Sqyquakes rocking Sacramento - is "Aurora" flying out of Beal?

EL DORADO COUNTY (CBS13) – People from all over El Dorado County say they’re hearing loud booms several times a week, but there are many theories on what is causing them.

“I thought it was thunder,” said one person.

“It’s definitely not thunder; too consistent. I thought it was just mining,” said another person.

“I always considered them to be sonic booms from flying aircrafts for years,” said Loring Brunius, owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry.

People who live near Pleasant Valley say their days have been interrupted by loud booms, shaking the floor beneath them.

“You can feel it in the ground, no question about it. But no one’s been able to figure out why,” said Pleasant Valley resident Peter O’Grady. “I tend to hear somewhere between four to six of these things during the weekdays usually between 11 p.m. and 2 p.m.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom just like that,” said Lorren Gonzales, who lives near Pleasant Valley.

And the rolling foothills of El Dorado County make it difficult for them to even tell where it’s coming from.

We asked the owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry what he knew about it. He says they havent blasted since last year. And any miners or quarry owners would need government permission before they can set off any explosives.

“It’s a federally mandated system, and enforced,” said Brunius.

Some think the booms are from nearby wineries using propane cannons to scare away birds.

“We’ve never done it and I don’t know of any other winery that does,” said Carrie Bendick, a winemaker at Holly’s Hill Winery.

According to USGS, there aren’t enough seismic stations to pinpoint the exact location. Meanwhile, some say the booms have been around so long and happen so often they barely notice them anymore. Still, others want to solve the mystery.

“I would like to know what it is, yeah. And I’d like to know when it’s going to stop too,” said O’Grady.

CBS13 spoke to Fallon Naval Air Station that said any supersonic flight operations they do are only allowed over Dixie Valley, which is hundreds of miles away.

Some think illegal mining could be the source of the sounds, but Brunius doubts that theory. He said if that was the case, the culprit would have been caught by now.

Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on moon, dies at 82

By Eric Malnic, Special to The Times

August 25, 2012, 2:17 p.m.

Neil Armstrong, the U.S. astronaut who was the first person to set foot on the moon, firmly establishing him as one of the great heroes of the 20th century, has died. He was 82.

Armstrong died following complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family announced Saturday.

When he made that famous step on July 20, 1969, he uttered a phrase that has been carved in stone and quoted across the planet: "That's one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong spoke those words quietly as he gazed down at his, the first human footprint on the surface of the moon. In the excitement of the moment, the "a" was left out -- either because Armstrong omitted it or because it was lost in the static of the radio transmission back to Earth.

For the usually taciturn Armstrong, it was a rare burst of eloquence seen and heard by 60 million television viewers worldwide. But Armstrong, a reticent, self-effacing man who shunned the spotlight, was never comfortable with his public image as a courageous, historic man of action.

"I am, and ever will be, a white-sock, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer," Armstrong once told a National Press Club gathering.

Perhaps.

How many other nerdy engineers flew 78 combat missions as a Navy jet fighter pilot during the Korean War? Logged more than 1,000 hours as a test pilot in some of the world's fastest and most dangerous aircraft? Or became one of the first civilian astronauts and commanded Apollo 11, the first manned flight to land on the moon?

In the years that followed the flight of Apollo 11, Armstrong was asked again and again what it felt like to be the first man on the moon. In answering, he always shared the glory: "I was certainly aware that this was the culmination of the work of 300,000 to 400,000 people over a decade."

Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on his grandfather's farm near Wapakoneta, Ohio.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT THE LA TIMES

Drone strike kills 18 militants in Pakistan

ABC NEWS: U.S. missiles slammed into three compounds close to the Afghan border Friday, killing 18 suspected militants, Pakistani officials said, just a day after the government summoned an American diplomat to protest drone strikes in the country's northwest tribal region.

The drones struck the North Waziristan tribal area, the main militant sanctuary in the country and the target of a planned Pakistani military operation that the U.S. expects in the near future. Hundreds of militants and their family members streamed out of North Waziristan in the past two days in anticipation of the operation, local residents said.

The U.S. has long demanded Pakistan target militants holed up in North Waziristan and has welcomed the planned operation in the area. But Pakistan is likely to focus on Taliban militants who have been at war with the state, not those who have been fighting the U.S.-led coalition in neighboring Afghanistan.

The suspected militant hideouts destroyed by U.S. drones Friday were hit minutes apart and were located several kilometers (miles) from each other in North Waziristan, said intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The U.S. has carried out seven drone strikes in the past week in North Waziristan, ignoring Pakistani protests that they violate the country's sovereignty. The attacks have exacerbated the already troubled relationship between the two countries, but the U.S. has refused to stop the strikes, saying they are vital to combating Taliban and al-Qaida militants who pose a threat to the West.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned a senior U.S. diplomat on Thursday to protest the wave of drone strikes.

On Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan called the attacks "illegal, unproductive." He said they were a "violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and in violation ... of international laws."

The Pakistani government is widely believed to have supported the strikes in the past. That cooperation has come under strain as the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated, but U.S. officials say privately that there are still senior members of Pakistan's government and military who condone the attacks. The U.S. rarely discusses the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan publicly.

The strikes are unpopular in Pakistan because many people believe they kill mostly civilians — an allegation denied by the U.S.

The suspected militant hideouts that were attacked Friday in the Shawal area of North Waziristan were each hit by two missiles, said the intelligence officials. Militants often use the hideouts when they are crossing into Afghanistan, the officials said. In addition to the 18 suspected militants who were killed, 14 others were wounded, they said.

In the earlier strikes in the tribal area, five allies of a powerful warlord, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, whose forces often attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan, died when a U.S. drone struck their hideout last Saturday. And on Sunday, American drones fired a flurry of missiles into North Waziristan, killing 10 suspected militants in two separate strikes. On Tuesday, missiles targeting a vehicle in the area killed five more suspected militants.

Attack on Pakistani military base sheds doubt on nuclear security

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A militant raid early Thursday on a northern Pakistan air force base with suspected links to the country's nuclear weapons program has renewed questions about Islamabad's ability to safeguard its nuclear arsenal in the face of an insurgency that shows no signs of waning.

A team of eight militants climbed over a perimeter wall at the base in Kamra, about 25 miles northwest of Islamabad, and exchanged gunfire with Pakistani security forces for more than two hours, said air force spokesman Tariq Mahmood. All eight attackers were eventually shot to death, but not before they fatally shot a Pakistani security officer and damaged an aircraft with a rocket-propelled grenade, officials said.

The base at Kamra abuts the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, which assembles fighter jets and other weapons systems, and is a major research hub for the country's air force. Experts have long believed that the compound at Kamra is also used to store some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, though the military has always denied this.

"Questions will be raised about nuclear weapons -- though the militants were stopped, they entered a high security area and kept security forces engaged for more than two hours," said security analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi. "That means the government of Pakistan and the military will have to address the lapses and weaknesses that exist in their security systems."

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was aimed at avenging the 2009 U.S. drone missile attack that killed Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, as well as last year's U.S. commando raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In recent years, the Pakistani Taliban, the country's homegrown insurgency, has been responsible for waves of suicide bombings and other terror attacks on military installations as well as markets, mosques and other civilian targets.

The attack on the base began at about 2 a.m. The militants, wearing explosives-filled suicide vests and armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, were fired on shortly after clambering over the wall and were unable to reach any of the base's hangars, Mahmood said. The base's commander, Air Commodore Muhammad Azam, was shot in the shoulder but was not critically injured. Security forces later found two homemade bombs that the attackers had brought into the compound but were unable to detonate, officials said.

Pakistani authorities touted the deaths of the militants as ample evidence of the country's ability to keep its military installations secure. "Everyone did what they were supposed to do," Defense Minister Naveed Qamar told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday. "The security forces challenged the militants and eliminated them."

Nevertheless, the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal remains a major concern for the U.S., given the continued presence of Al Qaeda and other allied militant groups in the country's volatile tribal areas along the Afghan border. U.S. experts say Pakistan is expanding its arsenal, which is estimated to number about 100 nuclear weapons.

"The great danger we've always feared is that if terrorism is not controlled in their country, then those nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Wednesday.

Pakistan's history of militant attacks on military and security facilities has reinforced Western fears about Islamabad's ability to secure its nuclear program. The base at Kamra has been the scene of two previous attacks, one in 2009 when a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed seven people at a checkpoint outside the base, and the other in 2007, when a suicide bomber injured five children on a Pakistani air force bus as they were heading to a school near the base.

Last year, a team of militants scaled the perimeter wall of a naval base in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and launched a 17-hour siege on the compound that killed 10 Pakistani security personnel and destroyed two U.S.-supplied maritime surveillance aircraft. In October 2009, militants stormed the army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi and took hostages, setting off a 22-hour standoff that ended in the deaths of 23 people, including nine militants.

Pentagon says reports Russian Akula in Gulf of Mexico don't hold water.

MOSCOW TIMES: Observers on Thursday cast doubt on a news report that a Russian nuclear submarine traveled undetected for up to a month in the Gulf of Mexico, while the U.S. Pentagon denied the story and the Russian Defense Ministry kept mum.

The Washington Free Beacon, which broke the story Tuesday, also refuted allegations that the report was driven by U.S. presidential campaign politics rather than facts.

“We stand by our story,” the site's publisher, Michael Goldfarb, said by telephone. He added that he was “kind of offended” by accusations that the report reflected partisan politics.

Analysts speculated that the news leak was “scaremongering” intended to discredit President Barack Obama's policies of defense cuts and the “reset” in relations with Moscow.

The Beacon report said that the submarine patrol highlights Moscow's growing assertiveness and exposed deficiencies in U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities, which are threatened by the Obama administration’s plans to reduce defense spending.

The nonprofit news site was founded in February by the Center for American Freedom, a Washington-based conservative advocacy group chaired by Goldfarb.

The group says on itswebsitethat the Free Beacon is “dedicated to uncovering stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day.”

Goldfarb worked on the 2008 presidential campaign of Republican Senator John McCain.

The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday denied the Beacon report, which said a Russian Akula-class submarine capable of carrying long-range ballistic missiles had spent a month in restricted U.S. waters in June and July.

“I don't know what that information was based on, but it was not correct," spokeswoman Wendy Snyder said, according to Interfax. The Pentagon did not respond to telephoned and e-mailed requests for further comment.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday that questions should be submitted in writing. The ministry had not responded by Thursday evening.

Experts said that while Akula-class vessels are among the quieter submarines, they are still relatively easy to detect because they are nuclear-powered.

“They are unable to sit silently because their reactor cannot be turned off,” said Christian Le Miere, a naval analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Le Miere added that while it was possible the vessel escaped detection by U.S. Coast Guard sonar, this was unlikely because of its size.

“A submarine of nearly 10,000 tons cannot easily enter coastal waters, where it is harder to detect,” he said.

His comments were echoed by Alexander Nikitin, a former nuclear submarine officer who heads the Bellona environmental group. He said Akula-class ships have always produced a great deal of noise.

“The problem was always there, and no technical breakthrough has been achieved,” he said.

He added that while a vessel could enter the Gulf of Mexico undetected, it was unlikely to remain there for weeks. “I am very skeptical about that report,” he said.

Alexander Kolbin, an analyst with the PIR Center think tank, said doubts would remain about the story as long as it remained unconfirmed by either government.

“Either the ship was discovered or it is a ploy by the Republicans to discredit Obama's defense cuts,” he said.

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The Moscow Times