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China Plans A New Mega City: Population, 42 Million
A city the size of Switzerland? If China gets its way, yes.
Some ambitious apparatchiks in southern China want to combine 9 cities to create an urban area the size of New Jersey and Vermont combined.
The plan, announced in state media, would unite several existing cities in the prosperous Pearl River Delta region, including Guangzhou (12 million), Shenzhen (8.6 million), Dongguan (6.9 million) and six smaller cities. Together, these cities already account for about 10% of China’s economy, the Telegraph notes.
The Party’s planners hope improved transport links and better infrastructure be beneficial to the population and to greater economic efficiencies . Other areas in China are facing a similar gravitational pull to merge together, notably Beijing with its southern smaller twin Tianjin, already joined by a high speed train link.
Rich neighbors Hong Kong and Macau will not join the super sprawl, but it’s safe to assume that they’d like to have a say in larger regional themes, like pollution control.
The godzilla-like territory has yet to be named.
Mount Kirishima volcano in Japan explodes violently
By Brett Israel
A spectacular volcanic eruption is currently under way in Japan. The mountain Kirishima is firing red-hot magma and volcanic bombs into the air.
Mount Kirishima, a volcano on the southern island of Kyushu, began erupting on Jan. 26. A giant ash cloud poured from the volcano, prompting the Tokyo VAAC to issue an ash warning for places above 25,000 feet (7.6 kilometers).
Volcanic material shot from the crater, triggering pyroclastic flows, according to the blog Big Think.
Kirishima ejected volcanic bombs — lava fragments that are rounded as they fly through the air — more than a mile (2 kilometers) high from its vent, according to news reports. Images of the eruption show plumes of glowing material shooting a few hundred feet in the air. A volcanic vent is a gap in the Earth’s crust through which lava and volcanic gases can escape.
Kirishima technically refers to a larger group of volcanic vents on the island. These vents are quite active but mostly have small explosive eruptions. The latest eruption may be the largest since 1959.
See the ongoing eruption on the Kirishima webcam. To view live volcano webcams from around the world click here.
Justice Department seeks to have all web surfing tracked
Mandatory data retention ‘raises serious privacy and free speech concerns’
WASHINGTON — The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.
“Data retention is fundamental to the department’s work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,” US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.
“Some records are kept for weeks or months; others are stored very briefly before being purged,” Weinstein said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
He said Internet records are often “the only available evidence that allows us to investigate who committed crimes on the Internet.”
Internet and phone records can be “crucial evidence” in a wide array of cases, including child exploitation, violent crime, fraud, terrorism, public corruption, drug trafficking, online piracy and computer hacking, Weinstein said, but only if the data still exists when law enforcement needs it.
“In some ways, the problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse,” he told lawmakers.
Weinstein noted inconsistencies in data retention, with one mid-sized cell phone company not keeping records, a cable Internet provider not tracking the Internet protocol addresses it assigns to customers and another only keeping them for seven days. Read more…
Tectonic Plates Collapsing under Pakistan and Indonesia – 20 Foot Drop in Shoreline on Java confirmed by Google Satellite
This Picture is Soon to Come Again but this Time it will be with Volcanoes and Earthquakes!
On January 17, 2011, it was reported that the 17,500 Islands Nation of Indonesia was flooding. Here on the Islands of Java, the largest regions of the world’s fourth most populous country, and the largest population of Muslims in the world. This flooding would not seem unusual but experts there reported that there was no reason for the flooding that would account for the submergence of such a large populous area along the sea coastline.
It is true that there had been two weeks of raining in the mountainous regions of Mount Mandiri. Yet, the Chief Social Service NTT Piter Manuk admitted something was unusual. As he reported:
Piter Manuk – “Residents panic was triggered by the arrival of the flood that is considered not reasonable because there are no tributaries that pass through residential areas and for the first time this has happened in the history of Read more…
Russia threatens NATO with nukes
Press TV
The Russian president has called on NATO to clarify Moscow’s role in a European missile system, warning if no agreement is reached, Russia will be forced to deploy “offensive” nuclear weapons.
“So this is not a joking matter. We expect from our NATO partners a direct and unambiguous answer,” Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin.
“In either case, we are either together with NATO, or we separately find an adequate response to the existing problem,” he said.
Under former US President George W. Bush the United States proposed a plan to deploy a missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic — a plan which was fiercely opposed to by Russia. Moscow said it would deem such a deployment a threat to its sovereignty and would properly respond to it.
US President Barack Obama later scrapped the plan proposing Russia to join the missile system.
Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on a joint missile system plan in Europe during a NATO-Russia Council meeting in Lisbon in November last year.
The parties agreed to formulate terms for cooperation on the missile system by June 2011.
“Either we agree to certain principles with NATO, or we fail to agree, and then in the future we are forced to adopt an entire series of unpleasant decisions concerning the deployment of an offensive nuclear missile group,” Medvedev was quoted by AFP as saying.
China Funneling Weapons to Afghanistan
Originally published on www.DarkGovernment.com
The Chinese are believed to be working with Afghan Taliban groups who are now in combat with NATO forces, prompting concerns that China might become the conduit for shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, improved communications and additional small arms to the fundamentalist Muslim fighters.
QW-1M / SA-18 Grouse Anti-Aircraft Weapon
A British military official contends that Chinese specialists have been seen training Taliban fighters in the use of infrared-guided surface-to-air missiles. This is supported by a May 13, 2008, classified U.S. State Department document released by WikiLeaks telling U.S. officials to confront Chinese officials about missile proliferation.
China is developing knock-offs of Russian-designed man-portable air defense missiles (manpads), including the QW-1 and later series models. The QW-1 Vanguard is an all-aspect, 35-lb. launch tube and missile that is reverse-engineered from the U.S. Stinger and the SA-16 Gimlet (9K310 Igla-1). China obtained SA-16s from Unita rebels in then-Zaire who had captured them from Angolan government forces. The 16g missiles have a slant range of 50,000 ft. The QW-1M is a variant that incorporates even more advanced SA-18 Grouse (9K38 Igla) technology. Read more…
Mysterious Wood on Iceberg at Magnetic South Pole
By Anthony D Poerio • Jan 24th, 2011
(Via)scallywagandvagabond.com
Begin wildly conspiring: Australian ABC‘s Karen Barlow, who is traveling to Antarctica on the Aurora Australis to study glacial ice, has spotted this rectangular block of wood perched prominently atop an iceberg within the no compass region around the magnetic south pole.According to Barlow, “Wildlife watchers near Aurora Australis’ bridge first thought it was a relaxing seal but it was soon apparent it was rectangular in shape.” And, some say, startlingly similar to the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey...
Naturally, theories from serious to sarcastic have been bursting through the blogosphere.
Said one commenter, “It’s a door – and when you open it there’s a staircase, which leads to a secret passage way to the North Pole. I thought everyone knew about this!”
And another, claiming to be Adolf Hitler, “You vill ALL schtop lookink at ze exit hatch for our Untergroundt UFO-Schnaffenfatzer NOW!” Which was only a matter of time, because we all know it’s notoriously difficult not to slip into a German drawl anytime underground Antarctic bases are involved.
But whether it’s Elvis’s hideaway home or a piece of timber deposited by migrating swallows, one theme in these theories is common to nearly them all. As one commenter, going by the name ‘Peter’ noted “This is the end people.” Like always.
Your move, Julian Assange.
Japan facing avian flu pandemic, 4th farm tests positive for virus
TOKYO, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) — Chickens at a poultry farm in Japan’ s southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima have tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu, local government officials said Wednesday.
The prefectural government said that of the 10 birds tested for the virus, eight of them tested positive. The culling of around 8,600 chickens has already started at the poultry farm in Izumi, Kagoshima Prefecture, according to the officials.
This is the third case this year and the fourth since December that mass poultry culling has occurred in Japan following the detection of the avian flu virus, which officials say in some cases was a particularly infective strain. Read more…
Egypt on the boil, Mubarak’s son flees
Egypt‘s longtime President Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal, seen as his likely successor, has reportedly fled to Britain, along with his family following a Tunisia-inspired protest. The 48-year-old younger Mubarak boarded from an airport in western Cairo a private jet bound for London with his wife and daughter, and nearly 100 pieces of luggage, the US-based Arabic website Akhbar al-Arab reported.
Thousands of Egyptians defied a ban on protests by returning to Egypt’s streets on Wednesday and calling for Hosni Mubarak to leave office, and some scuffled with police. Activists had called on Egyptians to take to the streets again to end Mubarak’s 30-year rule after Tuesday’s “Day of Wrath” involving anti-government protests across Egypt in which three protesters and one policeman were killed. The three protesters died in the city of Suez, and the policeman was killed in Cairo.
Police used riot trucks on Wednesday to break up a crowd of as many as 3,000 people who had gathered outside a Cairo court complex, one of the places where demonstrations had started on Tuesday. Police arrested at least 500 people across Egypt on Wednesday. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the morgue in Suez demanding the release of one of the three bodies, witnesses said. Protesters said he was killed by several gunshots and demanded an autopsy.
“The government has killed my son,” the Suez protesters outside the morgue chanted. “Oh Habib, tell your master, your hands are soiled with our blood,” they said, referring to interior minister Habib al-Adli.
Hundreds of protesters also gathered outside Cairo’s journalists’ syndicate, where the authorities allow regular protests. Police beat some with batons when they tried to break a cordon. Protesters on buildings threw stones at police below. The state news agency said 90 people were arrested while trying to gather in Tahrir square in central Cairo, the focus of the biggest demonstrations. A judicial source said 64 people were detained in Alexandria.
The interior ministry had earlier banned all protest meetings. “No provocative movements or protest gatherings or organisation of marches or demonstrations will be allowed, and immediate legal procedures will be taken and participants will be handed over to investigating authorities,” the state news agency MENA cited the ministry as saying.
One opposition group, the Sixth of April Youth, called on its Facebook page for more protests on Wednesday “and after tomorrow, until Mubarak goes”. Facebook has been a key means of communication for protesters, but Egyptians said the site was blocked on Wednesday. Twitter confirmed its site was blocked on Tuesday, although users could still access it via proxy sites. The Internet has been the main platform for some of the most vociferous criticism of Mubarak. agencies
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