Half a million people evacuated as deadly fire rages through Jaipur oil depot

Five killed and 150 injured as massive fire rages through Indian oil depot | Mail Online.

Up to half a million people have been evacuated after a massive fire erupted at a fuel depot in the Indian city of Jaipur last night night.

Twelve people have been confirmed dead and at least 150 injured in the blaze, which continues to rage out of control more than 17 hours after it started.

The fire broke out at around 7.30 pm in a giant tank holding 8,000 kilolitres of oil. It swiftly spread out of control as huge flames leapt into the air and thick black smoke billowed into the night sky.

4th typhoon in month lashes Philippines

The Associated Press: 4th typhoon in month lashes Philippines; 7 killed.

MANILA, Philippines — The fourth typhoon to whip the Philippines in a month lashed the capital and nearby provinces Saturday, leaving fresh floods and new misery before blowing out of the country. At least seven people were killed and several were missing.

Typhoon Mirinae, with winds of 93 miles (150 kilometers) per hour and gusts of up to 115 mph (185 kph), slammed into Quezon province northeast of Manila around midnight Friday. It quickly swept westward out to sea south of the capital and weakened into a tropical storm Saturday afternoon.

Obama’s new world order – Washington Times

Obama’s new world order – Washington Times.

President Obama is on a path toward establishing a one-world government. This is the warning of Christopher Monckton, a former major policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In December, world leaders will descend upon Copenhagen to sign a United Nations climate change treaty that will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and set to expire in 2012. An agreement has been drafted.

The goal of the Copenhagen treaty is to erect an international cap-and-trade regime to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, said to be responsible for man-made global warming. Recently, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned of a “climate catastrophe” – a rising wave of floods, droughts and shrinking food crops – unless the treaty is signed. Mr. Brown even said global warming would inflict more damage than both world wars and the Great Depression combined; the world has only several weeks to save itself from impending doom.

“If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice,” he said. Mr. Brown has thus outdone former Vice President Al Gore in fear-mongering and inciting public hysteria.

Global-warming alarmists are using the myth of climate change to impose an embryonic socialist world government. Following the collapse of communism, the West’s progressive elites desperately searched for a viable ideological alternative. They found it in environmentalism.

Although the Green movement wraps itself in the flag of empirical science, it represents the very opposite: a dogma that provides meaning and purpose to its rabid followers. The ideology justifies massive tax increases and government control of the economy; it seeks to cripple free enterprise and curtail market-driven growth. Many of today’s Greens are yesterday’s Reds.

Global warming is the greatest fraud of our time. The overwhelming scientific evidence shows that, rather than getting hotter, the Earth’s temperatures are cooling. Increasing numbers of leading scientists are challenging the flawed computer models used by eco-alarmists.

Mr. Gore and his supporters cannot answer several simple questions. If the Earth’s temperatures are no longer rising, then how can CO2 emissions be responsible for global warming? How could previous dramatic increases in global temperatures – such as the end of the Ice Age – have taken place without concentrations of CO2? The answer is obvious: Carbon emissions are not connected to fluctuations in global temperatures.

The mad drive for an international cap-and-trade system is really geared toward achieving the left’s long-sought goal: the destruction of democratic capitalism and national sovereignty. The Greens are poised to succeed where the Reds failed.

The Copenhagen treaty must still be negotiated. Final agreement is far from certain, especially from emerging industrial powers like China, India and Brazil. Yet the draft version is clear about the treaty’s essential elements.

It calls for a massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the developing world. The United States would be forced to spend billions of dollars a year in foreign aid to pay for a so-called “climate debt” – a provision to punish wealthy countries for having historically emitted large amounts of CO2, while compensating poor ones for not contributing to greenhouse gases.

The Copenhagen treaty seeks to implement a bureaucratic redistributionist agenda; it is a way for Third World kleptocracies to extort enormous sums of money from America and other rich nations.

Moreover, Mr. Monckton points out that, in paragraph 38, Annex 1, the Copenhagen draft calls for a U.N.-created “government” responsible for taxation, enforcement and redistribution. In other words, the draft treaty explicitly demands that the world body erect an international mechanism with the power to impose emission-reduction targets for each country, determine acceptable levels of CO2 and levy global taxes.

The United States would lose control over its environmental policy. Also, it would sign its death warrant as a functioning democracy, enabling the United Nations to administer a fledgling world government possessing the authority to regulate and tax the American economy. The treaty is a sword aimed at the heart of our national sovereignty.

If Mr. Obama signs the Copenhagen treaty, he “will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever,” Mr. Monckton recently told an audience in Minnesota. “I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created.”

Yet the U.S. Senate can avoid this disastrous course. A supermajority of 67 votes is required to ratify the treaty. In 1997, the Senate in a 95-0 vote rejected the Kyoto Protocol, thereby preventing the United States from joining. Mr. Monckton believes that, in order to avoid defeat, Mr. Obama will try to circumvent the ratification process. If he does, he will spark a political revolt that will make the Tea Party protests look tame by comparison.

Mr. Obama has vowed to create a “green economy” based on “green-collar jobs” and “a green New Deal.” The Copenhagen treaty would enable him to accomplish his revolutionary ambitions. It would mark his Cultural Revolution – the permanent transformation of America.

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia with the energy of three Hiroshima bombs???

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia raises fears about Earth’s defences – Telegraph.

An asteroid that exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere with the energy of three Hiroshima bombs this month has reignited fears about our planet’s defences against space impacts.

On 8 October, the rock crashed into the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The blast was heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario.

Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster.

The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph. The sudden deceleration caused it to heat up rapidly and explode with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT.

Luckily, due to the height of the explosion – estimated at between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level – no damage was caused on the ground.

However, if the object had been slightly larger – 20 to 30 metres (60 to 90ft) across – it could easily have caused extensive damage and loss of life, say researchers.

Very few objects smaller than 100 meters (300ft) across have been spotted and catalogued by astronomers.

Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, warned that it was inevitable that minor asteroids would go unnoticed. He said: “If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes.

“A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars.”

The fireball was spotted by locals in Indonesia, and a YouTube video taken that day “appears to show a large dust cloud consistent with a bright, daylight fireball”, according to the Ontario researchers.

An asteroid or comet fragment around 60 meters across is believed to have been behind the Tunguska Event, a powerful explosion that took place over Russia in 1908. The blast has been estimated at equivalent to 10-15 million tons of TNT – enough to destroy a large city.

The White House is to develop a policy on the space object impact threat by October next year.

Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation

Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation – Times Online.

“The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 — there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land.

Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks up ochre lumps of dried mud from the ground and crushes them to dust between her fingers. “It is hard to cope,” she said.

A four-year drought has pushed as many as 23 million people to the brink of starvation across East Africa, making it the worst in a decade or more. Close to four million of those at risk are in Kenya, where one person in ten survives on emergency rations.

Last week clouds gathered over much of the country, but the rains have come too late to bring much relief. Aid agencies have warned that with them will come flooding, cholera, malaria and hypothermia.

Police officers armed with submachine guns are to be deployed on Britain’s streets

Armed officers placed on routine foot patrol for first time – Telegraph.

A hand-picked team from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s elite firearms unit, will walk the beat in gun crime hotspots where armed gangs have turned entire estates into “no go” zones.

Local politicians and anti-gun campaigners have reacted with anger at the news that the officers will carry Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns – capable of firing up to 800 rounds-per-minute – and Glock semi-automatic pistols.

FREEMASONS IN CONGRESS

YouTube – FREEMASONS IN CONGRESS.

Obama loosens missile technology controls to China

EXCLUSIVE: Obama loosens missile technology controls to China – Washington Times.

President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department — a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

The president issued a little-noticed “presidential determination” Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

Commerce officials say the shift will not cause controls to be loosened in regards to the export of missile and space technology.

Eugene Cottilli, a spokesman for Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, said under new policy the U.S. government will rigorously monitor all sensitive exports to China.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was recruited by MI5

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ‘was recruited by MI5′ – Telegraph.

Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and founder of the original Axis of Evil, worked as a British agent for MI5 at the start of his career, it has emerged.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini, who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany, got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, worked to ensure that Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the First World War by publishing propaganda in his paper, the Guardian reports. He was also willing to send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan.

Philippine floods forcing half a million from their homes.

Reuters AlertNet – Landslides, floods kill 184 in Philippines.

MANILA, Oct 10 (Reuters) – Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo mobilised troops on Saturday to clear roads of debris and mud in mountainous northern provinces isolated by landslides and floods that left 184 dead after a week of heavy rains.

Three northern regions devastated by the floods account for the bulk of the rice output in the main Luzon island and officials were assessing damage to the fourth quarter harvest.

About 3.2 billion pesos ($69 million) worth of crops, mainly rice and corn, were destroyed based on initial estimates by the agriculture department as of late Friday.

“I have ordered the soldiers and cadets at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City to help out in the rescue and relief efforts,” Arroyo said in a statement.

Baguio City in the vegetable and rice growing mountain province of Benguet 250 km (155 miles) north of the capital, remained totally cut off after boulders and mudslides, triggered by days of intense rain from Typhoon Parma, blocked roads.

Parma first hit the Philippines last Saturday and hovered around the northern part of Luzon throughout the week. It has since weakened into a tropical depression and moved out to sea.

The floods and mudslides came two weeks after another storm, Ketsana, inundated areas in and around the capital Manila, killing at least 337 people and forcing half a million from their homes.

Giant cosmic-ray laser to flash across Paris sky

Giant cosmic-ray laser to flash across Paris sky – Telegraph.

Every time the machine, which will be placed on top of the 689-foot high Montparnasse Tower – Paris’s tallest building – picks up a sub-atomic particle called a muon, a pulse of laser light will flash across the sky of the city’s Latin Quarter from the Paris Observatory.

Muons are debris from protons that are blasted out from the Sun or beyond our Solar System and constantly bombard the Earth.

The protons smash apart when they collide with molecules in the upper atmosphere. Their short-lived remains shoot down to the planet’s surface at nearly the speed of light.

The so-called “cosmic opera”, which will only be visible at night, seeks to inform the public about cosmic particles and pay tribute to an experiment into the phenomenon, conducted at the top of the Eiffel Tower in 1910 by a German physicist, Theodor Wulf.

The week-long event is part of a Europe-wide science festival, during which astroparticle physicists will meet the public to reveal some of the most exciting mysteries of the Universe.

Nasa bombs the Moon creating new dimple… but where was the flash?

Nasa bombs the Moon creating new dimple… but where was the flash? | Mail Online.

It was billed as one of the most ambitious missions in the history of space exploration.

But Nasa’s audacious attempt to smash two spacecraft into the surface of Moon in the search for water turned into a damp squib for millions of people today.

The £49million ‘bombing raid’ was supposed to create a six-mile high cloud of dust that would be visible from telescopes on the Earth.

But live pictures relayed back from the Moon showed no sign of an impact – even though both craft dived into a darkened crater as planned.

Nasa scientists were today analysing the data and images sent back to the Earth to find tell trace traces of ice in the debris.

Massive weather control planned for China’s 60th anniversary

channelnewsasia.com – Massive weather control planned for China’s 60th anniversary.

BEIJING: China will make its biggest-ever effort to control the weather and prevent rain washing out festivities marking the 60th anniversary of communist rule, state media said on Wednesday.

China’s air force will deploy 18 aircraft to spray cloud dispersal chemicals into the atmosphere around Beijing, while “48 fog dispersal vehicles” will use similar technology at airports around the capital, the Global Times reported.

“It is the first time in Chinese history that artificial weather modification on such (a) large scale has been attempted,” the paper quoted Cui Lianqing, an air force meteorologist, as saying.

“There are still a lot of uncertainties with the weather, and sometimes people can’t work against nature… but we are trying our best.”

China is planning a massive parade, song and dance performances and fireworks at Tiananmen Square on October 1 to mark the day when revolutionary leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the state’s founding in 1949.

Clear weather is especially important for the military parade, which will include a flyover by the nation’s most advanced fighter jets, the report said.

The capital made similar efforts for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics when over 1,100 “rain dispersal rockets” were fired into the skies to break up clouds around the Bird’s Nest National Stadium.

In addition to air force efforts, the Beijing Weather Modification Office is also prepared to implement similar cloud dispersal measures ahead of October 1, Xinhua news agency has reported.

Remote satellite technology will be employed to help monitor weather changes and adjust modification measures, the report said.

Weather records show that there is a 30 per cent chance of rain on October 1, but precipitation has been light on most recent National Days, it added.

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon | World news | guardian.co.uk.

US police spark outrage by using wartime acoustic weapon to disperse G20 protesters in Pittsburgh.

Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.

Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents.

But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time “sound cannon” had been used publicly.

The sonic weapon appear to be more effective than the Metropolitan police’s highly contentious kettling tactics used against G20 protesters in London. But it is equally controversial.

It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

Almost 4 million Kenyans on food aid as drought deepens

Almost 4 million Kenyans on food aid as drought deepens | World news | The Guardian.

The devastating drought sweeping across Kenya is causing widespread hunger, thirst and, in the case of cattle, death. Pictures of hundreds of cow carcasses being tipped into a mass grave near Nairobi highlight the scale of the natural disaster – and the clumsy or even negligent efforts of the government to deal with it.

Aware that the drought was likely to cause pastoralists to lose significant parts of their herds, the government announced a 500m shilling (£4.1m) plan last month to buy weak animals from farmers for 8,000 shillings (£65) each. The plan provided for the animals to be transported by truck to the Kenya meat commission depot in Athi River, a town near Nairobi, where they would be held, fed, and slaughtered, with the meat sold to recoup costs.

But many of the trucks transporting the cows hundreds of miles from as far away as north-eastern province, had insufficient water and food on board, causing large numbers of animals to die along the way. Of those that arrived alive, many soon perished owing to a lack of pasture in the holding bay.

The botched operation has caused anger and embarrassment among MPs, especially given that the government has been asking donors for urgent financial help in feeding the nearly 10 million Kenyans who are food insecure.

“They should have slaughtered the animals at the point of origin, not money to bring them to Athi River to be buried,” said John Muthotho, chairman of the parliamentary committee on agriculture, which has accused the meat commission and the livestock ministry of incompetence.

Why is NASA really bombing the moon?

NASA – NASA Selects Target Crater for Lunar Impact.

Sept. 11, 2009: NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is racing toward a double-impact on the moon at 7:30 am EDT on Oct. 9th. Today NASA announced exactly where the crash will take place.

The target crater is Cabeus A. It was selected after an extensive review of the best places to excavate frozen water at the lunar south pole.

“The selection of Cabeus A was a result of a vigorous debate within the lunar science community. We reviewed the latest data from Earth-based observatories and our fellow lunar missions Kaguya, Chandrayaan-1, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,” says Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principle investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “The team is looking forward to wealth of information this unique mission will produce.”

LCROSS will search for ice by plunging its spent upper-stage Centaur rocket into the permanent shadows of Cabeus A, where water might be trapped in frozen form. The LCROSS satellite will then fly into the plume of debris kicked up by the impact and measure the properties of the plume before it also collides with the lunar surface.

Were two million people really marching against corrupt government at the US Capitol?

Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration | Mail Online.

Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as “Obamacare makes me sick” as they protested the president’s health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.

The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.

Water shortage threatens two million people in southern Iraq

Water shortage threatens two million people in southern Iraq | World news | guardian.co.uk.

A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq’s civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water.

An already meagre supply of electricity to Iraq’s fourth-largest city of Nasiriyah has fallen by 50% during the last three weeks because of the rapidly falling levels of the Euphrates river, which has only two of four power-generating turbines left working.

If, as predicted, the river falls by a further 20cm during the next fortnight, engineers say the remaining two turbines will also close down, forcing a total blackout in the city.

Down river, where the Euphrates spills out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the north-eastern corner of the Persian Gulf, the lack of fresh water has raised salinity levels so high that two towns, of about 3,000 people, on the northern edge of Basra have this week evacuated. “We can no longer drink this water,” said one local woman from the village of al-Fal. “Our animals are all dead and many people here are diseased.”

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | Politics and Law – CNET News.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Millions facing famine in Ethiopia as rains fail

Millions facing famine in Ethiopia as rains fail – Africa, World – The Independent.

The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades.

Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million.

Donor countries provided sustenance to 12 million Ethiopians last year, more than half of it through the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). Having passed that total only eight months into this year, and with the main harvest already in doubt, aid agencies fear the worst is still to come. “We’re extremely worried,” said Howard Taylor, who heads the Department for International Development’s office in Ethiopia. DfID has given £54m in aid to the country this year, and Britain has also contributed through the EU. “This is exactly the time when we shouldn’t turn away from the people in need,” he said.