20 May 13

On the Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion, This Is What Austrians Are Saying About Hitler
Forty-two percent said life was not all bad under Hitler, while 61 percent said they would be interested in a strong-armed leader who did not have to deal with democratic challenges like political opponents and elections. The survey, published this weekend, is getting prominent play in the media in Israel, which is home to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors. That’s half the number of survivors who arrived in the country since Israel was founded in 1948.  

6.8 Chile earthquake strikes off the coast
The quake was recorded at 5:49 a.m. local time (EDT; 0949 GMT) Monday, at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), some 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the city of Puerto Quellon. No tsunami warning was issued. Chile's naval seismology office says it was not felt on land. U.S. seismologists originally estimated the magnitude at 6.8.  

Moon explosion visible from Earth
A meteoroid struck the surface of the moon recently, causing an explosion that was visible on Earth without the aid of a telescope, NASA reported Friday. But don’t be alarmed if you didn’t see it; it only lasted about a second.  

The Big One: Preparing for mid-America earthquake
It’s a bleak scenario. A massive earthquake along the New Madrid fault kills or injures 60,000 people in Tennessee. A quarter of a million people are homeless. The Memphis airport — the country’s biggest air terminal for packages — goes off-line. Major oil and gas pipelines across Tennessee rupture, causing shortages in the Northeast. In Missouri, another 15,000 people are hurt or dead. Cities and towns throughout the central U.S. lose power and water for months. Losses stack up to hundreds of billions of dollars.  

Earthquake Rattles Canada, Northern US
The quake occurred in the Western Quebec seismic zone. The effects were reported felt from London, Canada, to Montreal, even going into New York and Vermont.  

Mount Saint Helens 'Reloading' For Future Eruption
"We know magma is forming, we see little earthquakes, and we know it is reloading. We know it will erupt again and we know we may have as little as a week's notice. We have to be ready," Driedger said.  

There Were Two Gigantic, Suspicious Sales Of Gold On Friday That Caused The Price To Plunge
A lot of gold bugs think the price is being manipulated somehow, or that there's some divergence between what's going on in "paper" gold (gold prices that are tied to ETFs) and what's going on in physical gold (people buying ingots or jewelery).  

White House aide: Obama’s whereabouts night of Benghazi attack ‘a largely irrelevant fact’
White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer made the talk show rounds in the wake of three scandals involving the Obama administration, but seemed to have the same message: that the details were “irrelevant”... Pfeiffer said the legality of the Internal Revenue Service scandal was irrelevant... What...Obama had been doing the night of the attack was also irrelevant.  

Obama Administration to sign U.N. Arms Trade Treaty “In the very near future”
According to a May 16 Amnesty International article, a senior US diplomat–Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman–has confirmed the U.S. government will be quick to sign the new treaty. According to the article, Countryman said on Wednesday that the United States would sign the ATT “in the very near future.”  

North fires missiles over two days
North Korea fired a short-range guided missile off its east coast yesterday despite criticism from Seoul and Washington over the launch of three other missiles Saturday. “Following the launches yesterday, [North Korea] fired a short-range projectile off the east coast toward the northeast of the East Sea this afternoon,” a Southern military official told the Yonhap News Agency.  

H7N9 case has drug- and non-resistant strains
The only H7N9 patient so far in Taiwan was carrying two strains of the same virus, with one being drug resistant and the other not, making it tricky to treat to him, doctors said. Huang Li-min, a doctor from National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), explained that it was possible the avian flu virus was not drug resistant when the patient was first infected, but mutated later to become resistant to Tamiflu.  

Japan hit by an earthquake of 6.1 magnitude
A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the northern coast of Japan's main Honshu island today, seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of damage. The quake hit at 2:48 pm (0548 GMT) in the Pacific some 50 kilometres from Namie town near the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi plant, the United States Geological Survey said.  

Swarmageddon: America braces for cicada plague of Biblical proportions
After 17 years underground growing from larva to bug, billions of cicadas are set to revel in the final four climactic weeks of their unusual life cycle. At some point over the next few weeks, when the temperature at eight feet below ground reaches a steady 64F, the nymphs, as juvenile cicadas are called, will scramble backwards out of the ground.  

6,000 ducks die of plague in Thrissur
The ducks belong to Tony Eluvathinkal of Ammadam, a farmer. “I had no idea as to what was killing hundreds of ducks wading through the kole fields on Friday. But, the death toll dramatically mounted to around 6,000 on Saturday,” Tony said. Mamman Abraham, assistant professor at the Pathology Department of Veterinary University College, who conducted the post-mortem examination on the carcass of the ducks, said that duck plague has been confirmed in poultry samples collected from the kole fields.  

4.9 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Korean Waters
A 4.9-magnitude quake hit an area near Baeknyeong Island off Incheon, west of Seoul on Saturday. It follows a series of temblors in Northeast Asia, including a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in the Chinese province of Sichuan on April 20 and a 5.9-magnitude quake in waters off Sendai, Japan last Saturday.  

Over 30 dead, dozens wounded as string of bombings hits Iraq
A series of bomb blasts across Iraq has left at least 34 people dead. 24 were massacred in a series of car bombs across the predominantly Shi’ite city of Baghdad, while 10 others were killed in in Basra, in the south of the country on Monday.  

Iran dispatches warship to shadow Gulf exercises
The frigate Jamaran cruised to within a mile of the western vessels, placing her "almost on top of" the fleet conducting exercises to secure shipping, naval sources said. Commanders stressed they did not view the frigate as a threat and said day to day relations with the Iranian navy were cordial, but its presence underlined the sensitivity of the exercise in one of the world's most strategically important waterways.  

Report: Assad preparing missile strike against Tel Aviv in case attacked again
Syria is making preparations to strike Tel Aviv in case Israel launches another attack on its territory, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday. The Syrian army has begun deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles, the report said, adding that it has received orders to strike central Israel in case additional attacks against Syria are carried out.  

Premier Li Keqiang's visit: India and China in border row pledge
Visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has said India and China must "improve mechanisms" to settle a long-running border dispute, pledging his commitment to "peace and tranquility". Premier Li was speaking during a joint address with his Indian counterpart, PM Manmohan Singh, in the capital, Delhi. Mr Singh said special representatives from the two countries would meet soon to discuss ways to end the row.  

Oklahoma ravaged by deadly tornadoes
At least one person is reported dead and several others injured in a series of tornadoes that have torn through the US state of Oklahoma. The worst damage was caused by a tornado near the town of Shawnee, 35 miles (55km) from Oklahoma City, local media report. A mobile home park near Shawnee is said to have been levelled to the ground.  

---

19 May 13

MOON EXPLOSION visible from Earth
A meteoroid struck the surface of the moon recently, causing an explosion that was visible on Earth without the aid of a telescope, NASA reported Friday. But don’t be alarmed if you didn’t see it; it only lasted about a second. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before,” said Bill Cooke, of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.  

Al-Qaeda's Syrian wing takes over the oilfields once belonging to Assad
Up to 380,000 barrels of crude oil were previously produced by wells around the city of Raqqa and in the desert region to its east that are now in rebel hands - in particular Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda off-shoot ...Because of sanctions, Jabhat's oil is largely shipped to thousands of home-built mini-refineries that have sprung up across the north of the country.  

Dark, massive asteroid to fly by Earth on May 31
It's 1.7 miles long. Its surface is covered in a sticky black substance similar to the gunk at the bottom of a barbecue. If it impacted Earth it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby. Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. PDT.  

S.Korea deploys Israeli missile on border with North
South Korea deployed Israeli precision-guided missiles on Yellow Sea islands bordering North Korea... "Dozens of Spike missiles and their launchers have recently been deployed on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands," a South Korean army official said. "They can destroy (North Korea's) underground facilities and can pursue and strike moving targets," he continued.  

PM: Israel will keep stopping weapons transfer to Hezbollah
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded at the opening of Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting to reports in the British newspaper Sunday Times saying Syria has missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, assuring that "the Israeli government acts in a responsible, determined and measured manner to ensure the State of Israel's main interest, which is the security of its citizens."  

Syria army 'storms' rebel town Qusair
Syrian government forces have surrounded the rebel stronghold of Qusair and are storming it from several directions, says Syrian state TV. Fighting has gone on around the town, near the Lebanese border, for weeks. Opposition groups say militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement are fighting alongside government forces.  

Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper
More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.  

Father of Assad spokesman Mekdad kidnapped in Syria
Gunmen in Syria have abducted the elderly father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, one of the most powerful voices in the government. The man was seized in the southern province of Daraa, government and opposition sources said.  

Italy coalition: Thousands rally in Rome against cuts
About 100,000 protesters, led by trade unionists, have rallied in the Italian capital Rome against the policies of the new coalition government. Wielding red flags and placards, they urged the centre-left Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, to scrap austerity measures and focus on job creation. Public trust in his fragile coalition with the centre-right is dropping, opinion polls suggest.  

More South Koreans support developing nuclear weapons
Perhaps it is merely basic human desire to keep up with the neighbors, but an increasing number of South Koreans are saying that they want nuclear weapons too. Even in Japan, a country still traumatized by the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a debate about the once-taboo topic of nuclear weapons.