Three Americans tourists missing

The U.S. State Department said Friday it was investigating reports that three American tourists have been detained by Iranians while hiking near Iran's border with the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq.Two Kurdish officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information, said the Americans apparently were arrested after entering Iranian territory without permission.

U.S. helicopters were buzzing overhead and many U.S. Humvees had moved into the Kurdish city of Halabja to search for the Americans, said a Kurdish border force official.According to a security official, a fourth American who stayed behind at a hotel because he was sick said the missing Americans were tourists hiking near Halabja and the border town of Ahmed Awaa.

According to this account, the four had traveled to Turkey, then entered the Kurdish region Tuesday through the Ibrahim Al-Khalil border point in Zakho, the official said. They visited the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah on Wednesday. The next day, three of them took a taxi to Ahmed Awaa where they told their companion that they planned to stay at a nearby resort, the official said.

The three contacted their companion on Friday and told him "they had mistakenly entered Iranian territory and that troops surrounded them," the official said, adding "that was the last contact with them."The mountainous border area is a popular hiking destination and well-known for its thick growth of pistachio trees.

The border force official said Iranian authorities apparently arrested the three Americans because they had entered the neighbouring country without permission. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S. Embassy "is aware of the report and is investigating. We are using all available means to determine the facts in this case."

Iranian officials made no immediate comment.The self-ruled Kurdish region has been relatively free of the violence that plagues the rest of Iraq. Foreigners often feel freer to move around without security guards in the area. Halabja, 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, was the site of a chemical weapons attack ordered by Saddam Hussein in 1988 as part of a scorched-earth campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion. An estimated 5,600 were killed in the nerve and mustard gas attacks — the vast majority Kurds — and many still suffer the aftereffects.

Israel Hardened it's insistence against Iran

Israel hardened it's insistence that it would do anything it felt necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, just the ultimatum the United States hoped not to hear as it tried to nudge Iran to the bargaining table. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reassured Israel that the new Obama administration was not naive about Iran's intentions, and that Washington would press for new, tougher sanctions against the Iranians if they balk. He didn't say what those might include. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak used a brief news conference with Gates to insist three times that Israel would not rule out any response — an implied warning that it would consider a pre-emptive strike to thwart Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"We clearly believe that no option should be removed from the table," Barak said. "This is our policy. We mean it. We recommend to others to take the same position, but we cannot dictate it to anyone." The question of how to deal with Iran's rapid nuclear advancement has become a notable public difference between the new administrations in Jerusalem and Washington, despite overall close relations. Israel considers itself the prime target of any eventual Iranian bomb. Iran says it is merely trying to develop nuclear reactors for domestic power generation. Israeli leaders fear the U.S. prizes its outreach to Iran over its historic ties to Israel and appears resigned to the idea that Iran will soon be able to build a nuclear weapon.

Obama says he has accepted no such thing. Still, the United States argues that an Israeli attack against Iran would upset the fragile security balance in the Middle East, perhaps triggering a new nuclear arms race and leaving everyone, including Israel and Iran, worse off. Gates emphasized areas of agreement with Israel, including that the offer of talks with Iran must not be open-ended. Later, in neighbouring Jordan, Gates was blunt in describing what Iran might expect if it refuses the offer of international arms control talks this year, or walks away from Obama's wider offer of better relations with Washington.

"If the engagement process is not successful, the United States is prepared to press for significant additional sanctions," Gates said. He added that the U.S. would try to abandon the current policy of gradual international pressure, where layers of generally mild sanctions have been added each time Iran has flouted international demands. "We would try to get international support for a much tougher position," Gates said. "Our hope remains that Iran would respond to the president's outstretched hand in a positive and constructive way, but we'll see."

Gates' brief stop in Israel was part of a parade of top Washington officials visiting Israel this week, with Iran and the expansion of Jewish settlements on Arab land the main topics. In each case, the Obama administration is taking a harder line with Israel than the positions taken by President George W. Bush. Obama's special Mideast envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, was the first U.S. official to arrive, largely to discuss U.S.-Israeli differences over the settlements. Gates will be followed Wednesday by National Security Adviser James Jones and his deputy, Mideast and Iran specialist Dennis Ross, both expected to press for Israeli cooperation on Iran. Gates met with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman after leaving Israel on Monday.

Mitchell urged Israel to start "dealing with difficult issues like settlements." At the same time, he urged Arab nations to take "genuine steps" toward normalising ties with Israel. The differences over Iran come on top of U.S.-Israeli disagreements over the Mideast peace process — particularly Washington's calls for a halt to Israeli settlement building.

All this comes at a time when Washington's policy of dialogue with Iran itself has hit an impasse because of that country's election turmoil. A more cooperative Iran is important for the Mideast peace drive. With its links to Hamas and Hezbollah militants, Iran is capable of heightening tensions in Israel and the Palestinian territories. At the same time, an Israeli strike on Iran would probably push Arab nations away from any peace gestures toward Israel, despite their own rivalries with Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "reiterated the seriousness which Israel views Iran's nuclear ambitions and the need to utilize all available means to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability," Netanyahu's office said following his meeting with Gates.

While the United States also reserves the right to use force if need be, the Obama administration is playing down that possibility while it tries to draw Iran into talks. Gates said Washington still hopes to have an initial answer in the fall about negotiations. "The timetable the president laid out still seems to be viable and does not significantly raise the risks to anybody," Gates said in Israel. Both Barak and Gates said time is short. Other officials have said Iran is perhaps one to three years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

Barak, speaking in both English and Hebrew, gave only lukewarm endorsement to the negotiating strategy. "We are not in a situation in which we can tell the United States to hold, or not to hold discussions with Iran," Barak said. "But we repeatedly state our position in closed conversations, which is that a discussion like this should be limited in time, result-oriented, and able to decide if the Iranians are truly serious or not." Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., said Israel "isn't anxious to launch military action." "It doesn't want this, but Israel thinks more should be done and that diplomacy alone isn't enough. I think Israel and the U.S. are on the same page but on different sides of the paper," he said.

Source: AP

Sarah Palin Steps down as Governor

Sarah Palin stepped down Sunday as Alaska governor to write a book and build a right-of-center coalition, but she left her long-term political plans unclear and refused to address speculation she would seek a 2012 presidential bid.In a fiery campaign-style speech, Palin said she was stepping down to take her political battles to a larger if unspecified stage and avoid an unproductive, lame duck status."With this decision, now, I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right, and for truth. And I have never felt that you need a title to do that," Palin said to raucous applause from about 5,000 people gathered at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks.

Her first order of business as a private citizen is to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. She also wants to campaign for political candidates from coast to coast, and continue to speak her mind on the social networking site Twitter, one of her favorite venues to reach out to supporters.Free speech was a theme of her farewell speech at a crowded picnic in Fairbanks, as the 45-year-old outgoing governor scolded "some seemingly hell-bent on tearing down our nation" and warned Americans to "be wary of accepting government largesse. It doesn't come free."She also took aim at the media, saying her replacement, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, "has a very nice family too, so leave his kids alone!"

And she told the media: "How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin' things up?"She didn't elaborate, but Palin said when she announced her resignation July 3 that she was tired of the media focus on her family and felt she had been unfairly treated by reporters and bloggers.

Source: AP

Iranian airliner skids off runway killing 17

An Iranian plane carrying 153 passengers and crew skidded off the runway and crashed Friday while landing in northeast Iran, killing at least 17 people, the state news agency said. Among the dead was the manager of the privately owned Aria Airlines, operator of the plane.Television footage showed the plane sitting at an angle, its tail resting awkwardly on the ground and the mangled front end pointing toward the sky. The rest of the aircraft appeared largely intact.

The crash came just over a week after another Iranian passenger plane nose-dived into the ground shortly after takeoff, killing all 168 people aboard.Iran's aging fleet is plagued by maintenance problems, blamed on financial straits and U.S. sanctions that make it harder for the country to get many types of spare parts.The official IRNA news agency reported that in Friday's crash, the plane's tires failed on landing and the craft skidded into a wall. No wall was visible in the footage broadcast on TV.

The Russian-made Ilyushin-62 plane had flown from Tehran, the Iranian capital, to the northeastern city of Mashhad, 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) away.Local official Ghahrman Rashid told the state news agency that 20 people were injured. He said all the survivors had been evacuated.U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Iran's worst crash came in February 2003 and also involved a Russian-made Ilyushin that plowed into the mountains of southeastern Iran, killing 302 people — mostly members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.Some of the jets in Iran's fleet are U.S.-made craft bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to a cutoff in ties between the nations. U.S. sanctions imposed after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in November 1979 have prevented Iran from buying parts for those planes or purchasing new ones.

The sanctions also bar sales of European jets with a certain amount of U.S. parts, limiting Iran's ability to buy from Europe.As a result, Iran has focused on Russian-built planes — like the Tupolev and Ilyushins, the Soviet-era workhorses for Russian civil air fleets.After the Soviet collapse, government funding sharply declined for manufacturers of aircraft and spare parts, and other countries using the planes have had a harder time getting parts.

Source: AP

Israel slams Hillary Clinton

A key minister in the Israeli government criticised U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons. Dan Meridor, Israel's minister for secret services, told Army Radio that the comments imply a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran. "I heard, unenthusiastically, the Americans' statement that they will defend their allies in the event that Iran arms itself with an atomic bomb, as if they have already reconciled with this possibility, and this is a mistake," Meridor told Army Radio.

"Now, we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this."Clinton said on Tuesday that the U.S. has a plan to prevent Iranian domination in the Middle East if it gets the nuclear bomb. "We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer," Clinton said during a visit to Bangkok. The U.S. has asked 10 uranium-rich countries to tighten their monitoring of sales of the mineral to Iran, according to a document obtained by Haaretz. The move is based on an American estimate that Iran's uranium reserves will run out by 2010. A senior American delegation will arrive in Israel next week for talks on the dialogue between Iran and Western countries, especially regarding the Iranian nuclear program. The document was distributed by the U.S. State Department to 10 countries that produce yellowcake, a uranium concentrate used as a raw material for enriching uranium.

The United States wants the countries to increase monitoring of the sale of yellowcake to Iran. According to the document, "As a consequence of its geology, Iran's reported indigenous uranium reserves are insufficient to support its current nuclear reactor program for sustained period of time .... Calculations based on Iran's rate of uranium conversion thus far suggest that Iran will run out of yellowcake in 2010." The document is defined as a so-called non-paper to be used in contacts with privately owned companies that produce the concentrate. It was sent to Russia, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Britain, Kazakhstan and three others countries. UN sanctions prohibit the sale of uranium to Iran, but the United States fears that the Islamic Republic might be trying to acquire the material anyway. "Iran could soon begin, or may have already begun, to look for outside suppliers of uranium," the document says. "Extreme vigilance in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program is necessary given the requirements of the UN Security Council and the significant threat Iran presents to international peace and security."

The document also notes that given "Iran's publicly stated ambition to pursue its enrichment-related activities, we believe it critically important that the world's major uranium resource companies prevent all exports of uranium to Iran unless contained in fuel rods and for an established light-water reactor. Beyond the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation that we all share and the specific requirements of the UNSC, we believe that nuclear cooperation - particularly the provision of raw nuclear materials - with Iran is a significant business and reputational risk." It adds that "we urge companies subject to your jurisdiction not to facilitate Iran's nuclear ambitions by engaging in new business deals with Iran until all concerns regarding its intentions have been resolved and confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program has been established." Next Wednesday, a senior U.S. delegation led by National Security Adviser James Jones will arrive in Israel. He will be accompanied by President Barack Obama's special Mideast adviser, Dennis Ross, who recently served as Clinton's special adviser on Iran. The delegation will also include representatives of the CIA, Defense Department, Treasury and State Department. These officials were invited to Israel by National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, who will lead the Israeli side in what is said to be a continuation of talks held in Washington around three weeks ago.

Source: Haaretz

Magdalene's Holy Day

WHAT IF FOR YEARS, A SECRET HAS BEEN KEPT TO MAINTAIN A GREAT LIFE. WHAT IF THE SECRET HAS BEEN KNOWN, HIDDEN AWAY, UNTIL TIME CAME FOR IT TO BE REVEALED? A SECRET SO POWERFUL THAT THE WORLD PAID FOR IT IN BLOOD.

Every 22nd of July, the Holy Day of the Outcast Queen is celebrated. This day is very special for the followers of the Holy Grail. “The Holy Grail ‘neath ancient Roslin waits, the Blade and the Chalice guarding o’er gates. Adorned in Masters’ loving art, she lies. She rest at the last beneath the starry skies An ancient word of wisdom frees this enigma, thou reveal by the atbash, praised by the Templars and helps to keep the scatter’d family whole. Sacrosanct thou thee the five petals rose to the Holy Goddess, the Chalice, the Brotherhood is blessed forever. You don’t find the Holy Grail, but she finds you”

Mary Magdalene was from the house of Benjamin, meaning she was a Royal Descent. The Early Catholic Church recast Her has a whore and thus being a poor in order to erase evidence of her powerful family ties. It was not Mary Magdalene‘s Royal Blood that concerned the church so much as it was her consorting with Christ who also had Royal blood.

The book of Matthew tells us that Jesus was of the House of David, a descendant of King Solomon, the King of Jews, and so was Joseph, the father of Jesus. By marrying into the powerful House of Benjamin, Jesus fused two Royal Bloodlines, creating a potent political union with the potential of making a legitimate claim to the throne and restoring the line of kings as it was under Solomon.

The legend of the Holy Grail is a legend about Royal Blood. When Grail legend speaks of the Chalice that held the blood of Christ, it speaks of Mary Magdalene, the female womb who carried the Royal bloodline of Jesus Christ. This implies that they had a child conceived through Messianic tradition. Mary Magdalene was the Holy Vessel; the Chalice that bore the Royal Bloodline, the womb that bore the lineage and the vine from which the sacred fruit sprang forth. The Sangréal documents found by the Templars at the ruins of the Solomon temple contain proofs that Jesus had a Royal Bloodline.

The Sangréal documents include tens of thousands of pages of information. Eyewitness accounts of the Sangréal treasure describe it as being carried in four enormous trunks and those trunks are reputed to be the Purist Documents, thousands of pages of unaltered, Pre-Constantine documents, written by the earl followers of Jesus, revering Him as a wholly Human teacher and prophet. The Q-Documents, a legendary treasure, a manuscript written by Jesus Himself and which the Vatican also admits that it exists. The Q Document contains the chronicle of Jesus Ministry. Another explosive document includes the manuscript called the Magdalene Diaries- Her personal accounts of her relationship with Christ and His Crucifixion and her time in France and these documents were the treasure found by the Knights Templar and these made them so powerful.

Best Time for children to be bilingual

The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age 7. Missed that window? New research is showing just how children's brains can become bilingual so easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us learn a new language a bit easier. "We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults," says Dr. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology.

Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening even before they start talking, by the first birthday. Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn't distinguish between the "L" and "R" sounds of English — "rake" and "lake" would sound the same. Her team proved that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot of that ability.

Time out — how do you test a baby? By tracking eye gaze. Make a fun toy appear on one side or the other whenever there's a particular sound. The baby quickly learns to look on that side whenever he or she hears a brand-new but similar sound. Noninvasive brain scans document how the brain is processing and imprinting language.Mastering your dominant language gets in the way of learning a second, less familiar one, Kuhl's research suggests. The brain tunes out sounds that don't fit."You're building a brain architecture that's a perfect fit for Japanese or English or French," whatever is native, Kuhl explains — or, if you're a lucky baby, a brain with two sets of neural circuits dedicated to two languages.

It's remarkable that babies being raised bilingual — by simply speaking to them in two languages — can learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one. On average, monolingual and bilingual babies start talking around age 1 and can say about 50 words by 18 months.Italian researchers wondered why there wasn't a delay, and reported this month in the journal Science that being bilingual seems to make the brain more flexible.

The researchers tested 44 12-month-olds to see how they recognized three-syllable patterns — nonsense words, just to test sound learning. Sure enough, gaze-tracking showed the bilingual babies learned two kinds of patterns at the same time — like lo-ba-lo or lo-lo-ba — while the one-language babies learned only one, concluded Agnes Melinda Kovacs of Italy's International School for Advanced Studies.

While new language learning is easiest by age 7, the ability markedly declines after puberty."We're seeing the brain as more plastic and ready to create new circuits before than after puberty," Kuhl says. As an adult, "it's a totally different process. You won't learn it in the same way. You won't become (as good as) a native speaker."Yet a soon-to-be-released survey from the Center for Applied Linguistics, a nonprofit organization that researches language issues, shows U.S. elementary schools cut back on foreign language instruction over the last decade. About a quarter of public elementary schools were teaching foreign languages in 1997, but just 15 percent last year, say preliminary results posted on the center's Web site.

What might help people who missed their childhood window? Baby brains need personal interaction to soak in a new language — TV or CDs alone don't work. So researchers are improving the technology that adults tend to use for language learning, to make it more social and possibly tap brain circuitry that tots would use.Recall that Japanese "L" and "R" difficulty? Kuhl and scientists at Tokyo Denki University and the University of Minnesota helped develop a computer language program that pictures people speaking in "motherese," the slow exaggeration of sounds that parents use with babies.

Japanese college students who'd had little exposure to spoken English underwent 12 sessions listening to exaggerated "Ls" and "Rs" while watching the computerized instructor's face pronounce English words. Brain scans — a hair dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography — that measure millisecond-by-millisecond activity showed the students could better distinguish between those alien English sounds. And they pronounced them better, too, the team reported in the journal NeuroImage.

"It's our very first, preliminary crude attempt but the gains were phenomenal," says Kuhl. But she'd rather see parents follow biology and expose youngsters early. If you speak a second language, speak it at home. Or find a play group or caregiver where your child can hear another language regularly. "You'll be surprised," Kuhl says. "They do seem to pick it up like sponges."

Source: AP

"דחיית העולים ע"י הממסד הרבני מנוגד לאינטרס העם היהודי"

יו"ר האופוזיציה, ציפי לבני, תוקפת היום (ה', 18.06.09) בחריפות את דברי הרב שרמן, כפי שפורסמו הבוקר ב"הארץ". הרב שרמן יצא נגד עולים חדשים המבקשים להתקבל כיהודים על פי ההלכה ואמר, בין השאר, כי: "הם ברובם המכריע גויים שרוצים להתגייר מתוך אינטרסים". יו"ר "קדימה" אמרה בתגובה: "גם אם לממסד החרדי והקהילות החרדיות אין עניין בקירוב עליה זו, לנו - הציבור היהודי שאינו דתי בהכרח, יש בכך עניין גדול".
להלן תגובתה של יו"ר האופוזיציה לדבריו החמורים של הרב שרמן:
"אני מגנה בחריפות את דברי הרב שרמן על דבריו נגד ציבור העולים ונגד הליכי הגיור שקיבלו ביטוי גם בפסילת גיורי דרוקמן.
"חוק השבות הוא במהותו הסעיף הראשון של החוקה העתידית של מדינת ישראל וביטוי למהותה כבית לאומי לעם היהודי.
"גיורי עולי בריה"מ שהגיעו לארץ ומבקשים להצטרף כאן לעם היהודי הינו אינטרס ראשון במעלה של כולנו.
דחייתם ע"י הממסד הרבני וצמצום ההלכה באופן שלא מאפשר גיור מנוגד לאינטרס הקולקטיבי של העם היהודי החי בישראל.
"גם אם לממסד החרדי והקהילות החרדיות אין עניין בקירוב עליה זו, לנו - הציבור היהודי שאינו דתי בהכרח, יש בכך עניין גדול, דווקא מתוך הבנה עמוקה שקיומה של מדינת ישראל כבית לאומי לעם היהודי מהווה אינטרס עליון ומהות קיומה - בית לאומי משמעותו רחבה יותר מאשר קיום מצוות על ידי אזרחיה".
עוד אמרה:
"אני קוראת לרבנות הראשית לפעול על מנת להקל בהליכי הגיור.
פעלנו בעבר יחד עם רה"מ שרון על מנת להקל על תהליכי הגיור, אמנם הדרך שצריך לצעוד בה עוד ארוכה אך אנחנו לא ניתן להחזיר את הגלגל אחורה".

Source: Kadima

Terror Network Revealed

The Lebanese army on Tuesday said that it had revealed a terror network that had been planning to carry out a series of attacks against its troops, as well as a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.The army said in a statement that it was holding the ten members of the cell, from the Fatah al-Islam organization associated with al-Qaida, and was engaged in a series of skirmishes with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in and around the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in 2007.

According to the LAF, the group was comprised of members hailing from different parts of the Arab world, most of them from outside Lebanon. The group reportedly also planned to carry out attacks outside Lebanon. They were also going to bail out men associated with the group that have been barricaded in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilwe.

Reuters quoted a Lebanese security source as saying that six forged passports were found on the person of the leader of the group, a Syrian national."He traveled to six Arab countries in 15 days. His group was planning several attacks against a wide range of targets," Reuters quoted the source as saying.

On Monday, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gabriela Shalev charged that the UNIFIL troops who have been stationed in southern Lebanon and given a mandate to maintain peace in the region, have in fact done the exact opposite by assisting the small group of Hizbullah supporters in their illegal border crossing into Israel over the weekend.

On Friday, 15 Lebanese civilians crossed illegally into Israel, shouting and waving Hizbullah flags. IDF troops spotted the group, but did not confront them as they were reportedly unarmed and returned to Lebanon minutes later, without incident. In a letter submitted by the ambassador to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the president of the United Nations Security Council, Shalev accused a contingent of Indian UNIFIL peacekeepers of having done nothing to prevent the demonstrators from crossing the border and even cooperating with the group.

"[The demonstrators] stood opposite the UNIFIL force, [which did nothing,] and worse than that, according to statements made by the organizers of the demonstration, they even cooperated with them," the letter read. In her complaint, the Israeli ambassador lashed out at Hizbullah for its "grievous violations of Resolution 1701," which included both the border breach, as well as an attack by Lebanese villagers against UNIFIL troops on Saturday who were investigating an explosion last week in a suspected Hizbullah arms depot in southern Lebanon.
Both incidents "demonstrate an escalation and a pattern of behavior in Lebanon, that must be confronted," Shalev wrote in her letter.

Source: JP

Palestinians revoked of their Citizenship

Jordanian authorities have started revoking the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians living in Jordan to avoid a situation in which they would be "resettled" permanently in the kingdom, Jordanian and Palestinian officials revealed on Monday. The new measure has increased tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians, who make up around 70 percent of the kingdom's population. The tensions reached their peak over the weekend when tens of thousands of fans of Jordan's Al-Faisali soccer team chanted slogans condemning Palestinians as traitors and collaborators with Israel. Al-Faisali was playing the rival Wihdat soccer team, made up of Jordanian-Palestinians, in the Jordanian town of Zarqa.

As a preemptive measure, the Jordanian authorities recently began revoking the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians, leaving many of them in a state of panic and uncertainty regarding the future. The Jordanians have justified the latest measure by arguing that it's aimed at avoiding a situation in which the Palestinians would ever be prevented from returning to their original homes inside Israel. Since 1988, when the late King Hussein cut off his country's administrative and legal ties with the West Bank, the Jordanian authorities have been working toward "disengaging" from the Palestinians under the pretext of preserving their national identity.

A PA official in Ramallah expressed deep concern over Jordan's latest move and said that it would only worsen the conditions of Palestinians living in the kingdom. The official said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas raised the issue with King Abdullah II on a number of occasions, but the Jordanians have refused to retract.

8 killed, more than 50 hurt in Jakarta blasts

Eight people were killed and more than 50 were wounded on Friday morning when suicide bombers who checked in as guests smuggled explosives into American luxury hotels in Indonesia's capital and set off a pair of heavy blasts, investigators said.

The near-simultaneous bombings ended a four-year lull in terror attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation. At least 18 foreigners were among the dead and wounded. The blasts at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, located side-by-side in an upscale business district in Jakarta, blew out windows and scattered debris and glass across the street, kicking up a thick plume of smoke. Facades of both hotels were reduced to twisted metal. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw bodies being shuttled away in police trucks.

Two Australians and a New Zealander were believed to have been killed, but there was confusion about the exact number of victims.

An Australian think tank, the Strategic Policy Institute, predicted the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah might launch new attacks just a day before Friday's deadly strike.A paper released Thursday said tensions in the group's leadership and the release of former members from prison "raise the possibility that splinter factions might now seek to re-energize the movement through violent attacks."

Eros, the Greek God of Love

EROS the Greek God of Love, Desire and Fertility. One of the most popular Gods of all time. Ancient legends tell how EROS was born of CHAOS and helped URANUS (Heaven) and GAIA (Earth) get it together. Their offspring helped to populate the universe and fill the pages of mythology encyclopedias. (Later legends claim he's the son of APHRODITE, but that's just too obvious, isn't it?)As the beautiful bittersweet God of Love, he's in charge of the heart and carries a lethal love weapon which no-one can withstand. With two strings to his bow, he can fire golden arrows for love or leaden ones for indifference, so it's best to get on his good side if you're feeling smooch. Warning: if you reject the love of another in a nasty manner, his brother ANTEROS will take his revenge. The most eligible bachelor in the universe, EROS finally married PSYCHE after accidentally pricking himself with one of his own arrows. This was a match made not in Heaven, but in the Underworld.He is also known as cuddly CUPID to the Romans and Profit to the manufacturers of Valentine cards. After the Romans took over the Greek flowers and choccies empire, EROS went roaming to Londinium, where he now resides at Picadilly Circus. If you feel there's something lacking in your love life, you should pay him a visit. I suggest you take a large bulls-eye.

Passenger plane crashed in Iran

A passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed Wednesday in northwest Iran, and all on board were feared dead, state media reported. The Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Teheran to the Armenian capital Yerevan when it crashed near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 120 kilometers northwest of Teheran, state television said. The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames.

"It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said. He did not give a number, but state TV said 168 were on the flight. Reza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organization, was quoted as saying that there was still no precise information regarding the passengers of the plane. He said a delegation was sent to the scene soon after the event was reported but that the cause of the crash was unclear.

Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993..Iran has frequent plane crashes, which it blames on US sanctions on the country that prevent it from getting spare parts for aging airplanes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made aircraft whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The enigmatic writer Dan Brown has revealed the cover of his book “The Lost symbol” to be released on 15th September 2009. Interestingly, the date concedes with the Royal birthday of Christ as per the Messianic tradition. It is to note that Christ was born on 01st March 7 B.C with an official and royal birthday on 15th September. The new book of Dan Brown shades new findings on the Masonic Blazing star, the Bethlehem star, the Star of King David and the lost symbol of The Christ challenging human origins and the very foundation of all religions.

Here is an exclusive extract of the book;
The Elite, thousands of years ago seem to have hidden valuable enlightening records that threatened their war hungry profiteering ways by 'demonically' encoded texts so that action could be taken on their general public found delving into such works. Wayne believes this protocol is still active today, although it has taken a whole new direction. 'Angels' appear to be real flesh and blood visitors to our world and the texts encode important stars associated with these visitors as 'demons'. This will be ellaborated on further down the page. Historically speaking, this article identifies a symbol that has lost its meaning until now. The lost symbol is not only Solomon’s 'Key'. It is also the same 'Key' of the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff and the same 'Key' secret of St. Peter, as seen with his statue at the Vatican. The statue of St. Peter points down the causeway in the direction of the secret of the star fortress. Will Dan Brown identify the hidden meaning of these previously forbidden pieces of important history or will his book hide the truth with fiction? One can only wait and see. It has come as quite a surprise for many that his book title will be 'The Lost Symbol', but this does not change what he has already said his book would be based on.

For more information, please log into : http://keyofsolomon.net/

Iranians defy the Regime

Thousands of protesters streamed down avenues of the capital Thursday, chanting "death to the dictator" and defying security forces who fired tear gas and charged with batons, witnesses said.Turning garbage bins into burning barricades and darting through choking clouds of tear gas, the opposition made its first foray into the streets in nearly two weeks in an attempt to revive mass demonstrations that were crushed in Iran's postelection turmoil. Iranian authorities had promised tough action to prevent the marches, which supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been planning for days through the Internet. Heavy police forces deployed at key points in the city ahead of the marches, and Tehran's governor vowed to "smash" anyone who heeded the demonstration calls.

In some places, police struck hard. Security forces chased after protesters, beating them with clubs on Valiasr Street, Tehran's biggest north-south avenue, witnesses said.Women in headscarves and young men dashed away, rubbing their eyes in pain as police fired tear gas, in footage aired on state-run Press TV. In a photo from Thursday's events in Tehran obtained by The Associated Press outside Iran, a woman with her black headscarf looped over her face thrust her fist into the air in front of a garbage bin that had been set on fire.

In another image, a man dropped to his knees, overcome by the effects of tear gas.But the clampdown was not total. At Tehran University, a line of police blocked a crowd from reaching the gates of the campus, but then did not move to disperse them as the protesters chanted "Mir Hossein" and "death to the dictator" and waved their hands in the air, witnesses said. The crowd grew to nearly 1,000 people, the witnesses said.

"Police, protect us," some of the demonstrators chanted, asking the forces not to move against them.The protesters appeared to reach several thousand, but their full numbers were difficult to determine, since marches took place in several parts of the city at once and mingled with passers-by. There was no immediate word on arrests or injuries. It did not compare to the hundreds of thousands who joined the marches that erupted after the June 12 presidential election, protesting what the opposition said were fraudulent results. But it was a show of determination despite a crackdown that has cowed protesters, who have not held a significant rally for the past 11 days.

Onlookers and pedestrians often gave their support. In side streets near the university, police were chasing young activists, and when they caught one, passers-by chanted "let him go, let him go," until the policemen released him. Elsewhere, residents let fleeing demonstrators slip into their homes to elude police, witnesses said.All witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals. Iranian authorities have imposed restrictions that ban reporters from leaving their offices to cover demonstrations. Many of the marchers were young men and women, some wearing green surgical masks, the color of Mousavi's movement, but older people joined them in some places. Vehicles caught in traffic honked their horns in support of the marchers, witnesses said. Police were seen with a pile of license plates, apparently pried off honking cars in order to investigate the drivers later, the witnesses said.

Soon after the confrontations began, mobile phone service was cut off in central Tehran, a step that was also taken during the height of the postelection protests to cut off communications. Mobile phone messaging has been off for the past three days, apparently to disrupt attempts at planning. The calls for a new march have been circulating for days on social networking Web sites and pro-opposition Web sites. Opposition supporters planned the marches to coincide with the anniversary Thursday of a 1999 attack by Basij on a Tehran University dorm to stop protests in which one student was killed.

Demonstrators dispersed by nightfall. But after sunset, shouts of "death to the dictator" could be heard from rooftops around the city — a half-hour nightly ritual by Mousavi supporters that has continued even since the previous crackdown. Mousavi and his pro-reform supporters say he won the election, which official results showed as a landslide victory for incumbent hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Days of massive demonstrations erupted, until supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared the results valid and warned that unrest would not be tolerated.

In the crackdown that followed, at least 20 protesters and seven Basijis were killed, according to police. Police have said 1,000 people were arrested in the crackdown and that most have since been released. But prosecutor-general Qorban-Ali Dorri Najafabadi said Wednesday that 2,500 people were arrested and that 500 of them could face trial, Press TV reported. The remainder have been released, Najafabadi said.

Arrests have continued over the past week, with police rounding up dozens of activists, journalists and bloggers. In the latest detentions, prominent human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah was taken away by security forces from his office Wednesday along with his daughter and three other members of his staff, the pro-opposition news Web site Norouz reported. A former deputy commerce minister in a previous pro-reform government, Feizollah Arab-Sorkhi, was also arrested at his Tehran home, the site reported.

A large number of top figures in Iran's reform movement, including a former vice president and former Cabinet members, have been held for weeks since the election. Iranian authorities have depicted the postelection turmoil as instigated by enemy nations aiming to thwart Ahmadinejad's re-election, and officials say some of those detained confessed to fomenting the unrest. Opposition supporters say the confessions were forced under duress.

Ahead of the protests, Tehran's governor Morteza Tamaddon accused "foreign counterrevolutionary networks" of plotting new marches. "If some individuals plan to carry out any anti-security actions by listening to (protest) calls ... they will be smashed under the feet of our aware people," he said late Wednesday, according to the state news agency IRNA.

Source:AP

Happy Birthday Tzipi

Tzipora Malka Livni or just Tzipi Livni was born on 8th July 1958. She is the leader of Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset. She has been raised as an ardent nationalist as one of Israel leading voice for two states solution. She has earned a reputation as a honest, clean and sticking to her principles. She is now the Leader of Opposition. She served as Acting Prime Minister, Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Regional Co-operation, Agriculture & Rural Development, Immigrant Absorption, Housing & Construction and Minister without Portfolio.

Many Happy returns of the day.

Happy Birthday

Ancient quarry uncovered in Jerusalem

An ancient quarry covering approximately one dunam and dating back to the end of the Second Temple period was uncovered during excavations on Shmuel Hanavi Street in Jerusalem ahead of the construction of residential buildings, Israel Antiquities Authority said on Monday. According to Dr. Ofer Sion of the Authority, who directed the dig along with Yehuda Rapuano, the 2,300 year-old site was probably the source of the stones used to build the Second Temple walls. "The immense size of the stones indicates it was highly likely that the large stones that were quarried at the site were destined for use in the construction of [legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem King] Herod's magnificent projects in Jerusalem, including the Temple walls," Sion said.

"We know from historical sources that in order to build the Temple and other projects which Herod constructed, such as his palace, hundreds of thousands of various-size stones were required - most of them weighing between two and five tons", Sion continued, noting that the exposure of this quarry verifies the historic accounts of the intensity of Herod's building projects as described by Flavius Josephus. Among the artifacts discovered at the site were metal plates, referred to in the Talmud as 'cheeks,' which were used as fulcrums to severe the stones from the bedrock, as well as coins and pottery shards that date to the first century BCE, the end of the Second Temple period.

IAEA Head chosen

The United Nations nuclear agency's governing board chose on Thursday a veteran Japanese diplomat as its new head, diplomats said. According to the diplomats, Yukiya Amano received the required two-thirds majority from the 35-nation board. The vote Thursday was 23 for Amano and 11 for Abdul Samad Minty of South Africa, with one abstention. The present head, Mohamed ElBaradei, was scheduled to end his term in November. A previous round of balloting in March was indecisive. The diplomats spoke on the events inside the closed meeting on condition of anonymity.