Strange News of the World

Newly released files show Julia Child was a spy

2008-08-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

Television cooking personality Julia Child prepares a French delicacy in her cooking studio in this Nov. 24, 1970 file photo. Child shared a secret with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. The secret comes out Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the U.S.'s first centralized intelligence effort. The National Archives will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.(AP Photo/FILE)

By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - Before Julia Child became known to the world as a leading chef, she admitted at least one failing when applying for a job as a spy: impulsiveness.

At 28 as an advertising manager at W&J Sloane furniture store in Beverly Hills, Calif., Child clashed with new store managers and left her job abruptly.

"I made a tactical error and was out," she explained in a handwritten note attached to her application to join the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II-era spy agency. "However, I learned a lot about advertising and wish I had been older and more experienced so that I could have handled the situation, as it was a most interesting position."

Child was not yet married and was applying for the job under her maiden name, McWilliams, according to previously top-secret records released by the National Archives on Thursday. She was hired in the summer of 1942 for clerical work with the intelligence agency and later worked directly for OSS Director William Donovan, the personnel records show.

Details about Child's background and nearly 24,000 other OSS employees are revealed in the newly released documents, withheld from public view as classified records for decades by the CIA.

The 750,000 documents identify the vast spy network managed by the OSS, which later became the CIA. President Franklin Roosevelt created the OSS, the country's first centralized intelligence operation.

The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

Some of those like Child on the list have been identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records never have been available before. Those records would show why they were hired, jobs they were assigned to and perhaps even missions they pursued while working for the agency.

The release of the OSS personnel files unmasks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part was later folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945.

"I think it's terrific," said Elizabeth McIntosh, 93, a former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Va. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."

The CIA long resisted releasing the records. But a former CIA director, William Casey, himself an OSS veteran, cleared the way for transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the spy agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest documents to be made public.

Information about OSS involvement was so guarded that relatives often could not confirm a family member's work with the group.

Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he kept quiet for more than 50 years, only recently telling his wife of 62 years about his OSS activity.

"I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mess, now 93 and living in Falls Church, Va.

The files provide new information even for those most familiar with the agency. Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society created by former OSS agents and their relatives, said the nearly 24,000 employees included in the archives far exceed previous estimates of 13,000.

The newly released documents will clarify these and other issues, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.

"We're saying the OSS was a lot bigger than they were saying," he said.

___

On the Net:

CIA OSS page: http://tinyurl.com/6bvmhf

Index to National Archives OSS personnel files: http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/

Remains of cemetery found in Sahara

2008-08-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

This undated handout photo provided by the National Geographic Society shows a triple burial containing a woman and two children, their limbs entwined, discovered at the Gobero site during the 2006 field season.(AP Photo/Mike Hettwer, National Geographic Society)

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.

The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine."

Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.

"Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert," said Sereno. "I realized we were in the green Sahara."

The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake at the time people lived there. It's in a region called Gobero, hidden away in Niger's forbidding Tenere Desert, known to Tuareg nomads as a "desert within a desert."

The human remains dated from two distinct populations that lived there during wet times, with a dry period in between.

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine when these ancient people lived there. Even the most recent were some 1,000 years before the building of the pyramids in Egypt.

The first group, known as the Kiffian, hunted wild animals and speared huge perch with harpoons. They colonized the region when the Sahara was at its wettest, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The researchers said the Kiffians were tall, sometimes reaching well over 6 feet.

The second group lived in the region between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago. The Tenerians were smaller and had a mixed economy of hunting, fishing and cattle herding.

Their burials often included jewelry or ritual poses. For example, one girl had an upper-arm bracelet carved from a hippo tusk. An adult Tenerian male was buried with his skull resting on part of a clay vessel; another adult male was interred seated on the shell of a mud turtle.

And pollen remains show the woman and two children were buried on a bed of flowers. The researchers preserved the group just as they had been for thousands of years.

"At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place," said team member Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University.

Stojanowski said ridges on the thigh bone of one Kiffian man show he had huge leg muscles, "which suggests he was eating a lot of protein and had an active, strenuous lifestyle. The Kiffian appear to have been fairly healthy — it would be difficult to grow a body that tall and muscular without sufficient nutrition."

On the other hand, ridges on a Tenerian male were barely visible. "This man's life was less rigorous, perhaps taking smaller fish and game with more advanced hunting technologies," Stojanowski said.

Helene Jousse, a zooarchaeologist from the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria, reported that animal bones found in the area were from types common today in the Serengeti in Kenya, such as elephants, giraffes, hartebeests and warthogs.

The finds are detailed in reports in Thursday's edition of the journal PLoS One and in the September issue of National Geographic Magazine.

While the Sahara is desert today, a small difference in Earth's orbit once brought seasonal monsoons farther north, wetting the landscape with lakes with lush margins and drawing animals and people.

The research was funded by National Geographic, the Island Fund of the New York Community Trust, the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

___

On the Net:

PLoS One: http://www.plos.org/

National Geographic: http://www.nationalgeographic.ngm.com/

People of the Green Sahara: http://www.projectexploration.org/

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White Americans no longer a majority by 2042

2008-08-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That's eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

"The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future."

The Census Bureau Thursday released population projections through 2050, based on rates for births, deaths and immigration. They are subject to big revisions, depending on immigration policy, cultural changes and natural or manmade disasters.

The U.S. has nearly 305 million people today. The population is projected to hit 400 million in 2039 and 439 million in 2050.

That's like adding all the people from France and Britain, said Steve A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies.

White non-Hispanics make up about two-thirds of the population, but only 55 percent of those younger than 5.

By 2050, whites will make up 46 percent of the population and blacks will make up 15 percent, a relatively small increase from today. Hispanics, who make up about 15 percent of the population today, will account for 30 percent in 2050, according to the new projections.

Asians, which make up about 5 percent of the population, are projected to increase to 9 percent by 2050.

The population 85 and older is projected to more than triple by 2050, to 19 million.

___

On The Net:

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital

2008-08-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital
LiveScience Staff LiveScience.com 57 minutes ago
Roman temple ruins from the 2nd century A.D. have emerged from excavations at the ancient Jewish capital of the Galilee in Israel.
The discovery shows that the city of Zippori housed a significant pagan population which built a temple in the city center during the Roman period. The central location of the temple lies within a walled courtyard, and may help archaeologists better understand the urban layout of Zippori in the Roman era.
A church from the later Byzantine period sits on top of the ancient temple, as revealed by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition headed by Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The building of the church on the foundation of the temple testifies to the preservation of the sacred section of the city over time. The new finding not only sheds light the religious life, culture and society in Roman and Byzantine Zippori, but also indicates that Jews, pagans and later Christians lived together and developed their hometown with various buildings.
The newly discovered temple is located south of the decumanus, or colonnaded street, that ran from east to west and was the main thoroughfare in the city during the Roman through Byzantine period. The temple, measuring approximately 79 by 39 feet (24 by 12 meters), was built with a decorated façade facing the street. The temple's walls were plundered in ancient times and only its foundations remain.
No evidence has been found that reveals the nature of the temple's rituals, but some coins dating from the time of Antoninus Pius, minted in Diocaesarea (Zippori), depict a temple to the Roman gods Zeus and Tyche. The temple ceased to function at an unknown date, and a large church, the remains of which were uncovered by the Hebrew University excavation team in previous seasons, was built over it in the Byzantine period.
North of the decumanus, opposite the temple, a monumental building was partially excavated this summer. Its role is still unclear, although its nature and size indicate that it was an important building. A courtyard with a well-preserved stone pavement of smooth rectangular slabs executed in high quality was uncovered in the center of the building, upon which were found a pile of collapsed columns and capitals, probably as a result of an earthquake. The decoration on these architectural elements was executed in stucco.
Beyond a row of columns, an adjacent aisle and additional rooms were discovered. Two of them were decorated with colorful, geometrical mosaics.
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Original Story: Ancient Roman Ruins Discovered in Jewish Capital

Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks

2008-08-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

The annual Perseid meteor shower is set to peak on Tuesday, Aug. 12, after the moon sets in the wee hours of the morning. The best time to view the meteor shower will be between 4 and 5 a.m., according the American Meteor Society. At left, a Perseid shower over Rhyolite, Nev., on Aug. 13, 2007.(Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks August 12
Joe Rao SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist SPACE.com Fri Aug 8, 7:01 AM ET

Every August, just when many people go vacationing in the country where skies are dark, the best-known meteor shower makes its appearance.

It is also the month of "The Tears of St. Lawrence," more commonly known as the Perseid Meteor Shower.
Laurentius, a Christian deacon, is said to have been martyred by the Romans in 258 AD on an iron outdoor stove. It was in the midst of this torture that Laurentius cried out:
"I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other."
The saint's death was commemorated on his feast day, Aug. 10. King Phillip II of Spain built his monastery place, the "Escorial," on the plan of the holy gridiron. And the abundance of shooting stars seen annually between approximately Aug. 8 and 14 have come to be known as St. Lawrence's "fiery tears."
Viewing prospects
In 2008, the Perseids are expected to reach their maximum on Aug. 12.
The exact time of maximum should be about 11h Universal Time (UT) Aug. 12, according to Margaret Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the 2008 Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. If so, the timing is very good for meteor watchers observing before dawn in North America, especially in the western states. And that morning, the waxing gibbous moon sets around 1:30 a.m. local daylight saving time, leaving a dark sky for the next 3 hours.
Take full advantage of that moonless period. Next year, a last quarter moon will illuminate the after-midnight sky with its light and will hinder observation of the Perseids.
Comet bits
We know today that these meteors are actually the dross of the Swift-Tuttle comet. Discovered back in 1862, this comet takes approximately 130 years to circle the sun. And in much the same way that the Tempel-Tuttle comet leaves a trail of debris along its orbit to produce the Leonid meteors of November, Comet Swift-Tuttle produces a similar debris trail along its orbit to cause the Perseids. Indeed, every year during mid-August, when the Earth passes close to the orbit of Swift-Tuttle, the material left behind by the comet from its previous visits rams into our atmosphere at approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) per second and creates bright streaks of light in our midsummer night skies.
Comet Swift-Tuttle made its most recent appearance sixteen years ago, in December 1992. For several years before and after its 1992 return, the Perseids were a far more prolific shower, appearing to produce brief outbursts of as many as several hundred meteors per hour, many of which were dazzlingly bright and spectacular. The most likely reason was that the Perseids parent comet was itself passing through the inner solar system and that the streams of Perseid meteoroids in the comet's vicinity were larger and more thickly clumped together — hence the reason for the brighter meteors and much-higher-than-normal meteor rates.
But with the comet now far back out in space, Perseid activity has pretty much returned to normal.
Meteor clumps
A very good shower will produce about one meteor per minute for a given observer under a dark country sky. Any light pollution or moonlight considerably reduces the count. The August Perseids are among the strongest of the readily observed annual meteor showers, and at maximum activity nominally yield 50 or 60 meteors per hour. However, observers with a wide-open view of exceptionally dark skies often record even larger numbers on the order of 90 or even 100 per hour.
But while 60 meteors per hour correspond to one meteor sighting every minute, keep in mind that this is only a statistical average. In reality, what usually is seen is what some have called, "the clumping effect." Sometimes you'll see two or even three Perseids streak across the sky in quick succession, all within less than minute. This is usually followed by a lull of several minutes or more, before the sky suddenly bears fruit once again.
When and where to look
Typically during an overnight watch, the Perseids are capable of producing a number of bright, flaring and fragmenting meteors, which leave fine trains in their wake.
On the night of shower maximum, the Perseid radiant is not far from the famous "Double Star Cluster" of Perseus. Low in the northeast during the early evening, it rises higher in the sky until morning twilight ends observing. Shower members appearing close to the radiant have foreshortened tracks; those appearing farther away are often brighter, have longer tracks, and move faster across the sky. About five to 10 of the meteors seen in any given hour will not fit this geometric pattern, and may be classified as sporadic or as members of some other (minor) shower.
Watching for the Perseids consists of lying back, gazing up into the stars and waiting. Perseid activity increases sharply in the hours after midnight, so plan your observing times accordingly. We are then looking more nearly face-on into the direction of the Earth's motion as it orbits the Sun, and the radiant is also higher up. Making a meteor count is as simple as lying in a lawn chair or on the ground and marking on a clipboard whenever a "shooting star" is seen.
Counts should be made on several nights before and after the predicted maximum, so the behavior of the shower away from its peak can be determined. Usually, good numbers of meteors should be seen on the preceding and following nights as well. The shower is generally at one-quarter strength one or two nights before and after maximum.
A few Perseids can be seen as much as two weeks before and a week after the peak. The extreme limits, in fact, are said to extend from July 17 to Aug. 24, though an occasional one might be seen almost anytime during the month of August.
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Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York
Original Story: Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks August 12

Deliberate Decisions Are the Best

2008-08-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Deliberate Decisions Are the Best
LiveScience Staff LiveScience.com Mon Aug 11, 2008

When it comes to making life-changing decisions, neither snap judgments nor "sleeping on it" trump good old-fashioned conscious thought, new research suggests.

The finding contradicts research reported in 2006, which suggested unconscious thought is optimal for making complex decisions, including whether to buy a certain house or car. The 2006 findings, made by Dutch researchers and published in the journal Science, supported ideas of making quick decisions or leaving complex choices to the powers of unconscious thought."Claims that we can make superior 'snap' decisions by trusting intuition or through the 'power' of unconscious thought have received a great deal of attention in the media," said Ben Newell, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales and lead researcher of the new study that was announced today.

Newell and colleagues presented participants with complex decisions and asked them to choose the best option immediately, after a period of conscious deliberation or after a period of distraction (the "sleep on it" method), which is thought to encourage unconscious thought processes.

In all experiments, there was some evidence that conscious deliberation can lead to better choices and little evidence for superiority of choices made "unconsciously," the researchers said.
Faced with making decisions such as choosing a rental apartment or buying a car, most participants made choices predicted by their individual preferences for certain features (for example, safety, security, color or price), regardless of the mode of thinking employed.
Unconscious decision-making was thought to be best in certain situations because it is not limited by how much stuff can be shuffled through the mind - a limitation thought to hobble conscious thought. And so, scientists had said the benefits of unconscious thinking are greatest when a decision is complex, with multiple options and attributes.

"Our research suggests that unconscious thought is more susceptible to irrelevant factors, such as how recently information has been seen rather than how important it is," Newell said. "If conscious thinkers are given adequate time to encode material, or are allowed to consult material while they deliberate, their choices are at least as good as those made 'unconsciously.'"
The results will be published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

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Original Story: Deliberate Decisions Are the Best

Dollar soars higher on euro zone woes

2008-08-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Friday August 8, 2008 4:44 pm ET
By Tali Arbel, AP Business Writer

Dollar soars against major currencies as euro area struggles, commodities sell off

NEW YORK (AP) -- The dollar soared Friday in what analysts are calling a game-changing move as concerns about the deteriorating euro zone economy gripped investors and commodities sold off.

In late trading in New York, the euro came off its lows to $1.5013 from $1.5328 late Thursday. Earlier in the day, it sank as low as $1.5004. It is the highest point for the dollar since late February, and a rapid recovery from July 15, when the euro hit a record against the dollar at $1.6038.

"There's a real capitulation under way," said David Gilmore, partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics in Essex, Conn. "In 24 hours it's gone from $1.55 to $1.50, which is highly unusual. That changes your game plan for the marketplace."

The euro also sank against the British pound and the Japanese yen -- both of which are also weakening against the dollar.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank and Bank of England left their key interest rates unchanged at 4.25 percent and 5 percent, respectively. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet issued a warning on inflation and said economic growth figures for the second and third quarters of 2008 would be much weaker than in the early part of the year. He signaled that an interest-rate increase to counter inflation would probably not be forthcoming.

Higher interest rates can buck up a currency, as investors transfer assets where they can get better yields, while lower interest rates can weaken a currency.

The pound, meanwhile, recovered slightly $1.9198 after earlier selling as low as $1.9145, its lowest point since November 2006. On Thursday, the pound sold for $1.9436. But the dollar leaped to 110.24 Japanese yen from 109.45 yen, its highest level since January.

"This is payback time for the European currencies against the dollar," said Ashraf Laidi, currency strategist at CMC Markets. "These currencies have to retreat to better reflect the sharp deterioration in economic fundamentals in (the euro zone) region. This is not to say there's been an improvement in U.S. fundamentals."

Earlier in the week, the Federal Reserve maintained the benchmark federal funds rate at 2 percent.

Comments by ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet after Thursday's decision "confirmed that the window of opportunity for further rate hikes has been slammed shut by the cold blast of negative data releases that swept through the euro zone in the last few weeks," said Marco Annunziata, an economist at UniCredit in London.

Recent economic indicators from major euro zone economies such as Germany, France and Italy have painted a gloomy picture.

The ECB last month moved to cool inflation by raising borrowing costs for the first time in a year, by a quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent, while the Bank of England has left rates unchanged since April, when it reduced its benchmark figure by a quarter of a percentage point to 5 percent.

Crude oil futures, meanwhile, dropped below $116 a barrel, and oil-producing countries' currencies sold off. Gold is at two-month lows.

"Lots of investors have been on high commodity prices and a low dollar, and those bets are getting destroyed," Gilmore said.

The Canadian dollar, which leapt higher last fall on the back of surging oil and other commodities, is back down again to 12-month lows against the U.S. dollar, while the Australian dollar is back to mid-January levels. The New Zealand dollar is at 11-month lows.

The dollar rose to 1.0685 Canadian dollars from 1.0517, and hit a six-month high of 1.0837 Swiss francs before retreating to 1.0810 francs. On Thursday, the dollar bought 1.0625 francs.

AP Business Writer George Frey contributed to this report.

Slaughterhouse case fuels kosher justice movement

2008-08-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

Slaughterhouse case fuels kosher justice movement
By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK - Very little goes unexamined in the kosher world.

From meat and poultry to the coating on vegetables and the ingredients in mouthwash, rabbis who determine whether a product meets Jewish dietary laws scrutinize the most minute details about all things consumed.

For religiously observant Jews, that concern has rarely extended beyond the product itself.

But now, allegations of worker abuse at the nation's biggest kosher slaughterhouse have some Jews demanding that food companies be judged not just by the purity of their products but by the way their treat their employees.

"How can you sit at your table and eat a product packaged by a pregnant woman has been standing on her feet all day?" asked Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota. He is developing a certification program that aims to protect workers and the environment in the kosher industry.

Interest in Allen's "hekhsher tzedek," or "certificate of righteousness," has ballooned since a May 12 immigration raid at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa.

Nearly 400 illegal immigrants were arrested at the plant in the biggest such raid on a single work site in U.S. history. State officials say dozens of underage workers were employed there in violation of child labor laws. Agriprocessors has denied any wrongdoing.

Many Jews are embarrassed and angered by the allegations and, along with some religious leaders, are rethinking what it means to be certified kosher.

The "hekhsher tzedek" would be awarded to companies that pay fair wages, ensure workplace safety, follow government environmental rules and treat animals humanely, among other criteria.

The program, which could begin as soon as next year, would be separate from the traditional certification process that measures compliance with Jewish dietary law. A company that fails to obtain a "hekhsher tzedek" could still get its food certified as kosher.

Allen, of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, is developing the program through the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and its Rabbinical Assembly, to which he belongs. Conservative Judaism holds a middle ground between the liberal Reform and strict Orthodox traditions, allowing some innovation in Jewish law to adapt to modern times.

But it's unclear how much of an effect the certificate would have.

The majority of kosher consumers and certifiers are Orthodox, and they drive the multibillion-dollar U.S. market. Kosher meat is more expensive than standard food, and since large families are the norm among the Orthodox, some fear any changes could increase the cost.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, chief kosher executive of the Orthodox Union, the largest kosher certifier in the U.S., called Allen's idea unreasonable and unenforceable. He said the Orthodox Union relies on federal and state agencies — "who have both the expertise and authority" — to monitor plant conditions.

Yet, pressure for change is coming from more than just Conservative Jewish leaders.

Within the Orthodox community, there are signs that Jews in their 20s and 30s are gaining interest in what the Torah says about social justice.

Last year, young Orthodox Jews in New York formed Uri L'Tzedek, an advocacy group on issues such as immigration and labor rights. Leaders of the group, whose name means Awaken to Justice, collected about 2,000 signatures in support of a boycott of Agriprocessors.

They suspended the action when the owners hired a former federal prosecutor as a compliance officer, but are still going ahead with a fact-finding tour of the plant this week, where they will also meet with immigrant workers.

"The younger generations of modern Orthodox Jews are seeking new meaning to their religious expression, going beyond survival and anti-assimilation and just text study," said Shmuly Yanklowitz, a rabbinical student and co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek. "There have been countless individuals who have felt estranged from the Orthodox community who have been in touch with us. We're getting hundreds of e-mails saying that this has filled a gap."

Despite sharing the ideals of the "hekhsher tzedek," Yanklowitz said his group does not support the proposal. He said any systemwide change in kosher production will have to come from within the Orthodox world because of its "overwhelming commitment" to following Jewish dietary law and the buying power that brings.

Still, Conservative Jewish advocates for the justice certification believe they can bring moral pressure for change.

Rabbi Avram Reisner of Baltimore, a member of the panel of religious law scholars that guides Conservative Judaism, has written a 20-page analysis of Jewish law on wages, working conditions and other business issues in support of the "hekhsher tzedek."

"The Conservative movement has hauled the Orthodox establishment out in a way they hadn't anticipated," Reisner said. "We're not looking to horn in on the business. We're looking to expand the envelope so the kosher consumer can buy things that they feel good about."

___

On the Net:

Orthodox Union: http://www.ou.org

Hekhsher Tzedek: http://hekhshertzedek.org

Uri L'Tzedek: http://uriltzedek.webnode.com

Vietnamese women wed foreigners to help family

2008-08-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Vietnamese women wed foreigners to help family
By BEN STOCKING, Associated Press Writer
Sun Aug 10, 2008

TAN LOC ISLAND, Vietnam - Nearly 70 young Vietnamese women swept past in groups of five, twirling and posing like fashion models, all competing for the hand of a Taiwanese man who had paid a matchmaking service about $6,000 for the privilege of marrying one of them.

Sporting jeans and a black T-shirt, 20-year-old Le Thi Ngoc Quyen paraded in front of the stranger, hoping he would select her.

"I felt very nervous," she recalled recently as she described the scene. "But he chose me, and I agreed to marry him right away."

Like many women from the Mekong Delta island of Tan Loc, Quyen had concluded that finding a foreign husband was her best route out of poverty. Six years later, she has a beautiful daughter and no regrets.

From the delta in Vietnam's south to small rural towns in the north, a growing number of young Vietnamese women are marrying foreigners, mostly from Taiwan and South Korea. They seek material comfort and, most important, a way to save their parents from destitution in old age, which many Vietnamese consider their greatest duty.

Quyen has not gotten rich — her husband earns a modest living as a construction worker — but the couple have paid off her father's debts.

Young women have become Tan Loc's most lucrative export. Roughly 1,500 village women from the island of 33,000 people have married foreigners in the past decade, leading some to call it Taiwan Island.

Women in Tan Loc and other delta towns began marrying foreigners in the 1990s, when Vietnam opened up economically and many Taiwanese and South Korean firms set up operations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's southern business hub.

Poverty and the close proximity of foreign businessmen seem to be major reasons for the trend. The biggest complaints come from women's groups, who consider it demeaning, and from young village men for whom the pool of potential brides is shrinking.

With money from foreign sons-in-law, many residents in Tan Loc have replaced their thatch-roof shacks with brick homes. They have also opened small restaurants and shops, creating jobs in a place where people have traditionally earned pennies a day picking rice and other crops in the blistering sun.

The luckier families received enough to build ponds for fish farming.

Western Union has opened a branch to handle the money sent by newlyweds.

"At least 20 percent of the families on the island have been lifted out of poverty," said Phan An, a university professor who has done extensive research in Tan Loc. "There has been a significant economic impact."

Not all the marriages work out, of course.

Dam Psi Kin Sa went to Taiwan nine years ago, at the age of 20, and married a Taiwanese car wash owner more than twice her age who had been divorced three times. She met him through a matchmaking service.

Five years later, her husband demanded a divorce and locked her out of the house. Even though she had learned his language, Mandarin Chinese, the couple had trouble communicating. "We were angry at each other in a quiet way," she said in Taipei, where she has remained to be close to her daughter.

Over the past year, one Vietnamese bride was beaten to death by her South Korean husband, another jumped out a 14th-story window and a third hanged herself on Valentine's Day, leaving behind a diary full of misery.

"A marriage that is not based on love often brings problems," said Hoang Thi Thanh Ha of the Vietnam Women's Union. "How can you live happily ever after when you met your husband three weeks before the wedding?"

Nevertheless, most young women in Tan Loc seem eager to marry a foreigner. Le Thanh Lang recently went to the town hall to get papers confirming she is single and eligible to marry.

"Any country will do, I'll take anyone who will accept me," she said, waving the papers. "I need to send money to my parents."

Besides the marriage broker's fee, the groom gives about $300 to his bride's family, Lang said. After that, if all goes well, her husband may send up to several thousand dollars a year to her family — depending on what he can afford.

Many Tan Loc families with married daughters abroad have big homes with color TVs, new furniture and karaoke machines.

Their neighbors live in huts.

Tran Thi Sach's concrete home, with four large rooms and shiny green tile floors, is a mansion by island standards.

"Since my daughters got married, I've retired," said Sach, 59, who used to toil in the rice fields with her husband.

"We lived in a shack," she said. "We had to work no matter how hot it was, no matter how much it rained, from 5 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. Sometimes we could only afford rice porridge."

When her daughter Tho first said she planned to go to a marriage broker, Sach objected. What if her in-laws abused her? Where would she turn for help?

Tho married six years ago, and her younger sister Loi two years later.

"Their husbands are gentle, handsome and hardworking," Sach said. "They are really fine men."

Next door, Nguyen Thi Chin lives in a two-room shack with the roof so leaky that when it rains she must move from spot to spot to avoid getting wet. Each of her seven children married a Vietnamese, all of them poor. At 70, she is still working, pulling mussels from the muck in the Mekong River.

"I could never have a house like that," Chin said, glancing next door. "It's my destiny to be poor. If I had another daughter, I'd ask her to marry a foreigner."

More than 100,000 Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese men over the last 10 years and the numbers are rising, said Gow Wei Chiou of the Taiwan representative office in Hanoi. In the same period, roughly 28,000 Korean men married Vietnamese, according to the Vietnam Women's Union.

As more Taiwanese and Korean women move to cities to work, many men in those countries, especially those from rural areas, face increasing difficulty finding wives, said Chiou.

"Taiwanese women want to get married when they are much older, and they are also very opinionated," said Lin Wen-jui, 39, who met his Vietnamese wife through a Taiwanese friend in Ho Chi Minh City. She has since taken a Taiwanese name, learned Mandarin and opened a restaurant.

The overseas marriage trend has been boosted by online matchmaking services such as the Singapore-based Mr. Cupid, which offers a "comprehensive Vietnamese marriage package" and five-day matchmaking tours. "No one ever came on our trip without finding their dream bride," the site boasts.

In 2002, not long after Quyen went through her paces for her Taiwanese future husband, the Vietnam government outlawed commercial matchmaking services. Vietnamese media were reporting the phenomenon in vivid detail, and authorities said they were concerned that the business could be a cover for trafficking women into prostitution.

"They take hundreds of women at a time to a hotel and line them up for the men," said Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, vice chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Women's Union, a government agency that supports women. "It's very disrespectful."

But although driven underground, the practice continues, abetted by village matchmakers and secluded meetings with suitors.

Half the brides in such marriages are under 21, half the grooms between 40 and 60.

"Sometimes the men ask them to pose naked," Nguyen said "It's inhumane."

Quyen still has vivid memories of going to the matchmaker's house in Ho Chi Minh City, a 120-mile bus ride and a world away from Tan Loc.

"I was scared," she said.

Quyen made the final five. Speaking through an interpreter, the man asked a few simple questions: How many brothers and sisters do you have? How far did you go in school?

They had dinner and Quyen agreed to marry him on the spot.

"My life in Taiwan is good," she said during a visit to Tan Loc. "My husband and his family treat me well."

Life is not so good, however, for the young men in Tan Loc who watch the exodus of marriage-aged women with despair.

"If all the girls leave," said Nguyen Hoang Mong, 19. "there won't be anyone left for us. Marriage shouldn't be about money. It should be about love."

African 'tree of life' recast as European superfruit

2008-08-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

People walk down a road lined with Baobab trees, also known as the "tree of life", in Fandene, on July 25. In Senegal, villagers have always known about the health benefits of baobab fruit, which only now have been discovered by Europe in what could spell magic for localities like Fandene.(AFP/File/Georges Gobet)

African 'tree of life' recast as European superfruit
Stephanie van den Berg
Sun Aug 10, 2008

FANDENE, Senegal (AFP) - In Senegal, villagers have always known about the health benefits of baobab fruit, which only now have been discovered by Europe in what could spell magic for localities like Fandene.

The ancient, hardy species also known as the "tree of life" is scattered across the African savannah, some said to date back to the time of Christ.

Locals use nearly every part of the tree, whose processed fruit was approved for European import last month.

"You use the monkey bread fruit if you have a belly ache," said farmer Aloyse Tine, using the local name for baobab fruit. "If you're tired you eat the leaves, they are good for you."

The seeds can be pressed to extract oil used for cooking and the bark can be used to make ropes. In the past, the hollow bark was also used to bury "griots", a special West African cast of poets, musicians and sorcerers.

Farmer Tine, like others, used to lug his fruit to sell in the market in the nearby town of Thies.

Three years ago, he started selling instead to the Baobab Fruit Company, a Senegalese firm run by three Italians. It is the country's only industrialised producer of dried baobab fruit pulp, which it exports for use in cosmetics and certain dietary supplements.

The new income has already made changes. It "allows me to send my kids to school," he said.

Enter PhytoTrade Africa, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on developing fair trade and environmentally sustainable natural products.

Sensing potential, it launched in 2006 the process that would open European Union markets to this nutritious African oddity. Under EU rules, any "novel" food -- one not commonly consumed in Europe before 1997 -- requires special approval for use in the 27-member bloc.

"Approval for the baobab is fantastic news for Africa," said PhytoTrade's Cyril Lombard after the EU decision.

"Opening the European market to this product will make a real difference to poor rural communities there, offering them a potentially life-changing source of income."

One of these is Thiawe Thiawe, where 41-year-old Delphine farms some 20 baobab trees scattered outside her house.

"I've collected the fruits since I was a little girl with my grandmother," she told AFP. Like Tine, her life is a little easier since she started selling to the Baobab Fruit company rather than hawking her own goods.

"It's better to sell here than there, you don't have to wear yourself out going to Thies."

The Baobab Fruit Company says it already sees a spike in interest from Europe, where the pulp will likely be used in cereal bars and health drinks.

"Now we collect 150 to 200 tonnes of baobab fruit each harvest. In the last weeks there has been an explosion in demand," Laudana Zorzella told AFP at the factory in Thies.

"We are thinking we will need a much bigger harvest next time," she said. "In Senegal alone we estimate we could collect 13 thousand tonnes of fruit."

But what can baobab fruit, also known as monkey's bread, bring to health-conscious Europe?

According to the International Centre for Underutilized Crops at the University of Southhampton, the baobab is "a fruit of the future", rich in vitamin C, B1, B2 and calcium and chock-full of anti-oxidants.

In Senegal, its pulp is mostly used to make Bouye, a milky, tart juice made by boiling the pulp and seeds with water and sugar.

Some scientists calculate the fruit has three times as much vitamin C as oranges and has more calcium than a glass of milk.

And the tree is well adapted to arid conditions, tolerating both drought and poorly drained soil, and is fire resistant. Also known as the "upside down tree" for its bulbous trunk and spindly branches that look like roots, it can grow to be hundreds if not thousands of years old.

A study for PhytoTrade Africa conducted by the Natural Resources Institute in Britain suggested that wild harvesting of baobab fruit could generate trade of up to one billion dollars (640 million euros) a year for African producers.

Some environmentalists fear such commercial exploitation could lead to extinction of the iconic tree.

But Zorzella dismissed this, stressing that her company uses only the fruit and leaves the tree intact. "And if it becomes an important revenue the farmers will know that they have to protect the tree," she said.

In Fandene, Aloyse said this lesson has already been learned. As new baobabs sprout spontaneously, they are protected and allowed to grow.

"There are cattle herders that cut the leaves (to feed their animals) but we are starting to stop them now. That's not good because we need the trees to produce fruit," he said.

After the EU's approval, "everybody is asking for our products so they can test them," Zorzella said.

She estimated Europe's major food companies would need up to eight months for research and development before consumers there can actually get their own sip of a baobab smoothie or health bar.

Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say

2008-08-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor (8/9/08)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.

One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.

The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.

Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.

"We are not actually cloaking anything," Valentine said in a telephone interview. "I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."

Valentine's team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.

"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," he said.

"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."

These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.

NEGATIVE REFRACTION

The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.

"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," Valentine said. "It's kind of weird."

For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.

Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.

"What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker," Valentine said.

His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. "We call it a fishnet," Valentine said.

The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.

Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said -- perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.

"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," he said. "You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."

Olympics 8/8/08

2008-08-09T03:48:00.001-07:00

China opens Olympics with pageantry, pyrotechnics
By DAVID CRARY, Associated Press Writer 36 minutes ago
BEIJING - Once-reclusive China commandeered the world stage Friday, celebrating its first-time role as Olympic host with a stunning display of pyrotechnics and pageantry — topped by the unworldly sight of a flying gymnast, traversing the heights of the stadium to light the flame and begin the Summer Games.
Now ascendant as a global power, China welcomed scores of world leaders to an opening ceremony watched by 91,000 people at the eye-catching National Stadium and a potential audience of 4 billion worldwide. It was depicted as the largest, costliest extravaganza in Olympic history, bookended by barrages of some 30,000 fireworks.
It ended in spectacular fashion, when China's first Olympic superstar, 1984 gymnastics triple gold medalist Li Ning, was hoisted by wires to the top of the stadium, circled the entire circumference as though he was spacewalking, then used his torch to send a torrent of flame spiraling upward to light the Olympic flame in a huge cauldron overlooking Beijing.
That was preceded by the parade of athletes, climaxing with the entry of the 639-strong Chinese team; It was led by flag-bearer and basketball idol Yao Ming alongside a 9-year-old schoolboy who survived May's devastating earthquake in Sichuan province.
The welcome — by a frenzied, chanting, flag-waving crowd that sought to cool itself with paper fans in the stifling heat — was thunderous. And moments later, the crowd erupted again when President Hu Jintao declared the games open.
President Bush and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were among the glittering roster of notables who watched China make this bold declaration that it had arrived. Bush, rebuked by China after he raised human-rights concerns this week, is the first U.S. president to attend an Olympics on foreign soil.
Already an economic juggernaut, China is given a good chance of overtaking the U.S. atop the gold-medal standings with its legions of athletes trained intensely since childhood. One dramatic showdown will be in women's gymnastics, where the U.S. and Chinese teams are co-favorites; in the pool, Chinese divers and U.S. swimmers are expected to dominate.
The run-up to the games had epic story lines — China investing $40 billion to build the needed infrastructure, reeling from the catastrophic earthquake in May, struggling right up to Friday to diminish Beijing's stubborn smog. China's detentions of political activists, its crackdown on uprisings in Tibet and its economic ties to Sudan — home of the war-torn Darfur region — fueled relentless criticisms from human rights groups and calls for an Olympic boycott.
Second-guessed for awarding the games to Beijing, the International Olympic Committee stood firmly by its decision. It was time, the committee said, to bring the games to the homeland of 1.3 billion people, a fifth of humanity.
"For a long time, China has dreamed of opening its doors and inviting the world's athletes to Beijing for the Olympic Games," IOC President Jacques Rogge said in his speech. "Tonight, that dream comes true."
Rogge mentioned the Sichuan earthquake, saying the world was moved "by the great courage and solidarity of the Chinese people." And he exhorted the assembled athletes, as role models for the world's youth, to "reject doping and cheating."
Later, he would laud the pageant: "It was an unforgettable and moving ceremony that celebrated the imagination, originality and energy of the Beijing Games."
The story presented in Friday's pageantry sought to distill 5,000 years of Chinese history — featuring everything from the Great Wall to opera puppets to astronauts, and highlighting achievements in art, music and science. Roughly 15,000 people were in the cast, all under the direction of Zhang Yimou, whose early films often ran afoul of government censors for their blunt portrayals of China's problems.
He produced some majestic and ethereal imagery — at one point a huge, translucent globe emerged from the stadium floor, and acrobats floated magically around it to the accompaniment of the games' theme song, "One World, One Dream."
The show's script steered clear of modern politics — there were no references to Chairman Mao and the class struggle, nor to the more recent conflicts and controversies. The ceremony was taped for broadcast 12 hours later in the United States.
A record 204 delegations paraded their athletes through the stadium — superstars such as tennis great Roger Federer and basketball's Kobe Bryant, as well as plucky underdogs from Iraq, Afghanistan and other embattled lands. The nations were marching not in the traditional alphabetical order but in a sequence based on the number of strokes it takes to write their names in Chinese. The exceptions were Greece, birthplace of the Olympics, which was given its traditional place at the start, and the Chinese team, which lined up last.
Athletes from Japan, an old foe and current economic rival of China, were greeted coolly by the crowd even though they waved tiny Chinese flags. But cheers erupted for the next delegation, Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province that should reunite with the mainland.
The U.S. team — second-largest after China's with nearly 600 members — was welcomed loudly, with many in crowd recognizing the basketball stars who brought up the rear. Bush rose from his VIP seat to wave at the athletes, nattily dressed in white trousers, blue blazers, red-white-and-blue-striped ties and white caps.
"It was a breathtaking experience walking into the stadium," said Oganna Nnamani, a volleyball player from Bloomington, Ill. "I am thankful to be part of this moment."
"This is the biggest stage," said LeBron James, who hopes to lead the U.S. basketball team to a gold medal.
The American flag-bearer was 1500-meter runner Lopez Lomong, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who spent a decade of his youth in a refugee camp in Kenya. He's a member of the Team Darfur coalition, representing athletes opposed to China's support for Sudan. On Friday he avoided any criticism and said the Chinese "have been great putting all these things together."
Abroad, human rights activists were less generous.
"The Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee have wasted a historic opportunity to use the Beijing Games to make real progress on human rights in China," said Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
For Chinese dissidents who have dared to challenge the Communist Party's monopoly on power, the start of the Olympics meant tighter surveillance and restrictions.
"It's not my Olympic Games," said Jiang Tianyong, a human rights lawyer. "It's not the games for the ordinary people."
By all indications, however, most Chinese have embraced the games, buying up tickets at a record pace, volunteering by the thousands for Olympic duties, nursing expectations of triumphs by their home team.
To their eyes, the omens were good. The ceremony began at 8 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 — auspicious in a country where eight is the luckiest number.
"It not easy to meet with such a date," said Wang Wei, secretary general of Beijing Organizing Committee. "Hopefully this lucky day will bring luck."
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Secret History of the World

2008-08-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

The Biggest Secret (Chp. 3)

The Babylonian Brotherhood
As the flood waters receded after the Venus cataclysm the survivors came down from the mountains and up from within the Earth. They settled on the lowlands and plains and began to rebuild. This was when Sumer, Egypt and the civilization in the Indus Valley suddenly appeared at a very high level of technological advancement, although they had existed before and were now restored after the upheavals.

The Sumerian society began at the peak of its development because of this sudden infusion of knowledge and the white Aryan race, originally from Mars, expanded out from the Caucasus Mountains and the Near East down into Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley where, as even conventional history agrees, highly advanced societies spontaneously emerged. However within this white race, and others also, was a genetic stream I will call reptile-Aryan or reptile-human. Whenever I use the term Aryan I am referring to the white race.

These were the crossbreed bloodlines created from the genetic manipulation of the Anunnaki. The major centre for the reptile-Aryan bloodlines, in the ancient world after the flood waters receded, was Babylon in the south of the Sumer region alongside the River Euphrates. A closer look at the evidence appears to date the foundation of Babylon far earlier than previously believed and it was one of the first cities of the post-flood era. It was here that the mystery schools and secret societies were formed which were to span the globe in the thousands of years that followed.

The Brotherhood which controls the world today is the modern expression of the Babylonian Brotherhood of reptile-Aryan priests and ‘royalty’ which came together there after the flood. It was in Babylon in this post-flood period from around 6,000 years ago that the foundation beliefs - manipulated beliefs - of today’s world religions were established to control and rule the people.

The founder of Babylon according to ancient texts and legend was Nimrod who reigned with his wife, Queen Semiramis. Nimrod was described as a ‘mighty tyrant’ and one of the ‘giants’. The Arabs believed that after the flood it was Nimrod who built or rebuilt the amazing structure at Baalbek in the Lebanon with its three stones weighing 800 tons each. It was said that he ruled the region that is now Lebanon and, according to Genesis, the first centres of Nimrod’s kingdom were Babylon, Akkad and others in the land of Shinar (Sumer).

Later he expanded further into Assyria to build cities like Nineveh where many of the Sumerian Tablets were found. Nimrod and Semiramis (or the beings those names symbolized) were from the reptile bloodlines which also became known as Titans, the genetic streams of the reptile-possessed humans and the full blood reptilians. This race of ‘giants’ or ‘Titans’ was said to have been descendants of Noah, the baby described in the Book of Enoch (previously the Book of Noah) as being a Watcher-human hybrid with extremely white skin.

The father of Nimrod in the text of Genesis was Cush, also known as Bel or Belus, who was the grandson of Noah and son of Ham. Cush became known as the deity, Hermes, which means Son of Ham.1 Ham or Khem means the ‘burnt one’ and may have been connected to Sun worship.2 A great network of deities emerged from Babylon and its connections with Egypt.

Nimrod and Semiramis have remained the key deities of the Brotherhood to this day under many different names and symbols. Nimrod was symbolized as a fish and Queen Semiramis as a fish and a dove. Semiramis is likely to be symbolic of Ninkharsag, the creator of the reptile-human crossbreeds. Nimrod was the fish-god Dagon who was depicted as half man, half fish.3 It is possible that this was symbolic of him being half human, half scaled reptile.

Queen Semiramis was also symbolized as a fish because the Babylonians believed fish to be an aphrodisiac and it became the symbol for the Goddess of Love.4 Hence the use of the fish in Christian symbolism and architecture. In her role as the ‘Holy Spirit’, Semiramis was pictured as a dove holding an olive branch and Semiramis means ‘branch bearer’ as in ‘Ze’ (the) ‘emir’ (branch) and ‘amit’ (bearer).5 Note also the symbolism of this in the story of Noah and the Great Flood, when the dove came back bearing an olive branch. The return of the reptilians after the flood?

The name, Semiramis, was evolved from the earlier Indian deity, Sami-Rama-isi or Semi-ramis.6 A fish and a dove are two symbols still widely used in religious ritual and national ceremony, although most of the people involved have no idea of the true meaning. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Northern Ireland terrorist group the IRA, has a dove as its symbol and you find the dove on many of the sceptres held by the British monarch (see picture section).

Both organizations are modern fronts for the Babylonian Brotherhood and the doves symbolize Queen Semiramis. The dove to them is not a symbol of peace, but of death and destruction because of the reverse symbolism the Brotherhood employs. If it is positive to the masses, it is negative to the Brotherhood, and this allows their negative symbols to be placed throughout the public arena. No-one complains because they have no idea what these symbols, like the dove, really represent.

Semiramis was called the Queen of Heaven (also Rhea), the Virgin Mother of the Gods, and sometimes known as the Great Earth Mother (Ninkharsag). She was also worshipped under the name Astarte ‘the woman who made towers’ and this could refer to the Tower of Babel (Babylon) which Nimrod is said to have built. The bloodlines of European royalty came from the reptile-Aryan bloodlines of Babylon and the crown evolved from the horned headgear worn by Nimrod.

The horns symbolized the monarch’s authority and later became a metal headband with three horns symbolizing royal power with divine authority7 This is represented by the symbol of the fleur-de-lis which you find throughout the regalia of modern royalty (see Figure 6 below). As I have mentioned already, the Draco ‘royal’ hierarchy, the winged albino whites, are said to have horns and I’m sure this is the true origin of the horned headgear of ancient royalty. ...

Read more

"Highly Sensitive People"

2008-08-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

Are you INFP on the Briggs-Meyer analysis? You're not alone. Up to 20% of the population is HSP. Dr. Pat Allen (http://www.drpatallen.com/) has the traits that fit you. There's even a type of HSP who seeks high stimulation. The result is eventual overwhelm or boredom, riding the razor's edge.

Listen to the Aware Show today to hear about why some people can't figure out how other people in the office could engage in small talk, do lunch, and still want to chat all the way home and into the night. HSP don't do well with small talk.

Seminar, meet-and-greet in Topanga this weekend.

PHOTOS
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PHOTOS FOR GREEDY STOCK MARKET

Stocks rise on Specs (greed), Fall on Profit-taking (greed)

2008-08-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

Television screens on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange announce the Federal Reserve interest rate decision, Tuesday Aug. 5, 2008. Wall Street held on to a big advance Tuesday after the Federal Reserve left the benchmark federal funds rate target unchanged at 2% and assuaged some of the market's fears about the economy.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Stock falls on weak jobs report, Wal-Mart sales
By TIM PARADIS, AP Business Writer 13 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Wall Street tumbled Thursday after weekly unemployment claims jumped to a six-year high and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers reported disappointing sales, touching off renewed fears that a pullback in consumer spending will damage the economy. The Dow Jones industrials fell 200 points.

The Labor Department said the number of newly laid off people seeking jobless benefits increased by a seasonally adjusted 7,000 to 455,000 last week, the highest level since late March 2002. Wall Street had expected new claims to rise to around 430,000.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said same-store sales, or stores open at least one year, rose 3 percent in July as consumers began using up their government stimulus checks. Analysts who follow the important measure of a retailer's health had expected a 3.4 percent rise, on average.

Financial stocks also lost ground after insurer American International Group Inc. reported that it lost more than $5 billion in the second quarter. The stock was by far the steepest decliner among the 30 that make up the Dow industrials.

Meanwhile, the announcement by the credit-ratings agency Moody's Investors Service that it placed the long-term ratings of credit card lender American Express Co. on review for possible downgrade added to investors' jitters.

Bill Stone, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management, said the stream of economic news has been somewhat negative lately, often short-circuiting the market's attempts to build on rallies. Thursday's reports on employment and financials only added to investors list of worries, he said.

"The concerns about a weakening economy always run to worries about the financials and then you add some negative news to them on their own and you've got what we've got today," he said.
In late afternoon trading, the Dow fell 200.13, or 1.72 percent, to 11,455.94. The pullback comes after a two-day rally in the Dow of more than 370 points.

Broader indicators also slid. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 17.61, or 1.37 percent, to 1,271.58, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 13.24, or 0.56 percent, to 2,365.13.

Oil prices that fell sharply earlier in the week rebounded Thursday, likely adding to Wall Street's downbeat mood. Light, sweet crude rose $1.44 to settle at $120.02 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bonds jumped as investors sought the protection of government debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its prices, fell to 3.93 percent from 4.05 percent late Wednesday. The dollar mostly rose against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.

The employment data Thursday indicated that the labor market continues to weaken. The number of people continuing to collect unemployment benefits rose for the week ending July 26 to the highest level since early December 2003. In recent weeks, General Motors Corp., Weyerhaeuser Co. and Starbucks Corp. have all announced job cuts, sending more people to the unemployment lines.

Stocks briefly came off their lows after the National Association of Realtors said its seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose 5.3 percent to 89 from a downwardly revised figure of 84.5 for May. Despite the June increase, the index sits 12 percent below year-ago levels. Economists surveyed by Thomson/IFR had predicted the index would fall to 84.3.

Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds Inc., said swift pullback in stocks after the day's economic readings illustrates the fragility of investor sentiment. He said the market's volatility reflects an undercurrent of uncertainty and efforts by some traders to capitalize on shifts in the mood.

"We react very strongly to bits of news," he said. "The whipsaw danger is pretty high here."

In corporate news, American International Group fell $5.25, or 18 percent, to $23.84 after the world's largest insurer reported its loss and said weakness in the credit markets has erased several billions of dollars in value from its credit default swaps portfolio and other investments.

American Express fell $1.31, or 3.5 percent, to $36.68 after the Moody's announcement.

Citigroup Inc. fell $1.18, or 6 percent, to $18.52 after federal and state regulators announced settlements Thursday in which the company will repurchase more than $7 billion in auction-rate securities and pay $100 million in fines. The company neither acknowledged nor denied wrongdoing under the settlements. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had threatened to charge Citigroup with fraudulent sales of auction-rate securities and with the destruction of key documents.

The latest worries about financials offered an unwelcome reminder of the trouble companies are having with bad debt on their balance sheets. Tightness in the credit markets makes it hard for companies to unload and even value mortgages and other paper. And the reports of rising unemployment Thursday only added to fears that defaults on mortgages and other borrowings aren't likely to end soon as consumers continue to struggle.

The results from Wal-Mart and other retailers only fanned concerns about consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

Wal-Mart, also a Dow stock, fell $3.41, or 5.6 percent, to $57.35 after reporting its July sales.

Other retailers' reports disappointed Wall Street. Target Corp. fell $1.93, or 4 percent, to $46.08, while Macy's Inc. fell 65 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $19.03.

Among technology names helping check the Nasdaq's losses, Intel Corp. rose 95 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $23.75, while Microsoft Corp. advanced 43 cents $27.45.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 5 to 2 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume totaled 912.9 million shares.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 9.65, or 1.33 percent, to 716.25.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.98 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.16 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 0.27 percent, and France's CAC-40 added 0.20 percent.
___
On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com/

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com/

Stocks fall on worries about financial sector
Thursday August 7, 7:15 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

Stocks tumble on worries about financials, unemployment, retail sales; Dow falls 224

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street tumbled Thursday as further troubles in the financial sector, higher unemployment and lackluster retail sales touched off fresh concerns about the economy. The Dow Jones industrials skidded nearly 225 points, while bond prices shot higher as investors once again sought the safety of government debt.

The stock market's pullback erased most of the 370-point gain the Dow logged the prior two sessions and shows the lack of solid conviction behind many of investors' recent bets.

Heading the list of worries, insurer American International Group Inc. reported a loss of more than $5 billion for the second quarter and the Labor Department said the number of newly laid off people seeking jobless benefits last week jumped to its highest level in more than six years. Weak sales reports from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers added to investors' unease.

Meanwhile, an announcement by the credit-ratings agency Moody's Investors Service that it placed the long-term ratings of credit card lender American Express Co. on review for possible downgrade exacerbated investors' nervousness.

Bill Stone, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management, said the stream of economic news has been somewhat negative lately, often short-circuiting the market's attempts to build on rallies. Thursday's reports on employment and financials only added to the uneasiness, he said.

"The concerns about a weakening economy always run to worries about the financials and then you add some negative news to them on their own and you've got what we've got today," he said.

The Dow fell 224.64, or 1.93 percent, to 11,431.43. It was the Dow's sixth triple-digit move in the past two weeks, illustrating how commonplace big swings in the indexes have become amid investors' uncertainty about the economy.

Broader indicators also slid Thursday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 23.12, or 1.79 percent, to 1,266.07, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 22.64, or 0.95 percent, to 2,355.73.

Oil prices that fell sharply earlier in the week rebounded Thursday, likely adding to Wall Street's downbeat mood. Light, sweet crude rose $1.44 to settle at $120.02 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bonds jumped as investors sought the protection of government debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its prices, fell to 3.93 percent from 4.05 percent late Wednesday. The dollar mostly rose against other major currencies, while gold prices fell.

The Labor Department said the number of newly laid off people seeking jobless benefits increased by a seasonally adjusted 7,000 to 455,000 last week, the highest level since late March 2002. Wall Street had expected new claims to rise to around 430,000.

The number of people continuing to collect unemployment benefits rose for the week ending July 26 to the highest level since early December 2003, the Labor Department said. In recent weeks, General Motors Corp., Weyerhaeuser Co. and Starbucks Corp. have all announced job cuts, sending more people to the unemployment lines.

Stocks briefly pulled off their lows in the session after the National Association of Realtors said its seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose 5.3 percent in June from May, rather than declining as economists had expected. Despite the June increase, the index sits 12 percent below year-ago levels.

Jerry Webman, chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds Inc., said the swift pullback in stocks after the day's economic readings illustrates the fragility of investor sentiment. He said the market's volatility reflects an undercurrent of uncertainty and efforts by some traders to capitalize on shifts in the mood.

"We react very strongly to bits of news," he said. "The whipsaw danger is pretty high here."

American International Group fell $5.25, or 18 percent, to $23.84 after the company reported its loss and said weakness in the credit markets has erased several billions of dollars in value from its credit default swaps portfolio and other investments. The stock was by far the steepest decliner among the 30 that make up the Dow industrials.

Other insurers declined following AIG's report. Genworth Financial Inc. fell $1.62, or 9.9 percent, to $14.67.

American Express fell $1.59, or 4.2 percent, to $36.40 after the Moody's announcement.

Citigroup Inc. fell $1.23, or 6.2 percent, to $18.47 after federal and state regulators announced settlements Thursday in which the company will repurchase more than $7 billion in auction-rate securities and pay $100 million in fines. The company neither acknowledged nor denied wrongdoing under the settlements. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had threatened to charge Citigroup with fraudulent sales of auction-rate securities and with the destruction of key documents.

The latest worries about financials offered an unwelcome reminder of the trouble companies are having with bad debt on their balance sheets. Tightness in the credit markets makes it hard for companies to unload and even value mortgages and other paper. And the reports of rising unemployment Thursday only added to fears that defaults on mortgages and other borrowings aren't likely to end soon as consumers continue to struggle.

The results from Wal-Mart and other retailers fanned concerns about consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said same-store sales, or stores open at least one year, rose 3 percent in July as consumers began using up their government stimulus money. Analysts who follow the important measure of a retailer's health had expected a 3.4 percent rise, on average. Wal-Mart, also a Dow stock, fell $3.80, or 6.3 percent, to $59.96.

Other retailers' reports disappointed Wall Street. Target Corp. fell $2.25, or 4.7 percent, to $45.76, while Macy's Inc. fell 76 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $18.92.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 3 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume totaled 5.09 billion shares, compared with 4.77 billion shares traded Wednesday.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 12.49, or 1.72 percent, to 713.41.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 0.98 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.16 percent, Germany's DAX index fell 0.27 percent, and France's CAC-40 added 0.20 percent.

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com

Austrians fete voluptuous, prehistoric Venus

2008-08-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

In this Aug. 7, 1998 file photo the Venus of Willendorf is shown at Vienna's natural history museum. The Venus of Willendorf, a small Paleolithic statuette with a fleshy, distinctively feminine figure, was discovered 100 years ago Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.(AP Photo/Ronald Zak, file)

Austrians fete voluptuous, prehistoric Venus
By VERONIKA OLEKSYN, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

VIENNA, Austria - It's Venusmania in Vienna, where Austrians are celebrating the discovery 100 years ago Thursday of a tiny but voluptuous figurine that dates back 25,000 years to a time when mammoths roamed the region.

Venus wine, Venus chocolates, and pancakes with Venus jam — Austria is going all out Friday to fete the limestone beauty known as the Venus of Willendorf for the hamlet along the Danube where archaeologists stumbled upon her a century ago.

The Venus of Willendorf is just 4 inches tall but is celebrated for her undeniably curvy, feminine figure. Experts say the statuette dating back to the Paleolithic era is among the world's oldest depictions of a woman.

But exactly what she represents — or who carved her all those thousands of years ago — remains a mystery. Was she a fertility symbol, a lucky charm, a goddess — maybe even a prehistoric piece of pornography?

This undated file photo provided by Vienna's natural history museum shows the Venus of Willendorf. The Venus of Willendorf, a small Paleolithic statuette with a fleshy, distinctively feminine figure, was discovered 100 years ago Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.(AP Photo/Natural History Museum, handout)

"That's of course an interpretation question," said Walpurga Antl-Weiser, an expert at Vienna's Natural History Museum who has written a book about her, adding that it's hard to know what the humans of that era were thinking.

The figurine wasn't made from local materials, and over the years, similar statuettes have been found elsewhere, including France and Russia, Antl-Weiser told The Associated Press.

Back then, mammoths, bison and woolly rhinos roamed Willendorf, with humans living in camp communities, according to the Natural History Museum.

Modern-day archaeologists found the statuette during an excavation in 1908 and brought her for safekeeping at the Natural History Museum. She made her public debut in 1998.

Before Friday's big bash, she'll make a brief homecoming trip back to Willendorf. Starting Saturday, the Venus of Willendorf — along with several "sisters" from Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — will be on display at the Natural History Museum until February.

Fact is, the figurine continues to fascinate.

Reproductions of the Venus are widely available — as chocolate, marzipan, even as soap. On Friday, Austria's post office will officially unveil a special stamp in her honor.

To Antl-Weiser, the interest is easy to explain.

"She's very corpulent but still very beautiful," she said. "One gets the feeling she has become an icon."
___

On the Net:
Natural History Museum Vienna: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/sci_austria_voluptuous_venus/28505772/SIG=10r902bk9/*http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at

PHOTOS

Plant-Eating Dinos Grew Fast to Fend...

2008-08-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Plant-Eating Dinos Grew Fast to Fend Off Tyrannosaurs
Jeanna Bryner Senior Writer LiveScience.com Tue Aug 5, 8:25 PM ET

What some dinosaurs lacked in body armor, they made up for in size. The duck-billed hadrosaur grew to adulthood much faster than its predators, such as tyrannosaurs, a new study suggests.

By about age 10, the plant-eating hadrosaur called Hypacrosaurus stebingeri had likely ballooned to its mature length of 30 feet (9 meters) from nose to tail tip, the study showed. Meanwhile, the meat-eater and hadrosaur-enemy Tyrannosaurus rex would have still been a relative pipsqueak at that age, not reaching adult size until 20 to 30 years of age.

The size difference, the researchers say, would have forced the carnivorous dinos to hunt juveniles of H. stebingeri.

"The carnivorous dinosaurs are looking at the younger herbivorous dinosaurs," Lisa Noelle Cooper, a doctoral student at Kent State University in Ohio, told LiveScience. "They are actually hunting the younger ones. Once the Hypacrosaurus reaches that adult size, we think it's safer from predation. It's a size refuge." Cooper is also a researcher with the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

Once T. rex reached adult size, about 40 feet (12 meters) in length, the tables would of course turn, with the meat-eater coming out on top.

The results are published online today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences.

Cooper and her colleagues compared growth rate data from H. stebingeri with three predators, all of which lived during the Late Cretaceous period from about 100 million to 65 million years ago: the tyrannosaurs Albertosaurus and its gigantic relative T. rex, as well as the small Troodon formosus, which reached just 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length and sported a relatively giant brain.

For the hadrosaur, Cooper and her colleagues analyzed thin sections of long leg bones and counted and measured the growth rings, which each indicate a year of life. This individual dino was about 13 years old when it died.

"Our duck-billed dinosaur grew three to five times faster than any potential predators that lived alongside it," said Drew Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine who worked with Cooper on the finding. "By the time the duck-billed dinosaur was fully grown, the tyrannosaurs were only half grown - it was a huge size difference."

Hypacrosaurus also reached sexual maturity early, at only two or three years of age, the researchers said.

"That's another added bonus when facing predators - if you can keep reproducing, you're set," Cooper said. "It's the stuff of evolution." So if the juveniles were killed off by the meat-eating giants, H. stebingeri wouldn't go extinct, because the mothers would be churning out more offspring sooner than if they had waited until a late age to reproduce.

The research was funded by the Dinamation Society, Montana State University, Museum of the Rockies and the Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust.

PHOTOS

Science News

2008-08-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

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Greek Mummy Found in Lead Coffin

2008-08-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

Brown eyelashes and other soft tissue remnants can be seen in a skull from a partial mummy of a female found in Northern Greece and dating to A.D. 300. Credit: C. Papageorgopoulou

Greek Mummy Found in Lead Coffin
Robin Lloyd LiveScience Senior Editor LiveScience.com Mon Aug 4, 9:21 AM ET

A mummy of a middle-aged woman dating to Ancient Greek times has been discovered in a lead coffin inside a marble sarcophagus, the first clear indication of embalming in Greece from the era when the Romans ruled there.

A research team co-led by Frank Rühli of the University of Zurich was able to show that various resins, oils and spices were used to embalm the body, dating to A.D. 300. Along with the skeleton, the methods partially preserved some soft tissues from the body, most of which are now brittle, thin and extremely desiccated, including eyebrows, a muscle in the hand, hair and blood cells.

Rühli told LiveScience that this a "unique finding for this temporal and spatial setting."
The body was covered with a gold-embroidered purple silk cloth, indicating that the woman was probably of high social status, Rühli said. Her bones reveal that she was somewhere between 50 and 60 years old. The finding will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The mummy currently is held at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Myrrh, fats and resins
The sarcophagus was uncovered initially in 1962 during an archaeological dig in Northern Greece, on the eastern cemetery of Thessaloniki, which was used from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine Periods for burial and other ritual practices.

In addition to macroscopic and anthropological analyses, electron microscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry examinations were also performed on the remains. These showed the presence of various embalming substances including myrrh, fats and resins. The lead coffin encasing the remains might also have assisted in their preservation, though the researchers were uncertain if that was intentional or effective.

The coffin was made specifically for this corpse. The body, with a stature of about 63 inches, or 5 foot, 3 inches, lay on a wooden pallet inside the coffin and was wrapped with cotton and linen bandages.

Writing about corpses
Writings by Homer, Herodotus and Pliny the Elder suggest that the Ancient Greeks wrapped their dead in a funeral garment consisting of a long ankle-length robe. The corpse also might be washed with water and wine and treated with olive oil, but direct evidence for embalming practices and aromatics that might have been mixed into the oil has been less clear, the researchers wrote.

"Never before [have] such embalming substances been shown for this time period in Greece," said Rühli's colleague Christina Papageorgopoulou of the University of Zurich, who did much of the analysis and initiated the study of the mummy after coming upon the sarcophagus two years ago. "Up to now, only written historic sources suggested that selected people were embalmed in Roman Greece."

For instance, Alexander the Great is reported to have been preserved in beeswax, Papageorgopoulou and her colleagues wrote.

The research was done as part of the Swiss Mummy Project, aimed at gaining information about life and death, as well as after-death alterations (e.g. embalming procedures) of historic mummies, by using mainly methods that do not destroy the tissues. The work of the Swiss Mummy Project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Research Fund, University of Zurich.

Japan's females live longest

2008-08-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

A Japanese girl checks her mobile phone in Tokyo's Shibuya district June 19, 2007.(Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)

Japan's females are longest living in world
Wed Aug 6, 2008 12:30 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Japanese girls born last year can expect to live until they are 86 years old, which would make them the longest survivors in the world, a report from the country's health ministry showed.

Boys born in 2007 can expect to live to the age of 79.2, ranking third after Iceland and Hong Kong, the report said.

Japan's females have topped the world's longevity ranks for 23 years, something researchers have attributed to their healthy diet and tight social ties, among other reasons.

The report is the latest sign that Japan is ageing quicker than any other country, with government data showing a tenth of the population aged 75 years or older.

The proportion of those 65 years or older is also seen doubling to 40 percent by mid-century.

"People are in different social environments and are influenced by various factors and eating habits, so it's hard to answer the question of why people live long," a ministry spokesman said.

"But we can say that the improvement of medical technologies helps," the spokesman added. Japan has improved treatments for the ageing population's three biggest killers -- cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Japan also has one of the world's lowest birth-rates, leaving the government with the challenge of how to fund its pension requirements, take care of its elderly and maintain productivity.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota, editing by Miral Fahmy)