millions of viewers. It is the largest provider of broadcast and interactive web weather solutions for media companies in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Weather Central has more than 400 broadcast television clients in 21 countries worldwide. It provides weather forecasts to millions of users daily by distributing real-time personalized forecasts, interactive maps, and storm warnings based on each user's exact address.

Well-known for its advanced technologies, the company pioneered weather computer graphics systems worldwide and continues to innovate, recently releasing the industry's first 1km high-resolution forecast data set available on-air, online, and for mobile devices. Weather Central has used its hallmark scientific approach to secure customers that include network-owned and operated television stations, independent television stations, newspapers, websites, and individual businesses and consumers. From its headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin and its regional offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Berlin, the company's systems provide weather to hundreds of millions of viewers through customer installations worldwide, including those in the U.K., Canada, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, and other countries. Weather Central is also the primary provider of weather technology and delivery to broadcast stations in China.

Lynn de Rothschild shares a laugh with Hillary Clinton

Beyond its core North American and international media operations, Weather Central is also expanding its business for the enterprise, consumer, and mobile markets. The company's offerings for the B2B segment include precise weather products and solutions for a broad base of customers, including insurance, commodities and energy companies, hedge funds, and governments. Weather Central has also developed an extensive suite of consumer-facing digital products that will launch across online and mobile platforms as part of the company's MyWeather® brand in the next few months.

CEO of E.L. Rothschild LLC, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, commented on the acquisition, saying: “Weather Central is a world-class company that is number one in its category, with a history of success, a talented team, and a very bright future. Their products, which are the world's most precise for broadcast, online and mobile forecasting, allow companies and individuals unparalleled insights. Whether designed for an insurance company wanting to alert its customers of an impending hailstorm, a hedge fund trying to monitor agricultural commodities, or a consumer planning a vacation, no one has better information than Weather Central. At E.L. Rothschild, we will use our resources, business experience, and industry insights to build upon Weather Central's current success, and to develop the company's escalating international profile in markets like Latin America and India. We will also be focused on enhancing Weather Central's position as a digital leader in the consumer space.”

Chairman of E.L. Rothschild LLC, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, added: “As a family, the Rothschilds have always been dedicated to the utmost quality of our products and services. With respect to our investments, we focus on entering into long-term partnerships with people who share our values. As weather becomes more extreme around the planet, with greater human and financial ramifications, we believe that Weather Central will play a major role in mitigating damage and improving lives. This is important to the Rothschilds, as it is to Weather Central. We are proud of our new partnership with them."

Terry Kelly, Weather Central's founder and CEO, stated: “Much has changed since we launched Weather Central more than 35 years ago, but our core passion for innovation, customer service, excellence, and vision is stronger than ever. The world today is facing major weather shifts due to climate change, and with an increasingly mobile population, the ability for consumers to obtain highly accurate and personalized information about the weather is more important than ever. With our scientific knowledge and technological edge, we've established a business that is top-ranked in the broadcast market. With E.L. Rothschild, the sky is the limit for Weather Central as we look to expand our success internationally and prepare to launch exciting new digital offerings for consumers.”

ABOUT E.L. ROTHSCHILD LLC

E.L. Rothschild LLC is a privately funded family investment company, which was established in 2003 by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Lynn Forester de Rothschild to oversee a variety of the Rothschilds' global investments. The principals have extensive experience investing in and operating businesses in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, India and South America. E.L. Rothschild LLC employs the strategy of taking a long-term view toward partnership and value creation. The company currently has interests in media, real estate, agriculture and luxury goods, with significant previous positions in financial services, technology and communications.

ABOUT WEATHER CENTRAL, LP

Weather Central, LP was founded in 1974 by Terry Kelly. The company today has an outstanding team of meteorologists, scientists, industry specialists, and creative staff. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, the company is a leading provider of professional on-air, online, print, mobile, and enterprise weather solutions and forecasting in North America and to major customers worldwide. Utilizing the company's dynamic weather graphics, proprietary precise forecast models and data, and patented technology, more than 1,000 partners and hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide benefit from Weather Central's attention to superb weather presentation, forecast accuracy and personalization, and continuous customer support.

0 35 zoo animals freeze to death in northern Mexico

Thirty-five animals at a zoo in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua have frozen to death during the region's coldest weather in six decades.

Serengeti Zoo owner Alberto Hernandez says 14 parrots, 13 serpents, five iguanas, two crocodiles and a capuchin monkey died. He said Saturday that power failures cut off electrical heating at the zoo in the town of Aldama.
Temperatures have dropped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in the area, the coldest weather in 60 years.
Power outages have affected much of northern Mexico, forcing factories and businesses to close. Dozens of people are in shelters. Schools have been closed in Chihuahua state but are expected to open Tuesday as the weather warms.

http://news.mobile.msn.com 

0 U.S company Narus Helped Mubarak Shut Down Internet

0 U.S. warships moored off the coast of Egypt

U.S. officials announced that the U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon) began moving warships to ensure that the ready in case the need arise evacuation of American nationals from Egypt.

The newspaper quoted "Los Angeles Times," officials said the ship "Kearsarge" amphibious assault, carrying 700 to 800 from a survey the twenty-sixth in the Marine Corps (Marines), and ship "bonus" and arrived in the Red Sea and two Ra_ian off the coast of Egypt in the event of deteriorated the situation there.

And Pentagon officials stressed that the possibility of military intervention in Egypt is ruled out completely, stating that the Navy to move the pieces were only for emergency purposes in case the need arise to conduct evacuation of Amriken there.

The officials said that in addition to the Marines, typically includes "Kearsarge" about forty helicopter and jet aircraft "Harrier" can be used in evacuations and other humanitarian operations.

The officials said that in addition to the Marines, typically includes "Kearsarge" about forty helicopter and jet aircraft "Harrier" can be used in evacuations and other humanitarian operations.

They pointed out that more than a thousand of the crew of a ship Kearsarge war were sent to Afghanistan last month, will be deployed temporarily to leave one third of the crew. The United States already in the eastern Mediterranean the aircraft carrier "Enterprise" which the Pentagon announced it was heading to the Suez Canal on its way to the Gulf, but It seems that the crisis in Egypt made the decision keeping them where they are at least temporarily.

http://islammemo.cc

   

0 Disturbed - Land of Confusion

0 New 7/7 inquest: Reveals Bombs Weighed 11 kg (22 lbs) Each...Then How Were they Carried?

BBC News 1st feb 2011

22 lbs of Explosive Sludge

in these Normal sized Rucksacks?

Are they Magic Rucksacks??

here's a few pictures to illustrate what 22lb's really looks like in 
"The Real World"

(with links for authenticity)

 

A lovely 22lb Carp

R8 style wheels...22 lb each

22 lb of Dough

 A 22 lb Turkey (not the story the photo) 

And last but not least...

What every good Magicshow

finishes with..........

A 22 lb Rabbit !

1 litre of water = 1kg, granted this "liquid slop" wasn't pure water, but from what I understand it has to be in a near liquid form when being used as an explosive, Right..now imagine 11 litre bottles of your favourite spring water....now the size of the backpacks, even if at WORST for sake of argument, you were to half the 11 bottles due to the density of the added ingredients....that's STILL 6 litre bottles of spring water each...can you see what I'm getting at here yet??.  That said it was probably why they found it so hard to judge the correct quantity of ingredients, considering the wasted amounts left in the bath and flat(if the new pictures http://bit.ly/fwuYLI have not been staged that is....but one thing at a time)  they could have filled a car/van with this stuff and rammed a shopping centre terrorists never seem to take the simple option.
It's the SIZE of the backpacks Vs the stated VOLUME weight of the "liquid slop" that's my issue, soon as I read it I giggled.

0 Al Jazeera English: Live fullscreen flash Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

http://tinyurl.com/al-jazeera-english-live-stream

0 Fox News Misplaces Egypt, and confusion reigns in the TV newscasts

Moving Egypt to where Iraq should be is pretty odd since someone actually had to do this graphic for it to be posted. Are they just making it up as they go along? Can’t they use the Internet to get a map? How does this sort of thing happen on a network in the first place? 

 (update did a little digging & found that the below picture is actually from an older story from 2009...but it did happen as described and was featured in the huffington post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/fox-news-misplaces-egypt_n_246575.html )

 

                                             Use this for reference boys.

“Autocratic regimes give me the willies.”
Thus spoke the halfwit Geraldo Rivera on Fox News, late on Saturday night. Rivera was discussing the situation in Egypt with Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter whose coverage of the matter of weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq was later discredited. Although Miller had spent time reporting from Cairo, she didn’t have much to say, except the obvious, about Egypt.
Rivera plowed on, eventually putting his hands over his mouth and shouting, “Mubarak, get out.” And then announcing, “That’s my editorial.” 

Perhaps Fox News was airing this baloney on the assumption that nobody was watching, it being near 11 p.m. ET on a Saturday. At the same time, over on CNN, anchor Don Lemon was talking to a man named Moawad, an Egyptian living in the United States. The conversation, such as it was, veered into black comedy. Lemon asked, “What brought you here? Was it the situation there? What made you come?” And Moawad replied, “My wife.” From there it went like this, Q: “It was your wife?” A: “Yes.” Q: “Would you feel safe going back at this point?” Mr. Moawad looked round as if he’d been the victim of a prank.

The screens in the studio were showing endless footage of chaos on the streets of Cairo.
Watching TV coverage of the crisis in Egypt over the weekend was not always such a bizarre experience, but it was a bracing reminder of the limitations of TV news at such times. First, the Egyptian government’s shutdown of the Internet and other communications methods meant that most TV coverage relied on a limited amount of footage being repeated endlessly. Often, on CBC NN, a reporter was on the phone while footage that was not connected to the report aired. CNN went in for punditry over the weekend, having very limited access to knowledge of what was happening on the ground. Sometimes, they were talking to American tourists in Cairo who peered out the window and described what they saw.

The most incisive coverage came, of course, from Al Jazeera English, which is easily available in Canada, unlike the U.S. market, where it is rarely offered to cable or satellite customers. Here, anyone can get it at a cost of about $2 a month. This is a situation in which Al Jazeera surges to the fore in coverage – it knows the region better than any other broadcaster and is better staffed there than any other outfit. The seriousness of its journalism stands in startling contrast to what CNN and Fox offer,

Right after Geraldo Rivera did his shouting, and said, “That’s my editorial,” he laughed. Though it was more of a giggle. Darn funny fella, that halfwit. Darn funny situation, Egypt, isn’t it?

original article:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/ 

0 Guns and Butter Wednesday, 26 January 2011 "Cognitive Infiltration"

"Cognitive Infiltration"

with Tod Fletcher.

Produced and hosted by Bonnie Faulkner.

We discuss David Ray Griffin's newest book, Cognitive Infiltration, which is a deconstruction and debunking of Obama appointee, Cass Sunstein's, paper, "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures", in which Sunstein proposes a new government COINTELPRO type infiltration of groups which research and promote ideas and explanations that run contrary to US government narratives, most specifically about the events of September 11th. ;
   
here: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/67100

0 Egyptian Army Intervenes To Protect Protesters From Police Brutality

0 What's Actually Inside the Tear Gas Being Used in Egypt?

 The tear gas grenades being used to quell protestors in Egypt are actually made right here in the USA. They're intended to cause "tearing of the eyes" and "irritation of respiratory tract and mucous membranes". What's inside the tear gas?

 
Ars Technica took a look at some of the tear gas canisters, which are made by Combined Tactical Systems in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, and found that the grenades and canisters are "largely filled with a fuel mixture that burns to disperse the tearing agent." One grenade, the Model 5220 CN Smoke Grenade, has a starter mixture of potassium nitrate, silicon, and charcoal which is used to light CN smoke (a form of tear gas):

The CN smoke is 71 percent fuel, made up of potassium chlorate, magnesium carbonate, nitrocellulose, and… sucrose. The other 29 percent of the smoke is the tearing agent, chloroacetophenone, which has been around for nearly a century and causes severe irritation of the mucous membranes.

That's a lot of stinky stuff and yep, the tear gas lists itself as having a "pungent odor", which one protestor can attest to. He told ABC, "Your eyes tear up a lot so you can't see, and you feel like you're suffocating. You can actually breathe but you feel like you are suffocating so you try to run, but when you run you inhale more." [Ars Technica]

http://gizmodo.com 

0 Airport security officials brand three inch toy gun "firearm"

IT may be three inches long and made of plastic – but that didn’t stop a toy soldier’s gun being branded a “firearm” by zealous airport officials.

Ken Lloyd and his wife bought the “signaller crouching” figurine during a recent visit to the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Garrison.

But when the box containing the figure passed through the scanning machine at Gatwick airport, security officials declared the tiny plastic rifle a “firearm”.

Husband, Ken Lloyd, said his wife had demanded “a reality check”.

“The antenna was individually scanned as suspect and as the figurine’s SA80 rifle was pulled from the box, the security search officer contacted her supervisor,” he said.

Mrs Lloyd was directed back to the airport concourse and made her way to a branch of WH Smith and bought a padded envelope to post the rifle home.

“The two patrolling policemen didn’t seem to mind. They didn’t even notice.

The numerous security people sitting around the concourse didn't leap to their feet as she passed,” said Mr Lloyd.

But when she tried to post the padded envelope, she hit another set back.

“These small padded envelopes are guaranteed to comply with postal regulations anywhere in the world, except Gatwick airport. The security mail slot was too narrow,” she said.

Mrs Lloyd was directed to the airport’s customer service department for suggestions on how to post the envelope.

They agreed to scan the sealed envelope to save reopening it, but it was too light to activate the scanner.

A radio was placed on the scanner and the envelope was X-rayed and posted by the customer service person.

Five days later, it arrived at the Lloyds’ home in Canada.

Royal Signals Museum spokesman Adam Forty said: “The Royal Signals Museum is a military museum and takes security very seriously, especially around military installations and airports, but this does seem more than a little excessive. “The ‘firearm’ is three inches long and cast out of resin. It’s probably just as well we didn’t sell her a toy tank.”

0 Modern Humans Reached Arabia as much as 65,000 Years Earlier

Archaeologists working in the Arabian peninsula are re-documenting the first human migrations out of Africa, and offer new evidence that modern humans reached the Persian Gulf as much as 65,000 years earlier than previously believed.

The international team of researchers said the modern humans might have followed a direct route to the Arabian Peninsula, heading across the Red Sea, rather than traveling via the Nile Valley or the Near East as previous studies had suggested.

The researchers, led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, discovered an ancient human toolkit at the Jebel Faya archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates, which resembled technology used by early humans in east Africa but not the craftsmanship that emerged from the Middle East.

The toolkit included relatively primitive hand axes, perforators and scrapers, suggesting that technological innovation was not necessary for early humans to migrate to the Arabian Peninsula.

The researchers calculated the age of the stone tools using a technique known as luminescence dating, and determined that the artifacts were about 100,000 to 125,000 years old.

"These 'anatomically modern' humans — like you and me — had evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and subsequently populated the rest of the world," said Simon Armitage from Royal Holloway, University of London, lead author of the study.

"Our findings should stimulate a re-evaluation of the means by which we modern humans became a global species."

The researchers also analyzed sea level and climate-change records for the region during the last interglacial period, approximately 130,000 years ago.  They determined that the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which separates Arabia from the Horn of Africa, would have narrowed due to lower sea-levels, allowing safe passage prior to and at the beginning of that last interglacial period.

At that time, the Arabian Peninsula was much wetter than today, with greater vegetation cover and a network of lakes and rivers.  This would have allowed early humans access into Arabia and then into the Fertile Crescent and India, the researchers said.

"Archaeology without ages is like a jigsaw with the interlocking edges removed — you have lots of individual pieces of information but you can't fit them together to produce the big picture," said Armitage. 

"At Jebel Faya, the ages reveal a fascinating picture in which modern humans migrated out of Africa much earlier than previously thought, helped by global fluctuations in sea-level and climate change in the Arabian Peninsula."

The study appears in the January 28 issue of the journal Science.

http://www.redorbit.com 

http://www.independent.co.uk/ 

0 Graph Visualizes Egypt's Internet Blackout (PICTURE)

San Francisco-based CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O’Brien has worked globally as a journalist and activist covering technology and digital rights. Follow him on Twitter @danny_at_cpj.

My colleague at CPJ, Mohamed Abdel Dayem, was the first to mail me. "Just a second ago," he wrote, "about 10 contacts of mine all disappeared off instant messaging in unison. That cannot be a coincidence."

That was yesterday, January 27th, at 5:34pm New York time. A stream of similar emails followed. Everyone I knew had lost contact with Egypt. On the wider Internet, the Twitter streams and Facebook updates from Egyptian journalists, bloggers, and others, which had been overwhelming us since the protests on the 25th, had all suddenly gone quiet.
Could it be a coincidence? Internet connectivity disappears all the time, for many reasons, almost always accidental. Sometimes, it's a cut optical fiber. A ship might drag its anchor over a submarine cable. It can be very difficult to determine the true extent or origins of any online disruption.
To find out what was really going on, I posted a message to a mailing list where many of administrators of the American corner of the Internet discuss day-to-day operations. Were they all seeing a similar drop-off in connectivity to Egypt?
At first, the replies were equally anecdotal: someone with a server in Cairo could no longer access it; attempts to reach prominent Egyptian websites were failing. Finally, Andree Tonk at BGPMon, an Internet routing monitoring organization, provided the first concrete evidence of an Egypt-wide shutdown.
Tonk's article is somewhat technical, so let me explain the background. In order to direct traffic across the Internet, a large number of key machines across the Net maintain among themselves a global index of routes. Think of it as a constantly-updated roadmap of how to get from one part of the Internet to another.
At around 5:28PM Eastern, the routes to almost all of Egypt's share of the Internet began to disappear from this global index. Egypt went from having 2903 networks connected to the wider Internet, routed over 52 ISPs, to only 327, via only 26 remaining ISPs. Either because of a physical break in communications, or through a deliberate act by Egyptian ISPs, Egypt was vanishing from the Internet's map of itself.
Craig Labovitz, the Chief Scientist of Arbor Networks, a company that makes some of the Internet's most widely-used traffic-monitoring software, quickly added this more dramatic visualization of what his engineers were seeing (complete with typo):

                                            Arbor Network's traffic analysis for Egypt

This is, Labovitz writes, a "graph of Egyptian Internet traffic across a large number of geographically and topologically diverse providers on January 27th". You can see that traffic plummeting to a "handful of megabits after the withdrawal of most Egyptian ISP ... routes".
Note that both Labovitz and Tonk's analysis showed that not everything was down in Egypt. The rest of my evening was spent working with others to try and find out what was up, and why.
The main network that was completely unaffected by the early lockdown was the systems run by the Egyptian ISP, the Noor Group. There was some early speculation that this was because the Egyptian Stock Exchange was hosted on that network, which led to an online rumor that the service was being kept up to maintain government services.
Actually, Egypt's Stock Exchange was, like any high-availability website, hosted on multiple redundant Internet connections, including Noor. Noor also offered a DSL service to many ordinary Egyptians, which some journalists have been using to communicate.
Right now, we know that there are also some multinational companies that have connectivity (possibly because their internal networks don't use the public net). We've heard talk that "five star hotels" have connectivity also, as well as a handful of other networks beside Noor. SMS seems to be down, but mobile phones are working.
What we don't have is complete answers to why such a drastic Internet shutdown happened. As the hours of Egypt's disappearance from the global Net drag on, I have heard nothing of any catastrophic accident that could explain it. And as foreign journalists in Egypt are locked down in their hotels or are attacked on the streets as Al-Jazeera, AFP, and others are reporting, as local mobile provider Vodaphone admits "all mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas,"the chances that this is all just a coincidence grow slim indeed.

0 Egytpian Government Pull Plug On Internet....Countrywide.

Egypt's Internet Shut Down,

By James Cowie on January 27, 2011 7:56 PM

 

Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.

At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.
This is a completely different situation from the modest Internet manipulation that took place in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked, or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a rate-limited form designed to make Internet connectivity painfully slow. The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.
What happens when you disconnect a modern economy and 80,000,000 people from the Internet? What will happen tomorrow, on the streets and in the credit markets? This has never happened before, and the unknowns are piling up. We will continue to dig into the event, and will update this story as we learn more. As Friday dawns in Cairo under this unprecedented communications blackout, keep the Egyptian people in your thoughts.
Update (3:06 UTC)
One of the very few exceptions to this block has been Noor Group (AS20928), which still has 83 out of 83 live routes to its Egyptian customers, with inbound transit from Telecom Italia as usual. Why was Noor Group apparently unaffected by the countrywide takedown order? Unknown at this point, but we observe that the Egyptian Stock Exchange (www.egyptse.com) is still alive at a Noor address.
Its DNS A records indicate that it's normally reachable at 4 different IP addresses, only one of which belongs to Noor. Internet transit path diversity is a sign of good planning by the Stock Exchange IT staff, and it appears to have paid off in this case. Did the Egyptian government leave Noor standing so that the markets could open next week? 

UPDATE: (2:10 a.m. ET) HuffPost reader Thomas Jaworowski, a tech enthusiast, emails in that he "decided to try a few tricks" to see if Egypt's Internet really was down or it was just server overload causing the problems. He traced IP addresses, particularly for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo which is hosted in Egypt, and found that the Web traffic is indeed being blocked at the country level, not just a simple censoring.

0 Utah's Top Secret Army base locked down after 'serious concern'

Installation works to protect troops from biological and chemical weapons 

A Utah military base that carries out tests to protect troops against biological attacks was locked down over a "serious concern," but was beginning to reopen early Thursday, officials said. Early Thursday, base spokeswoman Paula Thomas said the base, located about 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, had reopened to incoming personnel, and preparations were under way to allow people inside to leave.
She said there were no injuries resulting from the cause of the lockdown, which began Wednesday afternoon. She said more details would be released later in the day.
Col. William E. King, base commander at Dugway Proving Grounds announced Wednesday evening that gates were locked to both incoming and outgoing personnel to resolve the problem, but that no one was in danger.
King and other base officials declined to provide any details on the cause of the lockdown.
"As you know measures like these (lockdown of our gates) are not taken lightly," King said Wednesday, according to NBC station KSL-TV. "No one is in immediate danger but these steps are required."
Thomas called as accurate media reports that about 1,200 to 1,400 people — a mix of military personnel and contractors and civilian workers — were inside the base when the lockdown occurred.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a lockdown began at 5:24 p.m. MST Wednesday, with no one allowed in or out of the base.
According to its website, the nearly 800,000-acre base conducts chemical and biological defense training, and "is the Defense Department's leader in testing battlefield smokes and obscurants."  Personnel there also test military equipment's viability in environments where they're facing chemical or biological threat.
The base also is used by the U.S. Army Reserves and the U.S. National Guard for maneuver training.

Further interesting reading...
http://www.project-112shad-fdn.com/ 
Aiming to expose and highlight the problems of the military personnel who participated in the US Army's
"atmospheric testing of chemical, biological and radiological warfare agents."

Looking at the pictures of the main gates from the above  website reminded me immediately of the Stephen King Classic..."The Stand." (Below).



and the Secret Nuclear Reactor, Biological and Future Weapons and Space vehicle testing below is very interesting..
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread61315/pg1 

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND 

THE NEW GROOM LAKE?

 
Dugway Proving Ground is located 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City and covers an area of approximately 800,000 acres in the Great Salt Lake Desert. It is by far the most secretive facility in Utah as well as the most controversial. Many residents feel threatened and unsure of its close location to Salt Lake City, especially because of the type of testing that takes place there.

The primary mission of Dugway Proving Ground is to plan, conduct, analyze, and report the results of technical tests and studies; especially in the areas of chemical defense, biological defense, incendiary, smoke and obscurant systems, and environmental technology testing. Dugway also provides test expertise, services and support for all authorized customers, including United States and foreign governments, as well as non-governmental organizations. In addition, Dugway is a major range and test facility for chemical and biological defense testing and a reliance center for the U.S. Department of Defense.

With the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States and its military forces suddenly realized a need for increased military capability in many areas, which included expanded knowledge in chemical and biological warfare.

Dugway Proving Ground was authorized to fill the need for testing weapons and defenses against chemical and biological agents. Over the years, the proving ground has undergone various name changes and periods of deactivation and reactivation.

Dugway is now part of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (TECOM), headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. TECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Material Command, headquartered at Alexandria, Virginia. At present, Dugway Proving Ground encompasses 798,855 acres. In addition to chemical and biological defensive testing and environment characterization and remediation technology testing, Dugway is the Defense Department's leader in testing battlefield smokes and obscurants. The installion currently consists of more than 600 buildings with a total value of more than $240 million.

NASA's X-33

Lately there has been an increase in activity at the Utah facility, both on the ground and in the airspace above Dugway. Reported last year, was the construction of a new 15,000 feet runway which is now known to be for the testing of NASA's next generation space shuttles, including the X-33. Also, unusual aerial objects emitting mysterious vapor contrails lends support to Dugway being a secret test facility for new aircraft.

Security at the installation has also been increased quite dramatically. Warning signs have been established along the perimeter of the base and if someone happens to wander to close to the restricted zones, expect to see unmarked "black" helicopters challenge your presence in the area.

It has also been revealed that an unusual facility within Dugway may house experimental craft, possibly of alien origin. During the 1950s and 1970s, the facility was constantly under armed guard. During this time period, convoy trucks had been seen entering the hangar with their cargo covered by tarpaulins. One truck was seen which was carrying something oval or circular in shape and being about 30 feet wide. The truck was accompanied by five men. Could this have been a flying disc-shaped craft? Three concentric fences were later built around the hangar.

Rumors persist as to what is housed in the hangar, a more common one being that it is a storage facility for a SLR-1 portable nuclear reactor. However, there is unusual evidence which may suggest that the flying disc was of a very secretive nature. The five men who were seen with the truck all happened to mysteriously die within a year of delivering the cargo to Dugway. Two of them died in a single plane crash from Chicago to Denver. The third died in an auto wreck when his car fell off a cliff in Northern California, presumably because of brake failure. The fourth committed suicide by hanging himself with a necktie, for no apparent reason. The fifth man simply was reported missing one day after leaving home for work.

Of course, the above story could simply be disinformation, to distract people from a different project at Dugway Proving Ground. But whatever the truth, the base is alive with strange and unusual activity. 
 

0 Yet Another Major Snowstorm Hits Northeast US

 
Yet another snowstorm hit the Northeast US Wednesday through early Thursday. 

The storm came in two rounds, an initial burst on Wednesday morning and then a heavier round late Wednesday through early Thursday. Unlike previous storms this season, heavy snow also fell in D.C. and Baltimore in addition to Philadelphia, New York City and Southern New England.

As snow began in the D.C. and Baltimore areas late Wednesday, thunder and lightning were common. Snowfall rates of 1-2" per hour made for a nightmare rush hour.

These heavy snow rates with thunder and lightning then moved northward through portions of eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Philadelphia piled up near 15" from this latest storm.

New York City and Newark picked up a whopping 19" snow. For the month, both cities now have piled on between 36-38" making January 2011 the snowiest January on record! Bridgeport, Conn., Islip, N.Y. and New York-La Guardia have also now seen their snowiest Januaries.

Hartford, Conn. now has near 48" this month, beating December 1945 as the snowiest month on record.

Below are some of the snow totals reported in the Northeast from this storm. 

0 Bank of England chief Mervyn King: standard of living to plunge at fastest rate since 1920s

Households face the most dramatic squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, the Governor of the Bank of England warned, as he reacted to the shock disclosure that the economy was shrinking again

Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis, Mervyn King warned.

With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will end the year worth the same as in 2005 — the most prolonged fall in living standards for more than 80 years, he claimed.

Mr King issued the warning in a speech in Newcastle upon Tyne after official figures showed that gross domestic product fell by 0.5 per cent during the final three months last year. The Government blamed the unexpected reduction — the first since the third quarter of 2009 — on the freezing weather that paralysed much of the country last month.

But there were fears that the country was poised to slip back into recession, defined as two successive quarters of negative growth. Economists said the situation was “an absolute disaster”.

The economic gloom deepened this morning as figures showed that mortgage lending by the major banks dived to an 11-and-a-half-year low during December.

Telegraph