Todays World News

"The moon may not be made of Swiss cheese, but it appears to have at least one deep hole, a vertical skylight that could serve as a protective lunar base for future astronauts. "We discovered a vertical hole on the moon," an international team of scientists recently announced. The gaping, dark pit on the near side of the moon is as big as a city block and deep as a modest skyscraper. It is thought to be a collapsed lava tube, created perhaps billions of years ago when the moon was warmer and volcanically active. The moon, overall, is more than 4 billion years old. The discovery, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in October, was made using data from the moon-orbiting Japanese SELENE spacecraft. It was not widely reported at the time, and the journal announced it today. The work was led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Space Agency JAXA."

"COPENHAGEN (AP) - The police foiled an attempt to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark's intelligence service said Saturday. Jakob Scharf, who heads PET, the Danish intelligence service, said a 28-year-old Somalia man was armed with an ax and a knife when he tried to enter the home of the artist, Kurt Westergaard, in Aarhus on Friday evening. The attack on Mr. Westergaard, whose rendering was among 12 that led to the burning of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries in 2006, was "terror related," Mr. Scharf said in a statement. "The arrested man has according to PET's information close relations to the Somali terrorist group, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda leaders in eastern Africa," he said. The man was suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities during a stay in East Africa and had been under PET's surveillance, but not in connection with Mr. Westergaard, Mr. Scharf said. The police shot the Somali man in a knee and a hand, authorities said. The police in Aarhus said that the suspect was seriously wounded, but that his life was not in danger."

"IT MIGHT sound like a contradiction in terms, but for the first time one of the main Irish consumer banks is moving to cashless banking in all its branches. National Irish Bank has written to thousands of its customers this month informing them of a "new style of banking" in which branches will not handle over-the-counter cash transactions. The letter says branches will no longer handle cash withdrawals and lodgements, night safe lodgements and foreign currency cash. Branches will continue to lodge cheques, drafts and postal orders and issue drafts. Customers are advised to obtain cash from "ATMs nationwide" or to seek "cash-back" on their debit cards. A spokesman confirmed that cashless banking was being introduced across the entire NIB branch network over the next 18 months, and had already been introduced successfully in a number of branches. He said the feedback from customers was positive with few complaints. "These branches provide better security for staff and allow us to spend more time, in a better setting, with our customers . . . Customers like them, as our staff have more time to discuss customers' overall needs.""

"The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little. More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government's largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won't affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota."

""We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements,...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to government,...and have no time to think, no means to call the mismanagers to account; but to be glad to obtain sustenance by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers...And this is the tendency of all human governments; a departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'till the bulk of society has been reduced to be mere automations of misery...And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt; Taxation follows that and, in its train, wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson (1823) THE JAILHOUSE LAWYER http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston THE REALITY ZONE http://www.angelfire.com/az/sthurston..."

"In what is being touted as the first time humans have remotely controlled insects, University of California at Berkeley engineers successfully implanted radio-equipped, "miniature neural stimulation" systems into flying beetles-most notably, the "elephant" beetle Megasoma elephas (pictured above), which can grow up to 20 cm (about 7 + inches) in length. * » See also: 2009: Bad Year for Endangered Manatees * » Get EcoWorldly by RSS or sign up by email. There's just one problem: while the engineers are able to control the bug's muscle movements, so far, the beetles can't fly-due to the heft of the micro electronics "on board". Further refinements will need to be made to these systems. Currently, tests are being conducted with miniature solar cells, piezoelectrics (pressure-generated electric power), and other micro-electro-mechanics (MEMs) to power these devices and minimize their weight. The final step would be to equip the insects with miniature cameras and/or microphones. The "cybug" project (note: entomologists do not consider beetles to be true "bugs"; this is a colloquial term) is being funded by DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the hope that one day the insects might be employed on the battlefield (e.g., to spy on troop movements) or perhaps even sent to spy directly on military commanders' strategy meetings. The chief engineers at UC Berkeley for this cybernetic insect project are Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato. "

"A little-discussed executive order from President Obama giving foreign cops new police powers in the United States by exempting them from such drudgery as compliance with the Freedom of Information Act is raising alarm among commentators who say INTERPOL already had most of the same privileges as diplomats. At David Horowitz's Newsreal, Michael van der Galien said the issue is Obama's expansion of President Ronald Reagan's order from 1983 that originally granted those diplomatic privileges. Reagan's order carried certain exemptions requiring that INTERPOL operations be subject to several U.S. laws such as the Freedom of Information Act. Obama, however, removed those restrictions in his Dec. 16 amendment to Executive Order 12425. That means, van der Galien wrote today, "this foreign law enforcement organization can operate free of an important safeguard against government and abuse." Get "Hope of the Wicked: Master Plan to Rule the World" from the WND Superstore! "'Property and assets,' including the organization's records, cannot be searched or seized. Their physical locations are now immune from U.S. legal or investigative authorities," he wrote. Obama's order said he was removing the Reagan limitations on INTERPOL:"

"Executive Order -- Amending Executive Order 12425 EXECUTIVE ORDER - - - - - - - AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words "except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act" and the semicolon that immediately precedes them. BARACK OBAMA"

"I am not unwilling to become a martyr like those who made that sacrifice after the election for their rightful national and religious demands. My blood is no redder than theirs." Anti-government protests erupted in Iran after the June 12 presidential vote, which secured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. The former prime minister at the outset of the Islamic Republic also rejected government claims that the opposition movement was a stooge of Britain and America. "We are neither Americans nor Britons. "We are loyal to the constitution," he said. "We want an honest and compassionate government that considers diversity of opinion and the popular vote to be opportunities, not threats."

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Happy New Year Everyone

DanJ's Blogs and Articles More Blogs to Check out. I've added a few more blogs to my list. Let me know what you think.

What is RFID? RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, a technology that uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance. RFID "spychips" have been hidden in the packaging of Gillette razor products and in other products you might buy at a local Tesco, Wal-Mart or Target store - and they have already been used to spy on people.

So what does all of this mean for 2010? It means that we had all better buckle up, because things are going to get very interesting very quickly.