Close encounter - coming up

This silver dollar was just sold for $10million

A Flowing Hair Silver Dollar, the first silver dollar struck by the United States Mint, is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters January 24, 2013.

The Flowing Hair Silver Dollar more than doubled the previous $4.1 million auction record for a coin set in 1999, auction house Stack's Bowers Galleries said. Legend Numismatics, a rare-coin firm based in New Jersey, bought the coin, which was the highlight of the evening sale in New York that fetched a total of $17.2 million. "We felt in our heart that this would be the very first coin to exceed the $10 million barrier in auction and were in fact prepared to bid much high in order to acquire this unique piece of history," the company said in a statement, adding it had no plans to sell the coin in the near future.
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One Martyr Down: The Untold Story Of A Canadian Peacekeeper Killed At War

January 2, 2013 by Adam Day

 PATROL BASE KHIAM, SOUTHERN LEBANON.
JULY 25, 2006, 19:10 LOCAL

Two nights ago Wolf dreamed he would die in this bunker. He dreamed he was going to burn as the metre-thick concrete walls collapsed on top of him. And though he was now calm, Wolf was still pretty sure he was going to die and nothing happening at the moment could have changed his mind. The shells and bombs were right on target; the last wave had landed inside the small white UN compound and blew the door off the underground bunker, the last refuge of the four peacekeepers now under siege. Across Lebanon and across the world responsible people were trying to stop the attack: “You’re killing my people,” they yelled into phones and radio handsets. They were trying to save Wolf but something had begun and it wouldn’t be stopped so easily. Wolf tried to call his wife in Kingston, Ont.; the phone rang but all she heard was static. “I love you. I love you,” she yelled into the static. The peacekeepers called for help but there was no help. They were alone, trapped and unarmed in the middle of a Middle Eastern war zone, supervising a truce that didn’t exist on a mission that didn’t make sense.

This is the story of how Wolf–Canadian Army Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener—came to be in that bunker and who killed him and why, which remains an unanswered question. It is also the story of the world’s oldest peacekeeping mission, the lost organization in charge of that mission and the failed dream behind it all.
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Speech by Bashar al-Assad on Syrian crisis

By Bashar al-Assad 
Damascus (Syria) | 6 January 2013

 Editor's Note: This is a long speech made by Syrian President Assad just a few days ago.
You will not see this kind of material published in the western mainstream media who has branded Assad as a murderer of his own people. Judge for yourself.

"Mr. Primer, Ministers,

Heads and members of the leaderships of popular organizations and trade unions,
Sisters and brothers,
Today I look at your faces and the faces of the people of our country as they are covered with sorrow and pain. I look into the eyes of Syria’s children and I don’t see an innocent laugh shinning, nor do I see toys that draw a smile on their faces. I watch the hands of elderly people and see them open to prayer for the safety of a son, a daughter or a grandson.
We meet today with suffering prevailing over Syria’s land leaving no room for joy in any corner of the homeland. Safety and security have been absent from the country’s streets and alleys.
We meet today and there are mothers who lost their sons, families who lost their breadwinners, children who became orphans and brothers who have been parted from each other, being martyred, displaced or missing.
If pain is pervading like a dark cloud over the country, the emotional state, though sublime, is not enough to compensate for the loss of the loved ones or the restoration of security and peace to the country or for providing bread, water, fuel and medicine nationwide.
Out of the womb of pain, hope should be begotten and from the depth of suffering the most important solutions rise. As the dark cloud in the sky conceals sunlight, it also carries in its layers rain, purity and hope of welfare and giving.
Read full speech here

China blazes trail for 'clean' nuclear power from thorium

Mr Jiang estimates that China has enough thorium to power its electricity needs for "20,000 years".

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The Chinese are running away with thorium energy, sharpening a global race for the prize of clean, cheap, and safe nuclear power. Good luck to them. They may do us all a favour. 

  

Princeling Jiang Mianheng, son of former leader Jiang Zemin, is spearheading a project for China's National Academy of Sciences with a start-up budget of $350m.

He has already recruited 140 PhD scientists, working full-time on thorium power at the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear and Applied Physics. He will have 750 staff by 2015.

The aim is to break free of the archaic pressurized-water reactors fueled by uranium -- originally designed for US submarines in the 1950s -- opting instead for new generation of thorium reactors that produce far less toxic waste and cannot blow their top like Fukushima.

"China is the country to watch," said Baroness Bryony Worthington, head of the All-Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy, who visited the Shanghai operations recently with a team from Britain's National Nuclear Laboratory.

"They are really going for it, and have talented researchers. This could lead to a massive break-through."
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Watch this dude!

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

These six extreme UV images of the sun, taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, track the rising level of solar activity as the sun ascends toward the peak of the latest 11-year sunspot cycle. More

By Dr. Tony Phillips 

 Jan. 8, 2013:  In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star.  While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. 
There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate," lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.
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