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Egypt VP Targeted in Assassination Attempt That Killed Two Bodyguards, Sources Tell Fox News
An assassination attempt on the Egyptian vice president left two of his bodyguards dead, sources told Fox News Channel on Friday.
The unsuccessful attempt to kill Omar Suleiman reportedly came in the past couple of days as violent unrest rocked the capital Cairo.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs would not comment on the matter when asked Friday.
Fox News Channel said it had not been able to independently confirm the story on the ground in Cairo.
Meantime, an AFP correspondent reported that gunshots erupted Friday for a few minutes at Cairo’s central Tahrir Square at the epicenter of protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year grip on power.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declined to address the assassination reports when asked by Fox News.
“I’m not going to … get into that question,” Gibbs said.
Map shows most of Northern Hemisphere is covered in snow and ice
At first glance it looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel program about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today – with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice.
The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm.
The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force.
That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image.
The shroud of white stretches down from Alaska and sweeps through the Midwest and along to the Eastern seaboard. The bitter cold has reached as far as Texas and northern Mexico where in Ciudad Juarez temperatures today were expected to dip to minus 15C.
In the U.S. tens of millions of people chose to stay at home rather than venture out. In Chicago, 20in of snow fell leading to authorities closing schools for the first time in 12 years. The newspaper for Tulsa, Okalahoma, was unable to publish its print edition for the first time in Read more…
Red alert in Britain’s forests as Black death sweeps in
Millions of larches have had to be felled to prevent the spread of a lethal virus from Asia. Christopher Middleton reports from the bleak and bare hillsides of South Wales.
Just before Christmas, you could stand at the top of Crynant Forest in South Wales and not have a clue that there was a village in the valley below. Today, the view down to the little white houses is uninterrupted. Where in mid-December there were thousands of larch trees, now there is a mass of stumps and branches.
It looks like a photograph from a First World War battlefield. A featureless no-man’s-land, interrupted by the occasional blasted tree trunk, pointing at an unnatural angle.
And that’s just the start of it. Turn your gaze in any direction, and there is a scene of devastation. Bare hillsides as far as the eye can see; slopes that look as if they’re covered in bracken are in fact coated with fallen trees.
Meanwhile, piles of logs as tall as barns are stacked up neatly by the roadside, like casualties awaiting collection from clearing stations.
The force that swept through here was not a hurricane, but an army of tree-felling engines sent in by the Forestry Commission. Already they’ve cleared 380 acres, but there’s more to be done. Much more.
And they’re in a race against time. Across the country, some 1.4 million larches have been cut down in the Read more…
Take a look at how many ounces of silver have been needed to buy a median-priced home in the US:
For most people, there are some surefire luxuries that signify wealth, a few pearls of conspicuous consumption that say “you’ve made it!” For me, it’s always been a second home. My grandparents owned a vacation home in Arizona and then Florida when I was a kid, and it was an annual highlight to travel there every year.
But something happened on the way to my generation’s iteration of the American dream. Of all the people I know that have second homes, only one acquired it through his own hard work and success. The rest inherited them.
With high unemployment, shaky business conditions, desperate governments, weak real estate demand, and a suspect stock market, owning a vacation home is not even on the radar these days for most Americans. Paying their existing mortgage is the primary concern, something millions of homeowners still aren’t able to do. So, how is it that I can suggest a way to buy a vacation home in this market?
Because there are two trends in motion that I believe will continue working in our favor. And it likely won’t take long for them to reach a culmination point, allowing those of us with such a goal to see it realized.
First, Read more…
How Space Weather affects the US Power Grid
The US power grid is a complex electrical apparatus that has well-known sensitivities to space weather disturbances. Recent changes in its design and utilization have significantly reduced its operating margins to supply us with on-demand electricity. This means there is less flexibility available with which to deal with power shortages and blackouts.
Space weather events can damage equipment over wide geographic regions so that recovery delays become substantially longer and more costly.
The 23rd Cycle – Chapter 4 – Describes in detail the state of the US power grid, and the forces which are driving it to be far more vulnerable to solar storms than at any time in the past.
“As North America has evolved into a unified power-sharing network of regions, each buying and selling a diminishing asset, US domestic power has become more vulnerable to Read more…
Russia Fields Ballistic Missiles in South Ossetia, Report Says
Russia has moved Tochka ballistic missiles to the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia, Interfax reported last week (see GSN, Aug. 26, 2010).
“The Georgian special services have been informed about the presence of the rockets in South Ossetia, which are capable to effectively repel any aggression from Tbilisi,” Georgia, an insider from Russia’s Southern Military District told the news agency.
Also called the SS-21 Scarab, the short-range, single-warhead missile can hit targets within 75 miles, according to Interfax (Interfax, Jan. 24).
Georgia and Russia fought a brief war in summer 2008 after Tbilisi tried to re-exert control over South Ossetia. Since then, Moscow has recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and constructed military facilities in the two areas.
Georgia last week denounced the reported transfer of the Read more…
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