Section of California Highway Falls Into Pacific Ocean

“A section of highway 1, near Big Sur, California is shut down indefinitely. Police say a 40-foot section of the two-lane highway crumbled into the sea and fell hundreds of feet down a cliff.

‘One of the things that is certain is that we have to keep this entire area blocked off,’ said William Perlstein with the California Highway Patrol.”  Read more.

Japan Nuclear Plant: Exposed to the Elements – Nuclear Fuel in Meltdown

Open to the elements after its walls were blown away, this is the dried-up storage pool where overheating fuel rods are threatening a nuclear meltdown at Japan’s stricken Fukushima power plant.

“Close-up pictures of the devastated No 4 reactor building show the gaping hole through which radiation is escaping into the atmosphere as the rods break down.

Last night, the UN’s nuclear safety body said it was “too early to say” whether desperate attempts to cool them by spraying water into the building had been a success.

The Foreign Office issued an urgent statement advising any Britons within 50 miles of the plant to leave the area immediately, and arranged charter flights to get British citizens out of the country.

Radiation levels 20 miles from the plant – well outside Japan’s official 12-mile evacuation zone – came close to double the safety limit normally allowed for nuclear workers.

Despite assurances that other countries were not at risk of harmful levels of radiation, growing alarm led to panic-buying of radiation-blocking drugs in places thousands of miles from Japan.”  Read more.

Debate Heats Up Over Muslims In France

“French President Nicolas Sarkozy has fired a Muslim advisor he recently hired to promote ‘diversity’ after the appointee openly attacked the president’s plan to hold a debate about Islam in France.

The dustup reflects growing Muslim resistance to Sarkozy’s efforts to protect the secular nature of the French state from Islamic Sharia law, namely by calling for the estimated six million Muslims living in France to be better integrated into French society.

Abderrahmane Dahmane, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, was let go after he spoke out against a plan by Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party to hold a debate on secularism and Islam. The debate, which has been scheduled for April 5, is on the compatibility of Islam with the rules of the secular French Republic.

Dahmane, who was appointed to his post only in January, said Muslim members of the UMP should not renew their party membership unless the debate is cancelled. He compared the situation of French Muslims to that of Jews during World War II and said the debate had been planned by a ‘handful of neo-Nazis.’ Dahmane also called UMP leader Jean-Francois Cope a ‘plague for Muslims.'”  Read more.

Turkish Columnist: Erdogan Won’t Say ‘You Shall Not Kill’ in Arabic

It’s nice to see a Turkish writer criticize his own President’s failure to condemn the butchering of a Jewish family, including a 3-month only baby, by a Palestinian terrorist.  But as soon as Israel does anything to protect its citizens from Palestinian terrorists, Erdogan boils into a bloody rage.

“While the world keeps silent on the terror attack in Itamar, a columnist for a popular Turkish paper chose to inveigh against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his neglect to condemn the murders of the five family members.

In an article entitled ‘You Shall Not Kill’ in the Hurriyet daily, Burak Bekdil asks, ‘I am still curious about what rank the 3-month old Israeli ‘soldier’ held. Captain? Lieutenant colonel? Certainly too young to be a general.’

Bekdil reminds his readers of a 2010 speech in which a hot-tempered Erdogan expressed harsh criticism of Israel, emphasizing the deteriorating relations between the two states.

‘These (people) even see babies in their cradles as a threat. They have killed babies in their mothers’ arms.’ These people, naturally, were the Israelis,’ Bekdil writes.

‘Mr. Erdoğan said in both Turkish and English: ‘You shall not kill.’ Then he showed his linguistic capabilities and went on: ‘You still don’t get it? Then I shall speak to you in your own language: Lo tir’tsach!'”  Read more.

Amil Imani: Islam is the Enemy of Freedom

“A great irony of the age is that the seemingly most diehard proponents of freedom— the useful idiots of our time—are the most dangerous unwitting accomplices of liberty’s enemy—Islam. Keep in mind that the very name ‘Islam’ is a derivation of ‘taslim,’ the Arabic word for ‘surrender,’ surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Quran.

This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights.

Below is a brief presentation of what this surrender to Islam entails and why it is imperative that all freedom-loving people arise and defeat the menace of Islamofascism.”  Read more.

Ethiopian Muslim Group To Christians: More Attacks Are Coming and More Christians Will Be Killed

“On March 8, 2011 armed Muslims entered the home of an elderly Christian leader who founded a church near the town of Asendabo, Ethiopia. When the militants began to assault the church leader, his grandson rushed to intervene, screaming at the men to leave his grandfather. The Islamists stopped assaulting the grandfather and turned their attention to the young man – swinging at his head and arms with their machetes. He sustained three wounds to his head and one on his hand before the men proceeded to rob the home and leave the young man for dead. The young man’s family was forced to make a three hour journey on foot to take him to a hospital in a nearby city, where he is still receiving treatment.

Asendabo is located in Jima province of Ethiopia. In. The attacks started on March 2 and lasted for a week; Muslims killed two Christians and wounded several others. The attackers burned down 69 churches and 30 Christian homes. They also robbed several Christian homes. Ten thousand Christians were forced to flee their homes following the attacks. The Muslims started the violence after accusing the Christians of desecrating the Qur’an.” Read more.

Iranian film: Invade Israel to Usher in Muslim ‘Messiah’

By Joel Richardson

“A documentary that ties the current events in the Middle East to the soon coming of the Islamic messiah figure known as the Mahdi has just been released in Iran. The video contains one of the most overt calls to war yet seen in the Iranian media, perhaps pointing to the anxiety and desperation of the present regime in the midst of the many regional uprisings, including one in its own country.

The documentary claims to have been made by the Iranian Muslim scholars (ulema) who presently control the country, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The film intermixes various Islamic sacred traditions (hadith) with a hodgepodge of chanting, passages from the Quran and graphic imagery portraying the Islamic world as collectively yearning for the coming of the Mahdi to deliver them from the “oppression” of the United States and Israel.

The documentary begins with the words, ‘Greetings to Mahdi, the one who all beings on earth and in heaven love without end. Here’s the one that mirrors Allah’s soul, the perfect human, the inheritor of all prophets.’

The narration then moves on to the words of Imam Bahger, Shi’a Islam’s fifth imam, who is quoted as saying, ‘The messiah [Mahdi] will not arise unless fear, great earthquakes and sedition take place.’ Imam Bagher (most often transliterated Baqir) is viewed as being among the ‘infallible’ imams of Shi’a Islam.” Read more.

Thousands of Seabirds on Remote Islands Near Hawaii Killed by Pacific Tsunami

“Thousands of seabirds have been killed when the tsunami generated by last week’s massive earthquake off Japan flooded a remote atoll near Hawaii.

At least 1,000 adult and adolescent Laysan albatross, along with thousands of chicks, perished as waves reaching 5ft-tall rolled over the low-lying Midway islands about four hours after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck on Friday.

Many drowned or were buried under debris, said Barry W. Stieglitz, the project leader for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuges.”  Read more.

29% of Fish and Seafood Species Have Collapsed, Global Collapse of Seafood Imminent

… “‘Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world’s ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems,’ said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. ‘I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are; beyond anything we suspected.’

The study focused on oceans, but lakes, rivers and other freshwaters were also analyzed over the four-year study. The team looked at 32 controlled experiments, 48 studies of marine protected areas, and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s 1950 to 2003 worldwide fish and invertebrates database. They also studied archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data for 12 coastal regions, making up a 1,000-year time series.

‘At this point, 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed. That is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating,’ Worm said. ‘It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer, but it’s not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it.'”  Read more.

About 20 Whales Die After Beaching Themselves in Tasmania

Whales beached themselves in New Zealand and Japan before they were hit by earthquakes.

“Rescuers will be renewing their efforts at first light to save the surviving 10 whales from a pod of about 30 that became stranded at South Bruny Island.

The pod became stranded at the island south of Hobart on Thursday.

The Hobart Mercury reports the team of wildlife biologists and rescuers have been pouring buckets of water on the long-finned pilot whales, hoping to keep them alive through the night.

Efforts to guide the surviving whales back into the water had to be postponed because of failing light, but will resume at first light on Friday.”  Source.

Japan’s Increasingly Frantic Efforts at Nuke Plant

Key details:

• Water dropped by helicopters seems to blow away in wind
• At least 19 workers hurt, 20 exposed to radiation
• Four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant’s six reactors have faced serious crises
• U.S. says Americans should consider leaving Japan
• Aid workers, victims, regional officials appeal for help
• More than 5,300 officially listed as dead, but toll expected to top 10,000

Japan tried high-pressure water cannons, fire trucks and even helicopters that dropped batches of seawater in increasingly frantic attempts Thursday to cool an overheated nuclear complex as U.S. officials warned the situation was deteriorating.

Two Japanese military CH-47 Chinook helicopters began dumping seawater on the complex’s damaged Unit 3 at 9:48 a.m. (8:48 p.m. EDT), defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama said. The choppers dumped at least four loads on the reactor in just the first 10 minutes, though television footage showed much of it appearing to disperse in the wind.  Read more.