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