วันเสาร์ที่ 30 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2555


Mohamed Morsi sworn in as Egypt's first popularly-elected president

By the CNN Wire Staff
June 30, 2012 -- Updated 1131 GMT (1931 HKT)
Egyptians wave national flags during a rally in support of president-elect Mohamed Morsi in Cairo's Tahrir Square on June 29.
Egyptians wave national flags during a rally in support of president-elect Mohamed Morsi in Cairo's Tahrir Square on June 29.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Mohamed Morsi was sworn in before Egypt's constitutional court
  • A day earlier, Morsi told crowd at Tahrir Square that his authority comes from all Egyptians
  • He vows to help free political prisoners, including man convicted in 1993 World Trade Center blast
(CNN) -- Mohamed Morsi was sworn in Saturday as Egypt's first democratically-elected president, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation that is economically strapped and lacks a working government.
The historic ceremony took place amid tight security before the Supreme Constitutional Court and was overseen by Egypt's military rulers who have been in control of the country since Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year during a popular revolution.
"Today, the Egyptian people established a new life for complete freedom, for a true democracy," Morsi said after taking the oath.
"I swear by almighty God that I will uphold the republican system and respect the constitution of the law and look after the interests of the people," he said.
Morsi upstaged the ceremony Friday, taking to Cairo's Tahrir Square before thousands and declaring that the people are the source of his authority as president.
"The whole nation is listening to me," he said in the televised address. "There is no authority above the authority of the people."
Morsi's speech appeared aimed at Egypt's ruling military council, whose recent actions have raised concerns about whether it would fully hand over control to an elected government.
Egypt's electoral commission declared Morsi the president-elect Sunday after a runoff with Ahmed Shafik, a former air force general who served as Mubarak's last prime minister.
Morsi had been the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, but he resigned from the party shortly after he was elected president.
Just days before the election, a high court ruled that Egypt's parliament was unconstitutional.
Morsi's supporters are pushing for a confrontation with the generals, who following the court ruling ordered the Islamist-dominated parliament dissolved and announced they would retain legislative power for an indefinite time.
Additionally, the military rulers named a defense council to oversee national security and foreign policies while also declaring it would maintain control of all military affairs.
World leaders, meanwhile, will likely be watching what Morsi does next.
During the speech Friday, he said he would work to free the blind Egyptian cleric serving a life sentence in the United States for a conspiracy conviction related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
He said he wanted to work to free political prisoners, which he said included Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
"Their rights will be on my shoulders and I won't spare effort" to free them, he said.
Morsi is a study in contrasts: a strict Islamist educated in Southern California who vowed during his campaign to stand for women's rights yet argued for banning them from the presidency.
During the historic campaign, Morsi said he would support democracy, women's rights and peaceful relations with Israel if he won.
But he has also called Israeli leaders "vampires" and "killers."
Morsi focused his campaign on appealing to the broadest possible audience after a slogan associated with his campaign, "Islam is the solution," sparked concerns that he could introduce a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.
During the campaign, he said he had no such plans. His party seeks "an executive branch that represents the people's true will and implements their public interests," Morsi told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Asked whether he would maintain Egypt's 1979 accord with Israel, Morsi said, "Yes, of course I will. I will respect it provided the other side keep it up and respect it."

วันศุกร์ที่ 29 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2555

A skull of an Australopithecus sediba.
The skull of a young male Australopithecus sediba rests near the spot in Africa where he died.
Photograph by Brent Stirton, National Geographic
Australopithecus sediba tooth picture
A. sediba tooth. Photograph courtesy Amanda Henry.
Ker Than
Published June 27, 2012
Chew on this: Bits of food stuck in the two-million-year-old teeth of a human ancestor suggest some of our forebears ate tree bark, a new study says.
A first ever find for early human ancestors, the bark evidence hints at a woodsier, more chimplike lifestyle for the Australopithecus sedibaspecies. Other so-called hominins alive at the time are thought to have dined mostly on savanna grasses.
A. sediba was identified from stunningly preserved fossils of a female and a young male discovered in a South African cave in 2008 by scientists led by paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Society grantee Lee Berger. (See"'Key' Human Ancestor Found: Fossils Link Apes, First Humans?")
"We think these two individuals fell down a sinkhole ... and were quickly covered in very fine-grained sediment that created an environment of very little oxygen," explained Amanda Henry, lead author of the new study.
"So there wasn't a lot whole lot of bacteria or decomposition, and there certainly wasn't any interaction with the air," said Henry, a paleobiologist at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

That airless entombment resulted in a rare state of preservation—to the point that even microscopic, fossilized particles of plant tissue remain trapped in dental plaque.
By comparing isotopes and other properties of the ancient particles, called phytoliths, with modern examples, the team was able to identify which plant parts individual specks came from—revealing a diet that included fruit, leaves, and bark.
In some cases the researchers could even pinpoint the type of plant.
For example, "we had a palm [tree] phytolith," Henry said. "We weren't able to tell whether it came from the fruit or the leaf or another part of the palm, but we could definitely identify that it came from that family of plants."
Part Ape, Part Human
The findings indicate that A. sediba preferred to feed in more enclosed, woodland environments, much like modern-day chimpanzees and gorillas—which also happen to eat bark.
"The way I interpret this is that, around two million years ago, our ancestors and relatives were exploring a variety of environments and behaviors within those environments," Henry said.
Like the chimpanzee, A. sediba may have even climbed trees and used simple tools to get its food—ideas supported by the fossils. The ancient ancestor had long, apelike arms; wrists suited to climbing; and a remarkably humanlike "precision grip," necessary for making stone tools.

"I imagine something kind of gorilla-like and something kind of chimpanzee-like," she said, "but also definitely bipedal, and also looking a bit more like us."
Henry speculates that similarly experimental eating may have been key to the success of early members of Homo, the human genus, which includes Homo erectus—the first known human species with long legs and short arms.
"By 1.8 million years ago Homo erectus is able to survive in a whole variety of different environments," she said. "They leave Africa and spread around the world. But just before that, you had a variety of different species that were focusing on smaller habitats and niches."

New Tool: Bark Only the Beginning
The A. sediba tooth-trace research was "very well done, and the conclusions are strong and set a very important precedent for future research," said Smithsonian Institution phytolith expert Dolores Piperno, who wasn't part of the project.
The new study marks the first time phytoliths have been used to examine the diet of a creature as old as A. sediba, added Piperno, an archaeobotanist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Previously, scientists had used phytoliths to glean clues about the diets of Neanderthals and of modern humans during the beginnings of plant domestication, but these are relatively recent events in the history of human evolution.
Study author Henry added that, now that her team has proven the technique withA. sediba, she wants to use it to study the diets of other early hominins—and she's not wasting any time.
"I'm going to South Africa this summer to start collecting some of that data," she said.
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Thai employers fear exodus of Burmese migrants


The idea of Burmese migrant workers eventually returning to their home country as its economy improve  is setting off alarms in Thailand, which depends on Burmese migrant labour in many industrial sectors.

Migrant workers repair a fishing net on a boat in Sattahip, in Thailand's Rayong Province. Thousands of Burmese work on Thai fishing boats and in industrial factories throughout the country. Photo: AFP
Migrant workers repair a fishing net on a boat in Sattahip, in Thailand's Rayong Province. Thousands of Burmese work on Thai fishing boats and in industrial factories throughout the country. Photo: AFP
In Trang Province in far south Thailand, leaders are predicting a looming labour shortage in the next few years, according to Trang's Industry Council chairman Withee Supitak.

He told The Bangkok Post on Thursday: "Industry operators in Trang are worried that there will be a labour shortage crisis because they rely heavily on these migrant workers, especially in manufacturing."

The industrial sector in the south formerly employed workers from northeastern Thailand, he said, but with more jobs there at the same income rate, fewer Thais are looking for jobs in the south.

"If the migrant workers also return to their homeland, southern industry operators must quickly adapt to the change and find ways to deal with the situation by using less labour and turning to machinery instead," said Withee.

The economy in Trang includes labour intensive farm products such as para rubber and palm oil, and orders from foreign countries have fallen, placing more pressure employers, he said.

Concerns about an exodus of Burmese migrant workers were heightened in May when Aung San Suu Kyi visited Thailand and focused on the rights and status of Burmese workers.

She told Burmese migrants she would work to improve their lot in Thailand, but one day they would also be able to return home to find work.

“Our ultimate goal is to create a situation so that our citizens can come back to our country whenever they want to and without any trouble. We have to work together to get to that goal, not separately or in different ways,” she said.

 “Although our countrymen must come and work here at this time, please believe that the condition and status of our countrymen will rise along with the changes in our country,” she said.

There are up to 1 million undocumented Burmese migrants working in Thailand, according to some estimates.

A migrant worker in Thailand can earn a daily minimum wage of 300 baht (US$ 9.5) compared to around $1 a day in Burma in low-income jobs.

Why We’re Still Catholics

Even a wrecked Church can't force us out of a rich faith, as much as some fundamentalists and dissenters alike might wish
Before this month, there was just one Bill telling me to leave the Roman Catholic Church. That was Bill Donohue, the dyspeptic president of the conservative Catholic League. Donohue dislikes my commentary on the Catholic hierarchy because I believe, as do millions of other Catholics, that its penchant for misogynistic, homophobic and otherwise archaic doctrine — not to mention its appalling actions during the church sexual abuse scandal — isn’t just un-Christian but grossly un-Catholic as well. Donohue has suggested on his blog that I hit the theological door and join “any one of the mainline Protestant denominations.” Why, he fumes, “would [Padgett] want to stay? … Is he a phony or a masochist? … He is surely not being intellectually honest.”
But now another Bill — Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times — is imploring me to smell the incense and bolt the church. Not me directly, but Catholics like me (and himself) who deplore hoary and bigoted church policies like an all-male priesthood and the demonization of homosexuals. In his June 17 Times op-ed, Keller cites a line from Donohue’s new book — “I believe,” Donohue writes, “as Pope Benedict XVIth said just before he became pope, that maybe a smaller church would be a better church” — to help convince reformists that the Vatican wants us to hang up our rosaries and disappear. Change “is a lost cause,” Keller advises. “Summon your fortitude, and just go.”
To both Bills I’d say: a wrecked church won’t force me out of a rich faith. By now, Catholics like me are used to a wide array of advisers — everyone from fundamentalist Catholics like Donohue to disaffected Catholics like Keller to atheists — warning us to get out of Rome. The calls grow louder whenever we hit another ugly sexual abuse milestone like last week’s conviction of Monsignor William Lynn in Philadelphia for endangering children by shielding alleged pedophile priests. I understand why the abuse scandal has moved many Catholics to leave the church; it’s at least partly responsible for the 5% decline in U.S. Catholic membership since 2000. But cases like Lynn’s, and less felonious examples of church arrogance like the controversial new English-language missal the Vatican has foisted on us, simply strengthen my resolve to stay.
Lynn is the first Catholic official convicted for protecting abusive priests — making it loud and clear that the vast hierarchical cover-up was as criminal as the abuse itself. Donohue and the Catholic fundamentalists insist, incredibly, that this whole sordid crisis is the result of homosexual priests run amok during the permissive, post-Vatican II era of the 1960s and 70s. But Lynn is the strongest reminder yet that the abuse scandal is a symptom of broader systemic rot in the church — decay born largely by the paranoid need to defend indefensible dogma — just as Jerry Sandusky’s abuse conviction (handed down the same day as Lynn’s guilty verdict) reflects a foul culture of delusion at Penn State.
The new English-language missal, meanwhile, is widely derided by Catholic laity and clergy alike. These re-fashioned Mass prayers aren’t just jarring examples of bad translation — recent letters to the Jesuit magazine America call them “painful,” “stilted” and “designed to decrease participation in the liturgy” — but a prime example of the church asserting authority for the petty sake of asserting authority. By making the missal’s language tortuously truer to the original Latin — Jesus is now “consubstantial” with God — Rome hopes to remind Catholics in dangerously progressive English-speaking countries like the U.S. that the magisterium is still His Majesty.
But neither the hierarchy’s criminality nor its absurdity makes me want to leave Roman Catholicism. It just makes me all the more determined to remind the world that this dysfunctional institution that claims to speak for Catholicism in fact does not speak for Catholicism. That so many of that institution’s codes don’t represent the Christ-inspired exercise of human compassion, hope and reason that the Catholic faith most Catholics practice is based upon. As a citizen, I’m a committed American: I didn’t leave the U.S. when Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were presidents. Likewise, as a person of faith, I didn’t join the Catholic church 30 years ago because of the hierarchy, and I’m not going to leave it now because of the hierarchy.
I’m hardly the first Catholic to take this stance. During the throes of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, the Dutch priest Erasmus, a humanist giant, ridiculed the folly of the Catholic church but stuck with the grace of his Catholic faith. Today there’s Bridget Mary Meehan, who in defiance of the Vatican calls herself an ordained priest, part of the growing Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. I asked her why she just doesn’t join the Episcopal church, which does ordain women: She insisted she wasn’t about to abandon a faith idiom she’s spoken all her life just because of a defective church. “We’re leading, not leaving, the church,” she told me.
The Womenpriests are actually part of Keller’s argument: If progressive Catholics want to keep practicing their faith, perhaps they should think more seriously about forming a splinter Catholic church, as Meehan and her cohort have essentially done, rather than risk legitimizing Rome’s antediluvian dogma by remaining in conventional parishes. It could come to that. But meanwhile, Catholics like me — and millions of Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists who also embrace their humane faiths even if they distrust their institutional hierarchies — plan to be intellectually, and spiritually, honest. Meaning, Mr. Donohue, you’re stuck with us.
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A guard supervises the burning of ivory in Gabon.
A guard supervises the burning of more than ten thousand pounds of ivory in Libreville, Gabon.
Photograph courtesy James Morgan, WWF
Christine Dell'Amore
Published June 27, 2012
More than ten thousand pounds of elephant ivory went up in flames today in the central African country of Gabon, a fiery act intended to snuff out a recent spike in poaching.
The government-held stockpile represents roughly 850 elephants that must have been killed for their ivory, which is increasingly in demand in Asia for artistic pieces. (Related: "Elephant Pictures: Killed Female Highlights Poaching Rise.")
The cache—which included more than 1,200 tusks and 17,000 pieces of carved ivory confiscated since 1985—is valued at a million euros, according to the nonprofits WWF and TRAFFIC, which have worked with Gabon to audit its ivory stocks.
Gabon's president Ali Bongo ignited the ivory pyre in the capital city of Libreville, making Gabon the first central African country to publicly burn its ivory. (Read"Ivory Wars" in National Geographic magazine.)
The event took place "on a hill, looking over Libreville—it was a beautiful scene, a slight breeze and cloudy sky," Richard Carroll, head of WWF's Africa Program, said in a phone interview from Libreville.
"In the middle of this field was this huge pile of ivory tusks all stacked up on a pyre."
After the pile was lit, "the smoke and [fire] built up more and more, and the heat was rising off this ivory—it was just a very inspirational scene," Carroll said.
"It's sending up a torch or beacon to the rest of the world ... that there is no tolerance for wildlife crime, [and] they're taking it seriously in this country."
"Shocking" Rise in Elephant Killings
The ivory burn comes amid "crisis levels" of elephant poaching across Africa, particularly in the central regions, according to a June report by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Elephant tusks—which are actually long incisor teeth—are attached to the animal's skull, which means a hunter has to kill the elephant to extract the ivory intact.
A 1989 CITES treaty banned trade in elephant ivory, but poaching continues to feed black market sales.
Scientists reported the highest recorded rate of illegal elephant killings in 2011, with tens of thousands of the large mammals lost that year to poachers, according to CITES.
In addition, although large tracts of elephant habitat remain in parts of central, eastern, and southern Africa, the populations are becoming increasingly fragmented, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which classifies the species as vulnerable to extinction.
Due to these and other threats, only between 472,000 to 690,000 African elephants likely roam the continent today—down from as many as three to five million in the 1930s and '40s, according to WWF.
Gabon is home to about 50,000 of the remaining mammals. (See elephant pictures.)
"The figures are absolutely shocking," said Iain Douglas Hamilton, founder of the conservation group Save the Elephants.
More Value on Live Elephants
As a warning against the ivory trade, "I think Gabon's example is very important—it's the right thing," added Douglas Hamilton, who has received funding for his work from the National Geographic Society. (National Geographic News is a division of the Society.)
"They're making a real statement [that] they're going to have nothing to do with corrupt, underhand dealings with ivory," he said. "We need to demonetize ivory—it's very important to take the value away."
Joyce Poole, co-founder of the conservation group ElephantVoices, agreed.
"Destroying ivory is a way of saying that elephant tusks should not be an asset unless they are on living elephants," Poole, also a National Geographic explorer, said by email.
"By burning its ivory stockpiles, Gabon is sending a powerful message that ivory on the market stimulates demand and fuels the killing of elephants," she said.
"I strongly support Gabon's decision, independent of the volume being burned."
By contrast, conservationist Brian John Huntley, a professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, generally supports legalizing trade in ivory and rhino horn.
The horns of rhinoceroses are also taken from poached animals and smuggled to Asia, where the material is coveted for traditional medicine, according toNational Geographic magazine. (Related: "Rhino Wars.")
Last year South Africa lost a record 448 rhinos to poaching, which is now "epidemic" in the country.
Making ivory and rhino horn sales legal again, at least in a limited way, might help "to implement real 'sustainable use' practices and bring the prices down, reducing the incentive to illegal trade," Huntley said by email.
"But here I would go along with the views of TRAFFIC, who are closer to the problem than the rest of us."
Combating Wildlife Trade a "Top-Tier" Issue
Beyond burning their ivory, Gabon is taking action in the field against poaching, WWF's Carroll noted.
According to a statement by President Bongo, "Gabon has a policy of zero tolerance for wildlife crime, and we are putting in place the institutions and laws to ensure this policy is enforced."
For instance, Gabon has beefed up its wildlife enforcement overall, in part by adding a military branch of 250 people to its park service staff to conduct antipoaching operations in high-risk areas, Carroll said.
The country has also committed to an ivory-stock management program to continually audit and destroy any ivory confiscated throughout Gabon.
What's more, ElephantVoices' Poole noted, Gabon is already a member of the informal African Elephant Coalition, a group of African countries where elephants roam that oppose the ivory trade.
As for whether Gabon's ivory burn will prompt nearby countries to follow suit, "it certainly may," Carroll said. "Wildlife-law enforcement has become a top-tier issue in the region."
For instance, central African ministers recently signed a regional agreement to legally enforce wildlife crime, he said.
And according to the University of Cape Town's Huntley, "Conservation is all about good governance—nothing more or less."

Big City Sightings: Washington, DC

UFO sighting in Washington DC area harkens back to 60-year-old historic incident

Moon rising in Washington DC
Moon rising in Washington DC
Steven Heap
By: Patrick J. Kiger
A video clip of a bright light seemingly hovering in the night sky over Reagan National Airport in Virginia on May 16, is creating a stir among UFO researchers, believers and enthusiasts on the Internet—perhaps because it revisits the scene of  one of the most famous  UFO sightings ever, which occurred at the airport almost exactly 60 years before.
The one-minute, eight second video, posted on YouTube on May 16 by a user identified only as “wowforreeel,” shows a large flickering light hovering in the sky to the north of National’s control tower.   The clip subsequently was reposted by “Greyhunter2012,” a collector of UFO and paranormal videos, and has garnered roughly 30,000 views.  It subsequently was featured on websites such as the Paranormal Searchers blog,  Disclose.tv,  The Conspiracy Index  and UFO Casebook,  and was the subject of an article on Gather.com, a site where amateur journalists post their work. “This incident needs to be thoroughly investigated,” writer Jim Kane urged.
Unfortunately,  “wowforreeel,” provides little information about the video, including such key details as  time of night when it was recorded. “Watched this for several minutes trying to see if it was a plane or helicopter,” the poster notes, cryptically. Subsequently, however, “wowforreeel” posted a second, longer clip that looks at the same video footage in more detail.  He notes that the bright object in the sky appears to remain motionless in relation to the ground, and that it did not make any sound. He explains that he panned out to shoot a more expansive view of the object, so that it would be clear that it was not a streetlight, and then zoomed in to get as good of a close-up as possible.
Neither the National UFO Reporting Center’s database  nor a similar compendium of sightings maintained by the Mutual UFO Network show any similar sightings in the Washington, DC area around May 16.
Unfortunately, digital video wasn’t yet available back on July 19, 1952, when one of the most famous UFO sightings in history occurred. On that evening at about 11:40 p.m, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport spotted seven unidentified objects on the radar screen, about 15 miles to the southwest of the nation’s capital city.
“Here’s a fleet of flying saucers for you,” he jokingly told his supervisor."
But the mood changed when a second controller at another facility reported that he not only had the objects on his screen, but could see “a bright orange light” through the window of his control tower.
Other strange occurrences ensued.  At 12:30 a.m., one of the objects buzzed a runway at National. A controller who observed the object described it as an orange disk, and said that it hovered at 3,000 feet over the airport before disappearing.
Jet fighters from a base in nearby Delaware were scrambled and sent to confront what appeared to be an intrusion into the capital’s airspace. But the objects mysteriously vanished—and then, after the fighters had returned to their base, reappeared.
After a repeat visit by similar objects on July 26, President Harry Truman asked his Air Force aide, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Landry, to find what what the UFOs were. He in turn called Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt the supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a secret probe of UFO reports, and asked him to investigate.  Eventually,  at a heavily-attended press conference, Air Force intelligence director John Samford told the press that the sightings may have been a false radar reading, caused by a temperature inversion in the atmosphere.  Given than eyewitnesses actually had seen the UFOs, that explanation failed to quiet speculation over the sightings, which has continued ever since.

5 good reasons to believe in UFO

By: Patrick J. Kiger
As most credible UFOlogists readily admit, proving that extraterrestrial spacecraft have visited our planet is a maddeningly difficult chore.
“The hassle over the word "proof" boils down to one question: What constitutes proof?” Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed the U.S Air Force’s secret investigation of UFOs in the early 1950s, once wrote.  “Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof?”
More recently, Investigative journalist Leslie Keen, author of the 2011 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” has noted that  in roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings, observers turn out actually to have seen weather balloons, ball lightning, flares, aircraft, and other mundane phenomena.  But another five to 10 percent of sightings are not so easily explainable, but that’s not the same as demonstrating that they are extraterrestrial in origin. Nevertheless, she argues, the hypothesis that UFOs are visitors from other worlds “is a rational one, and must be taken into account, given the data that we have.”
Here is some of the most compelling evidence for that hypothesis:
•    The long, documented history of sightings. UFOs were around, in fact, long before humans themselves took to the air. The first account of a UFO sighting in America was back in 1639, when Massachusetts colony governor John Winthrop noted in his journal that one James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two other witnesses watched a luminous object fly up and down the Muddy River near Charlestown for two to three hours.    There are documented sightings of sightings of what were then called “airships” during the 1800s as well, such as the July 1884 sighting of a Saturn-shaped UFO (a ball surrounded by a ring) in Norwood, NY, and a fast-moving object that briefly hovered over the startled townspeople of Everest, KS in 1897.
•    Numerous modern sightings by credible, well-trained professional observers. In Ruppelt’s 1955 book , “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,”  he documented numerous instances of military service members, military and civilian pilots, scientists and other credible professionals who had observed UFOs. In one instance, Ruppelt describes the experience of a pilot of an Air Force F-86 fighter jet, who was scrambled to track a UFO and got to within 1,000 yards of a saucer-shaped object that abruptly flew away from him in a burst of speed after he fired upon it.   He also mentions a 1948 UFO encounter in which two airline pilots got to within 700 feet of a UFO and saw two rows of windows with bright lights.
•    Consistencies in the descriptions of purported alien ships. Over the decades, witnesses who’ve seen UFOs have shown remarkable consistency in the shapes and other characteristics of the objects they’ve described.  In 1949, the authors of the report for Project Sign, one of the early military investigations of UFOs, identified four main groups of objects—flying disks or saucers, cigar or torpedo-shaped craft without wings or fins, spherical or balloon-shaped objects that were capable of hovering or flying at high speed, and balls of light with no apparent physical form that were similarly maneuverable.  Nearly a quarter-century later, a French government investigation headed by Claude Poher of the National Center for Space Research found similar patterns in more than 1,000 reports from France and various countries.   One caveat is that in recent years, reports of wedge-shaped UFOs—which bear a similarity to the latest terrestrial military aircraft—have begun to supplant some of the traditional shapes.
•    Possible physical evidence of encounters with alien spacecraft. The 1968 University of Colorado report, compiled by a team headed by James Condon, documented numerous instances of areas where soil, grass, and other vegetation apparently had been flattened, burned, broken off, or blown away by a UFO.   A report by Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock, who led a scientific study of physical evidence of UFOs in the late 1990s, describes samples of plants taken from a purported UFO landing site in France in 1981. French researchers found that the leaves had undergone unusual chemical changes of the sort that could have been caused by powerful microwave radiation—which was even more difficult to explain, considering that they found no trace of radioactivity at the site.
•    Documented physiological effects on UFO witnesses. The Sturrock report describes in detail various symptoms experienced by individuals who had encountered UFOS, ranging from burns and temporary deafness to persistent nausea and memory loss.  Among the most vivid examples:  Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s young grandson Colby, who reportedly happened upon a “large, diamond-shaped object” hovering over a Texas road in December 1980. All three became ill afterward;  Cash, for example, developed large water blisters on her face and swelling that closed her eyes, in addition to severe nausea and diarrhea. The effects persisted for years, and she was hospitalized more than two dozen times.

Scoring the Goals That Sank Germany, Balotelli Says it Loud: He’s Black, Italian and Proud

As the first black player to represent Italy at a major tournament, 'Super Mario' can't avoid a confrontation with his country's racial prejudices
Joern Pollex / Getty Images
JOERN POLLEX / GETTY IMAGES
Mario Balotelli of Italy celebrates scoring the opening goal during the UEFA EURO 2012 semi final match between Germany and Italy at the National Stadium on June 28, 2012 in Warsaw, Poland
“There are no black Italians!” went the chant by some far-right supporters of Italy’s national football team a couple of years ago when young Mario Balotelli made his debut for the national side. Well, the bad news for the racists that still make their voices heard in some of Italy’s stadiums, is that if there are no black Italians, their Euro 2012 semifinal against Germany  finished 0-0.
Of course, here on Planet 21st Century, Italians were driven into joyous rapture on Thursday by two exquisite Balotelli goals against Germany that booked Italy’s place in Sunday’s Euro 2012 final against Spain. The first was a superbly taken near-post header after his strike partner Antonio Cassano had brilliantly turned a defender to provide the cross; the second came minutes later after Riccardo Montolivo lobbed over the back four and he raced away to lash home a shot of such venom that German keeper Manuel Neuer scarcely moved before it bulged his net.

Balotelli’s goals (together with an earlier one against Ireland that remains a contender for goal of the tournament) not only confirmed him as the most dangerous striker at Euro 2012; they were direct hits on the scourge of racism that continues to dog the game. As hundreds of thousands of Italians danced with joy on the streets at his achievement, Balotelli took off his shirt — an offense that requires a yellow card under the rules of the game — and clenched his muscles like a body builder. Here is my black Italian skin, he seemed to be saying, to the people of the country that adopted him but which hasn’t necessarily accepted him, and remains plagued with a prejudice that denies his dignity. There he stood, an Italian hero black and proud, inviting his teammates, and all of Italy, to embrace him — and along with him, a different concept of the boundaries of Italian identity. The impact on millions of Italians will have been electric. And who can doubt that the tens of thousands of African migrants who live on the margins of some of Italy’s larger cities will have walked a lot taller on Thursday night.
“During international football competitions … eleven players briefly become their country, for a time, on the pitch. A nation is a difficult thing to grasp: unpalpable, mythic, flighty. Historians might labor away to define the precise contours of a country’s culture and institutions, and even sometimes attempt to delineate it’s soul, while political leaders try mightily (and persistently fail) to stand as representatives of it’s ideals. But in a way there is nothing quite so tactile, so real, as the way a team represents a nation: during their time on the pitch, they have in their hands a small sliver of the country’s destiny. And in those miraculous and memorable moments when individual trajectories intersect with a national sporting victory, sometimes biographies and histories seem briefly to meld. At such moments, the players who inhabit the crossroads of sporting and national history –Maradona in 1986, Zidane in 1998 — become icons, even saints.”
Saint Mario, then?
Well, let’s just say that Italy may take a while to get there. Balotelli’s goals were a challenge not only to the racism of opposing  fans who have been known to throw bananas onto the field to taunt him, but also that of many Italian fans. Indeed, just this week the leading Italian sports daily ran a cartoon of Balotelli as King Kong, which DuBois noted was using a “racial vocabulary not that far from that of the Croatian fans” fined by the tournament organizers for throwing bananas onto the pitch to humiliate Balotelli.
Balotelli’s goals negate and ridicule racism, diminishing its power but not necessarily eradicating it. Balotelli has had to fight for his dignity and humanity every step of his career, and that fight will continue.
His personal identity, also, is contested, and a source of great anger and conflict. His is the fight of a young boy who felt abandoned by his Ghanaian parents and raised by caring strangers in a hostile society. Thursday’s game was bookended by two touching moments that framed Balotelli’s identity: The cameras caught him warmly sharing a joke in the tunnel before the game with German defender Jerome Boateng; perhaps Balotelli had suggested that they could have been teammates if they had both followed Boateng’s brother, Kevin-Prince, in electing to play for Ghana, for whom both would have been eligible. And then, amid the triumphant celebrations of his teammates after the final whistle, Balotelli ran off into the crowd and embraced an elderly white woman — Silvia Balotelli, the mother who had adopted him at age 3, and who had held the hand of the fearful young Mario every night until he was asleep. “These goals are for you,” he told her. She appeared to be crying.
Balotelli, when he’s on his game as he was on Thursday, works hard for his teammates, and drives the team to victory. He raced over to Cassano to celebrate his strike partner’s work in creating the chance that Balotelli converted for his first. But out on the field, Balotelli never looks  like just another one of the lads. He’s also on a quest of his own, forced to blaze a trail for others that will follow. One day, young black Italian kids will be unproblematically integrated into the national football team, perhaps even into the nation it represents. And when that happens, they’ll look back on Mario Balotelli as their Jackie Robinson or Rosa Parks. For this observer, at least, the celebration of Balotelli’s second goal seemed to be a gesture that resonated with the raised fists of John Carlos and Tommie Smith on the podium at the Tokyo Olympics.
There’s arguably even a little of the young Muhammad Ali in a young man so brash and confident in his talents, yet speaking his mind on a world whose rules he believes his stacked against him, and people like him.
The commentators are maddened by Balotelli’s antics, but he’s only 21 years old, and a product of scarring psychological trauma at a very young age. His parents gave him up for adoption at age three, but they lived across town, and tried to reestablish the relationship when he became a famous footballer — an effort he angrily blocked.
The fact that Balotelli wants to make his voice heard — wants to challenge racism, challenge the injustices and hypocrisies he perceives — doesn’t sit well with his teammates. Leonardo Bonucci clamped a hand over Balotelli’s mouth to stop a tirade after the striker had scored a wildly improbable goal against Ireland earlier in the tournament.
His teammates would seem to prefer that Balotelli didn’t make an issue of racism, i.e. that he simply ignore the taunts and the ape-potrayals and get on with the game. But Balotelli didn’t invent racism; racism has targeted Balotelli — not his teammates — and has left him no choice but to respond. Balotelli’s very being as a black Italian in the number 9 shirt of the Azzuri is an exclamation point in a society where it’s quite conceivable that Barack Obama, were he a football player rather than the President of the United States, would be targeted by racist taunts. That may not be a struggle Balotelli’s teammates are willing to wage alongside him, but it’s a struggle Balotelli can’t avoid, nor does he try to.
I started my own Euro 2012 musings a month ago with a post on racism, Balotelli inevitably featuring front and center. In the post, I featured this lovely Nike ad:
As Balotelli gets into the chair, the barber asks what he wants. “To be remembered,” Balotelli answers. After his semifinal performance against Germany, there’s no question of him ever being forgotten.
Spain goes into Sunday’s final the odds-on favorite, despite the fact that the two sides drew when they faced one another in a group game. The Spanish know that to beat Italy, they must do two things: They must give Andrea Pirlo no time on the ball, denying him time and space to orchestrate as only he can. And they must keep Balotelli quiet. Pressing Pirlo is a straightforward if difficult task, but as his teammates know as much as his adversaries do, constraining Balotelli can be impossible. Oh, and the Spanish defenders’ cause won’t be helped by the fact that on the same day that Balotelli’s brace sank the Germans, UEFA fined Spain $30,000 — for racist abuse directed at Balotelli by Spanish fans during the group game. The mercurial young striker may go into Sunday’s game, once again, with a point to prove.
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วันอังคารที่ 26 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2555

John the Baptist's Bones Found?

Ker Than
Updated June 19, 2012
Purported skeletal remains of John the Baptist have been dated to the first century A.D. and so could conceivably have belonged to the "forerunner of Christ," who baptized Jesus, scientists say.
Discovered in 2010 among the ruins of a Bulgarian church, the remains include six human bones: a knucklebone from the right hand, a tooth, part of a cranium, a rib, and an ulna, or forearm bone.
DNA and radiocarbon testing of collagen from the knucklebone show that the remains likely belonged to a Middle Eastern man who lived in the first century A.D., which fits with the story of John the Baptist.
According to the Bible, John was a cousin of Jesus Christ, so the finding means scientists might have DNA from a relative of the  Christian savior himself—although proving it is likely impossible.
"The problem is we don't have a baseline for comparison," said study team member Thomas Higham, an archaeological scientist at the U.K.'s University of Oxford. "We don't have a solid, reliable piece of bone that belongs to [John the Baptist or Jesus]."
As such, the current study can't confirm—or for that matter, disprove—that the bones belonged to John the Baptist.
"It's really stretching it to think that material from the first century can end up all the way in this church in Bulgaria and still be there for archaeologists to excavate," Higham said. "But stranger things have happened."
"We Were Surprised"
The fate of John the Baptist's remains is a topic of much speculation among biblical scholars, but what is known is that, in the third and fourth centuries, reports began to appear of his bones being housed in various churches as holy relics to attract pilgrims—not an uncommon fate for the supposed remains of biblical figures.
"We thought that, since this [Bulgarian] church dates to the fifth century, this gives us a minimum age for this material," Higham said.
"And we thought that perhaps these bones would be fourth or fifth century as well. But we were surprised when they turned out to be much older than that," said Higham, whose work on the bones was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council. (National Geographic News is a division of the Society.)
The scientific analysis of the bones hasn't yet been submitted to a journal, though the results are featured in the National Geographic documentary Head of John the Baptist, airing Thursday in the U.K.
Hell, Damnation, and Cow Bones
The relics were found during an excavation on the island of Sveti Ivan—"St. John" in Bulgarian. Entombed in a small marble sarcophagus, the bones had been buried beneath the church altar.
For the time being, they'll remain in Bulgaria as property of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and are currently being showcased in the country's capital, Sofia.
Unfortunately, all of the attention has resulted in the theft of a rib bone, and, Higham said, the local bishop has issued an edict saying "hell and damnation will rain down from God, not only on the person who stole it but also on his family and anyone else who knows about it, and even the village where it was taken."
Curiously, three animal bones—from a sheep, a cow, and a horse—were also part of the cache. Tests showed they were about 400 years older than the human remains.
"The animal bones are the biggest of the group, and they may have just been put there to bulk up what looks like a pretty minimal collection of bones ... ," Higham said.
The archaeologists who originally discovered the bones also found a small box made of hardened volcanic ash buried nearby in an older part of the church. The case bears an ancient Greek inscription that mentions John the Baptist and his birthday. It also asks God to "help your servant Thomas."
One theory is that "Thomas" brought the box—which tests suggest originated from Cappadocia, a region of what's now Turkey—to the island.
"We think this box was the original box that brought the bones to the island," Higham said. "When the new church was built, the bones were put into the marble sarcophagus."
(From National Geographic magazine: "In the Footsteps of the Apostles.")
Hard to Identify, Then and Now
While the new results suggest the bones are from John the Baptist's time and place, archaeologist Andrew Millard said scientists will probably never be able to definitively say whether the relics belonged to the biblical figure.
"Whether they're the remains of John the Baptist or whether they were simply obtained from another first-century tomb, we can't tell," said Millard, of the U.K.'s University of Durham, who wasn't part of the study.
"The question really is how well they could have identified the remains of John the Baptist in the fourth century. They could've opened the wrong tomb in a cemetery."

วันอาทิตย์ที่ 24 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2555

A friend’s appeal to Burma


(Commentary) – The violence in Arakan State over the past two weeks has caused disillusion for some, division among many, and shock and anguish for everyone. Racial and religious tensions that have simmered just beneath the surface for years have exploded into an ugly cycle of destruction and revenge which threatens to derail Burma’s journey towards democracy and peace.

Benedict Rogers  Photo: facebook
Benedict Rogers Photo: facebook
Crude, racist abuse, deliberate misrepresentations, doctored images, misinformation and biased reporting have added a cruel twist to an already bloody tragedy.

Some people may call me biased, and to that charge I plead guilty. But I am biased not in favour of one community over another, in favour of one race or religion over another, in favour of one particular political party over another. Instead, I am biased in favour of the universal values of human rights, including religious freedom.

I am biased in favour of mutual respect, equal rights, peace and harmony between religions and races. I am biased in favour of the dignity of each and every human being, whatever their ethnicity or religion. I am biased against intolerance, hatred, racism and extremism.

The tragedy in Arakan State is that ordinary people from both Rakhine and Rohingya communities have suffered. Homes burned, mosques desecrated, women raped, people killed – and for what purpose? It has been claimed that as many as 30,000 people are displaced as a result of the violence, although this figure is not verified because the UN has vacated its staff and independent monitors have not had access to the area. One of the first things the government of Burma should do is allow international monitors in to assess the situation.

I am writing this as a friend of Burma and all of Burma’s people. I have worked for the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights in Burma for the past 15 years, and travelled more than 40 times inside the country and to all its borders. I have worked with Burmese democracy activists and former political prisoners, and with Karen, Karenni, Shan, Mon, Kachin, Chin, Rakhine and Rohingya people. I also write as someone with extensive experience of other countries where religious intolerance is growing, often from extremist Islamism: Indonesia, Pakistan and The Maldives, in particular.

And so with that background, I appeal to the government and people of Burma not only to stop the violence, but to change the attitudes of religious intolerance and racial hatred which have come to the fore in the past few weeks. I appeal to the people of Burma to be true to everything that is good and noble in Burmese and Buddhist culture, and to live up to the values of freedom and human rights for which they have been struggling. I make this appeal on several grounds.

First, I appeal to human conscience on the grounds of humanity and human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is exactly that: universal, for everyone. As Aung San Suu Kyi said in her Nobel Peace Prize Lecture last Saturday, human rights are “the birthright of all”. No human being should be degraded, restricted or abused in the way the people of Burma have been by the military regime for so long – and that includes the Rohingya people.

Second, I appeal on religious grounds. From my basic understanding of Buddhism, I know that there is a principle called “metta” – “loving kindness.” It is similar to the principle in my own faith, Christianity, of “love your neighbour as yourself.” In Christianity, we are also taught to “love your enemies.” Neighbour or ‘enemy,’ Rakhine or Rohingya, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or Animist, shouldn’t we apply “metta,” “love,” to all?

Last, if simple humanity, basic human rights and core religious teachings cannot persuade people to exercise love, tolerance, respect and peace, to safeguard equal rights for all, then I appeal on grounds of self-interest.

If what I have said so far has not upset some, what I am about to say will upset others, but I must say it anyway. The Rohingya people are among the most marginalised and persecuted people I have ever come across. I have visited Rohingya refugees on the Bangladesh-Burma border, and seen the despair in their eyes. I have met Rohingya refugees outside the region, and seen the depression in their hearts. The Rohingyas I know are among the most hospitable, kind, gentle, decent, tolerant, peace-loving human beings I have met. They have clung on to human decency, even when others have tried to deny them human dignity.

But I also know there is a danger ahead if they continue to be marginalized and persecuted not only by the regime, but by society as well, and it is this: the danger of radicalization.

The charge of ‘terrorist’ is already thrown at the Rohingyas, without any foundation or substance and fuelled by bigotry. But it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the Rohingyas are persecuted by the regime, marginalised by the democracy movement, discriminated against and attacked by society and ignored by the international community, if radical Islamist organizations tap into the seething despair among the Rohingya people, and the Rohingyas feel they have nowhere else to turn, then it is possible that more Rohingyas could be radicalized. Having seen radical Islamism in action in Pakistan, Indonesia, The Maldives and on the streets of London, to name just a few places, I fear for Burma if it is added to its woes. I am not talking about bombs and hijackings. I am talking about the ideology of political Islam, Islamism, as distinct from the religion of Islam followed by the vast majority of Muslims who adhere to the peaceful teachings of their faith.


Marginalization, despair, statelessness could be a breeding ground for radicalization. As Aung San Suu Kyi said in Oslo, “War is not the only arena where peace is done to death. Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.”

Don’t misunderstand me. What I have said must not be used to justify attacks on the Rohingyas. Indeed, quite the opposite. To avoid provoking Islamism, the Rakhine, the Burmans and the whole people of Burma should work with moderate-minded Rohingyas whose only desire is to be given the same rights as others, to be treated with respect and dignity, to live in peace. One Rohingya several years ago described his vision beautifully to me when he described Burma as a garden, in which various different flowers grow – and the Rohingyas are one of those flowers.

There are two myths about the Rohingyas that need to be dispelled. The first is the idea that ethnicity or race is tied to land or state. The Rohingyas are not seeking their own territory, or at least not the ones I know. They just want to be recognized as citizens of Burma. Even if they were demanding their own state, there is no reason to grant them that, as long as they are treated with dignity and equal rights.

The second is the idea that they are Bengali illegal immigrants. To this charge I have several responses.

First, the historical record is clear that the Rohingyas have lived in northern Arakan for generations. Scholars can debate the precise record with civility and evidence, but however many years it is, no one can doubt that they have been there for generations. The first President of Burma, Sao Shwe Thaike, a Shan, said that the “Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to the indigenous races of Burma. If they do not belong to the indigenous races, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races.” Burma’s first Prime Minister U Nu, who used the disputed term ‘Rohingya,’ authorized the Burmese Broadcasting Service to broadcast in the Rohingya language, and Rohingyas sat in Parliament. It was only when Ne Win took power, driven largely by his own racist and anti-Muslim prejudice, that they were stripped of their citizenship and plunged into decades of abuse.

If they were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, why do so many of them speak Burmese fluently and have Burmese names? If they were immigrants from Bangladesh, why does Bangladesh refuse them refuge when they flee Burma? If they were immigrants from Bangladesh, why do they wish to stay in Burma and make it their homeland, when all they receive is abuse? Illegal immigrants usually flee poverty and oppression to places of relative prosperity and freedom – why then would people flee Bangladesh for Burma?

Some Burmese have told me that it is a porous border and some who claim to be ‘Rohingya’ may be illegal Bengali immigrants. If that is so, then Burma needs to establish a proper system for identifying people. Those who were born in Burma must be treated as citizens. Those who are found, credibly, to be migrants should be processed appropriately and either given citizenship or returned to their country of origin, in the same way any country handles illegal immigration. What must not happen, in any circumstance, is the kind of inhumane, degrading abuse to which these people are subjected. Even illegal immigrants have human rights.

Martin Luther King expressed it well when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The Rohingya people, stateless, denied access to education, facing restrictions on movement, marriage and religion, have been facing a grave injustice for years. The Rakhine people, like others in Burma, have been suffering injustice too. And both communities, indulging in a depraved cycle of violence and destruction, will destroy each other and derail democracy for Burma if the current crisis continues.

So it is time for everyone, in Burma and in the international community, who cares about universal human rights, human dignity and peace, to stand up and put an end to the violence, and begin the long hard road to reconstruction and reconciliation.

Today there is a need for emergency humanitarian aid for all the victims of the violence, who have lost homes and are without food or drinking water.

Tomorrow, there will be a need for support for inter-faith and inter-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation. A starting point would be for us all to reflect on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s words in her Nobel Lecture: “Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace. Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution. Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.”

Let that be the way forward, for Burman, Rakhine, Rohingya, for government official and political prisoner, for Burmese citizen and foreign friends of Burma alike.