Photo courtesy UNR

Seismologists studying a year-long swarm of thousands of mostly minor earthquakes in northwest Nevada say they could be the precursor for a "big one," although speculation that they're related to a series of extinct volcanoes can't be ruled out.

The University of Nevada's Reno Nevada Seismological Laboratory announced Tuesday that there have been 5,610 earthquakes in a swarm that started in July 2014 in the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge near the Oregon border.

More than 200 have registered at a magnitude of 3 or greater, which is enough to be felt by ranchers and residents nearby. The largest one hit on Nov. 6 with a magnitude of 4.7, although there's also been a recent flare-up since mid-July.

"It's kind of usual that it has lasted so long," said Ken Smith, a seismologist.

It's been a topic of discussion whether or not those quakes stem from the extinct volcanos in the Sheldon refuge collectively known as the High Rock Caldera, which is at least 15 million years old.

That hasn't been conclusively ruled out yet, but Smith said there's no direct evidence of volcanic activity driving the earthquakes. To rule it out would require more seismic and geodetic measurements.

Such a repetition of small earthquakes is often associated with volcanic activity, but the latest ones point to a fairly typical tectonic sequence that is characteristic of the western Great Basin region.

"From analysis of the data to date, the activity appears to be primarily associated with a fault, or faults, dipping steeply to the southeast and striking north-northeast," Smith said.

A swarm of thousands of little earthquakes could also lead to a big one.

Three magnitude 7.0 earthquakes each century and one magnitude 6.0 or larger each decade are expected in Nevada. The last "big one" was the Dixie Valley/Fairview Peak event east of Fallon that hit in 1954 with two magnitude 7 earthquakes that came four minutes apart.

Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the country behind California and Alaska.

(Zero Hedge) A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money…

“But make no mistake, within seven days, all of the 500gpm flow will return to Cememnt Creek. Contamination may actually increase… The “grand experiment” in my opinion will fail.

And guess what [EPA’s] Mr. Hestmark will say then?

Gee, “Plan A” didn’t work so I guess we will have to build a treat¬ment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).

Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA’s plan all along”

Sound like something a government entity would do? Just ask Lois Lerner…

As we concluded previously,

The EPA actually has no concern for the environment, they just happen to use the environment as a cover story to create laws and gain an advantage for the companies that lobbied for exemptions to the agency’s regulations, and to collect money in fines. There are solutions outside the common government paradigm, and that is mainly the ability for individuals, not governments, to hold polluters personally and financially accountable.

h/t Stephen

Source: Zero Hedge

CAIRO (AP) — Islamic State sympathizers circulated an image Wednesday that appears to show the grisly aftermath of the beheading of a Croatian hostage abducted in Egypt, which if confirmed would mark the first such killing of a foreign captive in the country since the extremist group established a branch here last year.

The killing of the 30-year-old oil and gas sector surveyor likely will rattle companies with expatriate workers in Egypt and cast a cloud over President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's attempts to boost international investment and tourism following years of unrest.

The still image, shared by IS supporters on social media, appeared to show the body of Tomislav Salopek, a married father of two, wearing a beige jumpsuit resembling the one he had worn in a previous video. A black flag used by the Islamic State and a knife were planted in the sand next to him.

The photo carried a caption in Arabic that said Salopek was killed "for his country's participation in the war against the Islamic State," and after a deadline had passed for the Egyptian government to meet his captors' demands.

The picture also contained an inset of two Egyptian newspaper reports, with one headline declaring Croatia's support for Egypt in its war against terrorism and another saying Croatia reiterated its support for the Kurds, who have been battling the IS group in Syria and Iraq. Croatian troops fought in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and still serve in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

In a televised address to the nation, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said authorities there could not confirm the killing with certainty.

"We cannot 100 percent confirm it is true, but what we see looks horrific. A confirmation may not come for several days," he said, appealing for calm and adding that officials will not stop searching for Salopek as long as there is any hope.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.

Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world's prestigious religious institute, condemned the apparent killing, calling it a "demonic act of which all religions and human traditions are innocent." The statement also said Islamic law stipulates that it is forbidden to shed the blood of foreigners.

Exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood group, branded a terrorist organization by authorities, said the beheading was a sign that the government had failed to curb the rise of extremism in the country.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the image. However, it bore markings consistent with a filmed hostage demand released last week by the group, which calls itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State. It was not clear where the video was shot.

In that video, the IS affiliate set an Aug. 7 deadline for Egyptian authorities to free "Muslim women," a term referring to female Islamist prisoners detained in a sweeping government crackdown following the 2013 military ouster of the country's Islamist president.

The extremists' videotaped demand was entitled "A Message to the Egyptian Government," and was shot in the style of previous IS propaganda videos. It came just a day before el-Sissi hosted a much-hyped ceremony with foreign dignitaries to mark the opening of a new section of the Suez Canal.

As the deadline expired Friday, an Egyptian security official said that security forces were searching for Salopek across the country, focusing on the western provinces of Matrouh and Wadi Gedid, which border Libya, as well as Beheira in the Nile Delta and Giza, part of greater Cairo.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to journalists, the official said Salopek's driver, left behind by the kidnappers, said that the gunmen who seized the Croat on a highway just west of Cairo had Bedouin accents.

That suggests they could have come from a variety of isolated places in Egypt, including the restive northern Sinai Peninsula, where Egypt's Islamic State affiliate is based, or the vast Western Desert, which is a gateway to volatile and lawless Libya, home to its own Islamic State branch.

The sister of a woman jailed on charges of belonging to the Brotherhood, Esraa el-Taweel, who had previously pleaded for Salopek's life to be spared, said she spoke about the matter during a recent prison visit.

"She rejected that the life of an innocent man who is not responsible for other detainees be negotiated," said Doaa el-Taweel, who asserts that her sister is innocent. "She rejected the whole thing."

Salopek, a surveyor working with France's CGG Ardiseis, was abducted on July 22. The company has an office in the leafy southern suburb of Maadi, where many expats and diplomats live.

Last week, Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic met with her Egyptian counterpart in Cairo to press for Salopek's release, while Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry's office pledged in statement that Egypt would " spare no effort" in the search for him.

The Islamic State group holds about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared "caliphate." In Syria, IS militants have killed foreign journalists and aid workers, starting with American journalist James Foley in August last year, and released grisly videos of the beheadings.

Foley's taped beheading was followed by the killing of American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as Japanese nationals Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto.

In Libya, an IS affiliate released a video in February showing its fighters beheading a group of Coptic Christians from Egypt. In April, another video showed them beheading and shooting dead groups of Ethiopian Christians.

Egypt has seen an increase in violence since the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, with attacks by suspected Islamic extremists in both the Sinai Peninsula and the mainland focusing primarily on security forces.

Militants have also targeted foreign interests, including the Italian Consulate, which was hit with a car bomb last month. That came just days after another bomb killed Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in an upscale Cairo neighborhood.

But this would be the first time the local Islamic State affiliate has captured and then killed a foreigner in Egypt, a major escalation as the country tries to rebuild its crucial tourism industry after years of unrest following the 2011 revolt that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Last December, the affiliate claimed responsibility for the killing of an American oil worker with Texas-based energy company Apache Corp. Apache had said that previous August that one of its supervisors had been killed in an apparent carjacking in the Western Desert.

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Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Cairo, Darko Bandic in Pula, Croatia, and Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration doesn't plan to invite Cuban dissidents to Secretary of State John Kerry's historic flag-raising at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on Friday, vividly illustrating how U.S. policy is shifting focus from the island's opposition to its single-party government. Instead, Kerry intends to meet more quietly with prominent activists later in the day, officials said.

The Cuban opposition has occupied the center of U.S. policy toward the island since the nations cut diplomatic relations in 1961. The Cuban government labels its domestic opponents as traitorous U.S. mercenaries. As the two countries have moved to restore relations, Cuba has almost entirely stopped meeting with American politicians who visit dissidents during trips to Havana.

That presented a quandary for U.S. officials organizing the ceremony to mark the reopening of the embassy on Havana's historic waterfront. Inviting dissidents would risk a boycott by Cuban officials including those who negotiated with the U.S. after Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared detente on Dec. 17. Excluding dissidents would certainly provoke fierce criticism from opponents of Obama's new policy, including Cuban-American Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

Officials familiar with the plans for Kerry's visit, the first by a sitting U.S. secretary of state to Cuba since World War II, told The Associated Press that a compromise was in the works. The dissidents won't be invited to the embassy event but a small group will meet with Kerry at the U.S. chief of mission's home in the afternoon, where a lower-key, flag-raising ceremony is scheduled.

Their presence at the embassy would have risked setting back the new spirit of cooperation the U.S. hopes to engender, according to the officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly about internal planning and demanded anonymity. But not meeting them at all, they said, would send an equally bad signal.

"It wouldn't be surprising if North American diplomats prioritize contacts with the Cuban government," said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a relatively moderate dissident group. "If we show up, they leave."

View gallery

Cuban opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez delivers a news conference at an university in Santiago April …

The Obama administration says it is normalizing ties with Cuba after more than 50 years of hostility failed to shake the communist state's hold on power. It argues that dealing directly with Cuba over issues ranging from human rights to trade is far likelier to produce democratic and free-market reforms over the long term.

Key dissidents told the AP late Tuesday that they had not received invitations to any of Friday's events.

Dissident Yoani Sanchez's online newspaper 14ymedio has received no credential for the U.S. embassy event, said editor Reinaldo Escobar, who is married to Sanchez.

"The right thing to do would be to invite us and hear us out despite the fact that we don't agree with the new U.S. policy," said Antonio Rodiles, head of the dissident group Estado de SATS.

In a statement Wednesday, Rubio called the embassy omissions "a slap in the face" to Cuba's democracy activists.

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US Citizen Jordan Graddis, 24, left, takes a photo of Emily O'connell, 24, as she holds a US and …

"Cuban dissidents are the legitimate representatives of the Cuban people and it is they who deserve America's red carpet treatment,? not Castro regime officials," Rubio said.

The cautious approach is consistent with how Obama has handled the question of support for dissidents since he and Castro announced a prisoner swap in December and their intention to create a broader improvement in relations. The process has resulted in unilateral steps by Obama to ease the economic embargo on Cuba and last month's formal upgrading of both countries' interests sections into full-fledged embassies.

When senior diplomat Roberta Jacobson held talks in Havana in January, she met several government critics at the end of her historic trip but was restrained in her criticism of the government. Since then, American politicians have flooded Havana to see the sights, meet the country's new entrepreneurs and discuss possibly ending the U.S. embargo with leaders of the communist government.

According to an AP count that matches tallies by leading dissidents, more than 20 U.S. lawmakers have visited Cuba since February without meeting the opposition groups that were once obligatory for congressional delegations.

This week, after Cuba briefly rounded up dozens of protesting dissidents, the U.S. didn't suggest such action would delay Kerry's trip or cool relations.

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A Cuban honor guard prepares a Cuban national flag to be raised by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodr …

"The United States will continue to advocate for the rights to peaceful assembly, association and freedom of expression and religion, and we're going to continue to voice our support for improved human rights conditions and democratic reforms in Cuba," State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

Along with the flag-raising events, Kerry will meet Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. The pair could hold a joint news conference, in what would surely be a first since the Cuban Revolution toppled U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Kerry also plans a short walk around Cuba's 500-year-old capital, officials said.

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Weissenstein reported from Havana.

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On Twitter, follow Bradley Klapper at https://twitter.com/bklapperAP and Michael Weissenstein at https://twitter.com/mweissenstein