Syria lambasts Israel, US over nuclear claims

DAMASCUS, June 3 (AFP) Jun 03, 2008
Syria's official press lashed out at the United States and Israel on Tuesday over claims it was building a secret nuclear reactor, and said the Jewish state's own atomic facilities should be subject to international inspection.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that his inspectors would this month visit the site of the suspected reactor that was bombed by Israeli warplanes in September last year.

The site at Al-Kibar was attacked after Israeli and US intelligence concluded it was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, but the Syrians have denied the allegations.

"The American and Israeli claims are false. Instead, Israel should be called on to submit its own nuclear installations to international inspection so at least we know how many nuclear weapons it possesses," Syria's official Ath-Thawra newspaper said in an editorial.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear armed power in the Middle East but has a policy of neither confirming nor denying its arsenal and is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On Monday, ElBaradei criticised Israel for attacking the site before the International Atomic Energy Agency had a chance to inspect it, and the United States for waiting until April to pass on intelligence alleging that the reactor had a military purpose and was built with North Korea's help.

Khamenei rejects charges Iran seeking nuclear bomb

TEHRAN, June 3 (AFP) Jun 03, 2008
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday vehemently rejected charges Tehran was seeking a nuclear weapon, amid mounting concern from the UN atomic agency about the Iranian atomic drive.

"The Iranian nation is not seeking a nuclear weapon," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state television to mark the anniversary of the death in 1989 of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"We are seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes for daily use and we will continue this path to the envy of our enemies. We will mightily achieve this aim," he added.

Khamenei has in the past frequently stated Iran's nuclear programme is peaceful and that nuclear weapons are against Islam. But the vehemence and detailed explanation of Tuesday's speech were unusual.

His comments come a day after UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged "full disclosure" over allegations that Tehran hid key information about weaponisation in its contested nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has in the past months been investigating intelligence given by Western countries that Iran has studied how to make an atomic weapon, much to Tehran's fury.

The watchdog is currently holding its summer meeting of the 35-member board of governors, and the Iranian nuclear programme is a key issue.

In its latest report, the IAEA expressed "serious concern" that Iran was hiding information about alleged studies into making nuclear warheads as well as defying UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.

But Khamenei said: "You know the Iranian nation is in principle and on religious grounds against the nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons only incur high costs and have no use. They do not bring power to a nation."

Khamenei also expressed concern that "terrorists" could one day gain possession of a nuclear bomb and cause havoc throughout the world.

"Sooner or later, international terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weapons and bring the security of the world arrogance (the West) and all the other nations to an end," he said.

Monkeys' Brains Operate Robotic Arm

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

May 28, 2008

In a mental meeting of monkey and machine, two primates have learned to feed themselves with a robotic arm by controlling the appendage with signals from their brains.

The success boosts hopes for mind-controlled robotic prosthetics that may help disabled humans achieve some mobility.

The experiment employed "visualization" methods of learning that study leader Andrew Schwartz likens to those employed by many professional athletes.

"You show the animal what you want him to do, and neurons in the brain go off as if he were actually doing it," said Schwartz, a neurobiologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Mapping that brain activity enabled Schwartz and colleagues to figure out what nerve cell activity produced the desired physical actions.

Recording the Brain

Probes the width of a human hair were inserted into the neuronal pathways of the monkeys' motor cortex—a brain region that controls voluntary muscle movement.

Physical movement begins as electrical impulses generated by the activity of thousands of nerve cells.

When a monkey envisioned moving the arm, probes captured the neural activity and sent the information to a computer, which mapped that data to specific physical motions.

With U.S. Farmland Maxed Out, Growers Tap Into Reserves

Even though soaring commodity prices are bringing new pressures to increase agricultural output, U.S. farmland is maxed out, he said, limiting any response to price hikes and highlighting how agricultural productivity has failed to keep pace with increasing world demand.

"For about the first time in our history—other than the Second World War and after the Russian grain purchase—most of our good quality land in the United States is in production right now," he said.

About 2 million acres (810,000 hectares) coming out of the reserve program will be put back into production this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Another 6 million acres (2.4 million hectares), much of it formerly hay, pasture, and grassland, will be put into corn, soybeans, and wheat, added Doering, who is also the president of the American Agricultural Economics Association.

Monster Quakes Set Off Global Tremors

Rick Lovett
for National Geographic News

May 26, 2008

Massive earthquakes—such as the magnitude 9 quake that sparked the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004—can set off smaller tremors around the globe, a new study shows.

Traditional aftershocks occur close to the time of the original earthquake—often within days or a few weeks—as the earth adjusts to changes caused by the slippage along the original fault.

But smaller, more distant earthquakes can be triggered as low-frequency vibrations—somewhat like ocean swells—pass over faults. Such waves can't be felt by people standing on the ground.

It's too early to know if the recent deadly earthquake in China also triggered its own swarm of distant tremors, but "it wouldn't surprise me in the least," said study lead author Tom Parsons of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

Fault Stress

Vibrations from a big quake momentarily reduce the locking pressures on faults, allowing them to slip, Parsons said.

"That puts a temporary stress on a fault," Parsons added. "That's small, but [sometimes] appears to be enough to trigger an earthquake."

(Set off your own earthquake in an interactive simulation.)

To figure out how often this happens, Parsons and colleagues examined records of 15 major earthquakes with magnitudes of 7 or greater.

The scientists were able to correlate distant vibrations passing through various parts of the globe with the occurrence times of smaller, local earthquakes in 12 of the 15 events studied.

Flood Threat Prompts Evacuations in Quake-Hit China

Audra Ang in Mianyang, China
Associated Press

May 27, 2008

Potentially catastrophic flooding prompted emergency evacuations in China's Sichuan Province on Tuesday, even as aftershocks continued to batter the region and the threat of disease loomed for millions of refugees.

About 80,000 people were evacuated downstream of Tangjiashan, an unstable earthquake-created dam that is threatening to collapse.

The lake, near the town of Beichuan, is the largest of some 35 new bodies of water created by river-blocking rubble after a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Sichuan May 12.

Some rising floodwaters have already swallowed villages, though only Tangjiashan posed a risk of another big catastrophe.

Hundreds of troops were working around the clock to dig a channel that would divert the rising waters before they breach the top of the rubble wall.

Officials fear the loose soil and debris wall could crumble easily if the water starts cascading over the top, sending a torrent flooding down into the valley below.

Tangjiashan now holds 34 billion gallons (130 billion liters) of water and was rising by more than three feet (a meter) every 24 hours, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The 7th Fire Prophecy

In the Seventh Fire prophecy of the Anishnabek, each of the seven fires represent an era in human history. We are now in the time of the Seventh Fire. The task of the people of this age, including the Anishnabek and other red people, the yellow people, the black and the white, is to come together through choosing the road of cooperation. Without this, there will be no Eighth Fire, or future for Natives and others.

One person who talks about the Seventh Fire is Grandfather William Commanda of Maniwaki. An Algonquin elder, he holds three wampum belts, one of which is the Seventh Fire Prophecy belt which was made in the 1400s. His understanding of the prophecy was received from Ojibwe people in Minnesota, Michigan and northern Ontario, and through his own family, which has held the belts for over 100 years.

He speaks of the fact that the white race was welcomed by the Anishnabek, and it was hoped in the time of the Fourth Fire that the white race would come wearing a face of brotherhood, and that the Anishnabek and whites together would form one mighty nation. This did not happen and the white race chose the course of destruction and death.Today, in the age of the Seventh Fire, the races are again faced with a choice. The two roads are the black road of technology and overdevelopment leading to environmental catastrophe, the other is the red road of spirituality and respect for the earth. Together, people of the world have to choose the right road, be of one mind, or the earth cannot survive. Their prophecies are in line with those of the Seventh Fire: "Mankind must return to Peaceful ways, and halt the destruction of Mother Earth, or we are going to destroy ourselves. All the stages of Hopi prophecy have come to pass, except for the last, the purification. The intensity of the purification will depend on how humanity collaborates with Creation." William teaches that now is the time for Native people to forgive colonizers for their ignorant and destructive actions. The Seventh Fire is not just a time of reclaiming spiritual teachings; it is the time to use those teachings to help correct the imbalance felt in the circle that is the world. It is more than a revitalization movement, it is more like an arrival. Many Natives today are listening to teachings like the Seventh Fire prophecy, the Seven Generations teachings of the Iroquois and the prophecies of nations like the Hopi.