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Spain Earthquake | Spain officials put earthquake death toll at 8

LORCA, Spain – Ancient town of Lorca in southeastern Spain was reportedly struck by two rareearthquakeson Wednesday, May 11, 2011, international news reported.
The first earthquake wherein the epicenter was close to the town of Lorca was felt with a 4.4 magnitude. Two hours later, another tremor was felt at5.2 magnitude
Thousands of people have spent the night outdoors in this southeastern Spanish city in fear of further tremors after Spain's mostdestructive earthquakesin 50 years killed eight people and injured dozens.
People draped in blankets to protect them from the morning cold Thursday queued up for hot drinks handed out by volunteers at the five makeshift camps set up in the small city of Lorca that was hit by the two quakes.
A Murcia regional government statement said eight people, including one minor, had died in the quakes which seriously damaged many buildings and squashed cars Wednesday. A total of 167 people were treated in hospitals in the city.
Officials had initially put the death toll at 10.
VIA Spain Earthquake | Spain officials put earthquake death toll at 8
4 Planets Converge in Night Sky. Impending disaster?

During this month of May, four bright planets will engage in a fascinating dance with each other in the morning sky.
Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will be involved in a series of conjunctions, joined at the end of the month by a very thin, waning crescent moon. We could even refer to this as a "celestial summit meeting," or more precisely, a series of summit meetings during May 2011.
Twice during May three planets will converge to form a "trio."
According to Belgian calculator Jean Meeus, a trio is when three planets fit within a circle with a minimum diameter of 5 degrees. Such a limit was one that Meeus chose more or less arbitrarily, but as he notes, "We have to make a choice."
On Wednesday (May 11), Mercury, Venus and Jupiter will converge within 2.05-degrees of each other, followed just 10 days later by another trio, this time formed by Mercury, Venus and Mars, which will crowd within a 2.13-degree circle. Then late in the month, on three successive mornings, May 29th, 30th, and 31st, the waning crescent moon will arrive, sweeping past Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury stretched out across the eastern sky from upper right to lower left.
Evil omen? Impending disaster?
What might ancient sky watchers from 500 or 1,000 years ago have ascribed to such a series of gatherings as this?
Most likely, they would have felt a mixture of fear and wonder. A fine example was a case in 1186 A.D. when an unusual gathering of the five planets visible to the naked eye resulted in a near-panic across the whole of Europe after religious leaders predicted that worldwide disasters would result!
Even today, in our modern world, similar fears sometimes arise.
You need only Google-search the date May 5, 2000, and you will find a number of different websites that predicted a variety of disasters attributed to the combined gravitational and tidal forces associated with a gathering of the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
One website proclaimed that it would be "one of the most exciting, powerful and transformative celestial events of our millennium according to astronomy and astrology experts."
In many ways, these words sound all too similar to the hype and tripe that has been bandied about during these past few years concerning the Mayan Long Count calendar in 2012.
Needless to say, we all survived the recent 2000 celestial summit and despite what you might hear or read in the coming days ahead, absolutely nothing cataclysmic will take place (at least nothing that can be directly attributed to this impending dawn gathering of the moon and planets).
Tough to see
The only tragedy regarding this display is that those living north of the equator will have a difficult time seeing it.
At first glance there doesn't appear to be any problem concerning the visibility of these objects. Their elongations from the sun will range from 18 degrees to 26 degrees, which should place them all in dark skies. Unfortunately, during May, as seen especially from mid-northern latitudes, the ecliptic is oriented at a shallow angle relative to the eastern horizon at dawn.
As a result, the moon and planets will rise into view during late twilight and will lie very low to the east-northeast horizon by sunrise. To see them, you'll have to make sure not to have any potential obstructions to your visibility such as trees or buildings in that direction.
But coming above the horizon so near to sunrise will also mean that you'll have a fighting chance of catching only Venus (magnitude -4) and Jupiter (magnitude -2) with unaided eyes. Whether you will be able to glimpse zero-magnitude Mercury is debatable, and certainly binoculars will be needed if you have any hope of seeing Mars (magnitude +1).
The crescent moon will also prove to be a visual challenge, being only 2 percent illuminated on May 31. Low-lying clouds or haze near the horizon on any given morning will only reduce your chances of success.
In contrast, those of our SPACE.com readers in the Southern Hemisphere, where the ecliptic at dawn appears at a somewhat steeper angle, will see this ever-changing array somewhat higher and in a somewhat darker sky; more like mid-twilight as opposed to late twilight in the north.
Indeed, those living in far southern locations such as Cape Town, South Africa; Melbourne, Australia; or Dunedin, New Zealand, will have a much better chance of seeing and enjoying this month-long dance of the planets.
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York. (S)
VIA 4 Planets Converge in Night Sky. Impending disaster?
Prince William and Kate Middleton Honeymoon to the Seychelles?

LONDON – Prince William and Kate Middleton, have left for a honeymoonat an undisclosed location, palace officials said Tuesday, declining to elaborate on the key details of where or for how long. They also requested the young couple's privacy be respected during that time.
British media widely reported they had jetted off to theSeychelles, an island chain in the Indian Ocean. William has two weeks leave from his job as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot, but palace officials would not say if they will be away the entire two weeks.

After the media blitz surrounding their April 29 wedding at Westminster Abbey, the couple have made it clear they'd like to be left alone by photographers. A day after the wedding, the newlyweds asked the media not to intrude on their first weekend of married life, which they spent at home before William returned to military duty.
Privacy has long been a main concern for the royals while planning their honeymoon. They are thought to have considered private islands in the Caribbean — although photographers on boats could conceivably get pictures of them cavorting on a beach — and hideaways in Africa, where William has traveled extensively in the past.
The couple's decision earlier to delay their honeymoon surprised many. While he went back to work, Middleton — now known as the Duchess of Cambridge — was snapped by photographers grocery shopping near the couple's home on the remote Welsh island of Angelsey.
The Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 Indian Ocean islands about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of the Kenyan coast. A popular luxury destination, it lies outside the cyclone belt, so severe storms are rare, adding to the destination's appeal.

Srdjana Janosevic, the press secretary for the Seychelles' president, had no confirmation Tuesday that the royal couple had arrived or planned to vacation there, but noted they have visited the Seychelles before.
"Anyone who comes back and continues to enjoy the island, it just shows that it's a very desirable tourist destination," Janosevic said. "I think everyone would be happy if they are here."
The Seychelles has only about 90,000 people. While the British media feature constant stories on the royals, a top headline Tuesday in the Seychelles Nation newspaper was about an increase in pork and chicken production.
The top local topic is the country's May 19-21 presidential election, where President James Michel faces three challengers.

If the couple have chosen the Seychelles, it will be East Africa's second connection to the royal wedding. William proposed to Kate last October in a rustic log cabin on the slopes of Kenya's highest peak, Mount Kenya.
Both Kenya and the Seychelles are former British colonies.
VIA Prince William and Kate Middleton Honeymoon to the Seychelles?
Amal al-Sadah, the Youngest Wife of Osama bin Laden

United States (U.S.) and Pakistan fight over the right to withholdAmal al-Sadah, the youngest wife of Osama bin Laden. Amal is now detained in Pakistan and the country on Wednesday (04/05/2011), rejected the American request to speak with Amal.
The 27-year-old woman, according to initial reports about the storming of the complex U.S. residence of Osama in Pakistan, Sunday, has tried to become a shield for her from the special forces raid Navy SEALs. However, the information the U.S. side later said she had been used as shields by Osama and killed. The report was corrected again by stating that the Amal is not dead, only wounded in the leg. Amal should come along helicopter transported U.S. troops, but because one of two helicopters that crashed while landing troops, Amal was abandoned. She was later arrested Pakistani troops.
Who Amal al-Sadah? The story about him began 11 years ago. At that time, she is a teenage girl who was taken from a quiet city in southern Yemen, first to Pakistan, then to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. A year before the attacks of 11 September 2001, she became the fifth wife of Osama bin Laden. At that time, 18-year-old Amal and Osama 43 years.
The marriage was arranged a prominent Al Qaeda Yemen, Sheikh Mohammed Rashed Saeed Ismail. Ismail (his brother languishing in Guantanamo Bay detainees) told the Yemen Post in 2008, “I am a matchmaker (marriage) Osama with his wife, Amal al-hard, which is one of my students.”
In July 2000, Ismail accompany the new couple into Afghanistan. Last year, Ismail told a reporter Hala Jaber, “Even at a young age, she (Amal) is very religious and believe in the things that Osama, a man who is very religious and pious-believe.”
Marriage is also apparently a-political alliances to strengthen support for bin Laden in the land of their ancestors, Yemen. Osama’s bodyguard at the time, Abu Jandal, was responsible for delivering the dowry. “Sheikh (Osama) it gives me 5000 dollars and told me to send it to certain people in Yemen and the people that in turn brings money to the bride’s family,” said Abu Jandal in the daily Al Quds al Arabi in 2005.
In accordance with conservative Sunni tradition, the wedding celebration of all the affairs of men. “The bride is deemed to have approved the marriage with a trip to Afghanistan, so his presence (in marriage) is not compulsory,” he wrote in The Sunday Times Jaba after interviewing Ismail.
“People celebrate with meresital poetry and song, slaughter lambs, and eating food.” According to Abu Jandal, “the songs and joy mixed with the (sound) shooting into the air.”
A year after the wedding,Amal al-Sadahbirth to a daughter in Kandahar (a few days after the attacks of 11 September 2001). The boy was given the name Safiya. Children that are possible, according to Pakistani officials, has seen his father shot dead on Sunday. Her mother, according to Pakistani sources, has the now recovered from the wound in the leg he sustained in the attack.
Yemeni passport of a woman who was found hiding in the complex they seem to belong with Amal, but the name in the passport does not exactly match the name. Yemeni officials said they were unable to identify exactly the passport and Pakistan has not made a request to repatriate anyone in the complex is the former residence of Osama.
It is unclear whether bin Laden and Amal have another child. However, the leader of Al Qaeda that has more than 20 children from five wives. One of his sons were also reported killed in the attack on the complex in Pakistan’s Abbottabad.
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen, bin Laden has written about marriage in his book, The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader. Osama was first married at age 17 years with someone who was his cousin, Najwa Ghanem, perhaps two years younger than Osama. They had 11 children, but after living with the constant moving, Najwa eventually left Osama (and Afghanistan) a few days before the September 11 attacks.
Osama’s second wife was Khadijah Sharif, nine years older than bin Laden, a highly educated woman and a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. They married in 1983 and have three children, but eventually they divorced while living in Sudan in the 1990s. In an interview with Al Quds al Arabi, Abu Jandal said Khadijah was not able to deal with their hard lives and eventually return to Saudi Arabia.
Osama’s first wife, Najwa, helping to organize the third marriage with Osama Khairiah Patience. Khairiah also highly educated women and a doctoral degree in sharia or Islamic law. The woman was married to bin Laden in 1985 and they had one child, a son. Bergen writes that it is not known whether she survived the bombing in Afghanistan in October and November 2001.
Then, there Siham Patience who married Osama bin Laden in 1987. They have four children, and like Khairiah, she was not caught in his footsteps since the invasion of Afghanistan. Amal al-Sadah is the fifth and youngest wife of Osama. Amal al-Sadah had repatriated to Yemen for his safety, but somehow he came back to where Osama.
According to Abu Jandal, bin Laden after the big family arrived in Afghanistan in 1996, they often ride the bus is escorted by a vehicle full of guards. He said the three wives of Osama live harmoniously in the same house. They often go to events-Osama family outing in a separate car followed the family bus. In such event, said Abu Jandal, the leader of Al Qaeda that would teach her how to use firearms.
CNN terrorist Observer, Paul Cruickshank, said, not surprisingly, the complex in Abbottabad who attacked U.S. forces on Sunday and although there are several children is not known how many people who is the son of Osama. “He tried to train his children to follow in his footsteps.”
Overall, according to Abu Jandal, bin Laden has 11 sons, some of whom ran away from the harsh conditions of life with their father into a more prosperous life together Bin Laden’s family rich. “The girls are not known with certainty the amount,” said Abu Jandal told Al Quds al Arabi.
A few weeks after the events of 11 September, bin Laden told the Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, that he had plans for his youngest daughter, Safiya. “I became a father of a girl after 11 September,” he said. “I named her Safiya, who killed a Jewish spy at the time of the Prophet. (My daughter) will kill the enemies of Islam like Safiya.” (Original story)
VIA Amal al-Sadah, the Youngest Wife of Osama bin Laden
Bin Laden home videos expected to be released

WASHINGTON – The world is expected to get its first glimpse atOsama bin Laden's daily life as the world's most wanted terrorist Saturday with the disclosure of home videos showing him strolling the grounds of the fortified compound that kept him safe for years.
The footage shot at the terror leader's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and propaganda tapes made there, are expected to be released to the news media Saturday, U.S. officials said.
They are among the wealth of information collected during the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden and four others. The information suggests bin Laden played a strong role in planning and directing attacks by al-Qaida and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, two senior officials said.
And it further demonstrates to the U.S. that top al-Qaida commanders and other key insurgents are scattered throughout Pakistan, not just in the rugged border areas, and are being supported and given sanctuary by Pakistanis.
Despite protests from Pakistan, defeating al-Qaida and taking out its senior leaders in Pakistan remains a top U.S. priority. That campaign will not be swayed by Islamabad's complaints that the raid violated the country's sovereignty, a senior defense official said Friday.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive material.
Their comments underscore U.S. resolve to pursue terror leaders in Pakistan, particularly during this critical period in the Afghanistan war, as President Barack Obama moves to fulfill his promise to begin withdrawing troops this July.
Already the Afghan Taliban has warned that bin Laden's death will only boost morale of insurgents battling the U.S. and its NATO allies. Al-Qaida itself vowed revenge, confirming bin Laden's death for the first time but saying that Americans' "happiness will turn to sadness."
For its part, the U.S. has already launched at least one drone strike into Pakistan in the days since bin Laden was killed, and there is no suggestion those will be curtailed at all.
The strikes are largely carried out by pilotless CIA drones, and the expectation is that they will continue in the coming days as U.S. military and intelligence officials try to take quick advantage of the data they swept up in the raid before insurgents have a chance to change plans or locations.
The raid on bin Laden's compound deep inside the Pakistan border has further eroded already strained relations between Washington and Islamabad, and angry Pakistani officials have said they want the U.S. to reduce its military presence in their country. The Pakistani army, while acknowledging it failed to find bin Laden, said it would review cooperation with the U.S. if there is another similar attack.
Pakistani officials have denied sheltering bin Laden, and they have criticized the U.S. operation as a violation of their country's sovereignty.
But a senior defense official said recent protests by Islamabad about the raid will not stop the U.S. from moving against terror leaders that threaten American security.
Obama has made it clear that the U.S. will take action wherever necessary to root out al-Qaida, which has declared war on the United States and has been using Pakistan as a base to plot and direct attacks from there and other insurgent locations around the world.
The official also said there are no plans to scale back U.S. training of the Pakistani frontier corps and army. But the decision is up to Pakistan.
U.S. administration leaders have been careful not to directly accuse the Pakistani government of being complicit in the existence of sanctuaries that have cloaked bin Laden and his lieutenants. But U.S. lawmakers say it strains credibility that the most wanted man in the world could have been in living in a major suburb, one that's home to Pakistan's military academy, without someone knowing it.
CIA director Leon Panetta told lawmakers that "Pakistan was involved or incompetent," according to a U.S. official, who recounted to conversation on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door briefing.
Counterterrorism officials have debated how big a role bin Laden and core al-Qaida leaders were playing in the attacks launched by affiliated terror groups, particularly al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, and al-Shabab in Somalia.
Information gathered in the compound, officials said, suggests that bin Laden was much more involved in directing al-Qaida personnel and operations than some analysts thought over the last decade. And it suggests bin Laden was "giving strategic direction" to al-Qaida affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, the defense official said.
Officials say they have already learned a great deal from bin Laden's cache of computers and data, but they would not confirm reports that it yielded clues to the whereabouts of al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
Al-Zawahri is a leading candidate to take bin Laden's place as the leader of the terror group.
Obama met on Friday with the U.S. commandos who killed bin Laden after a decade-long search.
"Job well done," the president declared, addressing roughly 2,000 troops after meeting privately with the full assault team — Army helicopter pilots and Navy SEAL commandos — who executed the dangerous raid. Their identities are kept secret. (Original Articles)
VIA Bin Laden home videos expected to be released
Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved: NASA's dirty little secret?

There has been a long-lived bit of Apollo moon landing folklore that now appears to be a dead-end affair: microbes on the moon.
The lunar mystery swirls around the Apollo 12 moon landing and the return to Earth by moonwalkers of a camera that was part of an early NASA robotic lander – the Surveyor 3 probe.
On Nov. 19, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean made a precision landing on the lunar surface in Oceanus Procellarum, Latin for the Ocean of Storms. Their touchdown point was a mere 535 feet (163 meters) from the Surveyor 3 lander -- and an easy stroll to the hardware that had soft-landed on the lunar terrain years before, on April 20, 1967.
The Surveyor 3 camera was easy pickings and brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew. When scientists analyzed the parts in a clean room, they found evidence of microorganisms inside the camera.
In short, a small colony of common bacteria -- Streptococcus Mitis -- had stowed away on the device.
The astrobiological upshot as deduced from the unplanned experiment was that 50 to 100 of the microbes appeared to have survived launch, the harsh vacuum of space, three years of exposure to the moon's radiation environment, the lunar deep-freeze at an average temperature of minus 253 degrees Celsius, not to mention no access to nutrients, water or an energy source.
Now, fast forward to today.
NASA's dirty little secret?
A diligent team of researchers is now digging back into historical documents -- and even located and reviewed NASA's archived Apollo-era 16 millimeter film -- to come clean on the story.
As it turns out, there's a dirty little secret that has come to light about clean room etiquette at the time the Surveyor 3 camera was scrutinized.
"The claim that a microbe survived 2.5 years on the moon was flimsy, at best, even by the standards of the time," said John Rummel, chairman of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Panel on Planetary Protection. "The claim never passed peer review, yet has persisted in the press -- and on the Internet -- ever since."
The Surveyor 3 camera-team thought they had detected a microbe that had lived on the moon for all those years, "but they only detected their own contamination," Rummel told SPACE.com.
A former NASA planetary protection officer, Rummel is now with the Institute for Coastal Science & Policy at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.
Rummel, along with colleaguesJudith Allton of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Don Morrison, a former space agency lunar receiving laboratory scientist, recently presented their co-authored paper: "A Microbe on the Moon? Surveyor III and Lessons Learned for Future Sample Return Missions."
Poor space probe hygiene
Their verdict was given at a meeting on "The Importance of Solar System Sample Return Missions to the Future of Planetary Science," in March at The Woodlands,Texas, sponsored by the NASA Planetary Science Division and Lunar and Planetary Institute.
"If 'American Idol' judged microbiology, those guys would have been out in an early round," the research team writes of the way the Surveyor 3 camera team studied the equipment here on Earth. Or put more delicately, "The general scene does not lend a lot of confidence in the proposition that contamination did not occur," co-author Morrison said.
For example, participants studying the camera were found to be wearing short-sleeve scrubs, thus arms were exposed. Also, the scrub shirt tails were higher than the flow bench level … and would act as a bellows for particulates from inside the shirt, reports co-author Allton.
Other contamination control issues were flagged by the researchers.
In simple microbiology 101 speak, "a close personal relationship with the subject ... is not necessarily a good thing," the research team explains.
All in all, the likelihood that contamination occurred during sampling of the Surveyor 3 camera was shown to be very real.
A cautionary tale
On one hand, Rummel emphasized that today’s methods for handling return samples are much more effective at detecting microbes.
However, the Surveyor 3 incident back then raises a cautionary flag for the future.
"We need to be orders of magnitude more careful about contamination control than was the Surveyor 3 camera-team. If we aren't, samples from Mars could be drowned in Earth life upon return, and in all of that 'noise' we might never have the ability to detect Mars life we may have brought back, too," Rummel said. "We can, and we must, do a better job with a Mars sample return mission."
Winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award, Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999. (Original Story)
VIA Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved: NASA's dirty little secret?