“A third nuclear test has been successfully staged,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News agency said.

“The nuclear test was conducted as part of measures to protect our national security and sovereignty against the reckless hostility of the United States that violated our republic’s right for a peaceful satellite launch.”

A 4.9 magnitude earthquake was detected just north of a site where Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests in 2009.

The South Korean defence ministry, which raised its military alert level after the quake, said the blast had an explosive yield of between six and seven kilotons (6-7kt) and was of “enormous destructive power”.

In comparison, the nuclear weapons detonated above Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 carried a yield of around 20kt each.

A spokesperson for the UN boss Ban Ki-moon said: “The Secretary-General condemns the underground nuclear weapon test conducted by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea today.

“It is a clear and grave violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions.”

Tibor Toth, the executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), said the event’s location was “roughly congruent with” nuclear tests carried out by North Korea in 2006 and 2009.

“This act would constitute a clear threat to international peace and security, and challenge efforts made to strengthen global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, in particular by ending nuclear testing,” he added.

China expressed its “firm opposition” to North Korea’s nuclear test, saying its wayward ally had gone ahead with the blast “despite widespread opposition from the international community”.

“We strongly urge the DPRK to honour its commitment to denuclearisation, and not to take any actions which might worsen the situation,” the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

The UN Security Council will hold urgent talks on the blast at 2pm GMT and US President Barack Obama said the test posed a threat to international peace and security.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “The UK will begin urgent consultations with Security Council partners calling for a robust response to this latest development.”

Mr Obama said the US will “continue to take steps necessary to defend ourselves and our allies” and it will work with other nations “to pursue firm action”.

He added that North Korea’s action “warrants further swift and credible action by the international community”.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “North Korea’s development of its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities poses a threat to international and regional security.

“Its repeated provocations only serve to increase regional tension, and hinder the prospects for lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.”

Japan said the North Korean nuclear test was a “grave threat”, according to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“(The test) is a grave threat to the safety of our country and a serious challenge against the global framework of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” Mr Abe said in a statement, adding it “cannot be tolerated”.

After the blast took place a North Korean newsreader urged the Korean People’s Army (KPA) to prepare for combat against its foes.

She stressed that If an order was given “the KPA should blow up the stronghold of aggression at a strike”.

“And wipe out the brigandish US imperialists and South Korea puppet army to the last man and thus accomplish the historic cause of national reunification.”

Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani advocate for girls’ education, who survived a Taliban assassination attempt, has been nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize by three members of the Norwegian parliament from the ruling Labor Party.

She was nominated on Friday, which was the deadline for nominations. Yousufzai was shot in the head in October 2012 by Taliban gunmen who sought to silence her and stop her from “promoting Western thinking.” Hovering at death’s door, Yousafzai underwent emergency skull reconstruction surgery meant to stabilize her, before she was airlifted to Britain, to receive specialized medical care and protection against further Taliban threats.

The attack drew widespread international condemnation and Yousufzai has become a powerful symbol of resistance to the Taliban’s attempts to suppress women’s rights. Three months later, after what doctors called a miraculous recovery, she left the hospital. Last week, in her first video statement since she was nearly killed, she said that she would keep fighting for women’s rights. On Friday, a campaign led by a Pakistani-British woman urged Prime Minister David Cameron and other senior government officials to nominate Yousufzai for the Nobel Peace Prize. Tens of thousands of Britons joined the call.

The woman, a mother aged 20 named as Kepari Leniata, was stripped, tied up and doused in petrol by the boy’s relatives in Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands, said the National newspaper.

She was then thrown onto a fire in front of hundreds of people.

Police and firefighters were unable to intervene, the paper said.

The Post Courier newspaper said they had been outnumbered by the crowd and chased away. Both newspapers published graphic photos of the incident on their front pages.

Provincial police commander Supt Kaiglo Ambane told the National that police were treating the case as murder and would arrest those responsible.

In parts of the Pacific nation deaths and mysterious illnesses are sometimes blamed on suspected sorcerers. Several reports have emerged in recent years of accused people, usually women, being killed.

In 2009, after a string of such killings, the chairman of PNG’s Constitutional Review and Law Reform Commission said defendants were using accusations of witchcraft as an excuse to kill people, and called for tougher legislation to tackle the issue.

Local Christian bishop David Piso told the National that sorcery-related killings were a growing problem, and urged the government “to come up with a law to stop such practice”.

The US embassy in the capital, Port Moresby, condemned the killing as a “brutal murder”, the AFP news agency reports, and evidence of “pervasive gender-based violence” in Papua New Guinea.

“There is no possible justification for this sort of violence. We hope that appropriate resources are devoted to identifying, prosecuting, and punishing those responsible for Ms Leniata’s murder.”

The excavated remains were found on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa near the foot of the Tambora volcano known for its largest eruption in recorded history.

“Based on the unearthed remains, particularly the many bronze objects and jewels, evidence suggests the site was once inhabited by the wealthy or elite who had grown prosperous through trade,” said a member of the investigative team and a PhD candidate with Bristol University in UK Emma Johnston.

“We know from the excavations and deposit stratigraphy that the houses were mostly inhabited when the accumulating pumice fall led to the collapse of the houses, trapping and killing those inside,” she explained.

The design and decoration of the discovered artifacts suggest a link between the Tamboran culture and that of Vietnam and Cambodia, the experts claimed.

The Tamborans historically were known in the East Indies for their honey, horses, red dye and sandalwood.

In 2004, an archaeological team discovered pottery fragments and bones that belonged to the Tamboran culture in the volcanic area near the little village of Pancasila.

The recent excavation is in continuation of the 2006 project under the leading of Dr M. Geria of the Bali Institute for Archaeology.

The experts hope to learn more about the buried kingdom, with an estimated population of about 10,000 people, and gain more data about the flow of events that led to their death.

Source: Press TV [May 15, 2012]

http://strangesoundsinthesky.com/ – the domain of which was registered (privately, I might add) 10/4/11, about the same time as this “phenomenon” started spreading.

The more I watched, the more similar I noticed the sounds seemed. Some where varried, but had the same base machine/trumpeting hollow-earthy reverberating sound. Which, was very suspect after about a day of “finding” the different videos. But, if they were blatantly faked…the first question that came to mind was…why? Then…who?

After milling it over, my neural-synapses made a quantum leap and, just like a particular smell reminds you of an exact feeling, one thing popped into mind – the Cloverfield movie heavy viral marketing strategy that preceded the movie itself. So, putting the two together in a nifty Google search, I found that at least one individual who performed a little CSI on the videos vs. sound contained in them, and came up with an interesting fact: all were faked, most very badly. Many more individuals have put together the “strange sound” phenomenon and J.J. Abrams’s love of viral marketing, and right now, that appears to coalesce into the reigning theory – Most, if not all, of these videos are probably viral marketing for the yet-unnamed Cloverfield sequel. In any event, the most popular videos have been proven to contain fake audio overlays…many are just natural sounds (animals, even a cymbal) slowed down with delay or reverberation effects added.

It should also be noted, and highly suspect, that there have been no actual reports to local, state, or federal authorities, nor any direct reports or coverage of these supposedly very public and should-be-heard-by-everyone events. The only witnesses, it appears, is the videographer(s), and, contrary to what may be stated in some of the videos, no one else has reported, or even seems to react, to the sounds in these videos.

Contrast this to the Phoenix Lights event that happened on one day, March 13, 1997, and by comparison on scale alone, has been documented several ways, appearing on countless TV shows and specials. (A show recently debunked the lights as military flares dropped behind, and disappearing behind, the mountain in the background). Yet, with all these “sound events” happening over widespread, very populated areas, and world-wide, I might add, there exists absolutely no additional coverage at all by anyone other than one videographer in each region. With all the instant recording devices and how they have changed the reporting landscape, it’s very improbable there are not copious, multiple views of the same event being shared all over the net. Remember the Reno air show tragedy? An accident that happened in a split second, and there were no less then 7 different angles I’ve seen, and who knows how many just didn’t make the airwaves.

continue reading..texasghosts.org

Author: KWRIGHT | Source: http: texasghosts [January 18, 2012]

The Colorado-based Mutual UFO Network, the largest UFO investigative organization in the world, received many reports of UFOs during the first week of the year from eyewitnesses in 36 out of 50 states.

The 14 states that haven’t reported in so far are Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming — but the year is young.

WHAT’S THIS OBJECT THAT SLOWLY FELL OUT OF THE SKY IN JAPAN?

“For the entire month of January 2011, MUFON recorded around 500 reports, and we’re already up to 233 after just the first week of 2012,” said MUFON international director Clifford Clift.

“For December, we had 810, compared to about 500 in December 2010,” Clift told The Huffington Post.

“Last year, we averaged over 6,000 total sightings, and if it continues at this pace, we’ll be up 50 percent, with about 10 percent of those reports ending up as unexplained after our investigation,” he said.

According to New Zealand’s WeatherWatch.co.nz, in the first 24 hours of the new year, it received “almost 80 reports and they’re still flooding in at about 10 an hour.”

“Many people around the world have been outside celebrating the new year. In the U.S., where most of the sightings came from, conditions were fairly mild and dry in many areas, so more people were outside to see things,” weather analyst Philip Duncan said in a statement.

WATCH THESE UNUSUAL OBJECTS IN THE SKY OVER CAMPINAS, BRAZIL ON JAN. 3:

A group of twinkling cylindrical lights was videotaped over Campinas, Brazil, on Jan. 3, according to latestufosightings.net, which keeps track of on-going UFO reports, including the following:

Jan. 3: Two slow-moving, bright flying objects were recorded over Sinaloa, Mexico.

Jan. 4: The skies above North Carolina were the subject of videotape of unexplained bright objects.

Jan. 5: A white-colored globe was captured on video over Mesa, Ariz.

Jan. 6: A strange, bright object was videotaped as it fell out of the sky over Wakayama, Japan.

Jan. 7: Some high-altitude glowing orbs were caught on videotape over San Antonio, Texas.

Jan. 7: On the other side of the world, two bright objects were videotaped above Minsk, Belarus.

WeatherWatch suggests that what people are seeing are either meteorites, slow-moving, orange-colored Chinese lanterns or normal aircraft.

Most UFOs turn out to be explainable objects, but with the ever-present small remainder of the unexplained, MUFON’s Clift is optimistic about how the rest of the year may unfold.

“One reason why I think it’s going to be a good year is because people are looking at the sky a lot more and now they know where to report UFOs, and they’re reporting them like crazy,” he explained.

UFOS ARE OFTEN MISIDENTIFIED OBJECTS LIKE THESE:

These candle-lit Chinese lanterns can rise high into the sky and were mistaken for UFOs in England.

Author: Lee Speigel | Source: http:huffingtonpost[January 13, 2012]

The world is greeted this morning with the first living photograph of one of the world’s newest primates, Rhinopithecus strykeri.

It will be recalled that the October 26, 2010 issue of the American Journal of Primatology announced the discovery of a new primate species, a previously unknown type of snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus strykeri. It was unique in having a nose so upturned that the animals sneeze loudly when it rains. To avoid inhaling water, the monkeys supposedly sit with their heads tucked between their knees on drizzly days, according to local hunters. After interviewing locals, scientists discovered the monkey via those killed for food.

The find was made by biologists from the Myanmar Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association and primatologists from Fauna and Flora International and the People Resources and Biodiversity Foundation.

Primatologist Ngwe Lwin took a photograph of the Rhinopithecus strykeri, snub-nosed monkey, in early 2010, that had been harvested for food in Myanmar.

Jeremy Holden of the Flora & Fauna International has shared with me, for release on Cryptomundo, the first photographs of the new primate now known as the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

Researchers working in Northern Myanmar have recently made the first photographs of the recently discovered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

A joint team from Fauna & Flora International (FFI), Biodiversity And Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) and People Resources and Conservation Foundation (PRCF), caught the monkey on camera traps placed in the high, forested mountains of Kachin state bordering China.

“The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey was described by science in 2010 from a dead specimen collected from a local hunter,” said Frank Momberg of FFI, who organized the initial expeditions that lead to the monkey’s discovery. “As yet no scientist has seen a live individual”, he added.

“These images are the first record of the animal in its natural habitat,” said Ngwe Lwin, the Burmese national who first recognized the monkey as a possible new species. “It is great to finally have photographs because they show us something about how and where it actually lives.”

Heavy snows in January and constant rain in April, 2011, made expeditions to set the camera traps difficult.

“We were dealing with very tough conditions in a remote and rugged area that contained perhaps fewer than 200 monkeys,” said photographer Jeremy Holden, who lead the camera trapping team. “We didn’t know exactly where they lived, and had to rely on information gathered from hunters; I didn’t hold out much hope of a short term success with this work.”

But in May 2011, a small group of snub-nosed monkeys walked through one of the cameras and into history.

“We were very surprised to get these pictures,” said Saw Soe Aung, a field biologist who set the cameras. “It was exciting to see that some of the females were carrying babies – a new generation of our rarest primate.”

“The images are poor quality compared to what we are now used to seeing from wildlife photographers, but this somehow examplifies the fact that these monkeys are rare, mysterious, and on the brink,” added Holden.

As with most of Asia’s rare mammals, the snub-nosed monkeys are threatened by habitat loss and hunting. The team are now working together with the Ministry for Environmental Conservation and Forest (MOECAF), local authorities and local communities to help safeguard the future of this species. In February 2012, FFI and MOECAF are planning to hold an international workshop in Yangon aiming to create an conservation action plan for the Myanmar Snub-nosed monkey.

The Fauna & Flora International (FFI) protects threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take account of human needs. Operating in more than 40 countries worldwide – mainly in the developing world – FFI saves species from extinction and habitats from destruction, while improving the livelihoods of local people. Founded in 1903, FFI is the world’s longest established international conservation body and a registered charity. (The Fauna & Flora International is the group supporting serious research in pursuit of evidence of Orang Pendek in Sumatra.)

Original article on the discovery:
“A new species of snub-nosed monkey, genus Rhinopithecus Milne-Edwards, 1872 (Primates, Colobinae), from northern Kachin state, northeastern Myanmar” by Thomas Geissmann, Ngwe Lwin, Saw Soe Aung, Thet Naing Aung, Zin Myo Aung, Tony Htin Hla, Mark Grindley, Frank Momberg. Article first published online: 27 OCT 2010; American Journal of Primatology.

The following video is found on YouTube and is incorrected labeled as being of this new monkey.

But this is only a relative of Rhinopithecus strykeri that was posted in news articles in 2010, about the new discovery. Since then an Asian site on YouTube has wrongly posted this as being the new Myanmar monkey. They actually appear to be black snub-nosed monkeys found in the Baima Snow Mountain State Nature Reserve in Weixi, southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

Author: Loren Coleman| Source:Cryptomundo [January 12,2012]