10/21/14 ~ The Raw Story

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

George Soros and the CIA now banking on Aecio Neves to defeat Rousseff in Brazilian elections

After the corporate media and the CIA and George Soros manipulators tried to engineer Green Party-turned-Brazilian Socialist presidential candidate Marina Silva into the Brazilian presidency after the classic CIA textbook aerial assassination of Socialist Party presidential standard bearer Eduardo Campos, these same forces are at it again on behalf of Social Democratic Party candidate Aecio Neves. Although Neves was polling in second place to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff before the first-round presidential election on October, the death of Campos and his senior aides in a highly suspicious plane crash on August 13, forced Neves into third place in polls. Silva, a favorite of Soros and his international network of cash-flush non-governmental organizations, was propelled into second place.

However, thanks to an aware Brazilian investigative journalism press corps, Silva's connections to Soros and his team of interventionists and hedge fund tycoons was exposed. With Brazilian voters wise to Silva's puppet strings to Soros and other global bankers, she managed to only come in third on October 5. Silva subsequently endorsed Neves, Soros's second selection to take over the reins of presidential power in Brazil from Rousseff.

Neves's chief economic adviser and the man who would become Finance Minister in a Neves presidency is Arminio Fraga Neto. A former close friend and associate of Soros and his Quantum hedge fund, Fraga is hoping that a Neves presidency will open up Brazil to "market forces," the very same forces that have declared economic war on Venezuela and are attempting to swindle Argentina through vulture funds run by Soros's Wall Street friends. Fraga, a habitué of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is also a former executive with Salomon Brothers and a former president of the Brazilian Central Bank. Fraga has also been linked to Goldman Sachs through a Manhattan real estate deal involving the purchase of a $7.5 million condominium from a former Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers executive. Fraga's membership of the elitist Council on Foreign Relations and Group of 30 puts Fraga in the same camp as such Wall Street villains as Alan Greenspan, David Rockefeller, former Bank of Israel chairman Jacob Frenkel, and Wall Street apologist/columnist Paul Krugman, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

Rousseff's easy first place victory on October 5 sent Wall Street and its owned-and-operated media outlets opposed to Rousseff's plans to create an alternative development bank among Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to compete with the World Bank into extreme propaganda mode. Questionable polls suggesting that Rousseff and Neves are running neck-and-neck as the October 26 second round election approaches were featured as credible news stories by the usual Wall Street pathetic "stenographers" masquerading as journalists at , s, Bloomberg News, and .

Neves's grandfather, Tancredo Neves, a left-of-center threat to the longtime Brazilian military dictatorship, fell seriously ill just as he was to sworn in as president on March 15, 1985. Neves's illness resulted in his lackluster and more conservative vice presidential candidate José Sarney being sworn in as president. Tancredo Neves never recovered from what was said to be diverticulitis and he died on April 21. Later, it was revealed that Neves had a cancerous tumor that was not discovered until it was too late. Rousseff's sudden illness after her October 16 televised debate with Aecio Neves alarmed a number of Brazilians who remember the fate of Tancredo Neves.

In addition to the Central Intelligence Agency arranging for convenient plane crashes such as those that killed Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro, Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, and Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos all within a six-month period between December 1980 and April 1981 [after the election of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president and the return to power within the CIA of George H W Bush's and William Casey's infamous gunslingers, the agency's Technical Services Division continued to develop biological weapons, including cancer weapons, to assassinate its political targets.

In recent years, a number of Latin American leaders have been felled or have been stricken with cancer or heart attacks. The two most notable victims were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. Kirchner's wife, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was reported to have thyroid cancer, later denied by her spokespersons. The sudden onset of varying degrees of cancer also plagued such Latin American leaders as former Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (later ousted in a CIA-engineered coup), Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (after he signed a peace agreement with the left-wing FARC guerrilla movement), former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Bolivia's recently-reelected President Evo Morales.

Guyana's President Forbes Burnham died from throat cancer and Nauru's President Bernard Dowiyogo died from a sudden heart attack while being cared for in Washington, DC hospitals. Suspicions surrounded the two deaths at Georgetown University and George Washington Hospitals, respectively.

The CIA's macabre Jewish-Hungarian chief scientist Dr. Sidney Gottlieb developed a host of biological weapons for the CIA's MK-ULTRA program during his over 20 years of service with the agency. One was a biological toxin that was put inside a tube of toothpaste that was to be used by Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and another was a botulism-infected handkerchief that was to be handed to Iraqi leader General Abdul Karim Kassem.

As for Aecio Neves abandoning the left-of-center credentials of his grandfather, this represents another aspect of CIA influence operations. Aecio Neves represents the interests of Wall Street, which is manifested by the presence of Fraga as his chief economic adviser. Wall Street vultures, including Soros and Fraga's other associates in New York, want to privatize the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras oil corporation. Therefore, Aecio Neves has been handsomely bought off by the same globalized financial interests who attempted to engineer Marina Silva into office. With her defeat, these same forces have unsurprisingly rallied behind Neves.

For the CIA, blood is not thicker than water. It actually doesn't matter to Aecio that the CIA may have played a part in assassinating his grandfather. Omar Torrijos's son, Martin Torrijos, became president of Panama only to sign a pro-Wall Street free trade agreement with Washington. Martin Torrijos also gladly followed the global bankers' orders to increase Panama's retirement age and reform social security. Martin Torrijos also became a close ally of U.S. President George W. Bush even though Bush's father, George H W Bush, likely signed off on the CIA's operation to assassinate Torrijos's own father.

George Soros's favorite Asian opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, does not seem to mind the fact that it was Soros's friends at the Office of Strategic Services/CIA who ordered British intelligence to assassinate her father Aung San. Aung San, a founder of the Burmese Communist Party, was slated to become independent Burma's first post-independence leader. Aung San was killed by terrorists working for pro-British former prime minister U Saw. The weapons for the assassins came directly from British Army Captain David Vivian, who managed, with high-level "assistance" from the Burmese government, to escape from a Burmese prison in 1949.

Canada's Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, has, unlike his father, warmed up to the United States, Wall Street, and the cause of globalization. Justin Trudeau and Aecio Neves are prime examples of how the CIA eagle will take under its wings the progeny of leftist icons to achieve its goals.

President Rousseff's policies have created powerful enemies within the walls of the CIA in Langley, Virginia and among the board rooms of Wall Street and the West's most powerful corporations. She succeeded in proving the polls and pundits wrong on October 5 but October 26 remains yet another hurdle. The people of Brazil will be voting on October 26 as if their lives depend on it. For Brazil's poor and new middle class, a Neves victory will destroy their livelihoods, as well as their very lives.

The City of Norcross, Georgia, recently auctioned off Xui Lui's home because she had an overdue tax bill of $94.85, which she never received.

Lui, the mother of a 4-year-old, bought her two bedroom condo in 2011 and has always paid her local taxes, except for the first year.

The city sent her certified letters about the tax bill, but to the wrong address, notes CBS Atlanta.

Lui was recently told by the city that she must move out by Nov. 25 because her condo has been legally sold to another person via city auction.

"Where are we going to go? I have nowhere. This is my house. Why do I need to move out?" Lui told WSB-TV (video below).

Norcross City Manager Rudolph Smith said in a statement on Monday: "We are going back and doing our due diligence. [The city contractor who handled the sale] will try to work something out."

Lui, who is trying to find a lawyer to stop her eviction, stated, "Someone can rob your house? Rob your property? This is not American style, right?"

Family doctors will be paid £55 for every patient they diagnose with dementia under a new NHS England scheme which has been condemned as an "ethical travesty".

Leading GPs said the national project amounted to "cash for diagnoses" - allowing doctors to make a direct profit if they classify patients as suffering from dementia.

In some parts of the country, NHS authorities have gone still further - offering family doctors £200 for each new diagnosis made, The Telegraph can reveal.

Patients groups and doctors have condemned the schemes, saying they amounted to a "bounty on the head" of the most vulnerable, which could cloud the judgements of those making diagnoses.

Under the national scheme, doctors can receive the £55 payment for every extra patient given a diagnosis of dementia in the six months ending in March.

GPs qualify for payment if they diagnose the patients themselves - with no checks on whether their assessment is correct - or if they update their records when their patients receive a diagnosis in hospital.

Family doctors are already financially rewarded for carrying a host of medical checks, with a portion of their pay related to tasks such as taking blood pressure, measuring cholesterol and carrying out tests for conditions such as diabetes.

But the scheme is understood to be the first national initiative to offer doctors financial rewards for diagnosing patients with any condition.

It follows pledges by ministers to dramatically improve rates of dementia diagnosis.

In November, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said it was a "national shame" that just half of those with conditions such as Alzheimer's disease are properly diagnosed. The Government has pledged to increase that figure to two thirds by March.

NHS officials said the national payments scheme, which has just been introduced, was part of efforts to "spearhead the NHS drive to identify people with dementia".

But leading doctors condemned the initiative, saying it was not ethical to offer GPs financial incentives which could sway them towards making a diagnosis, when cases were in doubt.

Dr Iona Heath, a north London GP and former president of the Royal College of GPs (RCGPs) described the national scheme as "an intellectual and ethical travesty."

Dr Martin Brunet, a GP in Godalming, Surrey, said any GPs who accepted the inducements ought to declare their conflict of interest before they declared a diagnosis.

He told magazine: "It crosses a line that has not been crossed before - the direct payment on the basis of making a diagnosis, or 'cash for diagnoses.'"

"The payment is not on the basis of caring for our patients, but only the diagnostic label we apply - this creates a major conflict of interests that is frankly unethical," he added.

The service - which is optional for GPs - pays them £55 for every extra patient on their "dementia register" when the numbers in March are compared with those on their lists last month.

Payments will be made for the net increase in the total number of patients with dementia, meaning that the £55 for each new case diagnosed will be "offset" against any deaths of those dementia register.

The payments have been introduced under a "dementia identification scheme" by NHS England.

A separate deal offered to GPs in Bristol by Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group offers an upfront payment of £500 for signing up to the dementia diagnosis scheme, plus £200 per newly diagnosed patient, with a £200 bonus if diagnosis rates rise by five per cent.

For the past two years, GPs have already been offered payments to carry out assessments for dementia.

Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive of the Patients Association, said the new move was "a step too far," and said doctors should never be offered financial inducements to make a diagnosis.

She said: "This is putting a bounty on the head of certain patients. Good GPs will be diagnosing their dementia patients already. This seems to be rewarding poor GPs. It is a distortion of good medical practice."

Mrs Murphy said there were problems with patients only going to their GPs when their dementia was advanced, but said the best way to tackle that was improving services, so they could be offered help.

Dr Maureen Baker, chairman of the RCGP, said the new schemes were not fair, because the greatest rewards would go to practices which currently have the lowest rates of diagnosis.

The British Medical Association said its negotiators for the current GP contract had opposed the introduction of such incentives.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the BMA's GPs committee said: "This is not a jointly negotiated enhanced service, it's something NHS England wanted to do. Practices will have to make their minds up as to how they will approach it and I'm sure they will have lots of issues with it. It's just until the end of the year, to see whether this particular scheme makes any difference to the variation in diagnosis rates."

He said the BMA believed the problem with dementia was not about diagnosis, but about providing patients with the condition with enough support.

A spokesperson for NHS England said: "Dementia can be devastating both for individuals and their families. We know that more needs to be done across the health service to ensure that people living with dementia are identified so that they can get the tailored care and support they need. This additional investment is part of a drive to ensure this."

Naomi Kizhner, an industrial designer and graduate student from Hadassah College in Jerusalem, has designed jewelry that theoretically extracts energy from the wearers own body. The 'speculative' jewelry is embedded into the person's veins and uses their blood to turn small wheels inside the device.

As Naomi notes, the jewelry is not meant to be a practical energy source, but a discussion piece "about how far will we go to in order to 'feed' our addiction in the world of declining resources."

The project is called 'Energy Addicts' and consists of three pieces of jewelry: The Blinker, The E-Pulse Conductor, and The Blood Bridge. On her website, she says "The work delves into a world in which there is a significant decline, which forces humanity to seek all the more forcefully for alternative ways of cultivating power. The suggested solution to the dilemma is based on the idea of biological wealth, harvesting energy directly from the body."

Watch Naomi's take on the world of energy consumption below.

[embedded content]

Russian bases to span entire Arctic border by end of 2014

Russia will have military control of the entirety of its 6,200 km Arctic coastal zone by the end of 2014, just a year after Moscow announced its ambitious plan to build military presence in the region, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has announced.

“We have set quite a pace in our foray into the Arctic,” Shoigu said during a military council meeting in Moscow. “By the end of the year we will already deploy most of our units in the region – from Murmansk to Chukotka.”

Moscow announced its intentions to create a special force grouping in the strategic region in December last year, with Vladimir Putin saying that Russia needs to activate “all the levers for the protection of its security and national interests” in the “promising region.”

The undertaking, which Shoigu labeled “fundamental,” is now in full flow.

“Many of the sites in the region have to be repaired. In fact, a lot of them, such as airfields, logistics facilities, water intakes, power stations will have to be built from scratch, which is what we are doing right now.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.(RIA Novosti / Igor Russak)

Russia’s Northern Fleet, which is headquartered in Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula, has been assigned as the core of the new Joint Strategic Command, and also the main strike force.

Two Borey-class nuclear submarines, which will form the spine of the refurbished fleet, have been armed this year, and a third one has just completed trials. In total, eight Borey vessels are expected to be built by the end of the decade, though some of them may be re-deployed with the Pacific fleet.

RIA Novosti / Vladislav Belogrud

Russia is also in the process of unsealing at least seven airstrips that were shut down following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Tiksi in Yakutia expected to house the bulk of the Arctic air force.

Work also began in September on a permanent base located on the New Siberian Islands in the Laptev Sea. A military group consisting of two brigades will be stationed in the far North as part of the new military district.

The Arctic has attracted an increasingly intense gaze from the powerful nations that border it in the past decade, not least because it is thought to contain up to 30 percent of the world’s oil and gas. As technologies have advanced, more and more of those hydrocarbons have become recoverable and viable. The stretch of sea can also provide new shipping lanes for goods traveling between Asia and America and Europe.

Airport in village of Tiksi in Sakha-Yakutia.(RIA Novosti / Valeriy Yarmolenko)

Russia already has rights to any territories located within 370 km of its border, but has lodged claims on a much bigger part of the territory with the UN, due to the existence of an underwater shelf, which would make a sizeable portion of the Arctic an extension of Russian territory.

Canada and other Arctic powers have followed suit, with the exact divisions of territories expected to be decided over the course of the next decade.

Despite concerns from environmentalists, Shoigu said that the military would play a positive role in safeguarding the unique Arctic environment, and said that units are already engaged in a program of clearing up debris “that has accumulated for centuries.”

The trend of average U.S. citizens being incarcerated by overzealous judges and prosecutors within the police state formerly known as America continues with reckless abandon. In fact, these sorts of cases are becoming so commonplace I simply cannot keep up with all of them.

The following story is a perfect followup to my piece earlier today, which shows how American public school students are being arrested or harassed by police for the most minor of infractions, such as wearing too much perfume, sharing a classmates' chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing gum.

If you are an adult American slave, you can add not mowing your lawn to the list of prison-worthy crimes in the police state.

From Yahoo News:

If you are a resident of Lenoir City, Tennessee, you might want to remember to mow your lawn - otherwise, you will be spending the night in jail.

Karen Holloway just spent six hours in a jail cell for failing to maintain her yard in accordance with the standards set by the city.

The saga began last summer, when Holloway was sent a citation for her overgrown grass and shrubbery. Holloway, who works a full-time job and has two children living at home, a husband in school, and one family vehicle, admits the yard needed some attention but that it just wasn't feasible to do the work.

"The bushes and trees were overgrown. But that's certainly not a criminal offense," she says.

Last week, Judge Terry Vann handed down a five-day jail sentence to Holloway for refusing to comply with the city ordinances regarding yard maintenance, specifically the lack thereof. Holloway feels this was all just too much, saying, "It's not right. Why would you put me in jail with child molesters and people who've done real crimes, because I haven't maintained my yard."

In addition to the severity of the sentencing, Holloway say she also feels that she was bullied during the process because she was never read her rights or told that she could have a lawyer present.

And you wonder why so many Americans feel the country is on the wrong track. As the noted yesterday:

The only time the public has felt worse was in October 2008, during the first, deep spasms of the recession. Then, 78% said the nation was on the wrong track, and only 12% felt good about the country's direction. The last time "right direction" beat out "wrong track" was in January 2004 - and the last election cycle where that was the case was 2002.

For related storied about serfs being arrested for minor incidents, while the rich and powerful get away with enormous criminality, see:

Connecticut Man Arrested for "Passive Aggressive" Behavior to a Watermelon

New Jersey Threatens to Take 13-Year-Old Student From His Father Due to "Non-Conforming Behavior"

Hyper-Sensitive Illinois Mayor Orders Police Raid Over Parody Twitter Account

Charleston Man Receives $525 Federal Fine for Failing to Pay for a $0.89 Refill

The "War on Street Artists" - Puppeteer Unlawfully Arrested and Harassed in NYC Subway

Video of the Day - Thuggish Militarized Police Terrorize and SWAT Team Iowa Family

In Liberty,

Michael Krieger

A newly-released report has shed further light on the Turkish government's links to the ISIL militants, showing that Ankara is helping the Takfiri terrorist recruits cross the border into Syria.

A reporter working for Britain's Sky News has obtained documents showing that the Turkish government has stamped passports of foreign militants seeking to cross the Turkey border into Syria to join the ISIL terrorists.

Passports from different countries were recovered in a village near Syria's strategic town of Kobani across the Turkish border.

Turkey has time and time again been accused of backing ISIL terrorists in Syria.

Meanwhile, a large number of foreign passports recovered from terrorists killed during Syrian army operations show that many of the ISIL militants in Syria had traveled from Libya, Chechnya, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Belgium and France.

The Ankara government continues to block the supply of military equipment and reinforcements for Kurdish fighters defending Kobani against the terrorists.

Ankara also prevents Turkish Kurds from crossing the border into Kobani to join the anti-ISIL battle for the city.

Kobani and its surroundings have been under attack since mid-September, with ISIL militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages.

© REUTERS/Stringer

Students of Goverment Secondary School Garki wash their hands, as school resumes in Abuja September 22, 2014.

Nigeria was declared free of the deadly Ebola virus on Monday after a determined doctor and thousands of officials and volunteers helped end an outbreak still ravaging other parts of West Africa and threatening the United States and Spain.

Caught unawares when a diplomat arrived with the disease from Liberia, authorities were alerted by Doctor Ameyo Adadevoh, who diagnosed it, kept him in hospital despite protests from him and his government and later died from Ebola herself.

They then set about trying to contain it in an overcrowded city of 21 million where it could easily have turned a doomsday scenario if about 300 people who had been in direct or indirect contact with him not been traced and isolated.

"This is a spectacular success story," Rui Gama Vaz from the World Health Organization (WHO) told a news conference in the capital Abuja, where officials broke into applause when he announced that Nigeria had shaken off the disease.

"It shows that Ebola can be contained, but we must be clear that we have only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola."

This year's outbreak of the highly infectious hemorrhagic fever thought to have originated in forest bats is the worst on record.

The virus has killed 4,546 people across the three most-affected countries, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and travelers have from the region have infected two people in Texas and one in Madrid.

It was imported to Nigeria when Liberian-American diplomat Patrick Sawyer collapsed at the main international airport in Lagos on July 20.

Airport staff were unprepared and the government had not set up any hospital isolation unit, so he was able to infect several people, including health workers in the hospital where he was taken, some of whom had to restrain him to keep him there.

Lagos, the commercial hub of Africa's most populous nation, largest economy and leading energy producer, would have been an ideal springboard for Ebola to spread across the country.

"Nigeria was not really prepared for the outbreak, but the swift response from the federal government, state governments (and) international organizations ... was essential," said Samuel Matoka, Ebola operations manager in Nigeria for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was involved in managing the outbreak, said officials and volunteers reached more than 26,000 households of people living around the contacts of the Ebola patients.

President Goodluck Jonathan urged Nigerians to "replicate the unity of purpose and all-hands-on-deck approach adopted against Ebola in other areas of national life".

"Nigeria's globally-acclaimed success against Ebola is a testimony to what Nigerians can achieve if they set aside their differences and work together," a presidential statement said.

"Stand your ground"

Adadevoh, doctor on call at the First Consultants hospital in Lagos where Sawyer was brought, prevented the dying man from spreading it further, Benjamin Ohiaeri, a doctor there who survived the disease, told .

Ebola is much more contagious once symptoms become severe.

"We agreed that the thing to do was not to let him out of the hospital," Ohiaeri said, even after he became aggressive and demanded to be set free.

"If we had let him out, within 24 hours of being here, he would have contacted and infected a lot more people."

Sawyer was reported only to have malaria, Ohiaeri said. But Adadevoh noticed he had bloodshot eyes and was passing blood in his urine -- telltale signs of hemorrhagic fever. She left instructions by his bed that under no circumstances should anyone let him leave.

At one point, Sawyer ripped off his intravenous tube and a nurse had to put it back, according to a source close to the hospital staff. She later got infected and died. Sawyer then became aggressive and had to be physically restrained.

Ohiaeri said a Liberian government official on the phone had even threatened negative consequences if they did not release Sawyer, saying that holding him was tantamount to kidnapping.

"The lesson there is: stand your ground," he said.

Once the hospital contacted the ministries of health in the state of Lagos and the federal ministry in Abuja, authorities quickly set up and equipped an isolation unit.

Lagos state governor Babatunde Fashola rushed back from a pilgrimage to Mecca to handle the crisis, Ohiaeri said.

Nigeria used an existing health surveillance system for Polio for contact tracing, so was able to trace and isolate Sawyer's primary and secondary contacts quickly. Mobile technology meant live updates could be made to the contact list.

"Everyone played their part. We're so proud," Ohiaeri said.

IFRC's Matoka said contact tracing of suspected cases was key to preventing the disease from spreading into communities where it would have been harder to control.

"It was effective in identifying all suspected cases and keeping watch on them before they developed symptoms and infect other people. We were able to remove people from communities once they showed symptoms and (before they) infect many others," he said.

Even when the virus found its way to the oil hub of Port Harcourt in the southeast, authorities were able to quickly contain it, an example WHO said others should be able to follow.

"If a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do this ... any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases," WHO Director Margaret Chan said in a statement.

For the three impoverished countries at the epicenter of the crisis it is a different matter. According to consultancy DaMina Advisors, Nigeria has one doctor per 2,879 people compared with one per 86,275 in Liberia.

Nigeria's success in preventing the spread of the disease contrasts with its slower and more fractious response to crises such as the kidnapping in April of more than 200 girls still being held by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

"The approach to Ebola was pragmatic, patriotic and non-partisan," said Lagos-based political analyst and lawyer Emekanka Onyebuchi.

"They put the nation first and this is what we should have done in other areas, like the (kidnapped) girls."

The cooperation between the central government in Nigeria and the opposition-led administration in Lagos state contrasts with the United States, where bickering between Republican and Democrat lawmakers over Ebola has eroded public trust.

Alex Okoh, Nigeria's director of Port health services, said the lesson the United States and other countries can learn from Nigeria is to "put aside the political barriers and focus on the issues at hand".

Senegal, where one case was imported from Guinea, was declared Ebola-free on Friday.

Officials hope such success stories will change the way the West, where many are currently in the grip of a panic about a disease brought to their shores from "Africa", sees the crisis.

"There is focus on the worst-case scenarios, which again perpetuate the wrong, negative image of Africa as opposed to looking at some of the areas where there has been success," said Abdul Tejan-Cole, a Sierra Leonean who is executive director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa.

© Reutures/ Marko Savala/TT News Agency

Swedish corvette HMS Visby patrols the Stockholm Archipelago, searching for what the military says is a foreign threat in the waters.

Swedish forces have "established contact with something" and are lowering equipment into the water near the island of Ingaro outside of Stockholm where the search for an foreign submarine is currently underway, local media reported Tuesday.

"I can also see that they are lowering some equipment, but I do not have information about this. We are not commenting on the operation in detail," a spokesman for the Swedish Armed Forces is quoted as saying by the Aftonbladet newspaper.

According to the Swedish Dagens Nyheter newspaper, Swedish forces have "established contact with something". Three military ships, including the HMS Stockholm corvette, a patrol boat and a minesweeper, have reportedly gathered in a small area in Ingarofjarden in Stockholm's archipelago and monitoring devises are being lowered into the water.

Swedish forces first launched a major operation off the coast of Stockholm on Friday after receiving information, reportedly from a civilian, about the presence of an unknown underwater object in the region, suspected to be a foreign submarine.

© Nasa, JPL-Caltech, UCLA/AAP

A Nasa infrared image of Comet Siding Spring. The comet, also known by the less catchy name of C/2007 Q3, was discovered in 2007 by astronomers at the Siding Spring Observatory.

The Earth has been left with a huge blind spot for potentially devastating comet strikes after the only dedicated comet-spotting program in the southern hemisphere lost its funding, leading astronomers have warned.

The program, which discovered the Siding Spring comet that narrowly missed Mars on Sunday, was shut down last year after losing funding.

"It's a real worry," Bradley Tucker, an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU) and University of California Berkeley, told .

"There could be something hurtling towards us right now and we wouldn't know about it."

The Siding Spring survey - named after the observatory near Coonabarabran in central New South Wales, where the Mars comet was first spotted - was the only program in the southern hemisphere actively searching for potentially hazardous comets, asteroids and meteors.

Celestial objects that pass within 7.4m kilometres of the earth, or which are more than 150 metres in diameter, are considered potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). There are 1,508 known cases. The most famous asteroid to have struck the Earth landed in Mexico about 65m years ago, and is believed to have caused or contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A 20-metre meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere undetected in 2013 and exploded spectacularly about 30km above Chelyabinsk in Russia, injuring 1,500 people.

"It's essentially like a nuclear bomb going off in the atmosphere," Tucker said. "These things can do inconceivable damage."

The Nasa-funded Australian survey discovered more than 15 objects, and was led by Dr Robert McNaught, a Scottish-Australian scientist credited with discovering about 475 asteroids and about 82 comets, including the Siding Spring comet - more than any other astronomer.

© NSW Rural Fire Service/AAP

Bushfires and smoke surround the Siding Spring Observatory in Warrumbungle national park near Coonabarabran in NSW in January 2013.

Savage bushfires around the Siding Spring observatory nearly ended the program in January last year. The ANU pitched in more money after Nasa signalled that funding was running out, but by July 2013 "all the avenues had dried up", Tucker said.

Appeals to the Australian government and local mining companies for a lifeline also went unheeded. "There's a lot of science that's hurting," Tucker said.

May's federal budget stripped the country's scientific research agency, the CSIRO, of $111m in funding, with more than 500 jobs expected to go.

Tucker said programs to track abandoned spacecrafts, flecks of paint and other space junk were still relatively well funded. But the Siding Spring telescope used by the program needs an expensive upgrade, and neither Canberra nor private donors were interested. "There's limited science money, and something always has to give," he said.

The Siding Spring survey's partner site in Arizona continues to operate, meaning northern hemisphere astronomers can keep their gaze trained on the objects coming from the northern galactic plane.

"But obviously the northern hemisphere cannot see objects in the southern sky," Ian Adams, an ANU astronomer, said.

"The comet that went past Mars, that was a southern hemisphere comet, it came from deep in the southern hemisphere's sky. The northern hemisphere would never have seen it."

The task of searching the southern galactic plane was now left to "amateurs and enthusiasts" with a decent telescope in the backyard, Adams said.

Tucker said the problem was that governments still saw comet and asteroid-spotting as an academic pursuit rather than an early-warning system. "The idea needs to switch from thinking of this as scientific research ... to seeing it as something no different to tracking cyclones," he said.

"It's about getting people out of harm's way, minimising damage. And it shouldn't be seen as one country's problem. It's a global problem."

China has experimented with using missiles to divert small meteors and man-made space junk, Tucker said.

Scientists at ANU received $60m funding earlier this year to develop another solution: lasers that could be beamed from earth to slow down or alter the orbit of space debris before it collided with Earth.

European Galician Assembly has become more active in Lvov. It is known for its advocacy of separatism. Activists of the organization held a conference, at which the City Mayor Andriy Sadovyi and former economic development Minister Pavel Sheremet were among the guests.

The Galician Assembly consists of local intellectuals who have never concealed their separatist views (they recently registered the Ukrainian Galician party). The head of organisation Vladimir Pavliv became famous as a "Galician autonomist" even before the war. In his view, a change in the format of the administrative-territorial status is not far off.

"I am interested in autonomy for Western Ukraine or Galicia, and what happens beyond Zbruch, I don't care about," - he confessed two years ago. "The integrity of Ukraine for me is less important than the well-being of Galicia ".

Another leader of the Galician Assembly writer Taras Prohasko called Donbass -"a gangrene for the Ukrainian State." However, today the Galician separatists do not publicly express their support for the secession of the Western region, and the purpose of the organization is officially referred to as the development of Galicia and integration into Europe. However, activists of the Assembly hinted that they wouldn't mind getting into the EU without Ukraine.

"We need to unite, at least three areas - Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. "The goal of our Organization is to return Galicia to Europe, because this is an area which is most ready for European integration," - said Pavliv at the recent opening of Ternopil affiliate. He also didn't mind joining the initiative of Transcarpathian region and Bukovina.

Expert Taras Gliwinskiy believes that the Galician party is betting on local elections: "The chip will be the promise of EU membership, and if the economy will collapse because of the war in the East, the question of secession will rise".

An American drone crashed into the runway at Niger's main international airport on Monday, damaging it and shutting the facility down for hours, the US military has confirmed, adding that there were no casualties or injuries.

The crash occurred in the early morning around 3:40 am at Diori Hamani International airport, according to AFP, which added that the runway was closed for nearly nine hours to enable crews to repair the damage.

In a statement by the US Air Forces in Europe and Africa, it was revealed that the drone was an unarmed MQ-9 Reaper, which is remotely operated and capable of maintaining airborne surveillance efforts for dozens of hours.

"The US government is working closely with the government of Niger to secure the scene and mitigate inconveniences caused by the incident," the statement read, as quoted by AFP. "The cause of the incident is currently under investigation."

The use of surveillance drones over Niger has been a common occurrence since 2013, when the United States started the practice in an attempt to bolster French troops battling Islamist militants in neighboring Mali. Roughly 1,200 French soldiers are trying to contain an insurgency that erupted in 2012.

In fact, Niger has become a key staging ground for American and French drone flights. The two countries have been cooperating out of Niamey - the country's capital, and the location of the Diori Hamani airport - as they try to combat concerning spikes in jihadism throughout Africa. In September, the US announced it would open a second drone base in central Niger, where it could track extremists in Mali and Libya more effectively.

The most recent drone crash is the latest in Africa, where multiple accidents have been reported since 2011. Two years ago, a suspected drone fell out of the sky into a refugee camp in Somalia, witnesses told the Associated Press.

Following that event, the UN released a report stating that drones, in general, could pose a threat to air traffic. It noted one close call in which a drone nearly collided with a passenger plane in mid-air, and another in which a drone flew precariously close to a fuel depot.

Outside of Africa, accidents and near-misses have also been widely reported. Back in March 2014, an unmanned aerial vehicle almost crashed with an airborne commercial plane above Florida. In July, two drones operated by local residents nearly collided with an airborne New York Police Department helicopter, leading to arrests.

Meanwhile, a drone that crashed into a US Navy battleship off the coast of California caused $30 million in damages.

With drone use on the rise - the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) projects up to 7,500 drones operating in US airspace within five years - government officials are hard at work crafting operational and safety guidelines. Six domestic testing sites have been picked out by the FAA, and the integration of drones into American airspace is expected to start by the end of next year.

Despite the apparent trunk and floppy ears, that is not a picture of a baby elephant, but a very unfortunate (and maybe a little bit cute?) piglet born in northeastern China last week.

The piglet was the second to be born out of eight siblings. He really stood out from his brothers and sisters as the only one with grey skin, big ears, and a trunk. Unfortunately, he was also the only one to be born without a mouth.

Mouths are pretty essential, so the piglet sadly died just two hours after its birth. The farmer has since frozen the carcass so that he can prove to his friends that the pictures he took are totally not photoshopped.

We've seen pigs with two mouths and two noses, we've seen pigs with two heads and three eyes, but we've never quite seen something like this.

All hail the glorious "elephant" pig!

The northern white rhinoceros is one step closer to extinction with the death of Suni, one of only two breeding males left of his kind.

The 34-year-old animal was found dead October 17 in his enclosure in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy, possibly from natural causes, the reserve said in a statement. White rhinos are thought to be able to live up to 40 or 50 years. An autopsy is under way, but officials are certain poachers did not kill Suni, as the animal was monitored around the clock.

The death of the rare creature, which had not fathered any offspring, leaves only six northern white rhinos left on Earth, including just one male of that subspecies. The southern white rhino, a related subspecies, is considered near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Born at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, Suni had been an emblem of hope: He was one of four of the world's eight remaining northern rhinos sent to the Kenyan conservancy in 2009 as part of a last-ditch effort to save the critically endangered subspecies.

So far, it hasn't worked. "It's a shame the subspecies got to that point - that's the worst-case scenario in trying to bring back a subspecies," said Matthew Lewis, senior program officer for African species conservation at WWF.

The northern white rhinoceros is a "victim of evolution," Lewis added - it was a remnant population cut off from the southern white rhinoceros by the Great Rift Valley and the dense forests of Central Africa.

Already isolated and occurring in low numbers, the northern subspecies got caught up in political turmoil in Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, and its numbers quickly dwindled because of poaching and habitat loss.

"Not Just Another Charismatic Animal"

With just one breeding male left, the outlook for the subspecies is grim. Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, now considers the animal basically extinct.

That "we've lost [the subspecies] is a statement of just how bad off large animals are across Africa," said Pimm, who is also a contributor to National Geographic's News Watch blog. "It's a measure of the fact that rhinos are being massively poached and in trouble wherever they are."

From African lions to elephants, many of the continent's megafauna species are plummeting in number due to poaching and other human causes.

"It also means we're losing this distinctive, important animal within the savanna ecosystem," he said.

Rhinoceroses are key to keeping grasslands healthy, as they eat - and keep in check - particular species of savanna plants.

"It's not just another charismatic animal - it's also a species that has a very clear ecological role, and we need to be very worried that we have lost that," Pimm said.

© Barcroft Media, Getty Images

Suni takes a walk in November 2010 at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where he moved in 2009 from his birthplace in the Czech Republic.

Rhino Lessons

The story of the northern white rhinoceros is "a fantastic lesson on what not to do, and how we need to avoid getting to this point with the other rhinos," Lewis noted.

The black rhinoceros, which has four subspecies, is doing relatively well, though widespread poaching for the animals' horns, which are used in Asian traditional medicine, continues to flourish, he said.

Conservationists are now focusing their efforts on ensuring the safety of these animals and reducing the demand for rhino horn in Asian countries such as Vietnam.

But scientists aren't ready to give up on the northern white rhino entirely, he added.

For instance, if the last breeding male doesn't mate, scientists may be able to breed the northern white rhino females with the southern subspecies.

That would preserve some of the genes of the northern white rhino, even if the genes are mixed with those of their relative.

And the Ol Pejeta Conservancy is still on the case.

"We will continue to do what we can to work with the remaining three animals on Ol Pejeta," the reserve said in a statement, "in the hope that our efforts will one day result in the successful birth of a northern white rhino calf."

Tutankhamun's beautiful golden mask, the embodiment of a man secure in his power, has been flattering the pharaoh for many centuries, according to the most detailed image yet of the teenage king's face and body.

In the flesh, King Tut had a club foot, a pronounced overbite and girlish hips, says a "virtual autopsy" built using more than 2,000 computerized tomography (CT) scans of the pharaoh's body.

Built for the BBC documentary, , the shocking 3-D computer model could shed new light on the death of the boy pharaoh at the age of 19.

Previous theories suggested King Tut may have died as a result of a chariot accident, but the virtual reconstruction showed a different scenario.

"It was important to look at his ability to ride on a chariot and we concluded it would not be possible for him, especially with his partially clubbed foot, as he was unable to stand unaided," Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and Icemen in Italy, told the U.K. daily .

According to Ashraf Selim, an Egyptian radiologist, King Tut "also developed Kohler's disease or death of the bones, during adolescence, which would have been incredibly painful."

Indeed, about 130 walking sticks found in King Tut's treasure-packed tomb would support the theory that the boy pharaoh had to rely on canes to get around.

Zink believes the pharaoh's early death was most likely caused from his weakened state - a result of genetic impairments inherited from his parents, who were siblings.

Indeed, in 2010 an international genetic study produced a five-generation pedigree of Tutankhamun's immediate lineage. In the study, the mummy known as KV55 - most likely the "heretic" Akhenaten - and KV35YL, also known as the Younger Lady, were identified as siblings, as well as King Tut's parents.

The study confirmed the frail king was afflicted by malaria and suffered a badly broken leg, above his knee, just before he died.

"It is difficult to say whether malaria may have been a serious factor in the cause of death," Zink said.

The boy pharaoh has been puzzling scientists ever since his mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered on Nov. 22, 1922, in the Valley of the Kings by British archaeologist Howard Carter.

Only a few facts about his life are known. Tut.ankh.Amun, "the living image of Amun," ascended the throne in 1332 B.C., at the age of 9, and reigned until his death at 19.

As the last male in the family, his death ended the 18th dynasty - probably the greatest of the Egyptian royal families - and gave way to military rulers.

© Reuters/Tom Tingle

Jodi Arias, (R), speaks to prosecutor Juan Martinez during a hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, Arizona in this file photo taken August 13, 2014.

An Arizona jury will be sworn in on Tuesday to decide whether 34-year-old convicted murderer Jodi Arias will be executed for the 2008 slaying of Travis Alexander, court officials said.

After months of delays, a 12-member jury is set to be impaneled in Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix in the penalty phase retrial of the former California waitress.

Arias was found guilty of first-degree murder in May 2013 for killing Alexander, 30, in his Mesa, Arizona, home. Alexander was found slumped in his shower after being stabbed 27 times, having his throat slashed and being shot in the face.

Arias testified for 18 days, claiming she acted in self-defense, while prosecutors said she murdered Alexander in a jealous rage.

The jury found her guilty and quickly decided that she was eligible for the death penalty. But they deadlocked on what her punishment should be, prompting Judge Sherry Stephens to declare a mistrial.

The five-month trial featured lurid testimony and grim crime-scene photographs, drawing many U.S. television and Internet viewers with the aid of live-streamed broadcasts. The penalty phase retrial, however, will not be broadcast live.

It took roughly three weeks to seat the new jury, from a pool of roughly 400 people. If that jury deadlocks, the death penalty will be off the table, and Stephens will decide if Arias gets life in prison, or life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

© NASA

This is a radar image of one of the areas sampled on Ovda. There is a smooth ramp across the map going from higher to lower elevations, shown as a gradual transition in radar brightness up the ramp. (The top of the ramp is brighter than the bottom of the ramp in the lower right corner). The bright areas to either side of the ramp are highland plateaus, and the curious dark spots are the mysterious areas at the highest elevations that the researchers are investigating.

Venus is hiding something beneath its brilliant shroud of clouds: a first order mystery about the planet that researchers may be a little closer to solving because of a new re-analysis of twenty-year-old spacecraft data.

Venus's surface can't be seen from orbit in visible light because of the planet's hot, dense, cloudy atmosphere. Instead, radar has been used by spacecraft to penetrate the clouds and map out the surface - both by reflecting radar off the surface to measure elevation and by looking at the radio emissions of the hot surface. The last spacecraft to map Venus in this way was , two decades ago. One of the Venusian surprises discovered at that time is that radio waves are reflected differently at different elevations on Venus. Also observed were a handful of radio dark spots at the highest elevations. Both enigmas have defied explanation.

"There is general brightening upward trend in the highlands and then dark spots at the highest locations," explained Elise Harrington, an Earth sciences undergraduate at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, who revisited the Venus data during her internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, under the direction of Allan Treiman. Brightening, in this case, means the radio waves reflect well. Dark means the radio waves are not reflected. In other words, the higher you go on Venus, the more radio reflective the ground gets until it abruptly goes radio black.

"Like on Earth, the temperature changes with elevation," Harrington explained. And the cooler temperatures at altitude lead to ice and snow, which create a similar pattern of brightening for Earth - but in visible light. "Among the possibilities on Venus are a temperature dependent chemical weathering process or heavy metal compound precipitating from the air - a heavy metal frost."

Getting to the bottom of these mysteries has been very hard because Venus has not been revisited since Magellan and no better data is available.

So Harrington and Trieman made do by re-purposing the old data. They used recently-available stereo radar elevation data (from Dr. R. Herrick, University of Alaska) rather than using the lower resolution radar altimetry. That increased their altimetry resolution from seeing patches 8 by 12 kilometers to just 600x600 meters. They also used Magellan's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with its 75x75-meter footprint, to look at radio reflectance, rather than the data on radio emissions from the surface, which had a coarser 15 by 23 kilometer resolution.

They applied these to two areas in the Odva Regio highlands region of Venus where they confirmed the same pattern of radar reflections brightening with increasing elevation, as was found by previous researchers. The radar reflection was low at the lower 2,400 meter (7,900 foot) elevation, then rapidly brightens up to 4,500 meters (14,700 feet). But they also found a lot more of those strange black spots, with a precipitous drop in the reflections at 4,700 meters (15,400 feet).

"The previous author saw a few dark spots," said Harrington. "But we see hundreds of them."

Years ago it was proposed that some sort of ferro-electric compound might be the cause of the brightening and the dark spots, but so far no specific compound has been identified which does the trick. Then again, with the surface of Venus being at almost 900 °F (500 °C) under more than 90 times the air pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level, with occasional showers of acid, it's not easy to test the properties of materials under Venusian conditions.

"No one knows what explains the sudden darkness," said Harrington, who will be presenting the work at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday, Oct. 20. "We think this might spur some more interest in Venus."

More information: "The puzzle of radar-bright highlands on Venus: a high-spatial resolution study in Ovda regio".

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

These images were taken of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring by NASA's on Oct. 19, 2014, during the comet's close flyby of Mars and the spacecraft.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's captured views of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring while that visitor sped past Mars on Sunday (Oct. 19), yielding information about its nucleus.

The images are the highest-resolution views ever acquired of a comet coming from the Oort Cloud at the fringes of the solar system. Other spacecraft have approached and studied comets with shorter orbits. This comet's flyby of Mars provided spacecraft at the Red Planet an opportunity to investigate from close range.

Images of comet Siding Spring from HiRISE are online.

The highest-resolution of images of the comet's nucleus, taken from a distance of about 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers), have a scale of about 150 yards (138 meters) per pixel. Telescopic observers had modeled the size of the nucleus as about half a mile, or one kilometer wide. However, the best HiRISE images show only two to three pixels across the brightest feature, probably the nucleus, suggesting a size smaller than half that estimate.

© NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of Tropical Storm Ana blanketing the Hawaiian Islands on Oct. 19 at 21:45 UTC (5:45 p.m. EDT).

Tropical Storm Ana made a slow track west of the Hawaiian islands over the last couple of days, and by Oct. 20 was moving westward away from the main Hawaiian islands and heading toward the northwest Hawaiian islands. NASA's Terra satellite caught Ana on a flyby on Oct. 19 that showed the storm's clouds blanketing the chain of islands.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible picture of Tropical Storm Ana blanketing the Hawaiian Islands on Oct. 19 at 21:45 UTC (5:45 p.m. EDT). At the time, the strongest thunderstorms appeared to be in the eastern and western quadrants of the storm.

On Monday, Oct. 20, a tropical storm warning was in effect for portions of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, from Nihoa to French Frigate Shoals. A hurricane watch was in effect for portions of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, from Nihoa to Maro Reef.

At 8 a.m. EDT (2 a.m. HST/1200 UTC) Tropical Storm Ana was just below hurricane strength with maximum sustained winds near 70 mph (110 kph). NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) expects weakening today, but intensification on Oct. 20. The center of tropical storm Ana was located near latitude 20.6 north and longitude 162.6 west. That puts the center of Ana about 225 miles (360 km) west-southwest of Lihue Hawaii and about 325 miles (525 km) southeast of French Frigate Shoals. Ana is moving toward the west near 9 mph (15 kph) and is expected to gradually turn to the northwest.

© Camille Haley

This image shows fallen trees littler the grounds at Fort Scaur, an historical landmark in Bermuda. Fort Scaur was built in 1870 and is located in Somerset, at the western end of Bermuda.

Hurricane Gonzalo departed from Bermuda leaving power outages, downed trees, and damaged homes and buildings. An on-the ground account of the storm indicated the eye passed over the island. By Oct. 20, post-tropical storm Gonzalo was approaching the United Kindgom, sparking severe weather warnings.

By Sunday, Oct. 19 Gonzalo was affecting eastern Canada. Forecasters expect Gonzalo to hold together over while traveling east across the North Atlantic where it will affect Scotland as an extra-tropical storm on Tuesday, Oct. 21.

Camille Haley was former NASA intern and is now a resident of Bermuda. She provided an account of her experience as Hurricane Gonzalo struck the island on Oct. 17.

"Light rain and wind slowly strengthened during the mid-afternoon, as Gonzalo approached Bermuda," she said. "At around 4:00 p.m. local time the wind and rain intensified by the minute. On a typical day, we can see the ocean from the veranda but there was no visibility within 100 feet at this point. I saw an electric wire fall in the neighbors' backyard; it continued to spark for hours. Trees were bending, branches were snapping and leaves were blowing everywhere. We were surrounded in darkness as the electricity in the area had gone out. Candles, flashlights and occasional strikes of lightning were our only light source.

Suddenly there was a strange silence. The wind and rain had come to a complete stop. Curious, I opened the front door to feel a smothering heat. The sky was clear and all that could be heard was the whistling sound of what seemed like a million tree frogs. The eye of the storm had arrived. If I had not known that the eye of Hurricane Gonzalo was going to approach us, I could have assumed that the storm had passed. Thankfully during this time, we were able to get a phone call through to my Aunt who lives in Boston. She was able gave us an update on what was predicted to come next. Without warning the wind roared fiercely followed by harsh rain. The second half of Gonzalo arrived with ferocity. In my opinion this was the worst part. I barely slept fearing that the front door and windows were going to implode. The howling sound of the wind was haunting.

The next morning the sky was clear and the ocean was calm. Although my neighborhood didn't suffer much damage, other than a few electric wires falling, other areas of the island had fallen light poles, wires and trees, crushed fences and walls. Some homes had roofs that fell in or came completely off. I'm amazed at how many trees were uprooted or fallen over across the island."

© NASA/NOAA GOES Project

NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a visible image of the storm on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 1145 UTC (7:45 a.m. EDT) that showed it in the North Atlantic, blanketing eastern Canada and stretching east over open waters.

By October 18, Gonzalo had moved north of Bermuda and was headed toward eastern Canada.

Between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Oct. 19, a weather station on Cape Race, Newfoundland reported a sustained wind of 41 mph (67 kph) and a gust of 55 mph (89 kph). St. Johns Newfoundland recently reported a wind gust of 45 mph (72 kph).

At 8 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 19, Gonzalo was still a hurricane over the cold waters of the north Atlantic. A tropical storm watch is effect for Arnolds Cove to Chapels Cove, Newfoundland, Canada.

.On Sunday, Oct. 19 at 8 a.m. EDT, Gonzalo's center was near latitude 47.6 north and longitude 50.1 west. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a visible image of the storm on Sunday, Oct. 18 at 1145 UTC (7:45 a.m. EDT) that showed it in the North Atlantic, blanketing eastern Canada and stretching east over open waters. At that time, Gonzalo was moving toward the northeast near 52 mph (83 mph). Gonzalo moved quickly away from Newfoundland into the North Atlantic. Maximum sustained winds were near 85 mph (140 kph) and gradual weakening was forecast.

Just three hours later the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image that showed Hurricane Gonzalo had moved more than 150 miles further east from Newfoundland, Canada than when the GOES image was taken.

On Oct. 19 effects from Gonzalo were still being felt in many places because of dangerous ocean conditions. Large swells, now waning, were affecting the Virgin Islands, the northern coasts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, portions of the Bahamas, portions of the United States east coast, Bermuda and Atlantic Canada.

By Sunday night Gonzalo and become an extra-tropical cyclone with a cold core center (instead of a warm center like a tropical cyclone) as the National Hurricane Center expected.

Gonzalo is expected to affect Scotland on Tuesday, October 21 as an extra-tropical storm, packing heavy rains and gusty winds.

On Monday, Oct. 20, the U.K. Meteorological Service issued a National Severe Weather Warning for the U.K.: "The remains of Hurricane Gonzalo are running across the Atlantic, reaching the UK on Monday night, bringing a period of strong winds to the U.K. The strongest winds are expected on Tuesday as the low pressure clears eastwards; some uncertainty remains in peak windspeeds but there remains the potential for disruption to travel, especially as the strongest winds coincide with the morning rush hour in places. Fallen leaves impeding drainage increases the risk of surface water affecting roads, while some damage to trees is possible, given that many are still in full leaf."

An elderly man was killed in an elephant attack in Parsa district on Friday.

Bash Tamang, 55, of Ram Nagar, Nirmal Basti-1 died in the tusker attack in the Parsa Wildlife Reserve.

His body was found on Saturday morning, police said

He was returning home while he was attacked.

Since Tamang did not arrive home till the late evening, a police team had started the search operation from Saturday morning.

An elderly man was killed in an elephant attack in Parsa district on Friday.

Bash Tamang, 55, of Ram Nagar, Nirmal Basti-1 died in the tusker attack in the Parsa Wildlife Reserve.

His body was found on Saturday morning, police said

He was returning home while he was attacked.

Since Tamang did not arrive home till the late evening, a police team had started the search operation from Saturday morning.

© Screenshot from LIFENEWS video

The driver of the snowplow that caused the Falcon-50 plane crash in Moscow's Vnukovo airport

It was determined in the course of the investigation into the Moscow plane crash that killed the CEO of French oil giant Total that the driver of the snowplow which likely caused the crash was drunk.

"It has been determined that the driver of the snowplow was under the influence of alcohol," head of Russia's Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin told the reporters on Tuesday.

Markin added that "there is a possibility that a number of airport staff will be suspended from carrying out their duties pending criminal investigation."

During the taxiing before take-off, at around Midnight Moscow time on Tuesday, the Falcon 50 business jet hit a snow-clearing machine. Although previous reports indicated otherwise, the plane did not leave ground following the collision.

[embedded content]

The CEO of France's oil and gas giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, was the only passenger in the jet, while three crewmembers who were also French citizens perished as well.

A criminal investigation has been launched into possible violation of safe-driving regulations involving an aircraft, resulting in the death of two or more persons.

"Some of the main theories being investigated at this time are a mistake by air traffic control and the actions of the snowplow driver. Bad weather conditions and the possibility of a mistake by the pilot will also be considered," Markin said.

[embedded content]

The black boxes have been uncovered and are being processed at this time.

Investigators are also examining technical documentation and testing fuel samples, according to Markin.

He added that "the scene is being investigated with the help of representatives from the International Aviation Committee" and that "staffers are being questioned at this time."

"Owing to the gravity of the matter of the Falcon-300 crash in Vnukovo," the spokesman for the Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin will personally hold a meeting with the investigative group and airport personnel, according to Markin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his condolences over the Total CEO's death. TASS cited his spokesman as saying that "Vladimir Putin has long known de Margerie and had a close working relationship with him."

"The president highly appreciated de Mergerie's business skills, his continued commitment to the development of not only bilateral Russian-French relations but also on multifaceted levels," Peskov also said.

The Swedish Armed Forces admitted Monday evening that they have failed to maintain transparency and issued false information about the whereabouts of the alleged foreign submarine in the Stockholm archipelago.

"The Armed Forces are conducting an intelligence operation in the Stockholm archipelago. . . We are supposed to do this with maximum transparency while preserving operational secrecy. This is how a credible, correct authority should and must act to preserve public confidence. It must be said that the Armed Forces in a sense have failed at this," Sweden's Armed Forces said in a statement.

On Sunday, Sweden's Armed Forces released a photograph of an object, suspected to be a foreign submarine in the Stockholm archipelago and a map, allegedly showing where the photo was taken. The area of the sighting was reported to be Jungfrufjärden, a fjard near the settlement of Dalarö south of Stockholm.

However, an investigation carried out by Sweden's public broadcaster SVT showed that no locations in the area matched the photograph. After being confronted by the SVT's journalists, Swedish forces admitted issuing false information to avoid "helping foreign powers".

"In retrospect, I should have been clearer during the press conference that I was showing a map with the approximate positions because I did not wish to reveal any exact positions with regard to the operation," deputy operational director Anders Grenstad said late Monday.

The Raw Story

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