Aliens have deactivated British and US nuclear missiles, say US military pilots

By Andy Bloxham

The beings have repeated their efforts in the US and have been active since 1948, the men said, and accusedThe beings have repeated their efforts in the US and have been active since 1948, the men said, and accused the respective governments of trying to keep the information secret.

The unlikely claims were compiled by six former US airmen and another member of the military who interviewed or researched the evidence of 120 ex-military personnel.

The information they have collected suggests that aliens could have landed on Earth as recently as seven years ago.

The men's aim is to press the two governments to recognise the long-standing extra-terrestrial visits as fact.

They are to be presented on Monday 27 September at a meeting in Washington.

One of the men, Capt Robert Salas, said: "The US Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it."

He said said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana which housed Minuteman nuclear missiles.

Capt Salas continued: "I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site.

"The missiles shut down - 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There's a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they're not from planet Earth."

Others claim to have seen similar activity in the UK.

Col Charles Halt said he saw a UFO at the former military base RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, 30 years ago, during which he saw beams of light fired into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area.

He said: "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted - both then and now - to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation."

The site was then the base of the US 81st Tactical Fighter Wing.

Capt Bruce Fenstermacher, a former US Air Force officer, also claims he saw a cigar-shaped UFO hovering above a nuclear base in Wyoming in 1976.

 the respective governments of trying to keep the information secret.


The unlikely claims were compiled by six former US airmen and another member of the military who interviewed or researched the evidence of 120 ex-military personnel.

The information they have collected suggests that aliens could have landed on Earth as recently as seven years ago.

The men's aim is to press the two governments to recognise the long-standing extra-terrestrial visits as fact.

They are to be presented on Monday 27 September at a meeting in Washington.
One of the men, Capt Robert Salas, said: "The US Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it."

He said said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana which housed Minuteman nuclear missiles.

Capt Salas continued: "I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site.

"The missiles shut down - 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There's a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they're not from planet Earth."

Others claim to have seen similar activity in the UK.

Col Charles Halt said he saw a UFO at the former military base RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, 30 years ago, during which he saw beams of light fired into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area.

He said: "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted - both then and now - to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation."

The site was then the base of the US 81st Tactical Fighter Wing.

Capt Bruce Fenstermacher, a former US Air Force officer, also claims he saw a cigar-shaped UFO hovering above a nuclear base in Wyoming in 1976.

Police on scene of shooting on UT campus

statesman.com

A gunman who fired several shots in the Perry-Castaneda Library on the UT campus is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and police are looking for a possible second suspect, officials say.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo confirmed that the shooter is dead, but UT continues to be locked down, and people are urged to stay out of the area.

Officials say it appears there are no other injuries. UT spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon said witnesses had reported that the man was armed with automatic weapon.

“The shooter is dead on the sixth floor of Perry-Castaneda Library, said Don Hale, a UT spokesman. “No identification. Apparently took his own life.”

“We don’t have any report of anybody getting shot at this point,” Hale said.

“It’s not clear yet” if there is a second suspect, Hale said shortly after 9 a.m., adding that the university’s advice to stay indoors and keep doors locked remains in force.

Police officials raised the possibility of a second gunman because they had received different descriptions of the gunman by witnesses.

It was unclear how many shots were fired, but witnesses described eight to 10 shots in short bursts.

There were numerous reports that the gunman was wearing a black ski mask.

KVUE talked to UT student Andrew McWaters who said he saw the shooter near Dobie Mall and heard four gunshots followed by two more. He said the gunman was wearing a black ski mask, smiling and waving the gun.

Hale said university officials at 8:23 a.m. alerted students, faculty members and staff members by text message, outdoor loudspeakers and an online posting to stay indoors.

A second e-mail alert from UT officials said: “Armed subject last seen at Perry Casteneda Library and UTC. Shelter in place. UTPD responding.”

“That seems to be working pretty well,” Hale said of that advice.

Emergency sirens began going off about 8:30 a.m.

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. from Red River Street to University Avenue is closed at this time.

Alicia Dietrich, public affairs assistant with the Harry Ransom Center, which is down the street from the library, said she heard the shots as she was parking her bike.

“I didn’t even know for sure that it was gunshots,” Dietrich said at 8:47 a.m. “The sirens went off about five to 10 minutes ago. The building has been locked down and I don’t think they’re letting anybody in or out.”

Kevin Olsen, a graduate student at the University of Texas, said he was walking by the Dobie dorm about 8:15 a.m. when he heard about eight to 10 shots in short bursts. He said other people walking to class also heard shots and were looking around “kind of in awe.”

TMZ Honcho -- What's Good for the Goose ...

TMZ has learned ... our boss got a ticket today! How do you like them apples?

Sources close to Harvey Levin tell TMZ he was driving in Venice, CA when he was pulled over by police. We're told Levin was texting while driving -- a huge no-no in the state of California.


Levin was given a ticket and sent on his way.

A call to Levin's rep was not immediately returned.

Worm hits computers of staff at Iran nuclear plant

By NASSER KARIMI (AP) – 4 hours ago

TEHRAN, Iran — A complex computer worm capable of seizing control of industrial plants has affected the personal computers of staff working at Iran's first nuclear power station weeks before the facility is to go online, the official news agency reported Sunday.

The project manager at the Bushehr nuclear plant, Mahmoud Jafari, said a team is trying to remove the malware from several affected computers, though it "has not caused any damage to major systems of the plant," the IRNA news agency reported.

It was the first sign that the malicious computer code, dubbed Stuxnet, which has spread to many industries in Iran, has also affected equipment linked to the country's nuclear program, which is at the core of the dispute between Tehran and Western powers like the United States.

Experts in Germany discovered the worm in July, and it has since shown up in a number of attacks — primarily in Iran, Indonesia, India and the U.S.

The malware is capable of taking over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants.

In a sign of the high-level concern in Iran, experts from the country's nuclear agency met last week to discuss ways of fighting the worm.

The infection of several computers belonging to workers at Bushehr will not affect plans to bring the plant online in October, Jafari was quoted as saying.

The Russian-built plant will be internationally supervised, but world powers are concerned that Iran wants to use other aspects of its civil nuclear power program as a cover for making weapons. Of highest concern to world powers is Iran's main uranium enrichment facility in the city of Natanz.

Iran, which denies having any nuclear weapons ambitions, says it only wants to enrich uranium to the lower levels needed for producing fuel for power plants. At higher levels of processing, the material can also be used in nuclear warheads.

The destructive Stuxnet worm has surprised experts because it is the first one specifically created to take over industrial control systems, rather than just steal or manipulate data.

The United States is also tracking the worm, and the Department of Homeland Security is building specialized teams that can respond quickly to cyber emergencies at industrial facilities across the country.

On Saturday, Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency reported that the malware had spread throughout Iran, but did not name specific sites affected.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The former guerrilla set to be the world's most powerful woman

independent.co.uk

The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.

As head of state, president  would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State: her enormous country of 200 million people is revelling in its new oil wealth. Brazil's growth rate, rivalling China's, is one that Europe and Washington can only envy.

Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday's presidential poll will be greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the "national security state", an arrangement that conservative governments in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich friends.

Ms Rousseff, the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant to Brazil and his schoolteacher wife, has benefited from being, in effect, the prime minister of the immensely popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former union leader. But, with a record of determination and success (which includes appearing to have conquered lymphatic cancer), this wife, mother and grandmother will be her own woman. The polls say she has built up an unassailable lead – of more than 50 per cent compared with less than 30 per cent – over her nearest rival, an uninspiring man of the centre called Jose Serra. Few doubt that she will be installed in the Alvorada presidential palace in Brasilia in January.

Like President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, Brazil's neighbour, Ms Rousseff is unashamed of a past as an urban guerrilla which included battling the generals and spending time in jail as a political prisoner. As a little girl growing up in the provincial city of Belo Horizonte, she says she dreamed successively of becoming a ballerina, a firefighter and a trapeze artist. The nuns at her school took her class to the city's poor area to show them the vast gaps between the middle-class minority and the vast majority of the poor. She remembers that when a young beggar with sad eyes came to her family's door she tore a currency note in half to share with him, not knowing that half a banknote had no value.

Her father, Pedro, died when she was 14, but by then he had introduced her to the novels of Zola and Dostoevski. After that, she and her siblings had to work hard with their mother to make ends meet. By 16 she was in POLOP (Workers' Politics), a group outside the traditional Brazilian Communist Party that sought to bring socialism to those who knew little about it.

The generals seized power in 1964 and decreed a reign of terror to defend what they called "national security". She joined secretive radical groups that saw nothing wrong with taking up arms against an illegitimate military regime. Besides cosseting the rich and crushing trade unions and the underclass, the generals censored the press, forbidding editors from leaving gaps in newspapers to show where news had been suppressed.

Ms Rousseff ended up in the clandestine VAR-Palmares (Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard). In the 1960s and 1970s, members of such organisations seized foreign diplomats for ransom: a US ambassador was swapped for a dozen political prisoners; a German ambassador was exchanged for 40 militants; a Swiss envoy swapped for 70. They also shot foreign torture experts sent to train the generals' death squads. Though she says she never used weapons, she was eventually rounded up and tortured by the secret police in Brazil's equivalent to Abu Ghraib, the Tiradentes prison in Sao Paulo. She was given a 25-month sentence for "subversion" and freed after three years. Today she openly confesses to having "wanted to change the world".

In 1973 she moved to the prosperous southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where her second husband, Carlos Araujo, a lawyer, was finishing a four-year term as a political prisoner (her first marriage with a young left-winger, Claudio Galeno, had not survived the strains of two people being on the run in different cities). She went back to university, started working for the state government in 1975, and had a daughter, Paula.

In 1986, she was named finance chief of Porto Alegre, the state capital, where her political talents began to blossom. Yet the 1990s were bitter-sweet years for her. In 1993 she was named secretary of energy for the state, and pulled off the coup of vastly increasing power production, ensuring the state was spared the power cuts that plagued the rest of the country.

She had 1,000km of new electric power lines, new dams and thermal power stations built while persuading citizens to switch off the lights whenever they could. Her political star started shining brightly. But in 1994, after 24 years together, she separated from Mr Araujo, though apparently on good terms. At the same time she was torn between academic life and politics, but her attempt to gain a doctorate in social sciences failed in 1998.

Image via WikipediaIn 2000 she threw her lot in with Lula and his Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers' Party which set its sights successfully on combining economic growth with an attack on poverty. The two immediately hit it off and she became his first energy minister in 2003. Two years later he made her his chief of staff and has since backed her as his successor. She has been by his side as Brazil has found vast new offshore oil deposits, aiding a leader whom many in the European and US media were denouncing a decade ago as a extreme left-wing wrecker to pull 24 million Brazilians out of poverty. Lula stood by her in April last year as she was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, a condition that was declared under control a year ago. Recent reports of financial irregularities among her staff do not seem to have damaged her popularity.

Ms Rousseff is likely to invite President Mujica of Uruguay to her inauguration in the New Year. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay – other successful South American leaders who have, like her, weathered merciless campaigns of denigration in the Western media – are also sure to be there. It will be a celebration of political decency – and feminism.

Roy Jones Jr. to fight again in October

By Dan Rafael

ESPN.com

Archive

In December, Roy Jones was knocked out in the first round by Danny Green. Then in April, Jones lost a one-sided decision to Bernard Hopkins. But neither of those back-to-back embarrassing defeats were enough to keep the former longtime pound-for-pound king from fighting again.

Jones, 41, who won titles in four divisions from middleweight to heavyweight before his precipitous fall, is coming back.

He will return to the ring to face Danny Santiago on Oct. 7 at the Pensacola Civic Center in his hometown of Pensacola, Fla.

Rafael's Boxing Blog

Get the latest scoop and analysis on the world of boxing from ESPN.com's Dan Rafael in his blog.

A news conference is scheduled for Wednesday to formally announce the bout, which will be for a vacant regional cruiserweight belt. Although the cruiserweight limit is 200 pounds, Jones and Santiago will meet at a contract maximum of 185 pounds.

Despite his recent poor run -- Jones is 2-3 in his last five bouts -- he said he still wants to fight.

"What are you gonna do? You gonna box or sit around? I've been sitting around and I wasn't enjoying it," Jones told ESPN.com on Tuesday night. "This is still what I want to do. Got nothing else to do but get in trouble or get fat, so what I got to stop for? I'll fight and I'll fight to win."

After the loss to Hopkins, a long overdue rematch of Jones' middleweight title win in 1993, he said he did not think about retirement.

"It never crossed my mind, to be honest," said Jones, who became the first former middleweight champion to win a heavyweight title in more than 100 years when he easily outpointed John Ruiz in 2003. "I want to do this. I feel real good. I want to fight and do the best I can do."

Jones, whose company, Square Ring, will promote the fight, said although he will face Santiago in the cruiserweight division, which is where he also fought Green, he is open to returning to the light heavyweight division he once dominated.

"Jean Pascal showed the division is still wide open," Jones said, referring to the Montreal star who upset Chad Dawson to claim the 175-pound division's lineal championship last month.

Jones said he is excited to fight again in his beloved Pensacola, where he last fought four fights ago, knocking out Omar Sheika in the fifth round in March 2009.

"I always loved fighting at home," he said. "My people come out and support me."

Said Square Ring CEO John Wirt, "Roy is looking forward to coming back to his roots. We've named the card 'Resurgence,' which we're tying into the fact that Pensacola is coming back from the [BP] oil spill and that Roy Jones is coming back. He gets a lot of inspiration and support from his hometown fans. He performed brilliantly against Jeff Lacy [in Biloxi, Miss.] and Omar Sheika fighting on the Gulf Coast and he believes that he gets strength from his hometown."

Jones (54-7, 40 KOs) acknowledged that he made almost no money -- if any -- for the fight with Hopkins, because it did poorly on pay-per-view and his take did not kick in until Hopkins received the first $3.5 million in profit, which it did not generate.

Jones knows he won't make much for the fight with Santiago either, a fight for which there is no television deal in place.

"Money ain't always the issue," said Jones, despite his own financial problems. "That's not what drives me. I know I'm not making much money for this fight. But I love doing it and I still want to see if I still got it, which I think I do."

Santiago (31-4-1, 19 KOs), 31, of Ocala, Fla., has won two fights in a row on the Florida club circuit. He lost his two most notable fights in a row. Zsolt Erdei stopped him in the eighth round of a light heavyweight world title bout in 2007 and, later that year, former light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver, knocked him out in the fourth round. Tarver, of course, has a lot of history with Jones. He lost his first fight to Jones, but then beat him easily in their second and third fights, including a shocking second-round knockout in their 2004 light heavyweight championship rematch.

Wirt said the undercard will feature light heavyweight prospect Ismayl Sillakh against Daniel Sackey and former featherweight titlist Derrick Gainer, Jones' Pensacola buddy, against Walter Estrada in a lightweight bout.

Dan Rafael is the boxing writer for ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @danrafaelespn.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hopkins ventures north for fight (canada.com)

4 World-Famous Websites Who Ripped off Their Ideas from Someone Else

Image via CrunchBaseBy Sherice Jacob

Being unique is overrated.

Look into the histories of world-famous websites like Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, and PayPal, and you’ll find they ripped off smaller, less well-funded competitors for their ideas, marketing strategies, and even business models. It’s not subtle, either. They took someone else’s idea and ran with it, making it worth millions or even billions in the process.

Sure, they improved the product. Sure, they had better marketing. Sure, they just plain got it done, when no one else could.

Without a doubt, they deserve credit for everything they’ve done, but they don’t get to claim they were first. Let’s take a look into their histories, and I’ll show you what I mean.

Facebook

You’ve probably heard the rumors of how Mark Zuckerburg stole the idea for Facebook from his Harvard classmates and founders of ConnectU. This story has been told in the news, made into a movie, and debated in the courtroom.

But you might not have heard about Friendster.

A social networking site from 2002, Friendster sprang up before MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn. Arguably, they were the first website with the idea of connecting a network of friends and letting them share content, events and media online, staking their claim with some of the most lucrative patents in social networking, including things like “uploading content to a social network” and “sharing relationship information in a social network”.

So what do you do when your company’s social growth is hemmed in by another company’s intellectual property?

You buy all their patents, of course – which is exactly what Facebook did.

Twitter

The original concept of Twitter was to a system that would dispatch messages to mobile phones to keep specific groups up to date on specific things. Smartphones were fairly rare when Twitter (or twttr as it was known) was conceived, but the idea spread like wildfire.

But it wasn’t original. Another company, called TechRadium, did it first.

TechRadium works with mass notification systems where a message author can send a note out to subscribers via text, email or voicemail. Not exactly, the same, no, but it was similar enough to give Twitter some legal trouble.

Fortunately for them though, they were expecting it. As a 2009 strategy meeting already revealed, they said, “we will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often” with the suggestion that they hire a “great patent attorney.”

Are they innocent? Maybe.

But they certainly weren’t first.

Hulu

Hulu provides users a way to watch episodes of their favorite shows online without breaking the law or having to download it first. If you’re willing to be inconvenienced by a few commercials, you can stream it in high-quality, free of charge.

Sounds like a great idea, right?

Yep, Joost thought so too, and they gave it a shot well before Hulu.

Joost had everything going its way: it was founded by the guys who created Skype, got millions of dollars in cash infusions from big corporations, and signed on Viacom and CBS as partners. But there was a big problem: downloading.

Joost required users to download software in order to watch shows. After downloading the software, you then had to download the shows before you could watch them, and it took a while.

Seeing the problem, Hulu burst onto the scene, allowing you to watch your shows instantly, and that was pretty much the end of Joost. They shut down their video client and became yet another white-label video provider.

PayPal

It’s 1998, and you’ve just launched an online person-to-person money transfer service online. Your business model is so enticing, that you’re quickly scooped up by top auction site eBay, Inc. and integrated into their auction payments system.

Surprise – it isn’t PayPal I’m talking about – it’s Billpoint.

Before PayPal existed, Billpoint was a fast and easy way to pay for auctions. When PayPal started becoming a popular alternative, eBay simply ramped up its endorsement of Billpoint, with mixed results among bidders and sellers. Eventually, eBay bought PayPal and phased out acceptance of Billpoint.

The first company to market lost again.

“Good Websites Borrow. Great Websites Steal”

You’ve probably heard the famous quote from T.S. Eliot, "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."

It’s just as true for marketing as writing.

Some brilliant ideas are simply too ahead of their time. Others fall behind while eager young competitors improve on the basic concept and create something that spreads like wildfire. And, while there’s no definitive formula that predicts success for one idea over another, the Internet really is ripe for creative entrepreneurs looking to build a better mousetrap.

You don’t have to be first. Really, you don’t even have to be second. If you’ve abandoned one of your ideas because you were crushed someone else did it first, dust it off and take another look. You might find a way to improve the idea, or you might just be able to execute it better.

You’ll never know until you try it.

So why not give it a shot?

Read more: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/idea-rip-off/#ixzz10KTXS2hy

Lawsuits accuse Bishop Eddie Long of sexual coercion; Long "adamantly denies"

By Shelia M. Poole, Megan Matteucci and Katie Leslie

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 Two DeKalb County men filed lawsuits Tuesday alleging Bishop Eddie Long, leader of one of the Southeast’s largest churches, coerced them into having sex with him in exchange for lavish trips, cars and cash.

Long is the nationally known minister of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, with more than 25,000 members.


The pastor’s attorney, Craig Gillen, adamantly denied the allegations.

"It is unfortunate that these two young men have chosen to take this course of action."

The plaintiffs, Anthony Flagg, 21, and Maurice Robinson, 20, began having inappropriate relations with Long at the age of 16, which is the legal age of consent in Georgia, said their attorney B.J. Bernstein.

The men are seeking a trial by jury and unspecified damages.

“It’s not just these two. There are young men around him at all times,” attorney B.J. Bernstein said. “There are kids at risk now.”

Bernstein said she has not contacted DeKalb law enforcement because of Long’s ties to DeKalb officials.

Gillen noted Robinson was arrested in June 2010 in connection with a burglary at the church. Robinson and Anthony Boyd, 19, of Decatur, were arrested June 23 and charged with stealing items such as an iPad and an iPhone, according to a police report obtained by the AJC.

Robinson committed the burglary in retaliation after learning that Long was involved with other men, including Flagg, Bernstein said.

“He lashed out,” Bernstein said. “But if it weren’t for that act, we wouldn’t know about this. He talked to his friends and learned Long had other ‘spiritual sons.’”

A few minutes before evening Bible study on Tuesday night, several members said they were shocked by the allegations.

Dwayne Jenkins, 47, of Lithonia, started attending New Birth a month ago, but is not yet a member. “It gives you a little shake,” he said of the lawsuit. “It’s his word against his word. Only Mr. Long and the two men know what happen. I’m not here to judge, I’m here to get close to the Lord. The Lord will take care of it.”

“That don’t even make sense,” said Hillary Lewis, 52, carrying the Bible in her hand. “I like the message that he brings,” the Snellville resident said. “He brings things down to earth.”

Samuel Midgette, 40, of Atlanta called Long “a good man – a man of God. He wants to help everybody… That man loves his wife. When you believe in your pastor, you believe in your pastor.”

The lawsuit names Long, New Birth and the Longfellows Youth Academy as defendants. According to the suit, the academy is a program for young men ages 13 through 18.

According to the lawsuit, Robinson, 20, and his family joined New Birth in 2003. His mother enrolled him in the Longfellow Academy when he was 14.

The suit alleges Long began to spend personal time with Robinson when he was 15 years old. At some point, the suit alleges, Robinson was placed on the payroll. In addition Long bought Flagg a Ford Mustang, the suit alleges.

Bernstein said she has emails, text messages and photographs between the men and Long.

Long took Robinson on several overnight trips to various destinations, including New York and Turks & Caicos, according to the suit. The suit says Long took Robinson to Auckland, New Zealand, for Robinson's birthday in 2008.

During that trip, Robinson alleges in the lawsuit, Long regularly "engaged in sexual touching and other sexual acts."

In separate trips, the men flew on Long’s personal jet and shared a bed with him at the hotels, Bernstein said. Long used the alias “Dick Tracy” when he checked into the hotel, the suit alleges.

However, the bulk of the relations occurred on the megachurch’s property, including inside Long’s “guest house” on Snapfinger Road in south DeKalb, Bernstein said.

Long was named 21 years ago as pastor of the then 300-member church that would become New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

It has expanded beyond its Lithonia home and has satellite churches in other cities. The 240-acre Lithonia campus is like a small town and promotes a myriad of ministries, such as the annual Hosea Feed the Hungry and help for the homeless and addicted.

-- Craig Schneider contributed to this article.

Inside AJC.COM

President Ahmedinejad Threatens U.S. With War 'Without Boundaries'

By THOMAS NAGORSKI, ABC News Managing Editor



Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad warned the Obama administration today that if Iran's nuclear facilities are attacked, the U.S. will face a war that "would know no boundaries."

The Iranian president, who is in New York for the annual meetings of the United Nations General Assembly, spoke at a breakfast meeting with reporters and editors at Manhattan's Warwick Hotel.

He said that Iran is on the brink of becoming a nuclear power, and warned Israel and the U.S. against attacking its nuclear facilities.

Asked about the possibility of a U.S.-supported Israeli air strike against Iran, the fiery Iranian leader said an attack would be considered an act of war, and suggested the U.S. is unprepared for the consequences. Such a war "would know no boundaries," Ahmedinejad said. "War is not just bombs."

Iran claims it has no plans to make a nuclear weapon, but the country is faced with United Nations sanctions, spearheaded by the U.S., meant to convince Iran to comply with international regulations and abandon its nuclear program.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session, Ahmedinejad said he was prepared to meet with the Obama administration, but that "the whole outlook has to shift." Sanctions in particular, he said, had damaged the chances for an improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations.

He took some credit for last week's release of Sarah Shourd, one of three American hikers who were jailed 14 months ago and accused of espionage.

The decision to free Shourd, he said, was a judgment made by the judiciary and by Ahmedinejad himself. "A combination of both" a judicial act and an act of sympathy, he said.

Shourd, who still faces charges, had to guarantee a $500,000 bond before she was released. Her fiance and and another male friend remain in Iranian custody.

Ahmedinejad acknowledged the possibility that Palestinian leaders may ultimately make peace with Israel, he questioned the legitimacy of Palestinian negotiators and raised questions about the Holocaust that have marked his tenure as president.

Wal-Mart to aggressively roll out smaller stores

Image via WikipediaNEW YORK (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning an aggressive push into urban markets with a new small format that's a fraction of the size of its supercenters.

The expansion, expected to be spelled out next month at the retailer's meeting with analysts at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., is aimed to pump up sluggish U.S. sales.

Real estate executives said that over this past summer, the world's largest retailer has been scouring for small locations, around 20,000 square feet, in urban areas including New York City, San Francisco and other cities. That size is larger than a typical drugstore but smaller than a supermarket.

"I see this as a smart move, instead of coming into a market as a 900-pound gorilla," said Faith Consolo, chairman of real estate firm Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail leasing division. She noted that Wal-Mart has been talking to landlords and brokers.

"They're on an aggressive roll," she added. "This is a creative time. Everyone is thinking out of the box."

She noted that in New York City, Wal-Mart has been looking in Queens and the lower part of Manhattan.

Since 2008, Wal-Mart has been testing smaller stores called Marketside. They now total four and average 15,000 square feet. The format focuses on fresh food. And the discounter now has almost 200 Neighborhood Market by Walmart stores, which offer a mix of fresh food, pharmacy, beauty, stationary and pet supplies and are about 42,000 square feet.

Wal-Mart has been shrinking its supercenters, which carry a wide assortment of food and general merchandise, to about 150,000 square feet from 195,000 square feet. But the company has maintained that it plans to use smaller formats in urban markets.

In a note to investors Monday, Brian Sozzi, analyst with Wall Street Strategies, said he believes the new 20,000-square-foot stores would likely fuse the Marketside and Neighborhood Markets formats.

"Wal-Mart needs to have a store concept that brings in customers more than once every two weeks when paychecks are distributed," he wrote. He added that using the Marketside Stores as a vehicle for growth is too limiting, and that Neighborhood Markets are too big to enter cities.

Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo said Monday that "while we have not shared an exact size of the small format ... we continue to evaluate a wide range of stores sizes across the country and will consider any format that puts us closer to our customers."

Bill Simon, the new president and CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. business, told investors last week at a Goldman Sachs retail conference, said that "we will have a healthy mix of supercenters and small formats, including our grocery format, Neighborhood Market and smaller formats," he continued. He added that in particular, Wal-Mart is looking to open stores that are similar to the formats in Mexico, Central America, and Latin America.

"We are going to beg, borrow, steal and learn from them as quickly as we can, because it is important for our urban strategy," he added.

Wal-Mart, which now has more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. has hit a wall in the U.S. The company just reported its fifth straight quarterly decline in revenue at stores opened at least a year, considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

Wal-Mart benefited during the recession as affluent shoppers traded down to cheaper stores. But stubbornly high unemployment and tight credit are still squeezing its main U.S. customers, lower-income workers who are having even more trouble stretching dollars to the next payday because of tight credit and an unemployment rate stuck at almost 10 percent. The discounter's own merchandising gaffes have also contributed to the company's revenue figure's decline.

Wal-Mart's rival Target Corp. is set to spell out more details of its urban strategy on Friday to the media at its headquarters in Minneapolis. Target had told analysts in January that it plans to open in the next few years smaller stores of 60,000 to 100,000 square feet. That compares with its current average of 125,000 square feet. But real estate executives including John Bemis, head of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.'s retail leasing team, say Target also is looking at 20,000-square-foot locations.

"I think 20,000 makes more sense than 80,000 square feet," Sozzi said.

'Halo: Reach': Great stories + exciting play = huge sales

By Larry Frum, Special to CNN

(CNN) -- "Halo: Reach" is a prequel that not only brings to a close the much-loved video-game series but also gives fans an outstanding solo story and new multiplayer options that make the farewell less painful.


Bungie, the developer of the series, has said that "Halo: Reach" will be its last game with the franchise. While it is unknown if another developer will pick up the plasma rifle, publisher Microsoft should be pleased with Bungie's swan song.

In 24 hours after its release this week, Microsoft said "Halo: Reach" earned more than $200 million -- making it the biggest entertainment release in the United States so far this year.

Its massive first-day sales puts "Halo: Reach" in the running to catch "Modern Warfare 2," which had a little more than $401 million in U.S. sales in its initial weekend in 2009.

"Halo: Reach" was definitely one of the most anticipated video-game releases of the year, based largely on the playable multiplayer demo available to those who bought the series' last installment, "Halo 3: ODST."

Players control Noble 6, a member of an elite squad of soldiers known as Spartans, and quickly find themselves trying to defend a planet from an oncoming invasion by the Covenant Empire -- a multispecies force of bad guys.

Along with the rest of the Noble team members, the player moves from one mission to another, uncovering the reason for the alien invasion and struggling to survive in increasingly dangerous scenarios.

The solo campaign is well thought out and tells the story from Noble 6's perspective.

Players will immediately identify and relate to the other Noble team members since they have distinct personalities that emerge during firefights and in between missions.

The tale of brutality and sacrifice winds its way through the forests of the planet Reach, into the cold expanse of outer space above and into deep caverns holding long-buried secrets.

While the thrill of blasting Covenant soldiers will be enough for some, the story pulls the player through 11 unique levels with enough story to keep it interesting without dragging through needless scenes.

Noble 6's armor is customizable, but doesn't add anything to game play other than looking good. There are armor packs found in the field that do the actual work and give the player additional and tools like sprinting, camouflage and jet packs.

Weapons will be familiar to Halo players, and ordinance packs are readily available. However, attempting to make a stand in the middle of a jungle might not be the best idea unless the player gets familiar with using alien weaponry as well.

The environments are beautifully rendered and majestic in their scope. Animation and effects seem lifelike, but nothing less would be expected from Bungie.

iReport: Large crowd for "Halo" release

Driving in-game vehicles is still wonky.

Vehicles handle like a go-cart with four different-size wheels. And whatever you do, don't let the AI (artificial intelligence) drive, because you'll never know how long it will take to get from point A to B, and trying to fire at enemies is really an exercise in futility as you lurch in the passenger seat.

Multiplayer action has been a staple of the Halo franchise, and "Halo: Reach" offers more choices for cooperative and competitive play than its predecessors.

Along with the familiar "Deathmatch" and "Capture the Flag" games, more objectives, scenarios and choices about how to play are available in the new multiplayer modes.

Players can place parameters on the type of teammates and opponents they want to battle with, or against.

"Firefight" teams up players in a game of survival as they face ever-increasing waves of enemies who also get stronger as the game progresses.

"Generator Defense" put teams of three against one another in a battle of attack and defense.

The "Invasion" scenario pits six against six in a fight for territory control.

Each mode is customizable and players can earn credits (which can also be earned in the solo campaign) that unlock features to change the look of Noble 6.

There are also challenges from Bungie that will help players improve their skills.

Despite all the in-game success, there have been a few glitches along the way.

Some players who rushed out to buy the game were getting a disc-read error, which Microsoft says it's addressing on a case-by-case basis.

The gaming site Kotaku also reported that the 4GB Xbox 360 Slim is not capable of online co-op play.

Apparently one of the requirements for online co-op is a HDD (hard disc drive) and the Slim's memory unit is not enough. The only recourse for those users is to purchase a Slim hard drive or a 250GB Xbox 360.

Despite those glitches, Bungie has definitely emptied its Halo basket of ideas and put together a fitting ending (or is it a beginning?) for a franchise that has thrilled millions of fans since 2001.

Great storytelling, awesome environments and an expanded co-op system should keep players awake into the wee hours defending humanity from the Covenant scourge.

Internet Explorer 9 to be released on 15th September

littleabout.com

September 15 will lay the benchmark for Microsoft as it rolls out the Beta edition of Internet Explorer 9, which is a revamped and much improved version of Internet Explorer 8. It seemed since a few years that Microsoft has neglected the browser domain and concentrated only on its operating systems.

But with Windows 7 faring well, and with the news of its latest version of the browser being launched, it seems that Microsoft is again aiming high by hard selling its web browser.

Now, Internet Explorer 9 will have a new looking revamped interface that promises to be ever more user friendly. Like the latest versions of Chrome or Opera browsers, we may get to see a minimalist view of the toolbar that gives a very clean look. And its not just the looks that Microsoft has worked upon, it’s the speed as well.

Today’s browser market is captured by heavy weights such as Opera, Chrome and Firefox too, apart from Internet Explorer. But they seem to be growing at a more rapid pace, when compared with Internet Explorer, the higher growth proving that people tend to migrate to other browsers for increased speed of browsing.

Microsoft seems to have worked upon its java script engine that makes processing time faster. It also makes use of the graphics hardware in the computers for better performance.

Another major shift from traditional browsers is the compatibility with latest technologies of HTML 5 and CSS3 which is in compliance with the latest web browser standards. So, finally Microsoft has woken up to regain its lost ground in the web browsers domain, and with the advent of Windows Explorer 9, it might just put other browsers in a tight spot, as they no longer may harp upon the older Explorer’s short comings.

If you are not able to download Windows Explorer 9, there is a new and improved version of Windows Explorer 8 that can be downloaded by clicking the link below.

Source: Bulls discuss Carmelo Anthony

ESPNChicago.com

Image via WikipediaThe Chicago Bulls are interested in trading for the Denver Nuggets' Carmelo Anthony and are discussing internally including Joakim Noah as part of the deal, according to a league source.

 

According to the source, the Nuggets are hesitant to take back Luol Deng as part of a deal with the Bulls because Denver is leery of taking on long-term contracts with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire on June 30, 2011. Deng is two years into a six-year, $71 million contract.

Noah will make $3.1 million this season in the fourth year of his rookie deal. He would become a restricted free agent next season unless the Bulls extend his contract.

Yahoo! Sports reported Wednesday that an NBA source with knowledge of Anthony's wishes told him Anthony still hopes to convince Nuggets general manager Masai Ujiri to trade him, and he prefers a move to the New York Knicks or Bulls.

The Nuggets offered Anthony a three-year, $65 million extension through 2014, but if he rejects it, the team will have to consider trading the forward who has guided them to seven straight playoff berths.

"I think I'm going to convince him to be a Nugget," Ujiri said on Aug. 31. "No, I don't know, I can't make a judgment on that. Like I said, it's a process and until he tells me that ... we want him back, the city wants him back, ownership wants him back."

Anthony has never come out and said he wanted to be traded, however.

At his basketball camp this summer, Anthony dismissed all the speculation of his impending departure from Denver: "I've been hearing that for five years. I'm a Denver Nugget. I'm here, I'm with the Nuggets. I don't become a free agent until next year, if I decide not to take that extension."

Anthony, 26, has averaged 24.7 points per game in his career, including 28.2 last season.