Solar Impulse, the Swiss bid to make the first solar-powered flight around the world, rolled out its prototype on Friday at an airbase near Zurich and powered up the engines.

All four sun-fuelled electric motors were switched on for the first time under open skies after the completed high-tech plane was pushed out of the hangar.

As bad as Friday's jobs report was, showing October's unemployment rate jumping sharply to 10.2 percent, the outlook is likely to worsen for American workers well into next year.

Another great Paul Craig Roberts piece!

The green jade seal, belonging to the emperor Qian Long (1736-1795) fetched £3.6 million, six times its estimate, at the auction on Wednesday following frantic bidding by eight competing collectors.

News of the sale was greeted with anger on the Chinese internet, where the country's growing nationalism frequently finds its voice.

The military can also impose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole and there are nine men on its death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The US Armed Forces has a death penalty – lethal injection – but there have been no executions since 1961 when an army private, John Bennett, was hanged for rape and attempted murder.

John Gross, one of the lead engineers of the NIST report is questioned about the existence of molten steel at the WTC building, the collapse of Building 7, and also explains how the NIST report did not do any analysis concerning the physical collapse of all three buildings.

See also: Thermite and the WTC Collapses

See also: 9/11 Firefighters: Bombs and Explosions in the WTC

A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honor the dead.

What family members didn't know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.

Reposted (emphasis mine) from alexconstantine's blacklist.

[Major Hasan's] past training, paid for by the US Military, [was] at Virginia Tech University ... "...most likely” one of the US Department of Defenses top PSYOP training centers and where in April, 2007, it suffered the worst school massacre in US history....Even more interesting to note is that... [there] were three other “alleged” gunmen....

Major Hasan... [was] one of the originators of what is called the US Army's “Warrior Combat Reset Program” set up to help American soldiers ... [with PTSD], and which according to these reports led to his being at Fort Hood to “electronically prepare” an experimental group of US Soldiers for their return to the Iraq war zone....

So strong was the American Military and Intelligence establishments’ belief that only by “erasing” the previous “battle stained” memories of their Soldiers could they be made to continue killing and dying that in 2007 they contracted with Russia’s Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow to purchase a system [which] was used by the Soviet Military on Russian troops being redeployed to Afghanistan.

Unfortunately for the Americans, ... the previous Soviet experiments... had a very dangerous side-effect of “triggering immediate battle memories” instead of “erasing” them and resulting in masses of Russian troops ... to “erupt” in “immediate violence” which left an estimated 37 of them dead when they began (for no apparent reason) to begin firing upon each other....

The Big Pharma frenzy over H1N1 vaccines has turned into a circus of hilarious medical quackery thanks to the fact that by the time the vaccines are available, most people will have already been exposed to the virus. Hence, most people will have already built up their own H1N1 antibodies, rendering the vaccine not just useless, but downright laughable.

I like the way he uses humor to get a point across.

some foul language

A study published in the peer-reviewed journal “Dermato-Endocrinology” explores why pneumonia, as a complication of the flu, struck many fewer people in southern US cities than those farther north. The authors of the article found an association between UVB irradiance and case-fatality rate (CFR) in the twelve regions studied by the United States Public Health Service in 1919.

...

The authors noted that “The lowest case-fatality rates occurred in the area with the highest solar UVB irradiance and lowest latitude, San Antonio TX, while the highest rates were in New London CT, which had the lowest UVB irradiance and highest latitude.

Collateral damage is nothing more than a euphemism for state-sponsored mass murder. It is the term given to people killed in military actions who were “not intentionally targeted.” In reality, this is pure propaganda. It has always been morally just to protect innocent people against aggressors. But, on the other hand, it has never been moral, nor has it ever been necessary, to bomb cities filled with innocent people.