Plane crashes into Hudson River

NEW YORK CITY — A US Airways flight headed to Charlotte has crashed into the Hudson River in New York City.

Flight 1549 left from Boston and was headed to Charlotte when it tried to divert to La Guardia Airport in New York City.

The plane landed in the Hudson River.

New York City firefighters are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries.

Witness Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, said, “I just thought, ‘Why is it so low?’ And, splash, it hit the water.”

http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-011509-mw-usairways_crash.759d7dc.html

2009 Webbot Predictions

Highlights….

January-The services bubble begins to collapse.  Malls and luxury goods tank. Unemployment continues upward.

February-Building tensions to the “Summer of Hell.” Global events start to heat up. Waves of enlistments to the US Military as alternative to unemployment (Obama youth corps?)

March and April-Food and goods riots.  Demonstrations. Breakdown of social contract. International pressure begins to build on the US dollar. NASA and political-whistleblowers.

May-Homeless, unemployed and displaced begin to question the socioeconomic contract. Prices of commodities continue rising. Electricity becomes sporadic in areas. All situations are starting to build into potential violence. Global coastal events go mainstream.

June and July-”Summer of Hell” might vary according to area. For example, California might have veggies but no power. Northwest might have power, but no veggies. There will be a lot of smaller earthquakes that people will start to notice as footnotes to the breakdown.

August-Government services falter as budgets collapse. Purchasing power of the dollar failing. Possibility of social security and government assistance being temporarily halted.

September-Geopolitical landscape changed as communities become cooperative living models. Think hippies. Eroded federal governance.

October-Internet becomes sporadic. Two major ship disappearances…may involve Hollywood or royalty.

Project outlook-First effects of Australia’s net censorship.

Autistic child taken from school in handcuffs

*Hey, how are you guys liking 1984?*

COEUR D’ALENE — A Ponderay mom was left outraged when school officials ordered her autistic 8-year-old daughter handcuffed and taken from the school in a police car.

Outside her Ponderay home, 8-year-old Evelyn Towry, in her pink boots and favorite sweatshirt explains why she’s now suspended from school.

“Because I was trying to leave and they hold me down,” Evelyn said.

Evelyn is a third grader at Kootenai Elementary and has Asperger’s Syndrome, a high functioning form of Autism. On Friday she started to act out.

“She wanted to attend a Christmas party in her cow sweatshirt and they told her she couldn’t that she would have to tuck the tail in and put ears down and she dug her heels in the way she does quite often and said she wouldn’t take it off,” Evelyn’s mom Spring said.

Spring says that when Evelyn tried to leave anyway two teachers restrained her, which is when Evelyn began kicking, pinching and spitting on the teachers.

“Well, I kicked because I was upset they were holding me down and I got thumb bruises on me,” Evelyn said.

School officials then called the police and Evelyn’s mom. When Spring got to school to pick her daughter up police were already escorting Evelyn in handcuffs out of the building and into a police cruiser. Police then took her to a local juvenile detention center where she stayed for an hour, after which she was allowed to go home.

“I was terrified and I was scared and I was hurt and I wanted to throw up. I wanted to take my baby with me,” Spring said.

School officials responded to a request for an interview for this story by e-mail, with the district superintendent saying they followed a specific safety plan for Evelyn which was agreed upon by the district and her mental health provider.

The plan, according to the district, says that “If a student assaults staff it is appropriate to call parents, involved support agencies, and local law enforcement officials if needed. All of the above occurred regarding this unfortunate incident.”

“I never saw the plan, I never signed the plan,” Spring said.

On Tuesday morning the Bonner County prosecutor charged Evelyn with one count of battery.

By Tuesday afternoon the charge was dropped.

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. She doesn’t even know what battery is,” Spring said.

Spring Towry and her husband are now pursuing civil action. While they don’t excuse their daughter’s behavior Spring says it didn’t have to go this far.

“I don’t want this to happen to another child or another parent,” she said.

http://www.kxly.com/global/story.asp?s=9669140

Help Palestinians, Become A Target

Absolutely sick and revolting….

http://stoptheism.com/

Nice excerpt:

ISMer Ewa Jasiewicz in house of former DFLP commander killed by IDF claims she is just picking up “civilian” casualties. Jaseiwicz, in Abu Rabo’s house, works with the terrorists. Rabo’s house no doubt held weapons cache with children inside as human shields. Abu Rabo was the deputy of Naif Hawatma, the head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Ewa Jasiewicz needs to be a target of IDF forces as well as she has shown she is in Gaza to work for Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups like DFLP. A picture of Ewa is below. If you know of her exact location, please email us at info@StoptheISM.com so we can target  and take her out once and for all.

As with any good subversive, Ewa changes her haircolor frequently

German police ban Israeli flags

*Chuckle*

German police officials in the cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, prohibited pro-Israeli supporters from displaying Israeli flags.

During an anti-Israeli demonstration organized by the radical Islamic group, Milli Görüs, which attracted 10,000 protesters last Saturday in Duisburg, two police officers stormed the apartment of a 25-year-old student and his 26-year-old girlfriend and seized Israeli flags hanging on the balcony and inside a window.

The hostile crowd pelted stones and other objects at the flags.

A video that appears on YouTube shows an angry crowd in front of the apartment house and the police forcibly seizing the Israeli flags. The confiscation of the flags was greeted by cheers from the anti-Israeli protesters.

The student told the online magazine Spiegel that he wanted to show “solidarity with the sole democracy in the region,” and complained about societal indifference in Germany toward Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

“Can anyone imagine the German police going into a private home to remove a Hamas flag?” Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said in a statement.

“This type of response will only encourage more aggressive and violent behavior by anti-Israel demonstrators and send the message that in Germany, Jews and supporters of Israel do not enjoy the full protection of the law,” he said.

Responding to Zuroff’s criticism of the police conduct as “cowardly” and “incomprehensible” as well as to the outrage of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Duisburg Police Chief Rolf Cebin posted a statement on the police Web site on Wednesday, saying “I deeply regret that feelings, especially those of our Jewish fellow citizens, were hurt.

“The removal of the flags was, as we see it today, the wrong decision,” Cebin said. “The situation was very heated and the officers wanted to avert harm to the participants, including the residents of the apartment. They acted with the best of intentions in a tricky situation, under considerable time pressure, in order, from their point of view, to prevent an escalation.”

When asked if the Duisburg police plan to confiscate Israeli flags from supporters who demonstrate against an anti-Israeli protest slated for this coming Saturday, Ramon van der Maat, a Duisburg police spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post that, “we have to see what is expected” at the protest, adding, “It depends on the situation and one cannot, across the board” say that Israeli flags will be permitted.

The Düsseldorf flag ban occurred during a demonstration earlier this month. The flag-wavers were taken into police custody.

Meanwhile, anti-Semitic violence directed at Jewish institutions is spreading across Germany. A Palestinian man assaulted a police employee Wednesday with an iron bar, as the latter was guarding a synagogue in the district of Mitte in Berlin. According to media reports, the attack is linked to Israel’s Gaza operation.

In the northeastern city of Rostock, police are investigating attacks on a Jewish community center which serves the small community of 1,000.

Assailants threw rocks at the windows of the center more than a week ago and a crossed-out Star of David was daubed on the building a week before that.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231950850066&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Feces-throwing monkey on the loose in Tampa Bay

*Ahem.*

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) – Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay. Authorities have been trying to capture the primate since Tuesday afternoon, but it managed to evade a bucket truck and tranquilizer dart.Gary Morse with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the adult male is thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source. It was last seen in Clearwater.

The monkey is not considered dangerous.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95N55DG0&show_article=1

Wicked: Coldest Temps In Over A Decade

With temperatures hovering below 0, Grant Park was not a very hospitable place Thursday morning.

The low is expected to be less than -10 in Chicago Thursday, for the first time since 1996.

The typical exercise of bundling up for winter won’t cut it on Thursday.

It’s time to break out the long underwear and the electric gloves, for what is expected to go down as the coldest day in more than a decade.

The National Weather Service has issued a wind chill warning until noon Friday. The forecast high for Thursday is expected to linger in the negative range at -2, dropping to -15 overnight. Strong northwest winds are producing wind chill factors of -25 to -40.

CBS 2′s Ed Curran says as of 5 a.m., it was -7 at O’Hare International Airport and -5 at Midway Airport. In Waukegan it was -9, in Joliet it was -11, and in Aurora, the mercury was reading -20.

But with winds of 14 mph at O’Hare wind chills were far more brutal, at a reading of -28 at O’Hare, -26 in Joliet, -33 in DeKalb, and -42 in Aurora.

As CBS 2′s Joanie Lum reports, the temperatures could result in frostbite or hypothermia and may even lead to death if precautions are not taken.

The last time the low was colder than -10 was Jan. 5, 1999, when it was a bone-chilling -16. Highs Thursday afternoon may also remain just below zero. If the high fails to reach zero, it would be the first time since Feb. 3, 1996, when the high was -5.

On Wednesday night, CBS 2′s Suzanne Le Mignot tagged along with city Department of Family Support Services Commissioner Mary Ellen Caron, who took to the streets Wednesday night. She wanted to persuade people to come in for the night – at least until Friday.

Some people do not like the idea of going to a shelter, but Caron was able to convince some of them that the weather was dangerous.

“We are very concerned about the cold right now, and just getting people into warm places for tonight,” Caron said, “and so that’s is our main purpose for being down here, and for hopefully moving people into shelters.”

“Everybody homeless should go and try to get themselves together, and it’s cold out here tonight, and I hope everybody gets a shelter tonight,” said Fonta Wright, who is homeless. “I hope everybody goes inside tonight, because it’s going to be too cold to be hanging out.”

Wright himself went to a shelter Wednesday night, and said he would probably do the same on Thursday night.

Caron said the shelters will not close in the morning as they usually do.

Additionally, several schools are closed throughout the Chicago area, although Chicago Public Schools remain open.

Meanwhile, city health officials are also issuing reminders of the warning signs of frostbite and hypothermia.

When exposed to the extreme cold, your body begins to lose heat faster than it can be produced. That’s when hypothermia can set in.

“People should notice the change in their mental status – confused, disoriented, almost like they’re drunk – but they haven’t had anything to drink,” said Cmsr. Dr. Terry Mason, Chicago Department of Public Health.

Some other warning signs of hypothermia are drowsiness, confusion and memory loss.

“The main thing we want to make sure is that seniors, children – the extremes of ages are the ones that are very, very vulnerable to this – so, we want to make sure that they are well-protected and supervised,” Mason said.

Warning signs for hypothermia in an infant are bright red, cold skin and a child with very low energy. Anyone with a temperature below 95 degrees should get medical help right away because a body temperature that low is an emergency situation.

While this will likely be the coldest day in more than a decade, it is not close to setting a record. On Jan. 18, 1994, the low for the day in Chicago was -21, and the high was only -11.

In December 1983, a brutal cold snap culminated in a frigid Christmas holiday where the temperature did not crack 0 from Dec. 22 until Dec. 26. The low that year was -24 on Christmas Eve and -17 on Christmas Day, and in a CBS 2 weather forecast at the time, meteorologist Harry Volkman was warning of overnight wind chills of -75 and air temperatures of -30 in the western suburbs.

But the coldest day ever in Chicago came on Jan. 20, 1985, when the mercury bottomed out at -27.

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/brutal.cold.day.2.908889.html

Israel Threatens to Destroy South Lebanon

Several residents of south Lebanon on Wednesday received recorded telephone messages from the “state of Israel” warning them against cooperating with Ahmed Jibril’s Palestinian organization and al-Qaida.

The recorded message said: “To the citizens of south Lebanon. Do not deal with the Palestinians. Do not allow al-Qaida or the General Command to launch rockets at Israel from pads deployed between your houses.

“Remember the catastrophe and destruction you suffered in 1982 because of the Palestinian presence in the south.”

The messages were received shortly after three rockets were fired on Israel from south Lebanon.

http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/0/A1D71136D5EF8176C225753E004EDC22?OpenDocument

V-shaped craft low flying over Chicago

CHICAGO – JAN. 5, 2009 – A low flying V-shaped object was spotted by a Dan Ryan Expressway driver just before 5 a.m. at the Cumberland Exit, according to information filed with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

The stationary craft was first visible to the man as he saw four lights in the sky – three green and one white. He noticed “divisions” between the lights.

“I could see what looked like light grey metal separating the lights, and a design that reminded me of mother of pearl coloring, shaped like frothy waves going up the metal divisions.”

Illinois MUFON Director Sam Maranto said Tuesday night that his office is following up on this sighting and he will have additional information soon.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2363-Chicago-UFO-Examiner~y2009m1d13-Vshaped-craft-low-flying-over-Chicago

USDA unable to weed out unapproved modified foods

*Big surprise, eh?*

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2009 (Reuters) — The U.S. food supply is at risk of being invaded by unapproved imports of genetically modified crops and livestock, a USDA internal audit report released Wednesday said.

The report, released by the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Office of Inspector General, said the USDA does not have an import control policy to regulate imported GMO animals.

Its policy for GMO crops, though adequate now, could become outdated as other nations boost production of their own GMO crops, the report added.

The Office of Inspector General recommended the department develop an overall control policy for all GMO imports and implement a strategy to monitor GMO crop and livestock development in foreign nations.

The audit found that the USDA needs to develop screening measures to weed out undeclared GMO crops and livestock. The department currently has no measures in place to identify a shipment of unapproved GMO imports unknown to the U.S. regulatory system, the report said.

The United States has been a forerunner in developing GMO plants and animals since the 1990s, but other countries are beginning to invest more in biotechnology.

The report noted that China has pledged $500 million toward biotechnology by 2010 and has developed a new form of GMO rice.

Although the implications associated with Americans consuming unapproved GMO food are unknown, the health and environmental concerns that it poses could threaten commerce.

The USDA’s lack of policies and monitoring capability on the matter reflect the United States’ dominance over the global market concerning genetic modification.

“Department officials stated that they have not needed such a strategy because most transgenic plants were first developed within the U.S. regulatory system, and it was unlikely that anything unfamiliar would be imported,” the report said.

“And transgenic animals have not been commercialized,” the report also said of officials’ reasoning behind being slow to develop regulations.

The USDA, for the most part, agreed with the report’s recommendations.

In a letter to the Office of Inspector General, the USDA said it would create a plan for monitoring GMO plant and animal developments worldwide by November 30. But further action on policy would require approval from the incoming administration.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre50d5zd-us-usda-gmo-policies/