Suicide bomber Hasib Hussain ate a last meal at McDonald’s before blowing up the No. 30 bus on 7 July, killing 13 people.

Hussain also made a number of telephone calls, at least one of which was to one of his fellow bombers, before carrying out his attack on the bus which exploded in Tavistock Square in central London. There were reports last night he may also have spoken to the other two bombers.

The final minutes of the 18-year-old from Holbeck in Leeds are believed to have been captured by a CCTV camera as he entered the fast food outlet after coming out of King’s Cross station. Detectives have been attempting to piece together Hussain’s “missing hour” between the moment he split up from his fellow bombers at King’s Cross and got on the bus. The bus bomb exploded almost an hour after the three Tube bombs.
Full: independent.co.uk

Yeah well if I were a rabidly anti-Western suicide bomber for sure I’d go to MacDonalds for my last meal…all Halal meat all the time.

LONDON (AFP) – Avian flu will “inevitably” be brought to Britain by migrating birds, the president of the British Veterinary Association warned.

The warning came as European experts argued over how to deal with the spread of the virus, a version of which has killed more than 60 people in Asia.

“Wild birds that have migratory pathways over Europe and the UK will become infected. It is inevitable that bird flu will be carried to this country by migrating birds,” said Dr. Bob McCracken.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed over 60 people in Asia, the majority in Vietnam, since 2003.

There are signs avian flu is moving west across Russia, where it has killed thousands of birds but has not been reported in humans.
Full: uk.news.yahoo.com

The giant orb of iron and nickel that anchors Earth’s center is spinning faster than the planet’s surface, according to a new study that confirms scientists’ expectations.

The finding is based on analyses of earthquake pairs that occur at roughly the same spot on Earth but at different times. On seismic recoding instruments, the earthquake signatures from waveform doublets, as they are called, look nearly identical.

When earthquakes strike, their seismic waves can travel through the planet and surface all over the globe.

The researchers analyzed 18 sets of waveform doublets — some separated in time by up to 35 years — from earthquakes occurring off the coast of South America but which were recorded at seismic stations near Alaska.
livscience.com

Deadly Tsunami Reached Around the Globe

…As a result of the influence of Israel’s neoconservative supporters and evangelicals expecting The Rapture, conservatives and Republicans are focused on the Middle East. They are apoplectic over Iran’s nuclear power program. If Iran has a nuclear power program, Iran might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in ten years. Vice President Cheney has ordered a plan for the US to use tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran’s capability should an excuse arise.

That would be the third Islamic country the US would have attacked in as many years. All hell would break loose. Meanwhile, the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that the Commission will approve Westinghouse’s sale of two nuclear reactors to China.

Conservatives and Republicans think this is a good idea. Vice President Cheney has lobbied in behalf of the sale. It is good for private business. It means $2.4 billion in revenues for Westinghouse Electric Company.

Iran will never again be a world power, even if it has a few nukes. Persia was a power in ancient times, not today. If we don’t bother Iran, Iran won’t bother us.

China is a different matter. China already is a world power. China holds enough US government debt to have the dollar and US interest rates in its hand. Last month in an official briefing a top Chinese general, Zhu Chenghu, said that if the US messes around with China or tries to interfere with China’s reunification with Taiwan, China will nuke the US: “If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

VP Cheney and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to make sure China has what it takes to do the job.

The moronic Bush administration is all concerned about “weapons of mass destruction” where they aren’t, not where they are. Why in the world is the Bush administration using up the US military and its weapons systems in Iraq, a country that was no threat whatsoever to the US, while aiding and abetting China’s rapidly growing economic and military power?

…Bush’s supporters, of course, are busy at work demonizing landlocked Middle Eastern states that have nothing but fanatical insurgents to ward off US military attacks on their homelands.

The conservative movement has disappeared. The Republican Party has disappeared. The two have morphed into a brownshirt movement that worships coercion and a strutting little marionette who believes he can threaten peoples into submission.

Why does Cheney want to sell nuclear reactors to China, but order the US Strategic Command to prepare to nuke Iran’s nuclear power capability, a capability that would allow Iran to sell more oil to an energy-starved world?

What’s going on here?
Full: counterpunch.org

People are mistaken if they think all this is simply about what’s ‘good for business’ for robber-baron capitalists. Unforunately, we are witnessing the unfolding of a carefully laid out plan, that horrifyingly, appeals to Cheney-types on an ideological level which is deeper than any consideration of mere monetary profits. Whoever these people are, they are intent on drawing the world into nuclear war and a massive reduction in world population to serve their cracked Machiavellian ‘philosopher king’ delusions.

…In 2005, the Perseids are expected to reach their maximum on Aug. 12. Peak activity is unfortunately predicted for the daylight hours across North America. Sky watchers are thus encouraged to watch during the predawn hours of Friday, Aug. 12 and again during the early morning hours of Saturday.

Observers will be favored by an absence of bright moonlight during these intervals. At midnorthern latitudes, moonset occurs on the evening of Aug. 11 at around 11-p.m. local daylight time and around 11:20 p.m. the following night. Since dawn doesn’t break until around 4:30 a.m., that means there will be about 5 to 5½ hours of dark, moonless skies for the two best viewing nights for the Perseids.

Take full advantage of this year’s favorable lunar circumstances. Next year, a bright waning gibbous Moon will flood the after-midnight sky with its light and seriously hinder the Perseids.
Full: space.com

“That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why my son died in Iraq. I’ve got the whole month of August off, and so does he.”

Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sends anyone else to see her, as happened when national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day, she would demand that “You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person.”

She told the audience of veterans from World War Two to today’s war in Iraq, that the two main things she plans to tell the man she holds responsible for son Casey’s death are “Quit saying that U.S. troops died for a noble cause in Iraq, unless you say, ‘well, except for Casey Sheehan.’ Don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name. You do not have permission to use my son’s name.”

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,” she exclaimed.

“There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”

As the veterans in Dallas rose to their feet, Sheehan said defiantly, “My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don’t owe you a penny…you give my son back and I’ll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we’ll put this war on trial.”

The co-founder of Gold Star Mothers for Peace objected to hearing that her son was among the soldiers lost in Iraq. “He’s not lost,” she said tearfully. “He’s dead. He became an angel while I was sleeping.”

She railed against the notion expressed by officials in the Bush administration that bringing the troops home now would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have died. “By sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They say we must complete our mission…but why would I want one more mother to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?”

The Vacaville, California resident said she first heard of Veterans For Peace in early May last year, during a CNN report about an exhibit of white crosses arranged in rows in the Santa Barbara beach. The exhibit was organized by VFP Chapter 54 to memorialize each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Her son had died the month before. “I decided there was only one place I wanted to be on Mother’s Day that year, and it was Santa Barbara,” she told the VFP members in Dallas.

Retired Special Forces Sgt. and VFP member, Stan Goff, today initiated a “Talk to Cindy” campaign to get Bush to meet with Sheehan. Contact information for the White House is: (202) 456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov
Full: informationclearinghouse.info

‘This is where it all began,” says Tommy Jacquette, extending a lanky arm in the direction of the run-down two-storey apartment block on the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street.

He is pointing to the spot in Watts, a district of Los Angeles, where 40 years ago, on August 11 1965, a young African-American named Marquette Fry was arrested along with his brother and mother, sparking the worst rioting ever seen in the US. When it ended six days later, 34 people were dead and 1,000 injured. An estimated 50,000 people took part in the disturbances, eventually brought under control by 22,500 police supported by almost 14,000 members of the National Guard. The cost of the disturbances was estimated at $50-100m.

…”It’s like the land where time stood still,” says Mr Hutchinson. “In 40 years, what the hell [has] changed? If anything, it could be worse. Forty years ago I don’t remember bars on homes. Despite the poverty and the segregation, I do remember a more tranquil, peaceful community. I hope 40 years from now we don’t stand on this same corner saying nothing has changed.”

“Not much has changed,” says Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic Hope, a Watts community group. “There are cosmetic changes but the solution is to help those in poverty have meaningful employment, healthcare and quality of life. Until that happens, there could be a riot here at any time.”
Full: guardian.co.uk

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres – the size of France and Germany combined – has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world’s largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying “tipping points” – delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, warned Iran this week about the extent of smuggling. The US has been protesting for the past two years over alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing that the smuggling was “a problem” for the Iraqi government. “It’s a problem for the coalition forces. It’s a problem for the international community, and ultimately, it’s a problem for Iran,” he said.

Disclosure of the smuggling came hours after four American soldiers were killed and six were wounded as a patrol was attacked near Baiji, 112 miles north of Baghdad, late on Tuesday. A bomb wrecked two Humvees and a bigger armoured vehicle.

Iran has repeatedly denied any involvement in the insurgency or party politics in Iraq.

A senior British official disclosed yesterday details of the incident two weeks ago when a group crossing from Iran was intercepted near Maysan, which is in the British controlled sector of Iraq. Iraqi security forces opened fire and the smugglers fled back to Iran leaving their cache of timers, detonators and other bomb-making equipment.

The British official said he did not know the identity of the group or those behind it but said it had the “fingerprints” of either Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, controlled by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the Lebanese based Hizbullah which Tehran backs. The incident came against a backdrop of tension between Iran and the west over allegations that Tehran is intent on securing a nuclear-weapons capability.

The US has had no diplomatic relationship with Iran since 1980 and has branded it part of the “axis of evil”. But Britain usually opts for a less confrontational approach than the US. The British official said he thought such smuggling from Iran was infrequent and trivial compared with the weapons going into Iraq from Syria.
Full: guardian.co.uk

It’s nauseating to sit and watch the ground being prepared for World War III…

An outbreak of flu in rural south-east Asia could spread around the globe in three months and infect half the world’s population within a year, unless strict measures to contain it are introduced, scientists said yesterday.

The warning comes from researchers who used computer models to investigate what would happen if the avian flu virus, which is currently rife among poultry in areas of China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, mutated into a form that spread easily among humans.

Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before the virus, known as H5N1, mutates to become more infectious to humans, possibly by swapping genes with the human flu virus.

“This is the event we’re all scared might happen at any time,” said Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London and the leading author of the study. “We’d be faced with an event worse than the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.”
Full: guardian.co.uk