Tennessee: Ground-Shaking Booms Puzzle Louisville Neighborhood

By Jim Matheny – “Louisville residents searching for the source of an unexplained ground-shaking boom can scratch another theory off the list.

A Loudon County resident speculated on Thursday that the noise could have come from maintenance on an underground pipeline (see previous story below). The Plantation Pipe Line Company operates a large liquid refined petroleum pipeline that runs from Knoxville to Macon, Georgia. The pipeline is co-owned and operated by Kinder Morgan.

Emily Mir with Kinder Morgan’s media relations department contacted 10News on Friday morning and indicated there were no recent operations that would have created the noise. Furthermore, the pipeline in question is located around 10 miles from the Lashbrooke subdivision.

The Lashbrooke subdivision in Louisville enjoyed a quiet and sun-bathed afternoon on Thursday. The peaceful surroundings of the affluent neighborhood along the Tennessee River lend no hint that its residents suffer from shell-shock.

‘It’s scary-loud. It’s loud enough that it makes your heart stop for a second,’ said Andy Wombold. ‘It sounds like a shotgun or an explosion of some kind.'” Read more.

Unearthly Sounds of Earth Perplexing Scientists – “Strange unearthly sounds heard around Earth are perplexing scientists, especially when similar sounds are heard at the same time. The sounds are described as ‘running trains,’ while others are described as trumpets or booming sounds. All are unearthly. YouTube.com is full of videos displaying strange sounds from all over the world, with viewers asking for explanations. They vary in countries and states—with many heard at the same time but in different locations of Earth, such as the sounds in southern Sweden.” Read more.

Egypt: Horde of 3000 Islamists Torch Christian Church, Loot and Burn Christian-Owned Homes and Businesses

By Wayne King – “A group of hard-line Muslims attacked a church building in Upper Egypt this afternoon, torching the structure and then looting and burning nearby Christian-owned homes and businesses.

The 3,000-strong mob of hard-line and Salafi Muslims gutted the Mar Gerges Church in the Elmarenab village of Aswan, then demolished much of its remains, multiple witnesses at the scene said. The mob also razed four homes near the church and two businesses, all Christian-owned. Looting was also reported.

Michael Ramzy, a villager in Elmarenab, said the attack started shortly after Muslims held their afternoon prayers.

‘Imams in more than 20 mosques called for crowds to gather and destroy the church and demolish the houses of the Copts and loot their properties,’ Ramzy told local media.

The Mar Gerges burning is the third church in Egypt in seven months to be burned down by a mob. Additionally, numerous other churches have been looted or otherwise attacked this year, including a New Year’s Eve bombing at the Two Saints Church in Alexandria that left 23 dead and scores critically wounded.

No casualties have yet been reported in today’s attack.

The tension in Elmarenab started the last week of August, when Muslim extremists, many of them thought to be members of the Salafi movement, which patterns its belief and practices on the first three generations of Muslims, voiced anger over renovations taking place at the church and anything perceived as a Christian symbol that could be seen from the outside.

To force the Copts to acquiesce to their demands, the Muslim extremists blockaded the entrance to the church and threatened Copts on the streets, in effect making them hostages in their own homes.

On Sept. 2, a meeting was held with military leaders and village elders in which the local leadership of the Coptic church agreed to strike all crosses and bells from the outside of the church. Normalcy returned briefly to the village, but by early the next week, the same people making demands for the removal of the crosses demanded the removal of newly constructed domes.” Read more.

New Hampshire: Dead Harbor Seals Pose Mystery on Beaches

By Amanda Cedrone – “Biologists are working to find out why the corpses of young harbor seals have been washing up on New Hampshire beaches this week.

‘We’re now up to a dozen different dead seals from beaches in Seabrook to Rye,’ said Tony LaCasse, spokesperson for the New England Aquarium.

The carcasses range in their level of decomposition from fresh to a few weeks old, LaCasse said.

Staff members at the New England Aquarium are completing necropsies on a few of the seals today to try to determine whether they were killed by disease, LaCasse said. The results will not be available for a few days to a few weeks.

The seals are all the same age, around four months.

‘There is no evidence of any kind of human involvement in these deaths,’ LaCasse said, noting that the situation is different from the gray seals that were found shot to death on Cape Cod beaches earlier this summer.” Read more.

Hamas: ‘Palestinians Must Resort to Resistance No Matter How costly It Is, Until Palestine Is Free and Israel Is Destroyed’

“Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told an international conference in Iran on Saturday that ‘resistance’ was the only option left for the Palestinians.

Meshal was addressing the ‘5th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada’ in Iran’s capital Tehran.

‘Palestinians must resort to resistance no matter how costly it is, until Palestine is free and Israel is destroyed,’ Meshal said.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who also spoke at the conference on Saturday, assailed a two state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, saying the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations is doomed to fail.

Khamenei told the conference, which was attended by other by senior Palestinian militant leaders as well as Mashaal, that the Palestinians should not limit themselves to seeking a country based on the pre-1967 borders because ‘all land belongs to Palestinians.’

‘Our claim is freedom of Palestine, not part of Palestine. Any plan that partitions Palestine is totally rejected,’ Khamenei told the conference.” Read more.