June 11, 2012 CNBC
Source: http://MOXNews.com
0 Former Tepco chief to be grilled over Fukushima disaster for first time
TOKYO (Reuters) - The former president of Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co faces questioning for the first time on Friday by a high profile investigative panel seeking to uncover the causes of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Members of the panel appointed by parliament will likely grill Masataka Shimizu over whether he planned to abandon the tsunami-devastated Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis in March 2011, as reactors melted down and the situation was in danger of spinning out of control, threatening Tokyo itself.
Then-prime minister Naoto Kan and two other ministers handling the disaster response have told the panel that Shimizu had planned to withdraw all of his utility's workers as explosions rocked the plant and three reactors melted down, spewing radiation across northeast Japan.
Shimizu, 67, was also widely criticized for vanishing from public view three days after the disaster struck. He was later hospitalized for dizziness and high blood pressure, leaving the utility's chairman to supervise operations during his absence.
Shimizu's testimony coincides with efforts by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government to restart two idled nuclear reactors in western Japan to cope with possible power shortages when electricity demand peaks in July and August.
All of Japan's 50 reactors have gone offline since the crisis and Tokyo has been trying to win local communities' agreement for the restarts despite persistent public concerns about safety and delays in setting up a new nuclear regulator.
The government is also thrashing out a new energy strategy after scrapping a 2010 plan that would have boosted nuclear power's share of electricity to more than 50 percent by 2030 from around 30 percent before the disaster.
UNPREPARED FOR RISKS
Shimizu, who stepped down in June last year as president of the utility, known as Tepco, has been questioned in parliament but Friday is the first time he appears publicly in front of one of the three main inquiries that have looked into the disaster.
He and other Tepco executives had said repeatedly that the scale of the natural disaster was unpredictable, but company documents have shown the utility was well aware of the risk.
Kan, who himself resigned last year after harsh criticism of his handling of the crisis, told the panel last week he had rushed to Tepco headquarters on March 15 to order Shimizu not to withdraw all the utility's workers.
Tepco, however, has denied it planned a full-scale pullout from the plant, which lost power and cooling capacity after a massive earthquake and the tsunami devastated the facility.
Shimizu quickly became a target of public outrage in the early days and weeks of the crisis.
The governor of Fukushima prefecture, where the stricken plant is located, on two occasions refused to meet him when the president visited to apologize.
But in a sign of the close ties that bind corporate Japan, Shimizu will later this month become an outside board member of Fuji Oil Co., which is owned by AOC Holdings Inc., a firm in which Tepco has an 8.7 percent stake.
Tepco itself, burdened with massive compensation and clean-up costs from the disaster, will be taken over by the government through a 1 trillion yen ($12.6 billion) injection of public funds to be approved at a shareholders' meeting this month.
The eventual cost of the disaster has been estimated at more than $100 billion. Last week, Tepco said the radiation release from Fukushima's meltdowns was more than twice initial estimates.
($1 = 79.5700 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Linda Sieg and Mark Bendeich)
Source:http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-japan-nuclear-shimizubre85703w-20120607,0,6381925.story
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| Workers stand near the No. 4 reactor building at the Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture (POOL, REUTERS / June 7, 2012) |
Members of the panel appointed by parliament will likely grill Masataka Shimizu over whether he planned to abandon the tsunami-devastated Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis in March 2011, as reactors melted down and the situation was in danger of spinning out of control, threatening Tokyo itself.
Then-prime minister Naoto Kan and two other ministers handling the disaster response have told the panel that Shimizu had planned to withdraw all of his utility's workers as explosions rocked the plant and three reactors melted down, spewing radiation across northeast Japan.
Shimizu, 67, was also widely criticized for vanishing from public view three days after the disaster struck. He was later hospitalized for dizziness and high blood pressure, leaving the utility's chairman to supervise operations during his absence.
Shimizu's testimony coincides with efforts by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government to restart two idled nuclear reactors in western Japan to cope with possible power shortages when electricity demand peaks in July and August.
All of Japan's 50 reactors have gone offline since the crisis and Tokyo has been trying to win local communities' agreement for the restarts despite persistent public concerns about safety and delays in setting up a new nuclear regulator.
The government is also thrashing out a new energy strategy after scrapping a 2010 plan that would have boosted nuclear power's share of electricity to more than 50 percent by 2030 from around 30 percent before the disaster.
UNPREPARED FOR RISKS
Shimizu, who stepped down in June last year as president of the utility, known as Tepco, has been questioned in parliament but Friday is the first time he appears publicly in front of one of the three main inquiries that have looked into the disaster.
He and other Tepco executives had said repeatedly that the scale of the natural disaster was unpredictable, but company documents have shown the utility was well aware of the risk.
Kan, who himself resigned last year after harsh criticism of his handling of the crisis, told the panel last week he had rushed to Tepco headquarters on March 15 to order Shimizu not to withdraw all the utility's workers.
Tepco, however, has denied it planned a full-scale pullout from the plant, which lost power and cooling capacity after a massive earthquake and the tsunami devastated the facility.
Shimizu quickly became a target of public outrage in the early days and weeks of the crisis.
The governor of Fukushima prefecture, where the stricken plant is located, on two occasions refused to meet him when the president visited to apologize.
But in a sign of the close ties that bind corporate Japan, Shimizu will later this month become an outside board member of Fuji Oil Co., which is owned by AOC Holdings Inc., a firm in which Tepco has an 8.7 percent stake.
Tepco itself, burdened with massive compensation and clean-up costs from the disaster, will be taken over by the government through a 1 trillion yen ($12.6 billion) injection of public funds to be approved at a shareholders' meeting this month.
The eventual cost of the disaster has been estimated at more than $100 billion. Last week, Tepco said the radiation release from Fukushima's meltdowns was more than twice initial estimates.
($1 = 79.5700 Japanese yen)
(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Linda Sieg and Mark Bendeich)
Source:http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-japan-nuclear-shimizubre85703w-20120607,0,6381925.story
0 Geoengineering may lead to whiter sky
One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth’s surface; scientists, however, theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day
One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth’s surface. Scientists, however, theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day. New research from Carnegie’s Ben Kravitz and Ken Caldeira indicates that blocking 2 percent of the sun’s light would make the sky three-to-five times brighter, as well as whiter. Their work is published 1 June in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
A Carnegie Institution for Science release reports that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. Large volcanic eruptions cool the planet by creating lots of small particles in the stratosphere, but the particles fall out within a couple of years, and the planet heats back up. The idea behind solar geoengineering is constantly to replenish a layer of small particles in the stratosphere, mimicking this volcanic aftermath and scattering sunlight back to space.
Using advanced models, Kravitz and Caldeira — along with Douglas MacMartin from the California Institute of Technology — examined changes to sky color and brightness from using sulfate-based aerosols in this way. They found that, depending on the size of the particles, the sky would whiten during the day and sunsets would have afterglows.
Their models predict that the sky would still be blue, but it would be a lighter shade than what most people are used to looking at now. The research team’s work shows that skies everywhere could look like those over urban areas in a world with this type of geoengineering taking place. In urban areas, the sky often looks hazy and white.
“These results give people one more thing to consider before deciding whether we really want to go down this road,” Kravitz said. “Although our study did not address the potential psychological impact of these changes to the sky, they are important to consider as well.”
There are several larger environmental implications to the group’s findings, too. Because plants grow more efficiently under diffuse light conditions such as this, global photosynthetic activity could increase, pulling more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. On the other hand, the effectiveness of solar power could be diminished, as less sunlight would reach solar-power generators.
“I hope that we never get to the point where people feel the need to spray aerosols in the sky to offset rampant global warming,” Caldeira said. “This is one study where I am not eager to have our predictions proven right by a global stratospheric aerosol layer in the real world.”
— Read more in Ben Kravitz et al., “Geoengineering: Whiter skies?”Geophysical Research Letters 39 (1 June 2012) (doi:10.1029/2012GL051652)
0 US Troops in Iraq talk about Halliburton & KBR
This from a government that supposedly "Loves" their military
0 Lord Jacob Rothschild Confronted by We Are Change
This is one of the 12 videos you will see released on May 31st during our 12 hour Donation Drive broadcast at Bilderberg. Help WeAreChange reach our goal @ http://wearechange.org/donate watch live here http://ustream.tv/wearechange
For decades, a shadowy and secret elite organization called the Bilderberg Group has plotted policy together that subjugates humanity under the cover of darkness. On the first day of the Bilderberg Group meeting in Chantilly, VA on May 31st, from 10am to 10pm, Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange will shine a much needed light on the group's members and media pundits that have kept details about the group hidden from the American public. Tune intohttp://www.ustream.tv/WeAreChange for a twelve hour donation drive being broadcast outside the Bilderberg conference to watch TWELVE never seen before confrontations released LIVE every hour. If you want to continue to hold these politicians accountable and make sure the elites continue to hear the voice of the people, donate to WeAreChange.org at http://www.WeAreChange.org/donate
WeAreChange's Schedule for the release of the 12 never before seen confrontation videos. We will release these videos while streaming live from Chantilly, VA, outside the Bilderberg meeting. Starts Thursday, May 31st at 10am. http://www.ustream.tv/WeAreChange
1. Tony Blair (10am)
2. Lawrence O'Donnell (11am)
3. Alan Greenspan (12pm)
4. George Pataki (1pm)
5. Charlie Rose (2pm)
6. Ted Turner (3pm)
7. Henry Kissinger (4pm)
8. Jill Abramson (5pm)
9. Vernon Jordan (6pm)
10. Paul Wolfensohn (7pm)
11. Lou Dobbs and Paula Zahn (8pm)
12. Lord Jacob Rothschild (9pm)
0 E.P.A. Chemist Who Warned of Ground Zero Dust Is Reinstated
A senior Environmental Protection Agency chemist who argued that she was removed from her job in retaliation for accusing the agency of underestimating the toxicity of dust at ground zero has been reinstated with back pay by an administrative board.
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| Cate Jenkins |
The federal Merit Systems Protection Board ruled late last week in Washington that the agency violated the due process rights of the chemist, Cate Jenkins, when she was fired in 2010 because she was not informed of all the charges against her.
The panel also found that an administrative judge who first heard the case did not give her an adequate opportunity to make her case that she was dismissed for acting as a whistle-blower.
Dr. Jenkins sued under the federal Whistle-Blower Protection Act, saying she was being punished for charging that the agency had relied on data that it knew mismeasured the pH levels of the dust released by the World Trade Center collapse in 2001.
The E.P.A. has said that Dr. Jenkins was fired for charges related to threatening a supervisor.
Dr. Jenkins had a history of disagreeing with her superiors on scientific matters at the agency and in 2009 underwent a two-day suspension for “discourteous, unprofessional and bullying” conduct toward colleagues.
The board did not decide if the E.P.A. fired Dr. Jenkins for her accusations. Instead, it said she was not given a full opportunity for a defense because she was not informed of a third charge used to justify her removal.
But Paula Dinerstein, a lawyer for Dr. Jenkins, said Tuesday that the ruling vindicated her client indirectly. “I think it shows to us that the agency was trying to get rid of her and silence her by making this allegation, and to go to the length of even a constitutional violation to get her out of there,” she said.
The E.P.A. is free to bring charges against the scientist again. It did not respond to requests for comment late Tuesday on how it planned to proceed.
Dr. Jenkins’s reinstatement was reported by The Guardian on Friday.
Recent scientific studies have found that the particles released by the towers’ collapse were more harmful to workers’ lungs than experts had believed.
They did not "underestimate" the toxicity,
THEY LIED!
0 Not Even A Drill: US, S.Korea speс-ops pester Pyongyang
It's a scandal likely to fuel the long-standing tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. A media report accuses US and South Korean special forces of parachuting into North Korea to spy on underground military facilities. The source was an American army general who admitted the missions had happened. It's been vehemently denied by Washington which now accuses the journalist behind the report of making up the quotes. Journalist Nile Bowie talks to RT. He says Washington strategy goes far beyond that.
Subscribe to RT! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=RussiaToday
0 Flame: Israel's New Contribution to the Middle East Cyberwar
The country that brought us Iranian nuclear assassinations, explosions at Iran missile bases, and Stuxnet, is at it again.
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| Map of known infections from Flame |
A computer virus called Flame, is spreading among computers in the Middle East. according to an article by an expert at Kapersky Labs:
…We’ve found what might be the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed. The ‘Flame’ cyber espionage worm came to the attention of our experts at Kaspersky Lab after the UN’s International Telecommunication Union came to us for help in finding an unknown piece of malware which was deleting sensitive information across the Middle East. While searching for that code – nicknamed Wiper – we discovered a new malware codenamed Worm.Win32.Flame.Flame shares many characteristics with notorious cyber weapons Duqu and Stuxnet: while its features are different, the geography and careful targeting of attacks coupled with the usage of specific software vulnerabilities seems to put it alongside those familiar ‘super-weapons’ currently deployed in the Middle East by unknown perpetrators. Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. It’s big and incredibly sophisticated. It pretty much redefines the notion of cyberwar and cyberespionage.…Flame is one of the most complex threats ever discovered.
Classical Zionism decrees that Israel should be a “light unto the nations.” But Israeli cyberwarriors have taken the saying a bit too literally making Israel a “flame” unto the nations. Such a contribution Israel is making to the advancement of western civilization. It would make Herzl and Ahad HaAm proud.
My major scoop is that my senior Israeli source confirms that it is a product of Israeli cyberwarfare experts. Most such products are produced by the IDF’s Unit 8200, though the Mossad also may take some role in such projects. So add to all the previous marginally successful efforts this new one. The goal is apparently to infiltrate the computers of individuals in Iran, Israel, Palestine and elsewhere who are engaged in activities that interest Israel’s secret police including military intelligence. My source also tells me that this is the first known instance in which Israeli intelligence has used malware to intrude on Israeli citizens. Within Israel and the Palestinian territories Flame is implemented by the Shin Bet. The “beauty” of it for the secret police is that unlike “legal” eavesdropping on phones or computers, you don’t need to ask for judicial approval to infect a computer. No Israeli police officer would ever investigate a case of an Israeli computer infected with Flame since it would lead to exposing Israeli security services.
Flame appears to be the third generation of Israeli malware after Stuxnet and Duqu, which were more specifically targeted at Iranian industrial facilities, specifically its centrifuge network. It shares some capabilities with them and exploits similar vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted computers and systems (though it is 20 times larger in size). There is also some indication of similar exploits used by Stuxnet and Flame used to access host computers, which indicate they may share common authorship or have been developed by two separate groups sharing data:
Flame is a sophisticated attack toolkit, which is a lot more complex than Duqu. It is a backdoor, a Trojan, and it has worm-like features, allowing it to replicate in a local network and on removable media if it is commanded so by its master…Once a system is infected, Flame begins a complex set of operations, including sniffing the network traffic, taking screenshots, recording audio conversations, intercepting the keyboard, and so on. All this data is available to the operators through the link to Flame’s command-and-control servers.Later, the operators can choose to upload further modules, which expand Flame’s functionality. There are about 20 modules in total and the purpose of most of them is still being investigated.
The “innovation” of Flame is that it not only can record audio, which is a relatively rare feature of worms, it can intrude into the host in multiple ways to steal and monitor information (including recording keystrokes and taking screenshots). In this fashion it can capture IM conversations that might be otherwise encrypted. It’s what they call in baseball a “triple threat.” It also has lots of wifi features especially using Bluetooth which enable it to use the host to scan nearby electronic devices (possibly for vulnerabilities and access to them as well).
Unlike with Stuxnet, the creators of Flame obscured any possibly information that would identify when the original source was created. This would make it more difficult to track the code to its source in any specific way. Kapersky though considers the worm a creation that does not predate and says that its authors continue to refine it.
Unlike Stuxnet which was designed to sabotage Iran’s centrifuge network, Flame is not a single-focus malware:
…The creators of Flame are simply looking for any kind of intelligence – e-mails, documents, messages, discussions inside sensitive locations, pretty much everything. We have not seen any specific signs indicating a particular target such as the energy industry – making us believe it’s a complete attack toolkit designed for general cyber-espionage purposes.
However, Flame can do some of the things that Stuxnet did, so it could also be adapted for such specific uses in the event it found a convenient target. Also, unlike Stuxnet which was designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the current worm targets individuals and organizations more than state entities:
There doesn’t seem to be any visible pattern re the kind of organizations targeted by Flame. Victims range from individuals to certain state-related organizations or educational institutions.
Flame uses at least 80 different servers and domain names to relay its data back home, so it is extremely difficult to track usage and where the information is transferred.
Kapersky notes that Flame may’ve been a companion project to Stuxnet and Duqu that was different enough from them that if the latter two were discovered, Flame could continue operating undetected:
…We believe Flame to be a parallel project, created as a fallback in case some other project is discovered.
Here is some further data on how Flame retrieves information and gleans what is useful to it from what is not:
Flame appears to be much, much more widespread than Duqu, with probably thousands of victims worldwide. The targets are also of a much wider scope, including academia, private companies, specific individuals and so on.According to our observations, the operators of Flame…infect several dozen, then conduct analysis of the data of the victim, uninstall Flame from the systems that aren’t interesting, leaving the most important ones in place. After which they start a new series of infections.
Like Stuxnet, Flame uses USB sticks as a method of infection and has two different ways it can accomplish this. Once inside, it can take advantage of multiple vulnerabilities to gain access not just to individual computers but entire networks.
When asked why the package is so big, Kapersky responded:
Much of these [the size of Flame] are libraries designed to handle SSL traffic, SSH connections, sniffing, attack, interception of communications and so on.
The cybersecurity experts note it took them months to analyze Stuxnet. Because of its greater size it will likely take a year to do the same for the current worm.
This is an Iranian report on Flame.
UPDATE: Senior Israeli minister, Bogie Yaalon, did everything but spill the beans to Galey Tzahal (Hebrew) in answering a question about the origin of Flame:
Anyone who believes that the Iranian threat is meaningful would find it desirable to take effective means, including these, to sabotage it. Israel is blessed with being a country that has tremendous technological capabilities. These tools open all sorts of possibilities for us.
Of course, this doesn’t answer the question why computers in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Russia and the U.S. were infected as well. Especially since Flame targets specific computers and does not attack in a generalized way as Stuxnet did.
0 107.2 Bq/kg of cesium from Fukushima pork
107.2 Bq/Kg of cesium was measured from pork of pig farmer in Koriyama city Fukushima.
According to Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, this is the first time cesium has been detected anywhere near these levels in pork.
It had not been distributed to the market, and Koriyama city has been ordered to dispose of the pork.
Source
According to Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, this is the first time cesium has been detected anywhere near these levels in pork.
It had not been distributed to the market, and Koriyama city has been ordered to dispose of the pork.
Source
Guide on current levels of intake of radioactive cesium per household, as a comparison.
0 Silver a great business to be in for the next 50 years at least.
Source:http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page32?oid=151847&sn=Detail&pid=32
Hecla Mining CEO, Phil Baker, says it's hard to envision silver mines being able to keep up with demand while the use of silver in various forms of technology is growing significantly.
Hecla Mining CEO, Phil Baker, says it's hard to envision silver mines being able to keep up with demand while the use of silver in various forms of technology is growing significantly.
GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) -
There has been a lot of talk in recent months about both the monetary role of precious metals and investment demand for silver.
For Hecla Mining President and CEO, Phil Baker, while the investment side of the market is important, it is the technological markets for the metal that are more exciting.
Speaking on Mineweb's Metals Weekly podcast, Baker said the silver market today can best be compared to where it was 100 years ago, when photographic demand was just beginning to grow.
"Hecla has been a silver mining company for 120 years - it was a great business to be in until the early 1980s and it was a terrible business to be in for the next 20 years. We're now back in a phase where it will be a great business to be in for the next 50 years at least."
According to Baker, the reasons for this prediction are two-fold. The first is that silver's unique properties mean that its uses in various forms of technology are growing significantly.
"Roughly half of all of the silver that's demanded today, goes into one of these technological uses. It goes back into the Second World War and then since the start of 2000 - the start of this century we had all sorts of new uses that have really outstripped that decline that we've seen since this photographic demand has exited," he said.
Silver is used in everything from band aids to iPads because of its conductivity, its malleability, its reflectivity and its ability as a biocide. And, as Baker points out, the existing uses aren't going away and "everyday there seem to be something new that comes out that uses silver."
The second reason why Baker is so bullish on the industrial side of the market is that, the markets for these technological products are set to grow significantly in the next few years.
For Baker, the trend towards ever-increasing urbanisation means growing markets for technological products.
"A good example of that is South Korea. About 20 years ago they were consuming about 0.05 ounces of silver per capita. Today they consume about 0.5 ounces - that increase we think will be the same increase that you'll see in China, and you'll see that on top of all of these new applications that we have for silver."
And, while demand is set to grow, Baker is less convinced that supply will be able to keep up, at least in the short term.
"We've had a depression for silver for the last 20 years, until about 2005 and as a result of that, there has not been the exploration for silver. It's really only been since 2005 that you've started to see that. So what new production that you see coming in for silver for the most part, comes in as a bi-product for some other metal. And if you look at the growth rate for gold and if you look at the growth rate for other metals, lead and zinc for example, there's not many new projects that are on the horizon that are going to make a material difference over the course of the next 10 years."
But, he says, "The problem that the silver market has is this underlying industrial demand or technological demand is growing at such a fast rate, that it's hard to envision the mines being able to keep up with the supply. So what's going to have to happen is that above-ground stocks are going to have to move from investment use, and be put into industrial use over time."
Having said that, Baker is also quick to point out that it is unlikely to be one way traffic.
"Investment demand will come and will go, and when it goes, you'll see silver prices being very, very volatile on the downside. I think over the long haul it's going to be very volatile on the upside but you'll have these periods of time with lower silver prices."
4 CNBC Propaganda overdrive: FULL ANNIHILATION OF ISRAEL
Even if that quote is real (and not taken out of context again as Ahmadinejad's was months ago),
how do you get all that BS from that single quote?...
0 Scottish sniper who shot fellow soldier in Afghanistan had never trained at night, inquest told
A SNIPER who is believed to have shot a comrade he thought was a Taliban insurgent in Afghanistan has told an inquest he had not been trained to fire his rifle in the dark.
Lance Corporal Michael Pritchard, 22, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was killed by a gunshot wound to the ribcage which is believed to have been fired from a remote observation post, known as a sangar, by Lance Corporal Malcolm Graham, of The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion, who thought he was shooting at insurgents digging in the road, the hearing at Eastbourne Town Hall was told.
L/Cpl Pritchard, who was on secondment with 4th Battalion The Rifles, was deployed to the observation post N30 on December 20, 2009 to watch a blind spot on an access road, Route 611, in the Sangin area of central Helmand Province to make sure Taliban insurgents did not plant improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the road, the hearing was told.
L/Cpl Graham said that all of his sniper training had taken place during daylight hours and he had never used a thermal imaging sight at night.
He told the court he was in bed on December 20 when he was told there were insurgents digging IEDs into the road and that he would receive a briefing when he got to the remote sangar.
On arrival he asked section commander Corporal Jonathan Dolton what was happening and he was told two men were digging IEDs into the road 700m away, the hearing heard.
He was also told escalation drills had been carried out and sentries had fired warning shots with a machine gun.
L/Cpl Graham said: "He (Cpl Dolton) told me there was an observation post in the area and that I had been brought in for accurate fire."
L/Cpl Graham said he was never given an exact location for N30 and asked Cpl Dolton for more information.
He was told it was on the right hand side of the road from where the suspected insurgents were digging but that they could not see the observation post from where they were.
Cpl Dolton told the inquest that if he had realised his men were shooting at British soldiers they would have ceased firing immediately.
He said poor radio communication meant he never received any messages to say shots were being fired close to an observation post where one of their colleagues was fatally wounded.
Cpl Dolton said that he was told by soldiers when he arrived at the remote sangar that they thought they had spotted insurgents in the road.
He looked through a viper thermal imaging sight and made out two human figures in the road, the inquest heard.
He said Lance Corporal Craig Knight told him they had permission to fire warning shots at the sources from the operations room.
Cpl Dolton said he reminded everyone that observation post N30 was being manned to the right side of the road.
But the inquest has heard that all the soldiers in the remote sangar said they were not aware there was an observation post in the area where shots were being fired.
Cpl Dolton told the court he did not believe the heat sources were coming from the post because white light was being used which goes against military tactics, he could see the outline of a body, and that the people appeared to be in the road rather than on the roof of a compound.
He said: "We were all in agreement that there were insurgents laying or arming an IED in the road."
Cpl Dolton said the Bowman (communications system) and their personal radios started working intermittently so getting information to the operations room was difficult.
He said he tried to contact N30 to let them know there were suspected insurgents in their area but he could not get through.
The inquest was told that the operations room told Cpl Dolton there were no soldiers in the road.
Cpl Dolton said: "Following all the suspicious activity I asked the ops room for permission to follow the escalation procedure, meaning moving from warning shots to lethal."
The corporal got out his map and ranged the sniper into the target which was 750m to 800m away, the inquest heard.
He said as far as he knew they had permission to fire across the restricted firing line.
Cpl Dolton said at no point was he told to cease firing at the targets.
He said: "One word, 'They have come a bit close to me'. That would have ended everything."
East Sussex Coroner Alan Craze said: "That was sent."
The corporal replied: "But it was not received, Sir."
Cpl Dolton said the first message he received over his personal radio during the whole incident was: "Check fire. Man down."
He said: "We all immediately began thinking the worst, that fire from our location had hit one of our men.
"L/Cpl Knight and Malc went quiet. They were in shock, as was I.
"I was happy that we had followed the correct procedure and escalation drills during the incident. I did not hear or receive a contact report from anyone saying they were being shot at."
He added that if he had received one message which put any doubt in his mind it would have overruled everything they were doing and they would have stopped firing.
0 Mystery Object Nearly Causes Mid-Air Collision Over Denver! - May 15, 2012
As far as I'm aware, "amateur" remote controlled planes do not fly at 8,000 ft
0 Jim Traficant "Israel gets $15-20 BILLION dollars every year from the US taxpayer"
Jim Traficant speaking in 2009 about Israel's "stranglehold" of US Media, foreign policy, and congress.
0 Radicals' deadly 'booby trap'
FEMALE suicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.
The shocking new al-Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women’s breasts during plastic surgery — making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines".
It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.
MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male suicide bombers.
Lethal
Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims: "Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery."
The lethal explosives called PETN are inserted inside plastic shapes during the operation, before the breast is then sewn up.
The discovery of these methods was made after London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner in the US on Christmas Day.
He had stuffed explosives inside his underpants.
Hours after he had failed, Britain’s intelligence services began to pick up "chatter" emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.
A hand-picked team investigated the threat which was described as "one that can circumvent our defence".
Top surgeons have confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.
One claimed: "Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines.
"You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray.
"Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner."
Explosive experts allegedly told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN could blow "a considerable hole" in an airline’s skin, causing it to crash.
0 Remote-controlled bomb hits police convoy in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan
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| Rescuers push a destroyed vehicle at the site of a blast in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan, on May 12, 2012. At least two people including one policeman was killed and 16 others injured when a remote- controlled bomb hit a police convoy in Pakistan's northwest city of Peshawar on Saturday morning, said police and hospital sources. (Xinhua/Ahmad Sidique) |
At least four people were killed and 12 others injured when a remote-controlled bomb hit a police vehicle in Pakistan's northwest city of Peshawar on Saturday morning, reported local Urdu TV channel Express.
According to local media reports, the blast took place at about 9:00 a.m. local time when a remote-controlled bomb hit a police vehicle passing by on the G.T. road in the Gulbahar area of Peshawar, the largest city in northwest Pakistan.
At least one policeman was killed and several women were injured in the blast, said local media, adding that the blast also destroyed five vehicles.
All the injured have been rushed to Lady Reading Hospital in the city, where at least four critically injured people died later.
Security forces have cordoned off the area following the blast and a search operation is underway.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
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