‘Qaeda chief in Iraq’ arrested. US Commanders: He’s a strawman. (uh someone’s. Not ours. No no. Not ours.)

A man calling himself the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been arrested in the north of the country, state television reported on Thursday quoting an interior ministry spokesman.

Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf told Al-Iraqiya that the detained man claimed he was Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who is also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, but that investigations were under way to verify his identity.

“He was arrested in Wad al-Hajar region of Nineveh during a raid yesterday (Wednesday),” Khalaf said. “Now we are conducting more investigations to confirm whether he is Abu Hamza.”

Khalaf said the arrest came after another man close to the detained individual said the Al-Qaeda chief was in a house in Wad al-Hajar area.

“The police then raided the area and captured the man who said ‘I am Abu Hamza al-Muhajir’.”

Muhajir, whose real name according to the US military is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, is an Egyptian national who was made the chief of the jihadist group in Iraq after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike

in June 2006.

Last year, there had been reports that Masri had been killed, but they were later denied.

In April, Muhajir announced a campaign in which the group will “offer the head of an American” as a gift to US President George W. Bush, in a speech monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group.

… Al-Qaeda in Iraq has in the past said it is led by an Iraqi, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but US commanders say he is a “cyber invention” and that he is a straw man invented to put an Iraqi face on a terrorist group led by foreigners who infiltrated Iraq to sow chaos and undermine the US-backed government. - ap

Looks very American. Without the head piece he could be Chevy Chase.

This is a new twist: US commanders now admit that Al-Qadea is a scam (or at least one leader in Iraq), but blame it on Iran or someone else. Since 9/11, however, many believe the CIA along with Israel and Pakistan have been sowing chaos under the banner of Al-Qaeda to be sure the US has a reason to stay in Iraq so we get the military bases for Middle East “stability” and the oil. You’ll find this point of view on prisonplanet, infoclearinghouse and so on.  No one denies the CIA Al-Qaeda connection:

Bin Laden, … Throughout the 80s …was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

But the current Pentagon story is that Bin Laden turned against the US after we trained and supplied him. Did he really? When? Why? Why did the CIA withhold Al-Qaeda interrogation tapes from the 9/11 Commission?  Isn’t is beyond believable that the plane into building exercise the CIA /NRO was conducting on 9/11 was just a bizarre coincidence?

With good  plausible deny ability you fall back closer and closer to the truth, but only when you must.

Salsa Basic Dance Steps. Xeno at Havana Nights.

Last night I went with a new friend to a beginning Salsa Dance lesson at Zokku Sushi restaurant and dance club in downtown Sacramento.

For only $10 you learn the basics from an instructor who normally charges $80/hour for private lessons.

(Disclaimer: Giana Montoya, the instructor, (left and below) is also a friend of mine.)

We arrived a bit late so we didn’t dance, but we had so much fun that we decided to take her next $15 beginner’s lesson.

This is something I think many people would really enjoy so if you are in the Sacramento area with nothing to do on the first Wednesday night of every month–starting yesterday, May 7, 2003–bring your $10 down to this club and give it a try.

If you are shy about your dance skills, you can just watch, but I think you will want to join in after seeing how much fun people are having.

For details, contact Giana 916.764.2236.

Here are the basic salsa dance steps for those who have never tried it:

Yoga for the Thyroid Gland?

from photobucket.com posted with vodpod

Utrasound: Jesus and cross found in womb. Woman: maybe a good sign.

When an Ohio woman looked at an ultrasound she expected to see a developing fetus.

Instead, she saw what she believes to be an image of Jesus Christ, MyFox Cleveland reported on its Web site.

Monet Sledge, from Lorain, Ohio, got an ultrasound in preparation for her first baby and was shocked when she saw what appeared to be an image of Christ on the Cross, the Web site reported.

Click here to discuss this story.

She showed the image to her sister, a mother of four, to get her opinion. “I was expecting to see little body parts,” Sledge’s sister Tequoia Smith told MyFox Cleveland. “Like a face, arms and legs.”

But she too believes saw Jesus on the cross.

“As soon as I saw it I was like oh my gosh.”

“People say maybe my baby is gonna be blessed and maybe it is a good sign,” said mother-to-be Sledge. “I don’t know, I’ve done wrong in my life, maybe he’s forgiven me early.” - fox

I’m not so sure that having jesus on a cross in any woman’s uterus is a good thing, but that’s just me.

Evacuation Ordered as Chilean Volcano Begins to Spew Ash

The Chaitén volcano in southern Chile blasted ash and what appeared to be lava a dozen miles into the air on Tuesday, leading the government to order the immediate and complete evacuation of everyone living within a 30-mile radius of it.

Preceded by dozens of tremors, the volcano — until now considered inactive — began erupting last Friday. It covered about 60 square miles with more than 15 inches of ash, rendering the air unbreathable, contaminating water sources, killing livestock and destroying all small- and medium-scale agriculture in this rural and mostly impoverished area 800 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

An enormous gray mushroom cloud of ash that could be seen from 100 miles away has since loomed over this sliver of land next to Argentina, where continental Chile breaks up into archipelagos. East winds have spread ash toward Argentina. The thick layer of volcanic ash, coupled with rain, has made access to the sparsely populated border zone difficult.

President Michelle Bachelet visited the area on Monday, announcing subsidies and other aid for affected families. On Tuesday, she convened an emergency committee of government ministers, emergency agency representatives, the director of the police force and regional officials.

The committee resolved to order the total evacuation of Chaitén, to authorize the release of emergency funds and to appoint Defense Minister José Goñi to coordinate the response to the natural disaster. - nyt

Boomerang In Zero Gravity (International Space Station) video | The Weird Post

from www.theweirdpost.com posted with vodpod

Families sue undertakers in body parts scandal

Families who claim the corpses of more than 1,000 relatives were dismembered and sold in an illegal body-parts scandal sued funeral directors and others on Tuesday.

The class action suit represents hundreds of people who claim their relatives’ body parts were harvested for medical use without their consent.

It charges seven individuals, and the funeral homes and human tissue services with which they worked, with conspiracy, negligence and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The seven were indicted by a grand jury last September and accused of harvesting bones, skin and tendons in unsanitary conditions, and selling them to hospitals with the risk that they could infect patients who received them.

The defendants allegedly made $3.8 million from sale of body parts obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey between February 2004 and September 2005 in an operation that was “ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal,” the grand jury’s report said.

In all, the scheme took tissue from 1,007 bodies, including 244 from Philadelphia funeral homes.

The suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common pleas, alleges that after removing parts from the corpses, the accused replaced harvested bone and tissue with foreign objects such as PVC piping “so that bodies would still appear normal for their pending visitations, funerals, or post-mortem proceedings.”

The defendants also falsified medical documents in order to take the body parts, including one claiming that the wife of a deceased man had given permission for his tissues to be harvested. The man, James Bonner, had never been married to the woman named in the document, the suit says.

“We must hold the responsible parties and their accomplices accountable,” Larry Cohan, an attorney representing the families, said in a statement. “These families have experienced terrible suffering — they deserve to know the truth and get on with their lives.”

Plaintiffs’ attorneys are also representing the families of “hundreds” of people who received body parts harvested in the operation.

Named in the suit are Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, his brother Louis Garzone and James McCafferty.

Five of the accused face criminal charges at a trial scheduled to begin on September 2. - ya

Civil War cannonball kills Virginia relic collector

Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.

As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.

But in February, White’s hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.

More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White’s home in this leafy Richmond suburb.

White’s death shook the close-knit fraternity of relic collectors and raised concerns about the dangers of other Civil War munitions that lay buried beneath old battlefields. Explosives experts said the fatal blast defied extraordinary odds.

“You can’t drop these things on the ground and make them go off,” said retired Col. John F. Biemeck, formerly of the Army Ordnance Corps.

White, 53, was one of thousands of hobbyists who comb former battlegrounds for artifacts using metal detectors, pickaxes, shovels and trowels.

“There just aren’t many areas in the South in which battlefields aren’t located. They’re literally under your feet,” said Harry Ridgeway, a former relic hunter who has amassed a vast collection. “It’s just a huge thrill to pull even a mundane relic out of the ground.”

After growing up in Petersburg, White went to college, served on his local police force, then worked for 25 years as a deliveryman for UPS. He retired in 1998 and devoted most of his time to relic hunting.

He was an avid reader, a Civil War raconteur and an amateur historian who watched History Channel programs over and over, to the mild annoyance of his wife.

“I used to laugh at him and say, ‘Why do you watch this? You know how it turned out. It’s not going to be any different,’” Brenda White said.

She didn’t share her husband’s devotion, but she was understanding of his interest.

“True relic hunters who have this passion, they don’t live that way vicariously, like if you were a sports fanatic,” she said. “Finding a treasure is their touchdown, even if it’s two, three bullets.”

Union and Confederate troops lobbed an estimated 1.5 million artillery shells and cannonballs at each other from 1861 to 1865. As many as one in five were duds.

Some of the weapons remain buried in the ground or river bottoms. In late March, a 44-pound, 8-inch mortar shell was uncovered at Petersburg National Battlefield, the site of an epic 292-day battle. The shell was taken to the city landfill and detonated.

Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. The combination of sulfur, potassium nitrate and finely ground charcoal requires a high temperature — 572 degrees Fahrenheit — and friction to ignite.

White estimated he had worked on about 1,600 shells for collectors and museums. On the day he died, he had 18 cannonballs lined up in his driveway to restore.

White’s efforts seldom raised safety concerns. His wife and son Travis sometimes stood in the driveway as he worked.

“Sam knew his stuff, no doubt about it,” said Jimmy Blankenship, historian-curator at the Petersburg battleground. “He did know Civil War ordnance.”

An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will not be complete until the end of May, but police who responded to the blast and examined shrapnel concluded that it came from a Civil War explosive.

Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery.

Biemeck and Peter George, co-author of a book on Civil War ordnance, believe White was using either a drill or a grinder attached to a drill to remove grit from the cannonball, causing a shower of sparks.

Because of the fuse design, it may have appeared as though the weapon’s powder had already been removed, leading even a veteran like White to conclude mistakenly that the ball was inert.

The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell. - ya

Two women report ghost has been having sex with them

The following is a sample from the Federal Way police public information log:

• At 4:02 p.m. April 10, two women went into the Federal Way police station claiming that over the past two years, a paranormal person has been placing sensors on their bodies and visiting them in their house at 28600 block of 25th Place South. They said that the ghost has been having sexual intercourse with them. One woman said that these incidents started in Kent and continued when she moved here. The other woman said that this just started now.

• At 3:36 p.m. April 12, a woman contacted the Federal Way police to report that a person was cutting a large tree down. She was concerned it could fall on her car or on her house located in the 30800 block of 22nd Avenue South. The woman who was trying to cut the tree was contacted and said that she needed to cut the tree because it was hazard.

• At 10:10 a.m. April 11, an unknown person cut the vinyl top of a woman’s car in the 30800 block of 8th Avenue SW, and gained access to the vehicle. All belongings inside the car had been gone and the total damage for the vehicle was about $1,200. …  more

Cloud Rat Rediscovered after 112 Years

The greater dwarf cloud rat was thought to live in the canopies of tall trees in the Philippines, but the last sighting of one was 112 years ago. Now it has been found again.

One of the rodents was found in Mt. Pulag National Park in the Philippines.

The fist-sized mammal has dense, soft, reddish-brown fur, a black mask around large dark eyes, small rounded ears, a broad and blunt snout, and a long tail covered with dark hair.

“This beautiful little animal was seen by biologists only once previously — by a British researcher in 1896 who was given several specimens by local people, so he knew almost nothing about the ecology of the species,” said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at the Field Museum and leader of a team that rediscovered the rat. “Since then, the species has been a mystery, in part because there is virtually no forest left on Mt. Data, where it was first found.”

The dwarf cloud rat (Carpomys melanurus) is a smaller relative of giant clouds rats, spectacular animals found only on Luzon Island in the Philippines, but widespread and comparatively well known.

The dwarf cloud rat was captured by Danilo Balete of the Philippine National Museum, in a patch of mature mossy forest (also called cloud forest) high on Mt. Pulag, at about 7,700 feet (2,350 meters) above sea level. It was in the canopy of a large tree, on a large horizontal branch covered by a thick layer of moss, orchids and ferns, Balete said.

“We had suspected from its broad, hand-like hind feet that it lived up in big trees, but this is the first evidence to confirm that,” Balete said.

Since this is the first time the dwarf cloud rat has been seen in its natural habitat, the data collected from this specimen “will significantly augment our understanding of how these rodents evolved, what makes them tick, and how we can keep them around,” said William Stanley, collections manager of mammals at the Field Museum. “Also, finding this animal again gives us hope for the conservation of one of the most diverse and threatened mammal faunas of the world.”

The research team thinks that this species probably lives only high in the big canopy trees in mature mossy forests at high elevations.

“Now that we know where to look for them, it will be possible to learn more,” Heaney said. - livesci