Breaking: Rash of bombings in Iraq may be al-Qaeda.

BBC:

At least 50 people have been killed in a series of apparently co-ordinated bomb attacks across Iraq.

The deadliest killed 19 people in the southern city of Kut. Several blasts hit Baghdad, including a suicide bombing in which 15 died.

There were also attacks in other major cities. Officials blame al-Qaeda.

Correspondents say the violence highlights fears about the stability of Iraq ahead of the formal end of US combat operations next week.

These attacks may be a response by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq (a branch of al-Qaeda) to the Americans sending all their combat troops home.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that the remaining US forces were down to below 50,000. Under the State of Forces Agreement, signed by the US and Iraqi governments, all US troops are due to leave by the end of next year.

Or the attacks could be a response to a claim by the ministry of the interior that it had broken up an al-Qaeda cell in Baghdad.

Almost all of Wednesday's attacks targeted security forces.

In Baghdad, the suicide car bomb hit a police station in the Qahira district in the north-east of the city killing 15 people, most of them police.

Police and hospital officials said 58 people were wounded in the explosion, which left a crater 3m (10ft) wide and caused houses to collapse, trapping people inside.

"We woke up to the sound of this powerful explosion that shook the area," resident Abu Ahmed, 35, told the Associated Press news agency.

"I searched for victims in the destroyed houses, and evacuated seven dead children and some women."

Elsewhere in the capital, smaller explosions killed at least four people and injured many others.

In Kut, 160km (100 miles) south-east of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a car outside a police station and the provincial government's headquarters.

At least 19 people were killed and 90 wounded.

In other incidents:

in Kirkuk, a car bomb killed one person and injured eight
in Falluja, a soldier was killed and 10 people injured when a suicide bomber drove into an Iraqi army convoy
in Tikrit, a roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded another
in Mosul, a gunman killed one soldier and a car bomb killed four civilians
in Basra, a car exploded as police towed it from a parking lot, killing one person and injuring eight
in Ramadi, a car exploded as two alleged bombers were working on it, while a second car exploded about 1km away, killing at least two
in Karbala, a suicide car bomb exploded at police checkpoint at the entrance to police station, injuring 30 people
The Reuters news agency reported other explosions in Dujail, Balad Ruz and Samarra, but these could not be confirmed.


No group has said it carried out the attacks, but the BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says the Islamic State of Iraq, a branch of al-Qaeda, may be behind some of them.

US military spokesman Maj Gen Stephen Lanza called the attacks "desperate attempts" by al-Qaeda to undermine faith in the Iraqi security forces.

Iraqi security spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi also blamed al-Qaeda, and warned of more attacks as US troops end combat operations on 31 August.

"By mobilising all its capabilities, the enemy is trying to escalate the terrorist attacks during this coming period," he said. "We have plans to face those terrorist attacks."

Violence in Iraq is down from the peak seen during the sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, although the number of civilian deaths rose sharply in July.

Black Horizon mentioned in Air & Space Magazine article!

The Truth is Out There
A veteran reporter describes his search for the aircraft of Area 51.
By William B. Scott
Air & Space Magazine, September 01, 2010

Snippet:

In 1992, a series of intercepted radio transmissions presented an entirely new possibility for the mystery airplane. Around 6 a.m. Pacific time on April 5 and 22, Steve Douglass, an investigative journalist who monitors military aircraft radio chatter and maintains a black-projects blog (www.DeepBlueHorizon.blogspot.com), picked up transmissions between Edwards’ radar control facility and a high-altitude aircraft that was using the call sign “Gaspipe.”

Controllers were directing the aircraft to a landing, using advisories that would be familiar to space shuttle astronauts returning from orbit. Edwards told Gaspipe: “You’re at sixty-seven thousand [feet], eighty-one miles out.”


Moments later, Edwards radioed, “Seventy miles out, thirty-six thousand. Above glide slope.” During years of flight testing in the Edwards area, I had heard controllers issuing similar clipped directives. The cadence and tone of the one talking to Gaspipe were the same. I concluded that Douglass’ recording was authentic. The mystery aircraft was descending rapidly, dropping from an altitude of more than 12 miles to almost seven in a few seconds, and evidently it lined up to land. Where, we didn’t know. Maybe Groom Lake.



Link: http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/The-Truth-is-Out-There.html?c=y&page12

Iran showcases new obsolete missile!

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran has successfully test-fired a new version of its Fateh missile, which has a longer range than previous models, Iranian news agencies reported Wednesday.
The Fateh-110 was designed by Iranian scientists and is also more accurate than older versions, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, Iran's defense minister, told state-run Press TV and the semi-official Fars news agency.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the Fateh-110 is a short- or medium-range missile. Press TV reported it is 9 meters (29.5 feet) long and weighs 3,500 kilograms (7,716 pounds).
Vahidi claimed that the production of the missile was "another victory in the field of defense and technology, and was another example of busting the sanctions and getting rid of them," Fars quoted him as saying.

He also denied that Iran's implementation of the Fateh missile was linked to the recent purchase of U.S.-made Patriot missiles by Kuwait, according to Fars.


"Kuwait is not a threat to us because we have friendly relations with Kuwait ... however, there was no need to have that system (Patriot) in Kuwait," the minister said.
The test-firing of the missile came days after Iran unveiled the first long-range military drone manufactured in the country, state media reported.

On Saturday Iran also began fueling its first nuclear energy plant in the southern city of Bushehr, according to the nation's state media.
Press TV said the effort would help the country create nuclear-generated electricity.

But some Western nations have questioned whether the nuclear fuel will be used solely for electricity, suggesting that Iran would eventually try to enrich uranium on its own, providing material for nuclear weapons.

The United States has questioned Iran's motives in continuing to enrich uranium within its borders.
The five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany offered Iran a deal last October: send the low-level uranium out of the country to be enriched elsewhere in exchange for fuel for its reactor.

Tehran did not accept and instead made a counteroffer: make the swap a simultaneous one and carry it out on Iranian soil.

The U.S. State Department called the Iranian proposal a stalling tactic and said world powers would not "front" the fuel to Iran. A stalemate ensued.

The United States is now seeking support for expanded sanctions, saying Iran is unlikely to negotiate unless sanctions are in place.

Taliban cowards stoop to new low: poisoning schoolgirls.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Dozens of schoolgirls and teachers were sickened Wednesday by poison gas in Afghanistan, medical and government officials said.
The latest incident, this one at a high school, is the ninth such case involving the poisoning of schoolgirls, said Asif Nang, spokesman for the nation's education ministry.
Dr. Kabir Amiri said 59 students and 14 teachers were brought to the hospital, and were faring better.

"We don't have good equipment to verify the kind of gas that they were poisoned with, but we have taken their blood tests to send to Turkmenistan for verifying the type of gas" that was used, Amiri said.

Many Afghan girls were not allowed to attend school during the Taliban's rule from 1996 to 2001. Girls' schools began reopening after the Islamist regime was toppled. The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, estimates that 2 million Afghan girls attend school these days.
But female educational facilities, students and teachers have come under vicious attack as the insurgency has strengthened and spread from Taliban strongholds in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand.

A report compiled last year by the humanitarian agency CARE documented 670 education-related attacks in 2008, including murder and arson. Much of the violence in what CARE called an "alarming trend" occurred at girls' schools.

Planetary system discovered in Hydrus.

BBC

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets that orbit a star called HD 10180, which is much like our own Sun.

The star is 127 light years away, in the southern constellation of Hydrus.

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory (Eso) to monitor light emitted from the system and identify and characterise the planets.

They say this is the "richest" system of exoplanets - planets outside our own Solar System - ever found.

Christophe Lovis from Geneva University's observatory in Switzerland was lead researcher on the study. He said that his team had probably found "the system with the most planets yet discovered".


The discovery could provide insight into the formation of our own Solar System
"This also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research - the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets," he said.

The research has been submitted for publication to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Eso's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (or Harps) instrument was responsible for the discovery.

Harps measures the wobble of a star; this gives a measure of how much it is being tugged on by an orbiting planet.

"If there is one planet it will induce a little movement - the star will come towards us and move away," Dr Lovis explained to BBC News.

"And what works for one [planet] works for many."

With many planets orbiting the star, its movement becomes a very complex "superposition" of several different planet-induced movements.

"[This] marks the way towards gathering the information that will put our own existence into cosmic context”

Martin Dominik
University of St Andrews
Using Harp, Dr Lovis and his team were able to measure this and break it down, in order to calculate how many planets were in the system, how great each of their masses was, and even the path of each individual planet's orbit.

The researchers said the system around HD 10180 as unique in several respects.

It has at least five "Neptune-like planets" lying within a distance equivalent to the orbit of Mars, making it more populated than our own Solar System in its inner region. And all the planets seem to have almost circular orbits.

Dr Lovis said: "Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system."

False alarm?
So far, the astronomers have picked up clear signals from five planets, along with two slightly "fuzzier" signals. One of these possible sixth and seventh planets was estimated to be just 1.4 times the mass of the Earth; if its presence in the system was confirmed, it would be the lowest mass exoplanet yet discovered.

It is also predicted to be very close to its host star - just 2% of the Earth-Sun distance, so one year on this planet would last only 1.2 Earth days.

Dr Lovis said he was 99% certain that this small planet was there.

"There are five signals that are really strong that we have no doubt, but we have another two with a 'false alarm' probability of 1%," he said.

Martin Dominik, an astronomer and exoplanet hunter from the UK's University of St Andrews said the complexity and structure of this system made it an interesting discovery.

"The richness of the system of planets around HD 10180 with its many characteristic features marks the way forward towards gathering the information that will put our own existence into cosmic context," he told BBC News.

He cautioned against describing this as the "richest system" saying that it was not clear whether other systems that had already been detected hosted further planets.

Dr Dominik added: "I am tempted to consider the detected system as one of the most 'informative' ones.

"Like most discoveries in science, the findings come with more questions than answers; but in my opinion, this is what really advances a field.