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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/14/2013 9:39:24 PM

Sun Eruption May Supercharge Northern Lights Friday

This screenshot from a video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft shows a coronal mass ejection (center) erupting from the sun on March 12, 2013.
A recent solar blast may ramp up northern lights displays this Friday, giving well-placed skywatchers a treat, NASA officials say.

The sun unleashed a huge cloud of superheated plasma Tuesday morning (March 12) in a solar eruption known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). This cloud is not headed straight for Earth, but it could deliver a glancing blow to our planet on Friday (March 15), researchers said.

"There is now a 65% chance of geomagnetic activity on March 15 due to this event," officials wrote Wednesday (March 13) on theFacebook page of NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. "High latitude watchers — [get] ready for possible Aurorae."

The eruption originated from a sunspot known as Active Region 1690, which at the time was centered on the Earth-facing side of the sun, they added. NASA also released a video of the solar eruption as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Powerful CMEs that hit Earth directly can wreak havoc on our planet, triggering geomagnetic storms that can disrupt radio communications, GPS signals and power grids for days at a time. But Tuesday's eruption is not expected to affect Earth beyond possibly sparking some souped-up aurora displays.

The auroras, which are also known as the northern and southern lights, result when charged particles from the sun collide with molecules high in Earth's atmosphere, generating a glow. The phenomenon is usually restricted to high latitutes because Earth's magnetic field lines tend to funnel these particles over the planet's poles.

Tuesday's eruption notwithstanding, the sun has been pretty quiet recently. That's something of a surprise, because many scientists had predicted that the sun's current 11-year activity cycle — known as Solar Cycle 24 — would peak in 2013.

The lull has spurred some researchers to postulate that Solar Cycle 24 may actually have a double peak — one occurring in 2011, which saw many powerful sun storms, and another coming soon after the sun rouses from its mini-slumber.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/14/2013 9:43:06 PM

Damascenes panicked by call for men to fight Assad's war

Members of forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad are seen with their weapons at Darya near Damascus, in this handout photograph distributed by Syria's national news agency SANA on February 9, 2013. REUTERS/SANA/Handout

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - When a government-linked Islamic body in Syria said this week it was a "sacred duty" to join the army and fight the revolt, Damascus was ablaze with rumors of a mass military draft.

Men of military age panicked, worrying they would be given a gun and told to fight never-ending street battles with rebel fighters before being returned to their families in a wooden box, like thousands of soldiers over the past two years.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces are stretched thin across the country as the opposition takes further ground, overrunning military bases and executing prisoners. Fleeing reservists say morale is low among troops, who are virtually imprisoned in their barracks by officers who fear they'll defect or flee.

Mohammed, a 30-year-old who supports Assad, said he would rather flee the country than fight the rebels.

"So what exactly would I be doing if I got drafted? Killing rebels? They'll kill me back," he said, asking to withhold his second name for fear of retribution.

"I'd be dead no matter what, like a lamb to the slaughter," said Mohammed, who completed his two-year mandatory military service years ago. "Yeah, sure I support the regime, but this isn't my fight."

The official news agency SANA denied the authorities were planning to organize a draft.

"While military service is a sacred national duty, there's absolutely no truth in news by some media outlets about issuing a general call for conscription," it said. The army is "well prepared to repel and confront terrorists," it added, using the government's term for the armed opposition.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London said on Thursday the Syrian army's strength has roughly halved to around 110,000 men due to defections, desertions and battlefield losses.

"Essentially, the regime could only be certain of the loyalty of the mainly Alawite Special Forces, the Republican Guard, and the elite 3rd and 4th Divisions - perhaps 50,000 troops in total," the think tank said in its annual report on the world's militaries.

Friday is the two-year anniversary of the uprising, and Damascus residents are bracing for a big rebel push. Some parents decided to keep their children at home on Thursday. Earlier in the week there was an exodus of families leaving the city, although streets were quiet by Wednesday afternoon.

Rebel fighters have reached outer suburbs but have not been able to penetrate the city's center. Machinegun fire could be heard in nearby suburbs and shells fell on an inner-city district on Wednesday as rebel positions encroached the capital.

A diplomat said security forces had closed off half the roads leading to the capital's eastern suburbs, which are a rebel stronghold.

The revolt started in 2011 with peaceful protests demanding democratic reforms from a family-based leadership that has ruled since Assad's father, Hafez, took power in 1970.

Since then, the rebellion has grown into a full-scale civil war with a sectarian dimension. Most fighters are drawn from the Sunni Muslim majority, while Assad holds the loyalty of many in his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and other minorities, who fear retribution if he falls.

RELIGIOUS DECREE

The draft rumor spread this week after Syria's highest official Sunni Muslim body issued a religious decree on Sunday calling on Syrians to join the military, which it called both "a national and a sacred duty".

Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, a staunch supporter of Assad who lost his son in a rebel ambush in October 2011, called on parents to push their children "toward this duty, and do not worry, for they will not be killed, only rewarded by God."

Opposition sources say the call came after clashes broke out in Assad's family hometown of Qurdaha, populated by Alawites.

Alawites feel they are carrying the lion's share of Assad's fight and opposition sources said men in Qurdaha who want Sunnis to share more of the burden clashed with police who were trying to draft them. Reuters is unable to verify the account due to reporting restrictions in Syria.

Damascenes have been exchanging tales of young men snatched at checkpoints from the streets and taken into military service.

A 40-year-old man in Damascus said joining the army is his biggest fear as he would be forced to flee Syria and leave his elderly parents behind.

"I was worried enough to see my mother's reaction to the news of a mass draft, when we all first heard it on TV," he said. "She became excitable and her face flushed red. So I changed the channel right away. I don't want to upset her."

Syria requires mandatory military service of up to two years for men aged 18. But there are many exemptions, including a temporary delay if the man is enrolled in college, and a permanent exemption if he is the only son in the family.

Thousands of young men are believed to have dodged their military service to avoid going to the front lines during the civil war. Some families hide their military-aged sons at home, while some of the well-to-do have sent their sons abroad.

There is talk of male college students in their final year of studies purposely failing courses to remain enrolled in university and exempt from military service.

Some anti-Assad Damascenes said a draft would push them to join the rebels.

"Bring it on. If Assad wants to entrust me with a gun, I'll kill his troops on my first day," said one man in his forties.

"I can't tell you how many men there are, much younger than I, who are just waiting for the slightest excuse to pick up arms and join the rebels. Assad can't be so stupid as to arm men who want to see him dead."

(This article was reported by a journalist in Damascus whose name is withheld for security reasons)

(Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Peter Graff and Janet McBride)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/14/2013 9:45:27 PM

Online war erupts in Kenya after peaceful vote

Associated Press/Jerome Delay, File - FILE - In this Wednesday, March 6, 2013 file photo, a man standing near to pro-peace graffiti checks his mobile phone in Kibera, Africa's largest slum, in Nairobi, Kenya. Tribal lines are being drawn over who won Kenya's presidential election and unlike the bloody violence that scarred the country five years ago, this time the only fighting is online. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Tribal lines are being drawn over who won Kenya's presidential election. But unlike the bloody violence that scarred the country five years ago, this time the only fighting is online.

Machete strikes and bows and arrows are being replaced by bitter Tweets and angry status updates.

The exchange of barbs between supporters of Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta — who was named the winner of the March 4 election with 50.07 percent of the vote — and his closest competitor, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, has degenerated into expletive-filled fights in social mediathat have the government worried.

The Ministry of Information and Communications said this week that it has been unable to contain "the ugly messages of hate and negative ethnicity" online. It said many of the messages qualify as hate speech.

Some officials worry that the virtual feuding could trigger real-life fighting.

"The outrage is becoming wider and the tension is palpable. It's going to erode all our efforts of building national cohesion," Milly Lwanga, vice chair of the government-funded National Cohesion and Integration Commission, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The buildup of tension, it's like a room where gas is leaking slowly and then eventually there will be something small to ignite it and people will wonder where the explosion came from."

After Kenya's disputed presidential vote in late 2007, Odinga's supporters took to the streets. Tribal violence erupted, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 people.

Odinga's camp said the prime minister will file a petition with the Supreme Court on Friday to overturn the election results. Odinga alleges the election was rigged.

"We are dealing with criminals who should not be in State House but in prison," Odinga said Thursday of his opponents. But, significantly, he is urging his supporters to stay calm as his case is heard in court.

No major violence has been reported, but the interactions are ugly online. Ethnic allegiances are exposed and ridiculed. Kenyatta's tribe — the Kikuyus — and Odinga's tribe — the Luos — clashed violently five years ago.

"Mmm! Kikuyus r thieves by default. There is nowhere on the planet earth, where a kikuyu works without stealing. Its embedded in their DNA. Kill all of them n Kenya will be a pleasant country to live in," a post on Facebook by one user, Phil Miser, read.

A user named Susan Karanja replied to the tribal taunt from Miser: "We may be thieves but we are also enterprising. No wonder we employ u to use (your) brains in our jobs coz u dont use (yours) to better (your) lives n that's the way it is. We run u not vice versa so swallow it."

One popular online forum in Kenya, mashada.com, was taken offline before the election, presumably because of hate-filled postings on the site. A Facebook group called Stop Raila Odinga Now has more than 20,000 members. One recent comment was addressed to Luos and Kambas, another ethnic group: "All your provinces do is give this nation violence, war, thieves, mad people and whores."

Gordon Mutugi, a 31-year-old public relations specialist, said that many people have stopped following him on Twitter because of his support for Kenyatta. Mutugi said many of his followers have branded him a tribalist.

The hate messages are being exchanged mainly between members of three communities, said Lwanga. The Kikuyus, the Luos and the Kalenjins, the tribe of William Ruto, Kenyatta's running mate. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission has bloggers monitoring the discussions who interject with "sober" comments to try to calm the exchanges down, Lwanga said.

In 2007, Kenyans sent out hateful phone text messages but it was before social media, such as Twitter, had really taken hold, she said.

Though Kenyan leaders appear to have prevented a repeat of the 2007-08 violence this election — at least so far — the way voters cast ballots remained largely the same: Kenyatta won overwhelming support from Kikuyus and practically none from Luos. It was the same — in reverse — for Odinga.

"It is a reflection of the way campaigns were conducted to galvanize the support around one tribal affiliation," Lwanga said.

Lwanga said the national cohesion commission is trying to trace people who post hate messages so that they are prosecuted. Hate speech carries a fine of around $12,000 or imprisonment for up to three years, or both. Recently the government has made all Kenyans register their phone numbers with the Communication Commission of Kenya, which should make it easier to track perpetrators. She said her group also tried working with the National Police Service's Cyber Crime Unit to block sites filled with hate speech but realized it was not working because the perpetrators would set up another site almost immediately.

The commission is asking Twitter and Facebook to remove hate-filled comments, she said. It defines hate speech as the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior that stirs up hatred or is likely to stir up ethnic hatred.

The 2007-08 postelection violence following a disputed election and the declaration that President Mwai Kibaki — a Kikuyu — had won a second term exposed deep tribal animosity that had built up for generations. Problems between the Luo and Kikuyu community started soon after independence from Britain in 1963, when Odinga's father — the first vice president of the country — had a falling out with Jomo Kenyatta, Uhuru Kenyatta's father and the country's first president.

That set off decades of bad blood between the Kikuyus and Luos. Inter-tribal marriage became taboo.

Bitange Ndemo, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communications, said on Twitter on Thursday that the ministry has noted the concerns regarding hate speech on social media, "and we are working overdrive to control it."

Research published last year by Kenya-based Portland Communications and Tweetminster found that Kenyans use Twitter more than any country on the continent except for South Africa.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/14/2013 9:49:29 PM
Hummmm...

Why CERN is 'confident' — but not certain — it's found the God particle

By Chris Gayomali | The Week8 hrs ago

Scientists say the Higgs boson believed to have been found last July could very well be the real thing

Yesterday a new Pope was confirmed. Today, the God particle. Well, maybe.

Scientists from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced early Thursday that after relentlessly poring over a year's worth of data, it's "looking more and more" like last July's discovery was indeed the mythical Higgs boson.

SEE MORE: Samsung's Galaxy S IV: Everything we know so far [Updated]

The elusive particle represents a missing cornerstone in the Standard Model of Physics. Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs first noted its presence in 1964, and ever since, scientists have used it to plug holes in the universe's various mathematical equations. The Higgs, for example, is thought to be the force that keeps the universe from unraveling, the invisible cosmic glue that keeps galaxies, stars, planets, and humans from combusting into the erratic protons that comprise us.

For the past few years, CERN scientists have been using the Large Hadron Collider to smash atoms together at fantastic speeds. After each crash, they have just milliseconds to sift through the ensuing wreckage for evidence of the Higgs — a process that's every bit as tedious as it sounds.

SEE MORE: Why Obama's 'charm offensive' on Republicans isn't working

Per CERN's announcement:

At the Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analyzed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson. [CERN]

Scientists who are part of the collaborative effort between CERN's two lab entities — ATLAS and CMS, both of which ran atom-smashing experiments independently to corroborate results — are quick to qualify the God particle's existence as an "open question." A slight possibility remains thatthis Higgs is "a more exotic particle — possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted by other theories," says Hayley Dixon at The Telegraph. In other words: We still aren't 100 percent sure.

SEE MORE: Why MSNBC is demoting Ed Schultz [Updated]

And yet the evidence is mounting. The Higgs particle is theorized to have two characteristics that set it apart from other particles: (1) It doesn't spin, and (2) its parity (a measure of how its mirror image behaves) should be positive. In their data set, CERN researchers were able to determine that the particle they've been studying indeed possessed both traits.

Which brings us back to an earlier point: What exactly would a universe without the Higgs look like? Here's what blogger Adam Frank told NPR last year:

It would all be photons. Everything would be moving at the speed of light, right. Which means at light speed, you wouldn't be able to have the kinds of structures we see today. You'd never get atoms and chemistry and rocks. So it's really important. The property of mass is really important for getting clumpy structures, essentially, like us. [NPR]

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
3/15/2013 10:46:38 AM

Pentagon spends nearly $1B a year on unemployment



Associated Press/LM Otero, File - FILE - In this July 19, 2012, file photo, military job seekers line up to speak to law enforcement recruiters during a job fair Thursday, July 19, 2012, in Irving, Texas. Even as it faces budget cuts and forced employee furloughs, the Pentagon is spending nearly a $1 billion a year on a program that sends unemployment checks to former troops who left the military voluntarily. But eligibility for the military compensation requires only that a person served in uniform and was honorably discharged. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as it faces budget cuts and forced employee furloughs, the Pentagon is spending nearly a $1 billion a year on a program that sends unemployment checks to former troops who left the military voluntarily.

Unemployment Compensation for Ex-Servicemembers, a Labor Department program, is a spinoff of the federal-stateunemployment insurance program. The Labor Department says the overall program is meant to help "eligible workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own" such as during layoffs.

But eligibility for the military compensation requires only that a person served in uniform and was honorably discharged. In other words, anyone who joins the military and serves for several years, then decides not to re-enlist, is potentially eligible for what could amount to more than 90 weeks of unemployment checks.

The program's cost rose from $300 million in 2003 to $928 million last year.

"It eats away at other parts of the budget, and is for people they no longer have control of," said Air Force veteran Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"Why are we spending so much on (the program) at a time when we can't afford to build a new fighter jet?" said Samuel Wright, a former Navy lawyer who helps troops with employment and other legal issues. The Pentagon is facing across-the-board cuts because of automatic spending reductions that took effect this month.

Defense officials and outside experts have become increasingly concerned about the rising cost of the compensation program. And some believe it's evidence of weaknesses in other programs, such as those designed to help veterans find jobs. Some military experts suspect the availability of the money may be discouraging some veterans from actively looking for work and thus falsely inflating data on their unemployment — data that shows higher joblessness for Iraq and Afghanistan vets than for older ones and for society in general.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman, said a factor in the higher costs is the increased use of National Guard and Reserve units over the past decade for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is, once they were activated, came home and were deactivated, they were added to the rolls of ex-active duty troops.

Another factor could be the recession, which resulted in higher overall national unemployment rates, he said.

The program for former military members started under a 1958 law aimed partly at helping troops transition from life in uniform to the private sector. Unlike the larger U.S. unemployment insuranceprogram, there is no paycheck deduction from troops to fund the military one. In the private sector, employers pay a tax to fund compensation checks; in the military program, the service branches are the employer.

Claims are filed with the states. The Labor Department then tallies compensation sent to former military members and sends the bill to their individual service branches, as well as to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, where a smaller number of former employees also are covered.

Former military members are subject to the same state requirements as others when they apply to a given state for the money. All states have a requirement of some kind that recipients search for work while getting compensation, the Labor Department says. States vary in the types of search activity needed and the effort required, with some, for instance, requiring two job interviews within a certain period or different types of documentation on the search.

Nearly 120,000 people filed first-time claims for money in the military program over the last budget year, compared with 71,000 in 2008, the Labor Department says. Well over 515,000 have gotten compensation since 2008.

Wright, now director of the law center at the Reserve Officers Association, says the payments "ought to be for people who are actively seeking re-employment — it's not just free money."

Officials worry, too, about what will happen to costs when the military draws down from its wartime size, sending more troops out of the services.

A 2008 analysis for the Pentagon by the RAND Corp. research institution found that the sharp rise in military unemployment payments did not mean the civilian labor market for recent veterans had weakened. The study suggested "a rethinking" of the program and also noted the big increase in reservists called up over the decade.

It's not solely the number of reservists activated that matters, but also how many know about, and claim, their legal right to go back to their former civilian employers after coming home from mobilization.

"I think one reason that a lot of (recent) veterans are unemployed and have great difficulty finding work is because employers are routinely violating" the law on returning troops and that too few are being prosecuted for it, Wright said. He says his law center gets more than 700 calls a month from people complaining about that or other employment or legal issues.

There are plenty of other reasons troops may not go straight from life in uniform to one in the private sector.

The need for "down time" — particularly among those who saw combat — can be a huge factor in re-acclimating.

Some troops also find it hard to face civilian life after the more authoritarian and regimented style of the military.

It also can take time for some to figure out how their military skills and experience translate to private sector jobs.

And some may not want what's being offered in the job market.

"A lot say, 'Hey, I joined the Army or Marines so I could get out of working at McDonald's,'" Wright says.

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans is 9.4 percent, compared with 7.7 percent among all Americans, and has been higher for some years.

The compensation "could be funding the acclimation period for veterans; some veterans may be declining employment opportunities or choosing not to seek employment," said a study last year by analysts at the Center for a New American Security.

That may be inflating the program's cost and "artificially inflating the ranks of unemployed veterans with individuals who are not actively seeking employment," said the study, which looked at how American business executives view hiring veterans.

It said the Defense Department should work to better understand the complex needs of veterans during transition to civilian society and figure out how "efficient, helpful and necessary" the unemployment compensation is.

"Questions to be considered include which veterans require an acclimation period, how much time is generally needed and whether (the compensation) is currently supporting recently separated veterans through that acclimation period," the authors said.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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