Independent journalist George Mapp was the first to publicly break the story of alleged weapon dealer Viktor Bout's imminent transfer to Florence Colorado's Super Maximum security prison (dubbed Supermax) to be canceled.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin — whom also presided over the Viktor Bout trial and sentenced him to 25 years — now sentenced Andrew Smulian who earlier pled guilty to participating in FARC weapon deal to 5 years.

Smulian will be able to deduct that time from his 60 month sentence and will be a free man in about 10 months.

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

A new report released found that the majority pharmaceutical drugs used to combat malaria are bogus or of poor quality .

The Fogarty International Center at the US national Institutes of Health (NH) funded a study that found a shocking 20 to 42% of the malaria vaccines used in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are of substandard quality or absolutely fake.

By researching studies and publications, the report explains that, according to the Southeast Asian countries, 36% of the 1,437 samples of malaria vaccines were counterfeit.

Another 30% of samples could not test positive for the pharmaceutical compounds that would be in a malaria vaccine...

The latest TEPCO estimates of the amount of radioactive fallout released from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan since the March 11th disaster now puts the level of Cesium 137 released into to the atmosphere 4.23 times higher than the amount released from Chernobyl.

According to the data, Fukushima is estimated to have released of 360,000 terabecquerels (1 tera is 1 trillion) of radioactive Cesium 137 into the atmosphere compared to the release of 85,000 terabecquerels of Cesium 137 during the Chernobyl accident.

This figure also only includes the amount of cesium released into the atmosphere and does not consider the amount released into water at the plant.

It should be noted that when declaring land contaminated with radiation to uninhabitable the levels of Cesium fallout is what is considered due to its 30 year half-life.

A newly released scientific study calculates a 'severe nuclear meltdown' resulting in worldwide nuclear fallout, similar to Chernobyl and Fukushima, is likely to occur once every 10 to 20 years.

The study was not based not on theoretical models predicting future performance such as the ones used to grant nuclear reactor operator licenses, but instead focuses on actual past operating performance at nuclear reactors.

The study also calculated the resulting nuclear fallout from such a nuclear meltdown and found that in such events only a small portion of the radioactive fallout falls near the event site itself with 75% of the radioactive contamination spreading beyond 1000 kilometers from the plant.

BP, government leaders, and other oil executives covered up a secret blowout in the Caspian Sea two years before the Gulf spill caused by the same reason.

When international law designed to stop war crimes is used by war criminals

Tony Cartalucci, Contributor
Activist Post

A historic ruling handed down by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal found former-US President George W. Bush and his associates guilty of war crimes including torture. Using standards provided by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and based on the precedent set by the Nuremberg trials, the tribunal succeeded in observing existing international standards in reaching its verdict before forwarding the results to the ICC and the United Nations...

RON PAUL'S THE REAL DEAL — JON STEWART

Another term for preventive war is aggressive war – starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.

Ron Paul's Electability

Ron Paul - Suddenly Seems Electable - Family Friendly Version

Nato summit leaders should have been forced to watch the moving protest of the former troops chucking their medals away.

It was one of the most moving experiences many of us had witnessed in our lives. It is hard to describe in words. I couldn't get the lump out of my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a woman next to me crying. Their words, their voices, crackling under the emotion of their courageous act, breaking under the weight of the pain, the trauma, their anger, sadness, and hope – theirs was a heroic and beautiful act, a moving ceremony. It was a privilege to be there with these women and men who served in our wars.

Operation Iraqi Freedom medal. Tossed. Global War on Terror medal. Thrown. National Defense medal. Pitched. Marine Corps Good Conduct medal. Flung. Navy and Marine Corps medal. Chucked.

Our new National Anthem!

In this powerful documentary you will learn how governments have historically deprived people of firearms … and then wiped them from the face of the earth.

AUSTRALIA cannot juggle its relationships with the United States and China indefinitely and must choose a ''godfather'' to protect it, according to a prominent Chinese defence strategist.

The warning by Song Xiaojun, a former senior officer of the People's Liberation Army, comes after Foreign Minister Bob Carr was told by his Chinese counterpart that Australia's close military alliance with the US was a throwback to the Cold War era.

Japanese researchers have unveiled a population clock that shows that the nation’s people could theoretically become extinct in 1,000 years due to declining birth rates.

Academics in the northern city of Sendai said that Japan’s population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.

Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium.

TEPCO believes they have accidentally spilled 12 tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has spilled into the Pacific Ocean.

TEHRAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran's currency has slid 20 percent against the dollar in the last week despite central bank intervention, and Iranians concerned about the economy said on Tuesday attempts to send text messages using the word "dollar" appeared to be blocked.

The central bank reportedly pumped $200 million dollars into the market last Wednesday after new and much tougher U.S. sanctions prompted nervous Iranians to change rials into hard currency, accelerating a rise in the price of dollars on the open market.

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

What happens when the UK's globalist nexus Chatham House, the US's International Crisis Group (ICG) run by George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski, lawyers like Robert Amsterdam, and media giants like BBC, CNN, the Guardian, and the Economist get together to back street protests? Color revolution . . .

Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked? Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.

The U.S. is in debt huge to China, and although China isn't our largest debtor; it is truly the only one on the world stage with the ability to act alone with the same menacing ability as the U.S. claims it still cans.

The reality?:

1) China could crash our economy within 4 hours if it felt it wanted to, AND that it would be a viable interest to its people and longevity. It CHOOSES not to due to the following-
a- Our dollar is kept just strong enough to attract goods from China which we all purchase and keeps China's people employed making all the stuff we used to. China wants its people working.

AFP

HONG Kong is scrambling to contain an outbreak of bird flu after recording its first human case of the illness since 2003.

A 59-year-old woman now in a serious condition in hospital.

As the bipolar Cold War system ended, a transitory phase of globalization was initiated in order to pave the way for global governance.

The color revolutions of the 21st century were a highly sophisticated method of transforming nation states into such a world system.

Mongolia experienced the draft form of color revolution in its "Red Rose Revolution" in the 1990's. The sparsely populated country was easier to manipulate due to its corrupt politics and post-Communist identity crisis.

As with many buffer states, Mongolia regarded it as beneficial economically, geo-strategically and security-wise to cooperate with larger powers such as the U.S. [1]

Laser beams, fireworks and water jets exploded from the banks of the Pearl River as China marked the opening of the Asian Games, two years after dazzling the world with a gala opener to the Beijing Olympics. The opening ceremony paid tribute to coastal Guangdong province's seafaring heritage. The venue on Haixinsha island was configured like a sailboat for the opening festivities designed by Chen Weiya, who was Zhang Yimou's deputy when he crafted the Beijing ceremony.

The president said his efforts to improve the relationship between Muslims and the West have been "earnest" and "sustained". Still, he said the progress is "incomplete" and there is more work to do.

Though issues of terrorism and extremism often dominate the tensions between the Muslim world and the West, Mr Obama said the relationship must expand beyond security issues.

"What we're trying to do is make sure that we are building bridges and expanding our interactions with Muslim countries," Mr Obama said during a joint news conference with Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Apparently released via file-sharing software, the files and the background on how they were compiled reveal that Japanese police, under pressure from U.S. authorities, trawled Tokyo in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, in search of intelligence data among the city's tiny Muslim community. According to victims of the leak, in some cases the Security Bureau tried to recruit them as spies.

The drubbing handed out to Mr Obama's Democratic congressional allies in Tuesday's mid-term elections by disillusioned voters has increased pressure on the president to create jobs.

The US leader is taking 200 chief executives of American firms to India, where a senior aide has said the White House is hoping for "tangible benefits".

The executives are drawn from the fields of technology, publishing and chemicals, among others, seeking opportunities in India's booming economy, which is one of the few bright spots in the struggling global economy. Boeing and Lockheed Martin will strengthen their bids for an $11 billion deal for 126 fighter jets.

Peter Gray flung his shoes at John Howard, a key Bush ally on the Iraq war, after demanding that the former leader defend his decision to send 2,000 troops to support the US-led 2003 invasion.

'That's for the Iraqi dead!' Mr Gray shouted as he flung the shoes during the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's live Q&A programme. The shoes missed their target and Mr Gray was escorted from the studio.

The staunchly nationalist Ata-Zhurt party had taken a clear lead by Monday afternoon in what international observers from the OSCE called a "vibrant" election which "reflected the will of the people of the Kyrgyz Republic".

Residents live under a constant fear of being hit as dozens of unmanned drones buzz the skies over North and South Waziristan. The drones frighten children and women who sometimes become the victims, especially if the intended targets are anywhere close to their homes.

According to local tribal sources, the Americans have planted several spies whose job is to insert microchips in vehicles which are then tracked and taken out by missiles fired from drones.

When the US drone attacks started several years ago, their priority was to get the al-Qaeda leadership, But a lot has changed since then, and it appears the Americans have expanded their targets to include foreign fighters, the Pakistani Taliban, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

One of the most distinctive and important teachings of Jesus was love for one’s enemies. Muslims as a whole are not Christians’ enemies, but even if a few Christians think so, that gives them no reason to violate their Lord’s teaching on loving the people they think are their enemies.

"Ok. I'm a little mixed up over the Palestinians and the Israelis . . . which one is throwin' the rocks?"

"I am all feared out, all I have left is LOVE; love for you and me, love is all" - kdtroxel

Excerpts from Petras thesis:

Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place.

Under pressure from nationalist and socialist anti-imperialist movements and regimes, colonial structured empires gave way to new nationalist regimes. Some of which restructured their economies, diversifying their productive systems and trading partners.

"There would have been no aggression and blood if not the rearmament of Georgia two years ago; we had been telling this to our partners, including to our European friends; and everyone kept silence; and how did it all ended? It led up to the war. This rearmament continues today," Putin said.

This is Russia's escape clause in the flawed 6-point ceasefire agreement which Sarkozy screwed up while he was so busy looking in the mirror at himself on the world stage.

U.S. and Afghan troops repelled attackers wearing American uniforms and suicide vests in a pair of simultaneous assaults before dawn Saturday on NATO bases near the Pakistani border, including one where seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack last year...

What is war? All war is class struggle. If we still had more communists around, they would remind us. Rich people start wars, poor people die and resources are stolen, banks emptied and all of it hidden behind flag waving and childish scare tactics. War is part of the grander plan. Is war politics or is it economics?

At one point in the last 2 years, it was estimated there there were as few as 12 “potential Al Qaeda suspects” in Afghanistan.

The person reading my water meter is a “potential suspect.” To a paranoid or law enforcement officer, anything that moves is a “person of interest.” A “suspect” is a person of interest who isn’t sleeping or dead.

Both God’s blessing and his generosity are best exemplified this month, as giving alms to the poor, suppressing greed and lust, along with feeling for suffering of the other all dominate interaction between people, bringing out the finest in both men and women.
The Intifada Palestine Team

Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas.

China may soon put an end to that...

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

by Aijaz Zaka Syed

I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare had India and Pakistan’s leaders in mind when he wrote those immortal lines in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

No matter who is in power in Delhi or Islamabad, the script of the carefully choreographed diplomatic spectacle never seems to change. From their famous encounter at Tashkent to the tense handshakes at Simla and Agra, and from Vajpayee’s historic bus trip to Lahore to the bitterness of Kargil, the more the narrative changes, the more it remains the same.

Israel agreed to sell South Africa nuclear weapons.

More than that, it makes any aid America gives Israel illegal. If Israel is nuclear, which is now official, and in violation of international treaties, just as with Iraq and Iran, then America has to demand inspections and disarmament. There is no choice. This is the law. Law for Iran, law for Iraq is also law for Israel. Israel has expected this day for years.

By Matthew Reiss

Plans for a missile base on South Korea's Jeju island, 450 kilometers, from Shanghai have threatened to disturb a precarious balance of power in the East China Sea. But Washington's aspirations to use the base have been blocked by residents of the island.

The administration of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced commitments in 2008 and 2009 to purchase and deploy a fleet of Aegis destroyers equipped with US anti-ballistic missile and radar systems, built jointly by Hyundai and Lockheed-Martin. To date, opposition to construction of the base and a pending lawsuit have delayed preparation of a home port for the ships. But following the March 26 sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan, the government has grown less tolerant of dissent.

The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 1
by Andrew Gavin Marshall at Globalresearch.ca.

There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:

For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.[1]

"We ourselves also see some difficulties in negotiating and discussing with the Red Shirts," Kiat told AFP. "If the US extends a helping hand, I don't know if it will have different results."

(*The Thai government should consider that the US entertained the idea of using a nuke , on an oil leak)

The town of Osh, the 'southern capital of Kyrgyzstan', has long ago become a major cross-point for the Great Heroin Way..."

There may be more to this than meets the eye, see Russia criticizes US, NATO over Afghan drugs from March where they complain that a surge in heroin smuggling is endangering Russia's national security, and (just this week) Medvedev Seeks War on Afghan Drugs, But U.S. Is Tepid. Anyone want to guess which recently-independent western-backed state is the Euro-hub for all these drugs?

THE KEY TO PAKISTAN’S SECURITY IS AFGHANISTAN

THE KEY TO AFGHANISTAN’S SECURITY IS PAKISTAN

US policy in Afghanistan hasn’t so much failed as it hasn’t even materialized. With the original rationale for overthrowing the Taliban their relationship with Osama bin Laden now long forgotten, buried with, not only the death of bin Laden many years ago but much more. No ties between bin Laden and 9/11 have ever been established, none of the training camps seen in the online videos existed anywhere but in fiction, truth is such a delicate thing. Children in Afghanistan are taught to be fighters from birth. Training an Afghan to fight is like training a fish to swim.

Just over a week after being forced to make a public apology, admitting that his campaign promise to get the US to abandon a military a base in Okinawa would go unfulfilled, Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has tendered his resignation, putting an end to his eight month reign.

The main cause of the collapse in polls was the result of his backtracking last month on a pledge to relocate U.S. troops stationed on Okinawa.

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia will not support efforts to punish North Korea for sinking a South Korean warship until it is fully convinced Pyongyang was behind the incident, a foreign ministry spokesman said Thursday.

"We need to receive 100 percent proof of North Korea's role in the sinking of the corvette," the spokesman, Igor Lyakin-Frolov, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

"Our specialists are currently studying the materials of the investigation. We need to draw our own conclusions about what happened. Everything will depend on the situation and the body of evidence."

WMR's intelligence sources in Asia suspect that the March attack on the South Korean Navy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette, the Cheonan, was a false flag attack designed to appear as coming from North Korea.

One of the main purposes for increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula was to apply pressure on Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to reverse course on moving the U.S. Marine Corps base off Okinawa.

Okinawans were outraged Sunday that Japan's prime minister reneged on his campaign pledge to move a U.S. military base off their island, a decision that upholds a long-standing agreement with Washington.

North Korea has threatened “full-scale war” after an international report concluded a torpedo fired by one of the reclusive regime’s submarines sank a South Korean navy ship in March.

A multinational team of independent investigators concluded that North Korea was behind the sinking of the 1,200-tonne corvette Cheonan that killed 46 sailors.

The international team, including five Australian Defence Force personnel and experts from America, Britain and Sweden, analysed the shattered hull and parts of a torpedo found on the sea bed.

The investigators say fragments, lettering and propellers on the torpedo match North Korean-manufactured torpedos acquired by the South seven years ago.

The interim government of Kyrgyzstan has declared a state of emergency in the southern city of Jalalabad after two people died in clashes.

Shots were fired as police tried to stop ethnic Kyrgyz protesters from storming an Uzbek university.

On Day One of the swine flu vaccination drive for healthcare professionals, the BMC found the vaccine had no takers. Over 2,000 city-based professionals, who had worked in isolation wards and screening centres when the virus had first struck, had consented to taking the vaccine, but none turned up.

Japanese navy commander Keizo Kitagawa recently spoke with Agence France-Presse and disclosed that his nation was opening its first overseas military base – at any rate since the Second World War – in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

Part 1: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11364
Part 2: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11365
Part 3: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11366
Part 4: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11367
Part 5: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11368
Part 6: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11369
Part 7: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11370
Part 8: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11371

Der Spiegel featured a report with the title "Revolutions Speed Russia's Disintegration."In part it revealed the prime movers behind the events in Kyrgyzstan:

"As early as February," Roza Otunbayeva (left)- now the apparent head of the provisional government - "pledged allegiance to a small group of partners and sponsors of the Kyrgyz revolution, to 'our American friends' at Freedom House (who donated a printing press in Bishkek to the opposition), and to George Soros, a speculator who previously helped unseat Edward Shevardnadze's government in Georgia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She has already confirmed that the American base at Manas will not be closed.

A U.S. military spokesman, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the security situation, said the troops have been unable to move because of the suspension of U.S. military operations at the airfield...

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has told Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat to immediately suspend the cervical cancer control vaccination programme for girls. The programme is part of a two-year study to look into the utility of a vaccine in public health programmes and acceptability of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine made by Merck. Gardasil, available in chemist shops across the country, is marketed in India by MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd.
The programme was marred by controversy after four deaths and complications among 120 girls were reported after vaccination. The girls complained of stomach disorders, epilepsy, headaches and early menarche. Women activists fear the vaccine may impact the mental health of girls who have shown no signs of distress so far.

US military flights from a base north of the Kyrgyz capital have been suspended after authorities closed the airport amid anti-government riots...

The Thai have just shown us what to do with a corrupt government as protestors stormed parliament, ran over police and chased the SOB's to the roof of parliament.

The Japanese central bank (BOJ) presently holds more than $1 trillion US Treasurys and dollar-backed assets. PM Hatoyama should announce that USTs will be liquidated incrementally at 5 percent per week until the balance is zero.

The government should warn that it will temporarily close Toyota plants now operating in the United States at a pace of one per month.

There should be a thorough review of import tariff policy, with the prospect of raising tariffs on US imports by 30 to 50 percent.

US nationals working in Japan should be required to update their Visas on a monthly basis pending resolution of the Toyota controversy.

New regulations and taxes should be targeted at US industries and financial institutions operating in Japan.

South Korea, Japan and China are discussing establishing a tripartite security framework this year, Seoul officials said Monday.

Japan's prime minister said Monday he may nix a key military deal with Washington on relocating US troops, after a local election in Okinawa showed that residents oppose any new Marine base in their region.

Indian intelligence agencies on Friday warned that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has purchased paragliders and its members are training to use them for suicide attacks on India.
According to intelligence inputs, fifty paragliders have reportedly been bought from Europe.

Give me a break! Paragliders?!

In the House of Commons a political fight is little more than a mildly-worded disagreement - but in Taiwain it's more akin to a violent football brawl.

In the island nation's most recent melee, more than 70 MPs punched and wrestled each other to the ground, yanked clothing and hurled anything in a politician's grasp.

One member of the governing party even claimed that he had been bitten by a member of the opposition.

The inauguration of the Dauletabad-Sarakhs-Khangiran pipeline on Wednesday connecting Iran's northern Caspian region with Turkmenistan's vast gas field may go unnoticed amid the Western media cacophony that it is "apocalypse now" for the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The event sends strong messages for regional security. Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?

Kazakhstan has denied US reports of possible uranium supplies to Iran...

The authorities in Tehran have also refuted the reports. According to Iran’s official media, the Iranian UN office said in a statement that this information was “not true”.

The statement came after the Associated Press cited intelligence sources as saying that the countries are about to sign a deal to export 1,300 tons of uranium ore from Kazakhstan... read full article

The Japanese ambassador to Iran has said Tokyo is ready to cooperate with Iran in the field of nuclear energy.

During a meeting with MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi in Tehran on Tuesday, Ambassador Akio Shirota also called for the expansion of ties between Iran and Japan in various spheres, the Fars news agency reported...

China on Saturday launched what it described as the world’s fastest super high-speed train. The new bullet train runs at an average speed of 217 miles-an-hour, and can reach up to 245 miles-an-hour, cutting the 1,068 kilometers (664 miles) journey time between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the country’s south (a business hub near Hong Kong) from the original 9 hours to about 3 hours.

The US yesterday told Japan the planned relocation of a US marine airbase and thousands of troops based on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa was not up for negotiation in a further sign of growing tensions over the future of the US military footprint in east Asia.

Reports said the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, told the Japanese ambassador to Washington, Ichiro Fujisaki, that Japan must honour a 2006 agreement to move the Futenma airbase – located in a crowded city on Okinawa – to the island's remote east coast.

Millions of people believe that evidence proves that Western intelligence services organized the hideous attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Even the mainstream media have stopped defending the official version and now prefer to ignore the issue altogether.

Distrust in Western governments grows as the wars of aggression waged by the USA and NATO continue to be justified with these “false flag” operations. Ever harsher domestic laws are being passed to crush all outrage and resistance in Western populations;

Against a snowy backdrop of the world's highest peak, the Nepalese prime Minister and 22 ministers, kitted out in padded jackets, hats and yellow oxygen masks, sat round a table 5300m high to endorse Nepal's declaration for the UN summit next week.

"We are all very excited because we had a historic meeting at Kalapatthar," Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told The Daily Telegraph after his helicopter dropped him at a lower plateau at Syangboche.

Japan’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) says it will quit the ruling coalition if the government decides to keep a US military base in Okinawa.
SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima said on Thursday that “the Social Democratic Party and I will have to make an important decision” if the government decides to go ahead with the plan.

A government minister has blamed Indonesia's recent string of natural disasters on people's immorality.

Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring said that there were many television programmes that destroyed morals.

Therefore, the minister said, natural disasters would continue to occur.

Police in Hong Kong are trying to trace the founder of a Chinese-language Facebook group whose members claim to be planning a mass suicide on December 21.

Meeting Japan's emissions-reduction target may cost households between $1,465 (£878) and $8,600 a year, according to a government-appointed task force.

The group warned that achieving the nation's stated target of cutting CO2 emissions by 25 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 would lead to a significant fall in disposable income for households, based on the assumption that the goal would be achieved only through domestic efforts – without the purchase of carbon offsets from overseas – and that the nation's economy expands 1.3 per cent annually.

TIME TO STOP BORROWING MONEY AND START PRINTING IT

Miners used to keep canaries in coal mines as an early warning device. If the air was so bad that it killed the canary, the miners would soon be next. Japan may be the canary for the out-of-control deficit spending policies now being pursued in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Dear Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,

In the fall of 1980 I was assigned as a civilian university professor to provide Japanese language instruction to the officers and men of the USS Knox (FF-1052), a destroyer home-ported in Yokosuka. Sharing quarters with the ship's nuclear weapons officer, I soon became aware that the Knox was outfitted with an ASROC antisubmarine missile system including nuclear depth bombs.