Tuesday, May 25, 2010

*****Israel arms may not be enough to stop nukes

Israel arms may not be enough to stop nukes
Monday, May 24, 2010

Rowan Scarborough

As the Obama administration continues to pursue a diplomatic solution for Iran's nuclear weapons program, Israel in recent years has extended the range of its bombers, launched sophisticated spy satellites and developed a more accurate ordnance-dropping system.

The reasons are clear: Israel is now in a position to send scores of F-16Is and F-15Is on the 1,000-mile penetration of Iranian airspace to try to disable the regime's far-flung network of nuclear research and uranium-enrichment facilities.

But a U.S. air-war planner in the Persian Gulf War tells The Washington Times he does not think Israel's relatively small air force — compared with the United States huge bomber and cruise-missile fleet — has the firepower to properly hit all the necessary Iranian targets.

The only real way to stop Iran's atomic bomb, said retired Air Force Col. John Warden, is for the U.S. to shut down Iran's electric generation for the foreseeable future — a strategy not currently on the Pentagon's table.

That Israel is now ready to make war with Iran, whose radical Islamic rulers have threatened to destroy the Jewish state, was announced earlier this month. Speaking to an air and space institute audience, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon bluntly spelled out the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) milestone.

"This capability can be used for a war on terror in Gaza, for a war in the face of rockets from Lebanon, for war on the conventional Syrian army, and also for war on a peripheral state like Iran," said Mr. Yaalon, who was Israel's top uniformed officer during the buildup.

Israel's improved air-war prowess centers on three major achievements:

• Long-range bombers. Israel has purchased premier U.S. fighters especially configured for the buyer's specific threats — read, Iran. The more than 100 F-15I Ra'ams and F-16I Sufas are equipped with special extended-range fuel tanks. Augmenting the supersonic strike jets is Israel's perfection of aerial refueling from B-707 tankers.

• Armaments. Israel's innovative avionics industry is fitting the jets with a new bomb-guidance system that can find intended targets easier. The defense force now owns scores of BLUs — the military acronym for "bomb, live unit," which is also known as powerful "bunker buster" bombs capable of penetrating underground or hardened facilities.

• Intelligence. Israel now has in orbit a fleet of super-spy satellites, such as the Ofek-7 launched in 2007, that can regularly capture images of Iran's nuclear and defense sites for the air force's target list. With such constant satellite coverage, it is a safe assumption that war planners have studied Iran's high-value facilities and have a tactic for how to strike each one. Israel has added expertise in analyzing such sites since it produces atomic weapons.

But Israel likely would face stiff challenges. There are at least two-dozen prime nuclear sites in Iran, some that would require multiple strikes, a feat Israel's limited bomber fleet might not be able to achieve. It is one thing to take out Iraq's nearby nuclear reactor — as Israel's F-16s did in 1981. It is another to launch a much more massive campaign against fortified, dispersed targets more than 1,000 miles away.

"Given they can fly more airplanes longer distances, fine," said Col. Warden, who worked with a team of air-war specialists to develop the unprecedented precision strikes on Iraq in 1991.

"It seems to me the real issue is, what are they going to do when they get there?" he said. "When they did that against Iraq, the Iraqis had focused a pretty significant part of their research program in that one place outside of Baghdad. So the targeting was fairly straightforward. You get a handful of airplanes there, and you have a pretty good chance of doing some work."

"The Iranians have not been ignorant of that particular operation or what was done to Iraq in two wars," he said. "It's just inconceivable they would not have put all that stuff in fairly well-protected places, deep underground, a lot of dispersal. The ability of the Israelis, and us for that matter, to find that stuff and to hit it all with sufficient numbers of things to actually to bring it to a halt strikes me as an extraordinary challenge."

Israel took out Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. In a mini-display of what it might do over the skies of Iran, the Israeli air force on Sept. 6, 2007, bombed an under-construction nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert, 60 miles from the Iraq border.

Israeli news reports at the time said the IDF dispatched eight F-15Is and F-16s. It also sent an aircraft designed to detect nuclear activity and electronic jammers to foil Syrian radars. Subsequent satellite photographs showed the target destroyed. The CIA thinks the Syrians planned to produce plutonium for atomic weapons, all with North Korean assistance.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has debated what to do about Iran's atomic ambitions, but no member has endorsed a bombing campaign, according to a former senior official. The official said the dovish U.S. approach is based on two principal reasons: U.S. intelligence agencies do not know the degree to which Iran has buried some of its facilities and thus lack enough knowledge to target them, and the political fallout might resort in a wider war in the Middle East, as the Pentagon is already tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We might be able to do it with 20 B-2s with 200 bombs apiece. Four thousand bombs," said Col. Warden. "Maybe that would do it. I don't know. If you could get to them, how deep are they buried and whether you know where the darn things are."

The only sure way to stop it is draconian. In the Iraq air war, planners took pains not to bring down the entire power-generation system so Baghdad could get electricity back postwar.

With Iran, if the United States wanted to absolutely ensure the Iranians could not build a nuclear arsenal, planners might opt to shut down all sources of power generation.

"Iran cannot sustain a nuclear research program if they don't have electricity and oil and a bunch of other things like that," Col. Warden said. "But that is a pretty draconian solution. We have the capability to do that. We could do that in 24 hours if we wanted to. But nobody else in the world is remotely close to being able to do it. And we wouldn't."

John Pike, a longtime analyst of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, has a different view on Israel's capability. He says the overt side of Iran's program — facilities at Esfahan, Natanz and Qom, for example — represents the bulk of its atomic work, which includes enriching uranium and creating components for the actual bomb.

"Iran requires 100 percent of its program in order to build a bomb," said Mr. Pike, founder and director of GlobalSecurity.org. "There do not seem to be any 'spare' or duplicate facilities. Israel does not need to destroy 100 percent of Iran's infrastructure to disable the program. Israel only needs to disable a big chunk of the program, which would render the remainder worthless. The major facilities are isolated, so there is not much danger of significant civilian casualties."

Mr. Pike said Israel might be considering another target: the nuclear workers and scientists themselves.

"Most of the people who work at these facilities live in housing that is more or less co-located with the facility," he said. "This makes for a short commute, and facilitates physical and operational security. Bomb the housing, and you destroy the program for a generation."

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has all but ruled out military action, but has said that all options are on the table for dealing with the problem.

U.S. intelligence analysts have said Iran could build its first bomb by 2012.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/24/israel-arms-may-not-be-enough-to-stop-nukes/

Owner of communications satellite says it avoided interference by a second, rogue satellite

Associated Press

LONDON

LONDON (AP) — The owner of a satellite that transmits programming to all U.S. cable systems says it avoided interference from another, out-of-control satellite that was drifting into its path.

SES World Skies says programming transmitted by its AMC 11 satellite was not affected by the Galaxy 15 satellite, which is drifting out of control thousands of miles above the Earth and had threatened to wander into AMC 11's orbit.

Galaxy 15 was expected to move into the second satellite's orbit around May 23.

SES had been weighing whether to move AMC 11 in its orbit, along with other protective measures it declined to specify.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/24/owner-communications-satellite-says-avoided-interference-second-rogue-satellite/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fworld+%28Text+-+World%29

DEA: No Comment on Drug Cartel Obtaining Intelligence Reports That DEA Provided to High-Level Mexican Authorities

DEA: No Comment on Drug Cartel Obtaining Intelligence Reports That DEA Provided to High-Level Mexican Authorities
Monday, May 24, 2010
By Edwin Mora

DEA agents in a training exercise. (Wikipedia Commons)

(CNSNews.com) -- The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) declined to comment on reports that a drug cartel from the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa had access to documents detailing Mexico's counter-narcotic operations, including information that the DEA had provided to high-level officials in Mexico's Public Safety Department.

On May 10, the Mexican daily newspaper Reforma reported that the leaked documents, copies of which were obtained by Reforma, constituted evidence that the Sinaloa cartel, one of the strongest in Mexico, "has an efficient system for obtaining information from the main intelligence agencies of the [Mexican] state, allowing it to even obtain the reports that the DEA provides to Mexico."

In response to CNSNews.com's request for comment, David Ausiello, a pubic affairs specialist at the DEA, said in an e-mail on May 17, "We are going to decline to comment on that report/story."

When CNSNews.com contacted the attorney general's office of Mexico back on May 7, spokesperson Macias Vences Viviana said the office would respond, but it has yet to provide any comment to CNSNews.com on the issue.

The Reforma article revealed that at least up until the Mexican military seized the leaked documents in May 2009, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, who remains a fugitive, was well aware of "every step" surrounding anti-drug operations by Mexico's federal government.

The leaked documents were presumably used to anticipate steps taken by the Mexican government against Guzman's drug cartel.

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. (Wikipedia Commons)

The Mexican military seized the leaked documents when they arrested cartel member Roberto Beltran Burgos on May 29, 2009. The documents were listed as evidence in the criminal charges filed against him. Burgos denied owning the Hummer truck in which the papers were found.

Reforma further reorted that the Guzman cartel was presumably able to obtain "precise information about the government's operations and targets at just the right time, allowing it to evade them."

The leaked documents contained detailed information, including shared-DEA intelligence that was meant to be seen only by high-level officials within Mexico's Public Safety Department.

One annotation in the seized documents, apparently made by a drug trafficker, revealed that the cartel had access to investigations said to originate from the DEA.

It read, "Note: Here also informs about today's investigations driven by … military intelligence and some by the DEA."

The exclusive documents included "descriptions of ranks and responsibilities, code names, e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers and the identification numbers for the Nextel radios used by the main federal armed forces support commanders," Reforma reported.

In addition, the Mexican military also seized a ledger that apparently listed code names for police commanders on the cartel's payroll. Reforma noted that the list "has not been completely deciphered."

In regards to the leaked documents, the Associated Press (AP) reported on May 11 that, according to U.S. law enforcement authorities, "Guzman had largely won the battle for the lucrative and hotly contested trafficking route through the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas."

"More than 22,700 people have been killed in drug violence since [Mexican President Felipe] Calderon launched his anti-cartel offensive after taking office in December 2006," the report added.

Furthermore, the AP reported that Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for Mexico's attorney general's office, said he could neither confirm nor deny the legitimacy of the leaked documents.

In November 2008, a probe of corruption at the top levels of Mexican law enforcement known as "Operation Clean House" ousted that country's former anti-drug czar, Noe Ramirez, along with other top officials for allegedly working with a drug cartel. Ramirez was arrested on suspicion of passing intelligence to drug gangsters from Sinaloa.

President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon during a joint news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

After the revelation that the Sinaloa cartel had access to restricted government documents, Samuel Gonzalez, the country's former top anti-drug prosecutor, said, "What I see clearly here ... is that the process of infiltration continues" among Mexican police, according to the AP's May 11 report.

"Allegations have long circulated that Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, who emerged as the top law enforcement officer after Operation Clean House, may have somehow favored the Sinaloa cartel headed by Guzman," reported the AP.

AP continued: "Garcia Luna has denied any link to the Sinaloa cartel, and Calderon has said the department has fought all the cartels equally. No firm proof of favoritism has ever been presented, but the arrests of top drug capos have hit all of Mexico's other cartels, while leaving Sinaloa's leadership largely untouched."

Guzman "El Chapo" has been successful in evading authorities apparently because of classified information to which he has gained access. He remains at large. Forbes magazine, in 2008, listed him as one of the richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $1 billion.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/66454

Islamic Nations Praise Obama’s Outreach and U.S. Plans to Close ‘Islamophobia Prison’ at Guantanamo

Islamic Nations Praise Obama's Outreach and U.S. Plans to Close 'Islamophobia Prison' at Guantanamo
Monday, May 24, 2010
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with the secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in Washington on October 2, 2009. The 57-member OIC has spearheaded the campaign at the U.N. against the "defamation" of religion, particularly Islam. (Photo: State Department)

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama's Cairo speech to Muslims, his plan to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the dropping of language deemed offensive to Muslims are among the positive developments highlighted in the Organization of the Islamic Conference's new report on "Islamophobia."

Areas requiring more work include winning the Obama administration over to the OIC-held position on the need for legal tools to counter "religious defamation."

The OIC made available copies of the third annual report compiled by a subsidiary body called the "Islamophobia Observatory" after its official release during a meeting of foreign ministers from the 56-nation bloc in Tajikistan last week.

The 70-page report lists dozens of incidents in Western countries over the past year as examples of what it terms Islamophobia.

They range from anti-Muslim graffiti to the Swiss ban on minaret building; from the periodic appearance of cartoons depicting Mohammed to complaints that a Christmas buffet for Britain's Royal Mail workers included pork in a supposedly vegetarian dish.

Warning that the phenomenon "poses grave and multidimensional challenges to global as well as regional peace, security and stability," the report calls for stronger action by governments.

"Defamation of Islam as well as personalities and symbols sacred to Islam and Muslims as well as other religions is a matter of grave concern to the OIC."

Specifically, it recommends that abusive or insulting statements on matters held sacred by a religion and likely to outrage substantial number of its adherents, should be banned.

Governments should also help or encourage the creation of self-regulatory media bodies to deal with these issues.

The report also calls for international human rights law "to be evaluated and evolved in the interest of combating Islamophobia and defamation of all religions in an effective manner."

Building a foundation towards achieving that goal, the OIC has succeeded in getting non-binding resolutions against religious defamation passed at the U.N. each year for the past decade. (The report says the fact that support from non-Islamic countries has helped to ensure passage of the measures "lends international legitimacy to the concept of defamation of religions.")

The bloc is now pushing to get an existing, legally binding anti-racism convention broadened to define defamation of religion as "a contemporary form of racism."

Noting Washington's opposition to the religious defamation drive – the U.S. and other critics say it impinges on freedom of expression – the report discusses the importance of getting U.S. support for the initiative.

"The criticism leveled by the U.S. administration on the OIC-proposed legally binding instrument was not in line with the expectations raised by promise of engagement in the [June 2009] Cairo speech by President Obama," it says.

"A positive response by the U.S. to the OIC's call for engagement towards evaluating and evolving norms towards combating Islamophobia – with particular reference to defamation of religions – would constitute a positive step forward in terms of backing President Obama's words with action," it says.

By contrast, the report praises the Obama administration for other policies.

"The main important development was the Cairo speech by President Obama, who promised a 'new beginning' with the Muslim world," it says. "It was also remarkable the decision he took to close down the 'Islamophobia prison,' Guantanamo, as well as the instructions to stop using derogatory concepts against Muslims such as 'War on Terror.' "

It also praises the appointment of Rashad Hussain, formerly a White House deputy associate counsel, as Obama's special envoy to the OIC, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to OIC headquarters in Jeddah last February – the first by a secretary of state in the organization's 40-year history.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/66494

Plans for a 13-storey mosque at Ground Zero provoke anti-Muslim backlash

James Bone, New York

Plans to build a 13-storey mosque and Islamic centre two city blocks from Ground Zero in New York are provoking an anti-Muslim backlash in America.

Muslim organisations picked the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory shop damaged in the September 11, 2001, attacks. The building at 45 Park Place has been vacant since it was hit by the fuselage of one of the jets flown into the World Trade Centre by Islamic terrorists.

"We want to create a platform by which the voices of the mainstream and silent majority of Muslims will be amplified. A centre of this scale and magnitude will do that," said Daisy Khan, director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which is behind the project.

The financial district committee of New York Community Board 1, representing local residents, gave the proposed Islamic centre a vote of confidence at a meeting on May 5.

The $100 million (£69 million) project would include a swimming pool, a basketball court, a 500-seat theatre and possibly a daycare centre. About 2,000 Muslims are expected to attend Friday prayers there.

The plans, however, have stirred a groundswell of opposition, with a group called Stop the Islamicisation of America calling for a street demonstration on June 6. "What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Centre buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack?" said Pamela Geller, the group's director. "Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in the eye of America."

Ms Geller's group said that Islam had a history of building mosques on top of the holy places of other religions as a symbol of Muslim dominance. It cited al-Aqsa Mosque on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Ayasofya Mosque in the former Hagia Sophia basilica in Istanbul, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus atop what was once the Church of St John the Baptist.

"The only Muslim centre that should be built in the shadow of the World Trade Centre is one that is devoted to expunging the Koran and all Islamic teachings of the violent jihad that they prescribe, as well as all hateful texts and incitement to violence," she said.

Paul Sipos, a member of Community Board 1, also questioned the symbolism. "If the Japanese decided to open a cultural centre across from Pearl Harbor, that would be insensitive," Mr Sipos told the New York Post. "If the Germans opened a Bach choral society across from Auschwitz, even after all these years, that would be an insensitive setting. I have absolutely nothing against Islam. I just think: why there?"

Some critics have been more extreme in their views. Mark Williams, a leader of the right-wing Tea Party movement, provoked controversy with an incendiary post on his blog.

Mr Williams, the chairman of the Tea Party Express, wrote: "The monument would consist of a mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god." Urged to apologise, he said: "I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual monkey god."

His comments drew a sharp rebuke from a spokesman for Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, who noted that the building had planning permission for a variety of uses, including a religious centre. Some families of September 11 victims have also voiced misgivings about the project. "I don't like it," said Evelyn Pettigano, who lost a sister in the attacks. "I'm not prejudiced. It's too close to the area where our family members were murdered."

After years of wrangling, work will soon be under way on every building project within the 16-acre Ground Zero site. The frame of the skyscraper once known as the Freedom Tower, which is to be the tallest in the city, is now 25 storeys high. A second tower has also risen above ground level; work has begun on the foundation of a third block and will soon begin on a fourth.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7134546.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

Europe in prophecy

The picture on the back of the Greek coin is that of the Goddess Europa, who according to Greek mythology, rode on the back of a bull. As far as I understand, the bull was actually Zeus in disguise, and in the story he throws Europa off his back and rapes her.For more images of the Beast in official European literature and coinage, see here.But what has this got to do with Bible prophecy?Listen to how the Apostle John describes the identity of the beast, the last world empire…Revelation 17:3-6
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

On the back of the Greek Euro, we have exactly the same image as the Apostle John describes. A woman, arrayed in purple and scarlet, sitting on a beast, with a cup in her hand. This of course is a symbolic description, but I believe John's description is so vivid, and the characteristics of the woman are so peculiar, that they reveal beyond all doubt, the identity of the woman and the beast she rides.

Many of the descriptions of this beast are already explained for us in the passage…

Seven headed and ten horned beast

Revelation 17:12-3
And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.

The Ten Horns ?

The WEU Membership

Belgium

France

Luxembourg

The Netherlands

United Kingdom

Germany

Italy

Portugal

Spain

Greece

Revelation 17:9
And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

The ten horns, as the book of Daniel also mentions, are ten kings that will give their power unto the Antichrist during the seven year tribulation period. The city of Rome is also known world wide as being the city that was built on seven hills, the "seat" of the Roman Catholic church.

Riding on a sea of peoples

Revelation 17:15
And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

This last world empire will be a multi-lingual confederacy. No other regional bloc has more diverse languages and cultures than that of Europe. Even the European Parliament building was designed to look like a modern day tower of Babel, where God previously confounded the languages of all men back in Genesis 11:9. Here is the original painting of the tower of Babel, contrasted with an official European Union advertisement – the above painting subtitled with the blasphemous statement of "Many tongues, one voice", and a photograph of the actual design of the EU parliament building.

Europa is decked with purple and scarlet, and holds a golden cup

Revelation 17:4
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

The fact that a woman rides the beast, and not a man, is significant. In the Bible, spiritually adulterous nations seem to always be portrayed as harlots, e.g. Ezekiel 23. The Roman Catholic church's worship and prayers are also directed towards a woman, Mary Queen of Heaven. It was also said that Pope John Paul dedicated Europe, along with his own life, to Mary. And as we will see later, many Catholic depictions of Mary show her adorned with twelve stars, as does our picture of Europa. Both women, Mary and Europa, are also worshipped as Goddesses – perhaps in the case of Mary not in name, but she was recently given the status of co-Redemptrix making her effectively equal with God.

Purple and scarlet just happens to be the colours of the Vatican's priestly garb. And it is estimated that Vatican city contains more wealth and riches than many nations combined. The cup of blood reminds us of the Roman Catholic communion, in which only the priest is permitted to drink from in contradiction of Scripture. And the blood reminds us of transubstantiation, the false belief that the wine in the cup actually becomes the physical blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit adds further emphasis on the blood, revealing that it is also a picture of how the woman has martyred the true saints of God, so much so that she is now become drunk on their blood. One of the most bloodiest times in the Roman Empire was during the time the book of Revelation was written, when literally millions of Christians were killed for entertainment, and sent into the catacombs of Rome with conditions so dank, life expectancy was only around six months.

Fornication here is of course in the spiritual sense. The Roman Catholic church has committed spiritual adultery with the religions of the world. Pope John Paul II possibly did more for the ecumenical movement than any other Pope.

I was forwarded the following information by my friend, John Vermeer, about the cup. A woman, presumably Mary Queen of Heaven, is adorned on many Catholic images holding a cup.

Pope Leo XII had the above medal minted in commemoration of the second year of his reign, the jubilee year of 1825. The back side of the medal reveals a depiction of a woman, sitting on the globe, holding a communion cup, while sitting on the world. The inscription reads SEDET SUPER UNIVERSUM, declaring that her seat of authority is universal, i.e., over the entire globe.

The image is full of Babylonian symbolism. The woman is not Mary at all, but represents Semiramis, the ancient Babylonian Madonna. The rays emanating from her head represent Nimrod, whom the ancient Babylonians believed died, and was transformed into the Sun. Babylonians believed Semiramis was conceived by the Sun, and gave birth to Tamuz, who it was believed was really a reincarnation of Nimrod. The cross depicted on the coin is not a Christian cross, it is really the old Babylonian letter T, which pagans have used for centuries in idol worship of their god Tamuz.

Europa is a great city that rules over kings

Revelation 17:18
And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

No other city in the world can make this claim apart from Rome. She has literally ruled over kings by threat and force for centuries (remember William the Conqueror, the Spanish inquisition, the Huguenots, etc), and still desires today to maintain her Holy Roman Empire.

A woman crowned with twelve stars

Revelation 12:1-2
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

Another woman is mentioned in Revelation. Some say that this other woman represents Israel, and I would be inclined to agree with that viewpoint. This woman is crowned with twelve stars. If you look closely at the Greek Euro, our Europa is also crowned with twelve stars. The European Union flag is also made up of twelve stars on a blue sea. The official EU line is that the twelve stars of the EU flag represents completeness. But in actual fact, you will see Mary Queen of Heaven (not the true Mary) crowned with twelve stars in many Roman Catholic pictures. The twelve star European Union flag shows us that the woman (Roman Catholic church) truly rides the beast of Europe.

The other woman in Revelation, Israel, is crowned with twelve stars with the moon is under her feet. The twelve stars could represent Israel being controlled by the European Union, or more likely representing the twelve tribes of Israel. And the moon is always symbolic of the Messiah in Jewish tradition.

Genesis 49:10
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

Possibly the reason why the moon is under the woman's feet is because "between the feet" is the Scriptural description of where offspring find a place of protection from their parents. This is a picture of the promise of God, that the nation of Israel would give birth to the Messiah.

Revelation 12:5
And she brought forth a man child (Jesus Christ), who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

Europa is raped by the beast

Revelation 17:16
And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

Just like the story of Europa, this modern day confederacy will throw the woman off its back and rape her. The modern day Roman Catholic church currently rides the beast of Europe, but when the Antichrist comes to power, this worldly religion will have served its purpose and will be destroyed by the ten kings through God's will.

http://unsealedprophecy.wordpress.com/europe-in-prophecy/

Conservative Watchdog Leader Issues Warning to Evangelical Groups

The head of a conservative watchdog group that monitors mainline denominations warned evangelical groups this past week to stay away from "divisive, liberal political activism" in light of the declining support witnessed within the National Council of Churches in the USA.

"Former NCC chief Bob Edgar's intense liberal political activism gained secular foundation support but seems to have further undermined church support," Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, noted in a statement Friday.

"Evangelical groups such as the National Association of Evangelicals should take the NCC's disastrous tenure under Edgar as a cautionary tale against embracing divisive, liberal political activism over church unity."

In making his point, Tooley highlighted how 13 of the NCC's 36 member communions made no contribution to the once preeminent association of U.S. Christian churches and how undesignated contributions by member churches to the NCC dropped 25 percent over the past decade while designated church contributions dropped 65 percent.

The life-long United Methodist and former CIA analyst also pointed to the May 17 meeting of the NCC Governing Board, which adopted its seventh deficit budget in as many years.

At the meeting, NCC General Secretary Dr. Michael Kinnamon said the organization's unrestricted reserves will dip below $3 million by the end of the next fiscal year without new support.

The ecumenical leader went on to emphasize relationship building among member churches and distancing the council from the perception of being purely political. Notably, however, the NCC soon after proceeded to work on a resolution that labels the Afghanistan war against the Taliban as unjust.

Tooley, who has been with IRD since 1994 and last year became its president, described the NCC as an "aging dinosaur of stale politics and bureaucratic inertia."

"If the NCC can't reverse the decline in church giving and foundation support, its days may be numbered," he said, before issuing his warning to evangelical groups that have more recently been taking up issues traditionally championed by the Left.

Founded in 1950, the NCC comprises a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, historic African American and Living Peace churches - which, combined, reportedly bring together 45 million people in more than 100,000 local congregations in communities across the nation.

Member communions include the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and Tooley's denomination, the United Methodist Church, among others.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100523/conservative-watchdog-leader-issues-warning-to-evangelical-groups/index.html

Propaganda from the AP

Leo Rennert

It's just a short paragraph. Yet, it is riddled with factual and historical errors -- all part of an egregious anti-Israel bias that undermines millennial Jewish ties and claims to Jerusalem.

It appears in the May 23 edition of the Washington Post, as the last paragraph of a brief item attributed to the Associated Press about U.S.-mediated indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the Post's "Digest" feature.

Here is the entire paragraph:

"Israel wants to annex Jewish settlements in the war-won West Bank and East Jerusalem."

How is that wrong? Let us count the ways:

1. For starters, Israel doesn't want or need to annex any part of East Jerusalem. After the 1967 war, when it defeated Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies bent on destroying it, Israel made Jerusalem whole again. Israel formally put an end to 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation of the eastern sector of the city -- the only time in its entire history that Jerusalem was a divided city. Today, there is nothing left for Israel to "annex." It's been a done deal for more than a generation.

2. When the Post and the AP refer to "East Jerusalem," this piece of real estate first and foremost encompasses the Old City of Jerusalem with its Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall and Temple Mount -- the latter two are Judaism's holiest sites. And there exists no Jewish "settlement" in the Old City. It may have started as a Jewish "settlement" 3,000 years ago when King David made it his capital. But as a Jewish capital for most of the next 1,000 years, (it never has been anyone else's capital) Old Jerusalem quickly turned into a full-fledged city, If there's a Jewish "settlement" in Old Jerusalem today, then Georgetown and Manhattan -- with their far more contemporary pedigrees -- are "settlements" in spades.

3. Not by any semantic stretch does "settlements" apply to other well-established Jewish urban neighborhoods in East Jerusalem beyond the Old City. Again, "settlements" in this context is a label that doesn't fit reality. There are more than 200,000 Jews today in East Jerusalem and they don't live in "settlements."

4. Nor is there any recent historical evidence that Israel "wants to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank." While Prime Minister Netanyahu so far hasn't put on the negotiating table the final borders he envisages under his accepted two-state solution, there is ample historical evidence that Israel has been ready to abandon all "settlements" in the West Bank. Yes, every "settlement" -- in the real meaning of the word -- namely, a fairly new implant of arrivals, such as was common in the first stages of America's westward expansion. Both in 2000-2001 (Barak-Clinton) and 2008 (Olmert), Israel offered to abandon all such remote West Bank "settlements," while insisting on retaining only well-established cities like Maale Adumim or the suburban Gush Etzion bloc. Salt Lake City may have started as a "settlement" but didn't take long to morph into a city. The same goes for the close-in Jewish urban centers that Israel wants to retain, while still leaving about 95 percent of the West Bank for a contiguous Palestinian state. Even the Obama administration acknowledges this reality.

5. The bottom line is that whether it's the Old City of Jerusalem, or other parts of East Jerusalem, or the West Bank, "settlements" are hardly the issue, if the term still has an exact meaning.

6. Another tendentious, anti-Israel biased formulation in this article is the "war-won" adjective appended to East Jerusalem. Since the article provides no context about the 1967 war -- no mention that Egyptian President Nasser set out to exterminate Israel and blockaded its access to the Red Sea (an act of war under international law) and that Israel prevailed in defense of its very existence in the ensuing Six-Day War -- the "war won" label as a stand-alone formulation makes it appear that it was Israel that somehow decided to go to war to capture East Jerusalem and the West Bank -- a total misreading of history.

7. Israel's "war-won West Bank and East Jerusalem" also leaves a false inference or impression that Israel, as winner of the 1967 war, used its victory to capture land from the Palestinians, when the historical truth is that there were no "Palestinians" as a putative national entity in 1967 and that Palestinians never exercised sovereignty in either the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.

But it's this kind of anti-Israel mythologizing that continues to permeate Washington Post and AP coverage and keeps eroding Israel's political and historical legitimacy.

Agenda journalism? Yes. Fair, accurate journalism? No.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/propaganda_from_the_ap.html

****Israel's Emergency Preparedness Drill in Full Swing

Israel's Emergency Preparedness Drill in Full Swing

CBNNews.com

Monday, May 24, 2010

JERUSALEM, Israel - Israel's fourth nationwide emergency preparedness drill began Sunday, with a simulated full-scale regional war scenario.

The exercise begins more than two weeks into the war, after 200 missile and rockets - some fitted with chemical and biological warheads - have been fired on northern, central and southern Israel by Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran.

On day one of the exercise, Defense Department officials, regional councils and teams of rescue personnel worked together to determine the number of casualties and damage inflicted by the missiles.

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to assure Syrian President Bashar Assad that the annual exercise should not be construed as a threat, this despite known collusion on missile transfers between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

"This is the fourth year we have conducted this exercise, and it will include using sirens throughout the country, in workplaces and residential areas, schools and day care centers, in hospitals, local authorities, government offices and more. It is a routine exercise, which has been scheduled for a long time," Netanyahu said.

"I want to emphasize it is not the result of any abnormal security development. On the contrary, Israel wants quiet, stability and peace," he said.

"It is no secret, however, that we live in a region under threat of missiles and rockets. Israel's best defense against this threat is, first of all, maintaining deterrence and the IDF's [Israel Defense Forces] decisive capability, These we develop without letup," the prime minister said.

Netanyahu also stressed the importance of preparing the public in the event of missile attacks, which he said "is exactly what this exercise will do."

Two weeks ago, during a wide-scale IDF exercise in the north, the prime minister responded to erroneous remarks by Assad.

"Israel wants peace and has no intention of attacking its neighbors, contrary to the false rumors that have been circulating about this matter," Netanyahu said.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak echoed his sentiments.

"We have no intention at all of starting a war in the north," Barak said.

"We are working toward the opposite - for calm and peace - but a country like Israel has to be prepared, and we are preparing," he concluded.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2010/May/Emergency-Preparedness-Drill-in-Full-Swing/
=====================

Israel Running 'National Home Front' Security Drills this Week

Israel's fourth National Home Front exercise, a drill for national security preparedness, began yesterday. The exercise will include a week of coordination and coopertion between the IDF Home Front Command, the National Emergency Authority, search and rescue forces, local Israeli authorities, government offices, security organizations, the education system, and public and private organizations.

In addition to improving cooperation between different organizations and institution, the government uses the exercise to "prepare the public and the local authorities for emergency periods," according to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

The general public is being asked by the IDF to take part in the simuluated emergency scenarios in more than 30 local authorities throughout Israel.

On Wednesday, a 90-second siren will go off throughout the country at 11:00 a.m., after which the public will practice going to designated secure areas and waiting for about ten minutes.

A cell phone alert system will also be tested in certain areas where citizens will get a text message that says "Have a nice day" from Israel's Home Front Command.

In his weekly address to the Israeli Cabinet, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasized that the exercise has been planned for some time, and is not a response to a specific security concern.But he added a cautionary note.

"It is no secret that we live in a region that is under the threat of missiles and rockets," said Netanyahu. "The State of Israel's best defense against this threat is--first of all--in maintaining deterrence and the IDF's decisive capability, and these we do without respite."

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/37625/army-to-boost-urban-combat-instruction

Majority still oppose gay marriage in U.S.

Published: May 24, 2010

PRINCETON, N.J., May 24 (UPI) -- A majority of Americans still are against legalizing homosexual marriage, a poll released Monday indicates.

The Gallup poll found 53 percent oppose same-sex marriage

and 44 percent favor allowing it.

The polling firm said 68 percent were opposed and 27 percent in favor when it first surveyed Americans about gay marriage. The latest numbers, Gallup said, were tied for the lowest opposition but slightly below the highest ever support -- 46 percent -- in 2007.

Among Democrats questioned, a majority favor legal gay marriage, with 70 percent identifying themselves as liberals expressing support.

Those surveyed who say religion is "very important" in their lives oppose legal same-sex marriage by 70 percent to 27 percent. On the other hand, those who say religion is not important to them support gay marriage by just as wide a margin, Gallup found.

The telephone poll of 1,029 adults was conducted May 3-6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/05/24/Majority-still-oppose-gay-marriage-in-US/UPI-42351274738431/

******Air Force to Test Supersonic Missile Tomorrow, Space Plane's Mission Revealed

Air Force to Test Supersonic Missile Tomorrow, Space Plane's Mission Revealed
Jason Mick (Blog) - May 24, 2010 5:32 PM

The Air Force's latest toy appears not to be a weapon of destruction, but rather one of intelligence

The Space Shuttle may be dead, but the Air Force is looking to pick up the slack. Last month they launched their secret space plane, the X-37B, from a base from Florida. The spacecraft is currently on the first part of a top secret nine month mission that will end with a soft landing in California.

So is the X-37B the Air Force's first foray into creating the world's first starfighter? Absolutely, not says the Air Force. Gary E. Payton, under secretary of the Air Force for space programs says that the plane carries "no offensive capabilities." He states, "The program supports technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development."

These claims seem to be supported by new data from amateur star watchers. Ted Molczan, a member of a skywatching team in Toronto, was among those who spotted the secret craft and analyzed its course. They found that like the Space Shuttle, it flew at a pretty typical altitude of 255 miles above the Earth's surface and circled the Earth every 90 minutes. Its course takes it as far north as 40 degrees latitude, just below New York City.

The interesting thing that Molczan noted was that the craft was passed the same point exactly every four days -- a typical format followed by spy satellites. And its trajectory took it past interesting locations, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea. Thus Molczan and other amateur observers are saying that the Air Force is probably being honest about the craft's lack of weapons, and it's probably testing high tech surveillance equipment.

If the X-37B indeed does not hold space weapons, fans of high-tech weapons can soften their disappointment with the news that the X-51A Waverider hypersonic missile will conduct its first test flight tomorrow.

The new missile is designed to have a unique profile from traditional ICBMs, to prevent nuclear powers like China and Russia from mistaking the missile for a nuclear warhead. The missile is to be launched from a B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

The almost wingless craft will use atmospheric oxygen to burn a mix of ethylene and JP-7 fuel initially, before transitioning to pure JP-7 fuel. This is different that previous attempts, such as the X-43A, which used hydrogen fuel. By ditching the need for hydrogen the hypersonic platform becomes more promising logistically. The new platform employs a bleeding edge Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJY61 scramjet engine and also employs advanced thermal protections.

The missile will climb 70,000 feet before descending at speeds in excess of Mach 6. Four test vehicles currently exist -- there are no plans of recovering the missile after the initial test. The hope is that it will keep transmitting data though until impact.

The X-37B space plane is reportedly on a top secret surveillance mission for the U.S. Air Force. (Source: U.S. Air Force)

The X-51A missile is designed to hit targets at hypersonic speeds without being confused with a nuclear warhead. (Source: U.S. Air Force)

The X-51A hypersonic missile will take flight tomorrow. (Source: U.S. Air Force)

The Air Force's latest toy appears not to be a weapon of destruction, but rather one of intelligence

http://www.dailytech.com/Air+Force+to+Test+Supersonic+Missile+Tomorrow+Space+Planes+Mission+Revealed/article18469.htm

Poland receives US Patriot missile battery

Poland receives US Patriot missile battery

2010-05-24 20:30:00

A US Patriot missile battery has arrived in Poland to be stationed at a military base and provide training to Polish soldiers, the US embassy in Warsaw said Monday.

'An American Patriot Air and Missile Defence Battery arrived Sunday at Morag, home of the 16th Mechanized Battalion of the Polish Land Forces, located in northeast Poland,' the embassy said in a statement. The mission in Poland was to conduct joint training and exercises with the Polish air defence, the embassy added.

The battery comes after Poland's parliament approved in February an agreement that specifies conditions for the stationing of US soldiers as part of revamped plans for a US missile shield.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) gives the green light for some 100 US soldiers to be stationed in Poland as part of the shield, which will include Patriot missiles and SM-3s.

Russia has been critical of the US-Polish agreement, which places the missiles in Morag, a town some 60 km from Kaliningrad, Russia.

US President Barack Obama announced Sep 17 that the US would drop former president George W. Bush's plans for a long-range system in favour of a short-and medium-range system to counter Iran's ballistic missile programme. It was agreed that Poland would still get the Patriot missile battery.

The battery will be manned by some 100-150 US soldiers, who will be based in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Officials will unveil the battery at an official ceremony Wednesday.

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123205676

Radical Islamic Terrorists and America’s Immigration Crisis

Radical Islamic Terrorists and America's Immigration Crisis

by Marinka Peschmann

At a press conference last Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama said his administration was taking a "very close look" at Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law, "for any implications, especially for civil rights."

So while the Obama Administration looks at civil rights implications, the big question to ask is will they also look at the implications of the radical Islamic terrorists in America—including those who have taken advantage of the broken U.S. immigration system?

What? Radical Islamic terrorists are in America?

According to a previously disclosed 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, the answer is a resounding yes, and among them are members of; Al-Qa'ida, Al-Shabaab, HAMAS, Hizballah, Jama'at al-Tabligh, Jama'at ul Fuqra, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Extremists, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Union, and the Taliban.

This information you will not learn from the Obama Administration's Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who considers acts of terror to be man-made disasters. The same Secretary Napolitano, who quickly condemned the Arizona immigration law (intended to do the job the Federal government failed to do), even though she had not read it.

Nor would you know that Islamic radical terrorists have taken advantage of America's immigration crisis by listening to Attorney General Eric Holder either. Instead, for instance, he obfuscated then refused to identify radical Islam as the motive behind the failed Times Square terrorist attack earlier this month, after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen (via marriage) from Pakistan, who returned to the States after five months of terror training in Waziristan, was arrested. Holder is considering suing Arizona over their immigration law even though, as he admitted last week, he had not read it either.

For unknown reasons the Obama Administration has deliberately refused to publicly address the clear and present danger of radical Islamic terrorists and the immigration crisis. As previously reported here, Terrorists have applied for Green Cards, and as the 215-page 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment confirms, "The international terrorism threat to Virginia and the nation as a whole stems from several radical Islamic militant groups…."

Moreover, as the threat assessment documents, there is a connection with radical Islamic terrorists and immigration:

Marriage fraud is a common method of facilitating the extended stays of foreign
terrorists in the U.S….Known cases of sham marriages exist involving al-Qa'ida, Hizballah, and individuals with radical ties. Fraudulent marriages have enabled individuals affiliated with al-Qa'ida, Hizballah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to remain in the U.S. One regional example is the Charlotte Hizballah cell, where a key figure "helped secure three fraudulent visas and three sham marriages for the purpose of 'legally' bringing in the United States his brother, his brother-in-law, and sister so that they might become legal permanent residents…

… one Virginia-linked case occurred in which a Norfolk police officer testified against an Ohio-based Jordanian man who had tried to recruit him online for a terrorist cause. Subsequent federal investigation showed this subject likely entered the U.S. through a fraudulent marriage to a Kansas City woman in 2001; the marriage was annulled five months later…

… Many individuals enter the U.S. on student visas and never enroll in school… [or] individuals may enroll and seem to be legitimate students but may still be working as operatives. The three categories of nonimmigrant student visas monitored and tracked by DHS are F visas for academic study, M visas for vocational study, and J visas for cultural exchange. Such visas can be exploited by terrorists not only as a method to legally penetrate the borders, but also present a legitimate opportunity to study technical fields which may be of use in future attacks.

One of the FBI's most wanted subjects, Aafia Siddiqui, who has ties to al-Qa'ida, entered the U.S. on a student visa and lived in the country for over a decade while studying and teaching at Brandeis and MIT… she was found with handwritten notes referring to a 'mass casualty attack' at various prominent locations in the U.S., such as the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge… Separate FBI reporting advised that an individual in the U.S. had sponsored several individuals from Egypt to enter to the U.S. on F-1 student visas. This individual had an identified contact at Strayer University who prepared and filed the visa paperwork through the University… The sponsor and the university contact allegedly hold radical Muslim beliefs…

Borrowing from Secretary Napolitano, the immigration crisis is a federal government-made disaster that occurred under both Republican and Democratic leadership. The consequences of the unsecured borders and the broken, backlogged United States Citizenship & Immigration Services do not exclusively adversely and dangerously affect Arizona– but the nation. It's time for the Obama Administration to stop deflecting reality and tell the truth about the threats facing America.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com

http://biggovernment.com/mpeschmann/2010/05/24/radical-islamic-terrorists-and-americas-immigration-crisis/

Satanic cult teens 'sacrificed' victims then ate them

Seven young members of a satanic sect have gone on trial in Russia accused of four gruesome murders in which they "ritually sacrificed" their victims before cooking and eating parts of them.

Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Published: 7:21PM BST 24 May 2010

Prosecutors say the murders took place on 29 and 30 June 2008 in a remote forested area close to Yaroslavl with two victims killed per night.

The self-styled devil worshippers, which included a young teenage girl, lured three girls and a boy aged from 15 to 17 to the spot by plying them with alcohol and inviting them to sit round a bonfire.

They then killed them in a sacrificial ceremony, stabbing them 666 times each in homage to the so-called Number of the Beast.

Prosecutors say the young killers then dismembered their victims' bodies and cooked certain body parts such as the hearts and the tongues before consuming them.

They buried the rest of the remains in a giant pit which they marked with an inverted cross topped with a dead cat. Investigators say the sect was formed in 2006 and gleaned its knowledge of Satanism from the Internet, initially killing cats and dogs before graduating to homicide.

The case has shocked inhabitants of the historic city of Yaroslavl some 150 miles north-east of Moscow which is one of Russia's 'Golden Ring' tourist destinations and better known for its beautiful churches and monasteries than grisly ritual killings.

The defendants' young age - four of the accused were under eighteen at the time of the murders - and the sheer cruelty of their crimes combined with the fact that none of them came from poor families has left many locals struggling to understand their motives.

The case is being held behind closed doors but local media say all seven defendants admit their guilt. They are officially charged with murder, theft and the desecration of human remains.

They would typically be jailed for life but the fact that four of the defendants were minors at the time means they are likely to get off more lightly.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7760270/Satanic-cult-teens-sacrificed-victims-then-ate-them.html

Weird weather ~ / Signs in the heavens

Hubble spots a planet-eating star

Page last updated at 9:16 GMT, Monday, 24 May 2010 10:16 UK

Scientists used Hubble data to create an image of the planet being swallowed

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured evidence of a Sun-like star "eating" a nearby planet.

Astronomers knew that stars were capable of swallowing planets in orbit around them, but this is the first time the event has been "seen" so clearly.

Although the planet was too far away for Hubble to photograph, scientists have created an image of it, based on analysis of the telescope's data.

The discovery was published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Continue reading the main story

We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own Solar System

Carole Haswell Open University

The researchers say the planet, which is called Wasp-12b, may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

It is so close to its star that it completes an orbit in 1.1 Earth days and is superheated to more than 1,500C.

Because of this proximity, the planet's atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times the radius of Jupiter and is spilling material on to the star.

Carole Haswell from the UK's Open University led the research team. She explained: "We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star."

Hubble's detection of the cloud enabled scientists to draw conclusions about how it was generated.

Dr Haswell said: "We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own Solar System."

Wasp-12 is a dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga.

The exoplanet was first discovered by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (Wasp) in 2008.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10136415.stm
===================

Persistent cold, wet weather delays crop harvests, worries farmers

By Loretta Kalb
lkalb@sacbee.com

Published: Monday, May. 24, 2010 - 4:29 pm | Page 1B

Last Modified: Tuesday, May. 25, 2010 - 1:58 am

Keep your sweater – and umbrella – within reach.

The chilly weekend temperatures were among the coldest in more than a half-century from Redding to Stockton, the National Weather Service reported Sunday.

More cold is expected today – a low of 45 and a high of 69 in downtown Sacramento – with rain forecast through much of this week.

The dogged pattern of rain and cold has prompted worries of another sort: Melon crops are less likely to be ready for market in time for July 4 celebrations, and tomato harvests likely will be delayed.

Cold "slows everything down," Yolo County Agriculture Commissioner John Young said Sunday. "We're not getting the temperatures we need for germination of seed. It slows the melons down, it slows the rice down, it slows any of the warm-weather crops."

Of course, the cooler temperatures have an upside, delaying Sierra snowmelt. On Friday the state Department of Water Resources boosted the delivery forecast for its customers to 45 percent of contract amounts, reflecting a snowpack that's at 167 percent of normal.

In the Valley, however, the regular cycle of spring rains threatens to narrow the timetable for tomato harvests, said Gene Miyao, farm adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Growers try to plant while soils are dry.

"Under wet conditions, (planting) causes soil compactions. That affects root growth. Irrigation doesn't infiltrate as well," Miyao said. "I think it certainly is a concern."

Waiting for soil to dry means risking that rain will fall again before planting. In that case, greenhouse growers can't move young-plant inventory to fields on schedule. And at harvest time, some growers must waiting for processor capacity. Tomatoes may rot in the field or face exposure to insects while waiting, Miyao said.

The late rains are no better for hay baling.

"If you get anywhere up to a half-inch or more (rain), you're going to start getting problems with mold," said Casey Stone, a partner in the 7,500-acre Yolo Land & Cattle Co. The company has about 600 Yolo County acres in hay.

Wind can help dry the hay. Winds from the northwest were forecast at 15 to 25 mph Sunday night in the Sacramento area.

And the forecast for rain? Figure on 0.2 to 0.5 of an inch of rain or showers starting by nightfall Tuesday, said Drew Peterson, National Weather Service meteorologist. Rain and showers will continue through Friday as a series of fronts arrive from the Gulf of Alaska.

Rainfall in downtown Sacramento, at 18.99 inches, is 97 percent of normal since July 1.

Not so normal is the late-season cold, which set records over the weekend.

"We're actually watching a record set in 1971," Peterson said. "We're looking to see if we make it through June 6 without a 90-degree day."

The warmest days downtown this year were 86 on May 3 and May 15. That triggered a premature chorus among weather-watchers.

"Everybody was saying, 'Summer is finally here,' " Peterson said.

For the record-setting, consider the weekend just ended.

Sunday's low of 45 degrees in downtown Sacramento matched the low established on that day in 1960. In Red Bluff, the low of 45 matched the low set in 1953. In Redding, the low was 42 on Sunday and on the same date in 1946.

On Saturday, the thermometer in Redding fell to 34 degrees, toppling the 39-degree record on that date in 1960. Red Bluff's low fell to 37 degrees, 3 degrees below the dates in 1960.

At the other end of the how-cold-it-got scale, Stockton Metropolitan Airport on Saturday never exceeded 67 degrees, two degrees lower than the coldest high for that day, set in 1943.

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/24/2771679/persistent-cold-wet-weather-stunts.html

Miami Company Creates "Gringo Masks" for Illegals

Miami ad group making a statement with Gringo Masks

By TODD WRIGHT

If you are looking for a way to beat Arizona's new immigration law, look no further than Miami's new Gringo Masks.

The new product, brainchild of Miami advertising agency Zubi Advertising, guarantees the cops won't be stopping you or your loved ones after you put your best white face forward.

The product is simple. Choose from a cut out of a blue-eyed, sandy hair-colored white guy or a green-eyed, blond haired white woman.

Cut the face to fit yours. Poke out the eyes. And presto! You don't look like a "suspicious, potentially illegal" alien. Rubber band or green card not included.

The Gringo Mask was not created for profit, says Zubi execs, but for purpose. It's one of the nation's leading Hispanic advertising agency's ways of showing it disapproves of Arizona's new law.

"When we first heard of the law in Arizona and the effects it could have in terms of racial profiling, we discussed at the agency what we could do about it, since we have access to media," co-owner Michelle Zubizarreta told the Sun-Sentinel. "How can we address the issue, but do so in a creative way while at the same time delivering a message?"

Now we could see how some might find the mask offensive - kind of along the lines of the infamous "Illegal alien with green card" Halloween costume of last year.

But Zubizarreta and her brother, Joe, said with traditional protests like marches and boycotts already in full swing, the Gringo Mask was another direct way of getting the message across.

"The spirit in which we conceived Gringo Mask," Zubizarreta said, "was not to offend anyone. We wanted to start a dialogue."

The Gringo Mask, along with instructions in Spanish and English, can be found at www.gringomask.com

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/weird/Miami-Company-Creates-Gringo-Masks-for-Arizona-Illegals-94782694.html