British intelligence fingers US Citizen in India Bombing

British intelligence tipped off the American authorities over a suspect in the Mumbai bombings, the Daily Telegraph has learned.

David Coleman Headley, also known as Daood Sayed Gilani, made frequent visits to the Indian city where he mixed with the Bollywood set as a cover for his activities, it is claimed.

He joined a local gym in the upmarket Breach Candy area and stayed at the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the targets, in April and May 2007.

According to a US indictment, Headley, 49, was a freelance reconnaissance agent for terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks a year ago.

Intelligence sources have told the Daily Telegraph that British officers collected the vital information that identified Headley, a US citizen living in Chicago who was arrested in October. They declined to give further details.

British intelligence was also responsible for the arrest of another US terrorist suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24, who was allegedly planning attacks on the New York subway when he was arrested in Denver in September.

Investigators in India are still trying to piece together Headley’s activity in the country around the crucial period, when he posed as a businessman running an immigration service.

He is said to have befriended a man called Rahul who has identified himself to Indian police as Rahul Bhatt, a young actor from one of Bollywood’s leading families.

Apart from his visit to the Taj Mahal hotel in 2007, when he stayed in the heritage building attacked by the terrorists the following year, he also visited New Delhi, staying in the city’s Paharganj area, in October 2007 and March 2009.

He is reported to have rented an apartment close to his gym in Mumbai from April 2008, where his landlady has described him as a “sweet and charming man”.

Headley’s associate, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, a Canadian living in Chicago, stayed in a guesthouse in south Mumbai close to the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, another target, until November 21 last year, five days before the attacks, when he returned to North America.

Headley himself was in Pakistan at the time of the attacks working on another plan he called the “Mickey Mouse Project”. Headley and Rana both attended the Hasan Abdal Cadet College in Pakistan and were members of an internet group called the Abdalians.

Five Pakistani army officers were arrested this week in connection with their activities. One Pakistani officer, referred to in US legal documents as “Individual A,” is said to have acted as Headley’s link to Let and another group called Harakat ul- Jihad Islami, both of which are associated with al-Qaeda.

While investigations continue into Headley’s activities in India he has been charged in Chicago with a number of other terrorist offences.

He is accused of plotting an attack on the culture editor and cartoonist who published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark. – telegraph

More on Headley. (Note: “carrying out a recce” = conducting a reconaissance mission.)

David Coleman Headley personally visited every target site of the 26/11 terror strikes last year, carrying out a recce on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a police source said today. …

“He (Headley) mapped the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Taj and Trident hotels and Nariman House. We are interrogating (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son) Rahul to find out when he went to Leopold Café. That he did is certain — when he did that is what we need to know,” a top officer said.

Headley had visited the Mumbai home of Rahul, who contacted police after learning of the terror suspect’s arrest by America’s Federal Burau of Investigation (FBI) last month.

The source said Headley, a Pakistani-born US national, and his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana stayed in Hotel Outram, a seedy motel in Mumbai’s Fort area, for about a fortnight in July 2008.

Born Daood Gilani, Headley, who changed his name and passport in 2006, posed as a Jewish American during his Mumbai stay. A source close to Rahul too confirmed that Headley had claimed to be a Jew. …

The FBI seized a book called How to Pray Like a Jew from him at the time of his arrest in Chicago. He had prepared himself thoroughly to pose as a Jew,” the officer said.

I found no pictures of Headley.  How do they know he was “posing” as Jewish?  I find no such book title, but I suspect it was this book: “To Pray As A Jew: A Guide To The Prayer Book And The Synagogue Service“.

Interestingly…

It turns out that US investigators had Headley under surveillance a month before the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. They monitored him for a year before the FBI arrested him at the Chicago airport on October 3 as he planned to leave for Philadelphia en route to Pakistan. – indiaexpress

It seems some Pakistani army officers were working with a senior al-Qaida member on the Mumbai and other terror attacks.

Five Pakistani army officers have been detained for questioning over possible links to two U.S. terror suspects accused of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper, intelligence officials said Tuesday. The detentions underscore long-standing allegations that elements in Pakistan support a militant group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is devoted to fighting the country’s arch enemy, India. The group is blamed for last year’s terror attacks in Mumbai and other strikes in India in recent years. Last month’s arrests of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana in Chicago have cast a fresh spotlight on the group. U.S. prosecutors said the two men were believed to be working with an unidentified senior member of the outfit and a senior al-Qaida operative. Two Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking anonymously because they are not allowed to release their identity, said phone records showed the five Pakistani officers had contacted Headley and Rana. They say the five include a retired brigadier general and two active lieutenant colonels, but did not provide more details. – yahoo

Is the unnamed retired general Mahmood Ahmed, the once head of Pakistani intelligence, the man who paid the lead 9/11 terrorist $100,000 and was (bizzarely enough) meeting with the heads of the US Senate and House intelligence committee in Washington DC on the morning of the US terror attacks of 9/11/2001? No, no. Ahmed wasn’t a brigadier general. A brigadier is a one star general. Ahmed was higher.  He was a Lt. general (a three star general) as in ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, now retired. According to wikipedia, “He is now a member of Tablighi Jamaat and preaching the teaching of Islam.”

About “the Mumbai bombings”:

The attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) began on November 26, 2008, and over the next three days, at least 173 people were killed, including 5 British nationals, with several hundreds injured. The famous Taj Mahal Palace hotel, scene of much of the carnage, was severely damaged by fire caused by the bombs. – noinvite

Ten heavily armed terrorists that India says came from Pakistan sneaked into Mumbai Nov 26 (2008) via the sea route and attacked various installations in the city, holding it to ransom for over 60 hours before they were neutralised. More than 170 people, including 26 foreigners, lost their lives in the carnage, while over 300 were injured. – indiainfo

The FDIC Reserve is gone. Blame our maniacal optimism.

The cash reserves needed for the FDIC to keep paying depositors at failed banks has all been used up. Don’t panic (yet anyways), the FDIC has an open credit line to the Treasury Department (uh, that means us tax payers) that will keep the FDIC floating in cash to keep paying out money to Grandma and Grandpa at the failed banks.

You see, the FDIC is supposed to be self maintaining, it charges banks a fee to have their deposits insured. Think of it as the banks paying an insurance premium. That money goes into the FDIC kitty and is used to pay depositors when a bank fails. That is all well and good except when the financial system blows up like it has over the past 2 years.

As of today’s quarterly report issued by the FDIC they are now broke, and I mean that in the literal sense.

FDIC deposit insurance fund now -$8.2B v $10.4B last quarter

Yep, they are broke, no money left in the cash drawer. So what now? As long as the FDIC has an open credit line with the Treasury then any bank that fails it will be the taxpayers who reimburse Grandma and Grandpa.

Think of it this way: you have a checking account at (let’s pick a name out of the air) #tyBank and they get closed by the FDIC. Your very own money will be reimbursed to you via the FDIC insurance fund, but you will actually be paying yourself back in part because taxpayers will be on the hook to keep the FDIC floating in funds. So in the end you still lose some money. – ats

Verified the Deposit Insurance Fund figures here, page 15: http://www2.fdic.gov/qbp/2009sep/qbp.pdf

This happened in 1992 after the SNL bailout as well. How did this happen? It happened because we as a species are a bunch of damn fools. I tend to agree with Barbara Ehrenreich’s main point:

November 24, 2009 “In These Times.” — In her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan/Holt, October 2009), Barbara Ehrenreich traces the origins of contemporary optimism from nineteenth-century healers to twentieth-century pushers of consumerism. She explores how that culture of optimism prevents us from holding to account both corporate heads and elected officials.Manufactured optimism has become a method to make the poor feel guilty for their poverty, the ill for their lack of health and the victims of corporate layoffs for their inability to find worthwhile jobs. Megachurches preach the “gospel of prosperity,” exhorting poor people to visualize financial success. Corporations have abandoned rational decision-making in favor of charismatic leadership.

This mania for looking on the bright side has given us the present financial collapse; optimistic business leaders — assisted by rosy-eyed policymakers — made very bad decisions. – infoclearinghouse

The solution is not pessimism, it is rational, incremental determination. Step by step we can recover. 

Lucky, the world’s oldest sheep, dies

The 23-year-old ewe, recognised by the Guinness Book of Records, died peacefully on her farm at Lake Bolac, 57 miles west of Melbourne, after a short illness. Lucky’s owner Delrae Westgarth says her beloved sheep had found the recent hot weather in Victoria hard to endure.

“It’s a relief,” said Mrs Westgarth. “She was good up to that first lot of heatwaves we had. But she went downhill a bit from then.” The Westgarths, who rescued Lucky as a newborn lamb after she was abandoned by her mother, recently invested in air-conditioning for their elderly pet, but even this couldn't save her.

“We brought her into the shed where she was reared and put air conditioners on her,” according to Mrs Westgarth. “That kept her going a bit longer.” Mrs Westgarth and her husband Frank admitted that looking after their pet sheep – a Polwarth-Dorchester cross — had become almost a full-time job.

After her teeth fell out, Lucky had to be handfed with crushed grain and milk.

In her old age Lucky became increasingly cantankerous, fighting with the other sheep and destroying the couple’s flowerbeds. Recently, the old ewe was allowed inside the house to watch television.

“When she got too old we brought her into a paddock on her own so she could eat by herself, [and] so the other sheep wouldn’t pinch all the tucker,” says Mrs Westgarth.

The couple, who admit they have enjoyed Lucky’s celebrity status over the years but say they have no plans to replace the world’s oldest and surely most cosseted farm animal.

via Lucky, the world’s oldest sheep, dies – Telegraph.

Jetman attempts first intercontinental flight, doesn’t make it, will try again

Yves Rossy, who calls himself “Jetman”, is poised to make the first intercontinental flight powered by a jet-pack when he attempts to fly across the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa to Europe on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Swiss adventurer powered into the record books a year ago when he crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover with a jet-propelled wing on his back.

He will now attempt the 23-mile crossing between Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain.

“It is going to be historic,” Mr Rossy said ahead of the record attempt. “No one has ever done this before.”

The daredevil, who also claims the nickname “Fusionman” – because he believes he combines the skills of man and bird – will leap from a plane on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar and attempt to soar across north Atlantic waters at the mouth of the Mediterranean.

Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth.

The journey, which is dependent on good weather, is expected to take less than fifteen minutes to complete.

Mr Rossy, who is a professional airline pilot, will be accompanied by a fleet of helicopters and aircraft to film

via Jetman attempts first intercontinental flight – Telegraph.

A Swiss man has failed in his attempt to become the first person to fly solo across the Strait of Gibraltar using a single jet-propelled wing.

Yves Rossy, known as Jetman, ditched in the water and was rescued minutes after setting off from above Morocco.

Organisers said he had deployed his parachute after the wing malfunctioned, possibly owing to engine failure.

The 50-year-old became the first person to cross the Channel using a jet-powered wing in September 2008.

Wednesday’s 38km (23 mile) flight had been billed as the first crossing of its kind over the north Atlantic between Africa and Europe.

It appeared to begin well as Mr Rossy launched himself from a small plane about 1,950m (6,500ft) above Tangier in Morocco.

Thumbs-up

The former fighter pilot had planned to cut his engines, open a parachute and land in Atlanterra, southern Spain, after a flight lasting up to a quarter of an hour.

But within minutes it was clear all was not well and Mr Rossy plunged into the sea.

He was unhurt when fished from the water by a helicopter, but had been taken to hospital as a precaution, said organisers.

“The good news is that he is fine,” Stuart Sterzel, spokesman for sponsors Webtel.mobi, told reporters near Atlanterra. “He gave the thumbs-up sign through the door of the helicopter.”

He added that Mr Rossy would probably attempt the crossing again in the new year. – bbc

Three buildings collapsed on 9/11, fire brought down Building 7 says report

NO PLANE flew into Building 7 at the World Trade Centre. But seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed in flames on September 11, 2001, this third skyscraper fell too.

Like its larger neighbours, it fell rapidly, vertically, almost symmetrically, like an implosion. It took 5.4 seconds for its 47 storeys to complete their fiery descent.

Building 7 has preoccupied conspiracy theorists ever since. Many believe it was brought down by controlled explosions. And if it was, so were the Twin Towers. And if they’re willing to believe that, it is not such a big leap to conclude that the whole atrocity was a US Government plot. They have not been silenced by an official report that concludes their theories are bunkum. It didn’t help that it was released almost seven years later, in August last year.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology spent three years investigating Building 7. It names fire as the culprit. Fire – fuelled by office furnishings, aided and abetted by the thermal expansion of structural elements.

“Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down,” said the lead investigator, Shyam Sunder. The conclusion that this was an ”extraordinary event” – the world’s first known total collapse of a tower caused by fire – only emboldened the doubters.

Explosives? The institute concludes that the smallest blast capable of crippling the third tower’s critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile”. No witness reported it.

The 9/11 Truth Movement points to the discovery of thermite, a potential explosive. The institute replies that the same metal compounds would have been present in the construction.

The institute’s finding is less sensational, but perhaps more alarming for people who frequent towers. Debris from the collapse of the first tower ignited fires on at least 10 floors of Building 7. These uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of steel beams on lower floors, damaging floor framing on multiple floors.

”Eventually, a girder on floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans … Floor 13 [collapsed], beginning a cascade of floor failures …”

The really scary part? This happened at hundreds of degrees below what had been anticipated in fire-resistance ratings. The institute recommended urgent evaluation of towers, improved thermal insulation and resistance for building materials, and structural systems to prevent ”pan-caking” or progressive collapse.

- smh

The Climate Research Unit hack (64 MB, FOI2009.zip)

A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories may have misrepresented the truth about climate change. Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers “cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not,” according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site.

Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure. The leaked documents (see our previous coverage) come from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it “relies on most heavily” when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.

via Congress may probe leaked global warming e-mails | Politics and Law – CNET News.

James Inhofe has been saying, since at least 2003, that there is a conspiracy. This quote is from 2005:

“As I said on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003, “much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.” I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” – senate.gov

Inhofe’s claims have been debunked in the past. People need to understand how many independent scientists are concluding that warming is real and man is responsible.

For instance, the American Geophysical Union, which includes 50,000 earth, ocean and atmospheric scientists, among others, whose first mission is to value the scientific method (rational skepticism), has stated since 2003 that “Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth’s climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth’s history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century. … The unprecedented increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, together with other human influences on climate over the past century and those anticipated for the future, constitute a real basis for concern.”

And if you, like Inhofe, value international expertise, consider the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. By some estimates, 2,000 scientists have participated. Their sole purpose is to state consensus about global warming, humankind’s role in causing it and its likely effects. The panel spoke clearly last year that it is nearly certain that human pollution is making the climate warmer, and that it will have dire consequences around the world.

I found this post from the Hadley Centre interesting:

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.

Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

- realclimate.org

http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/press.html is the latest science – and sorry GOPers/dittoheads/Beck lovers/ Fox News believers – the SCIENCE says Global warming is real, getting worse, and the part that is man-made appears likely to destroy our grandkids lives as it is growing more rapidly than expected – with a tipping point soon

Some interesting background:

1. There was a previous data breach/leak in July 2009 or before. It appears that just one person was the recipient of the stolen data: Stephen McIntyre, who says he got them anonymously. The breach was due to an insider (”mole”) in the UK. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6644 http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6634 (esp. comment #3)

(McIntyre is a skeptic of human-caused Global Warming, not a denier. He focuses on problems/weaknesses he sees in the data and methods.)

2. McIntyre has been in a long-running battle with the UEA HCC/CRU over access to their data, their “code” (data analysis software), and even their emails http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3234. Here’s McIntyre’s philosophy and goals in this quest: http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66 . Here’s a short summary of the conflict, published just a day before the recent breach hit the wires: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704335904574496850939846712.html

3. McIntyre was actively monitoring defensive actions by UEA HCC/CRU over the summer, including “massive data purges”: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6673 (Is “Climate Audit reader Super-Grover” an insider, given the comment “worse than we expected”??).

4. McIntyre has just recently been denied in his appeal of the rejection of his most recent FOI. http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/test/

Putting these together, plus imminent start of the Copenhagen Climate Summit…

… it doesn’t take a detective genuis to see that the current data breach/theft/leak is probably just a continuation of this on-going war between these parties. It’s also likely that the same “mole” is also responsible or involved in this breach.

Rapidshare still has a this leak document: http://rapidshare.com/files/309710046/FOI2009.zip

(64 MB, 157 MB when expanded.). It was originally posted to a Russian server but that link has been removed:

http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip.

How soon until “Hactivism” hits the other side? Will we see 100 MB of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh email hack downloads?

Summary: Yes, huge sums of money are at stake. There is indeed a battle and each side uses propaganda because it must, because you, the consumer, the voter, respond emotionally, not rationally. Despite the battle tactics, there is an objective truth about Climate Change.  This leak does not change that.

Building a Better Alien-Calling Code

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new, simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher.

As of now, Earthlings spend much more time searching for alien radio messages than broadcasting news of ourselves. We know how to do it, but relatively little attention has been paid to “ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener,” wrote California Institute of Technology geoscientist Michael Busch and Rachel Reddick, a Stanford University physicist, in a study filed online Friday on arXiv.

According to Busch and Reddick, neither the Arecibo message, beamed at star cluster M13 in 1974, nor the Cosmic Calls sent in 1999 and 2003 were tested for decipherability. So the pair devised their own alien-friendly messaging system: Busch invented the code, and Reddick role-played the part of an alien trying to decode it.

Like the earlier codes, Busch’s used radio to send a string of ones and zeroes. But whereas those messages were meant to be translated into pictures, Busch’s code is supposed to be turned into mathematical equations.

Reddick received the code, minus a chunk at its beginning and fragments throughout its body, as if she’d tuned in late to a signal slightly distorted by its passage through space. Knowing nothing about the code, and using nothing but a pencil, paper and a computer’s search-and-replace function, she decoded its start: descriptions of gravity and atomic mass ratios, which are “dimensionless numbers that should be universally recognized.” Once Reddick worked those out, the rest of the message — descriptions of atoms, chemical formulas for the elements required for life on Earth, and details of our solar system — came quickly.

The code does presume that alien listeners have “at least an equivalent knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and physics,” wrote Busch and Reddick. But even five undergraduate students needed only an hour to figure out a few of Busch’s mathematical and grammatical basics, so it can’t be that hard.

For now, it seems unlikely that the code will actually be sent into space. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence runs on a shoestring budget, and doesn’t directly receive national funding. But if it’s this cheap and easy to talk to aliens, perhaps humanity should try more often.

via Building a Better Alien-Calling Code | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Under the microscope: Glowing alien-like flea takes top photography prize

This strange alien-like creature is not a character from a science-fiction blockbuster but actually from far closer to home. The eerily beautiful image is of a water flea with a radiant green ‘crown of thorns’ to protect it from predators.

It took top prize in the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition, the world’s foremost forum for showcasing microscope photos and movies.

Dr Jan Michels, a zoologist at the University of Albrecht, Germany, took the honors for the photograph.

The image reveals not only the exoskeleton, but also interior detail down to the nuclei within its cells, seen as tiny, glowing blue dots.

The stunning and unusual depiction of a whole organism detailing both external and intracellular structures was selected from more than 2000 entries.

Any life science subject is eligible, and entries are judged based on the science they depict, their aesthetics (beauty and impact of the image), and their technical merit.

via Under the microscope: Glowing alien-like flea takes top photography prize | Mail Online.

Sting claims he once confronted a ghost

Sting has claimed he once confronted a ghost which wandered into his room at the dead of night.

The singer, who famously sang Spirits In The Material World in the 1980s, said wife Trudie Styler also witnessed the figure, standing with a child in the corner of their bedroom.

Sting said he also experienced flying objects and mysterious voices in one of his homes in an interview to be played on Radio 2.

He said: ”I would never have said I believe in ghosts, until I saw one – and I’ve seen a ghost with my own eyes”

The musician, whose former band The Police recorded an album Ghost In The Machine, continued: ''I was in bed one night, a very old house I used to live in. And I woke up at three in the morning, bolt upright, looked into the corner of the room and thought I saw Trudie standing there with a child – our child – in her arms, staring at me.

”And I thought ‘well, that’s strange – why is she standing in a corner, staring at me?’. And I then reached next to me and there was Trudie, and I suddenly got this terrible chill. And she woke up and said ‘Gosh, who is that?’ and she saw this woman and a child in the corner of the room.”

Sting told presenter Claudia Winkleman, in an interview to be broadcast on Friday night at 10pm, that the figure simply disappeared.

He added: ”A lot of things happened in that house, a lot of flying objects and voices and strange, strange things happened.

”When you live in old houses you get this energy there. Intellectually, no I don’t believe in them (ghosts), but I’ve experienced them on an emotional level.”

via Sting claims he once confronted a ghost – Telegraph.

I’ve seen one when I was awake. I don’t believe in them, but yeah, I’ve seen one.  I assume my mind/eyes were playing tricks on me.

Lightning’s gamma rays may destroy matter

A satellite dispatched to scout out high-energy gamma rays streaming from the cosmos found that not only were flashes of gamma rays oddly close to home, but they were also powerful enough to annihilate matter.

The radiation stemmed from lightning storms on Earth. Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope recorded 17 gamma ray flashes coming from Earth that matched up with lightning tracked by the World Wide Lightning Location Network, operated out of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Previous gamma ray telescopes had detected the terrestrial gamma radiation, which was a huge surprise when it was first discovered in 1994.

Most of the gamma rays observed by Fermi and other telescopes come from the destruction of supermassive stars and other cataclysmic events far beyond the galaxy.

“Probably the last place we ever expected to see gamma rays was from Earth or Earth’s atmosphere,” Gerald Fishman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told Discovery News.

“It was a serendipitous discovery,” he added. “For 10 or 12 years, it was treated as a scientific curiosity. No one knew what to make of it.”

Fermi’s observations of terrestrial gamma rays have deepened the mystery. At least one of the flashes contain an unmistakable pattern of positrons — the antimatter counterpart of electrons.

“It was a surprise, and now we have to explain it,” said Fishman, who is working on a paper about the discovery with colleague Michael Briggs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Scientists believe strong electric fields can trigger an avalanche of high-energy electrons that interact with the atmosphere, a sort of naturally occurring particle accelerator.

The electron avalanche may be what triggers lightning, as well as produce gamma radiation, Fishman said.

via Lightning’s gamma rays may destroy matter – Discovery.com- msnbc.com.