Geo-engineers are finally coming out of the "chemtrail" closet, as reports are now emerging about deliberate plans in the works to dump untold tons of sulfate chemicals into the atmosphere for the purported purpose of fighting so-called "global warming."
The U.K.'s Guardian and others are reporting that a multi-million dollar research fund, which just so happens to have been started and funded by Microsoft founder and vaccine enthusiast Bill Gates, is being used to fund the project. A large balloon hovering at 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico, will release the sulfates into the atmosphere within the next year.
The stated purpose for this massive release of toxic sulfate particles is that doing so will allegedly reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, and thus cool the planet. But many environmental groups and advocates of common sense are decrying the idea as dangerous, and one that could result in permanent damage to ecosystems all across the globe.
"Impacts include the potential for further damage to the ozone layer, and disruption of rainfall, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions, potentially threatening the food supplies of billions of people," said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of the ETC Group, a Canadian environmental protection group.
"It will do nothing to decrease levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or halt ocean acidification. And solar geo-engineering is likely to increase the risk of climate-related international conflict, given that the modeling to date shows it poses greater risks to the global south."
But the Gates-backed cohort is persistent in its efforts to geo-graffiti the world, as its scientists insist that governments are not doing enough to fight back against the supposed environment impacts of global warming. If governments refuse to implement high enough carbon taxes to eliminate greenhouse gases, in other words, then Gates and Co. believes it has no choice but to "save the planet" by polluting it with sulfate particles.
Spraying the skies with sulfate particles will destroy the planet faster than 'global warming' ever could
Sulfate particles are toxic, though, and constitute the very same type of ambient particulate matter (PM) that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers to be a noxious air pollutant. Deliberately spraying the skies with tiny particles composed of any material, for that matter, is hazardous both to respiratory health in humans and animals, as well as to water sources, soils, and other delicate environmental resources.
"Sulfate particles from acid rain can cause harm to the health of marine life in the rivers and lakes it contaminates, and can result in mortality," says an online water pollution guide (http://www.water-pollution.org.uk/health.html). A University of Washington (UW) report also explains that sulfate particles "contribute to acid rain, cause lung irritation, and have been a main culprit in causing the haze that obscures a clear view of the Grand Canyon."
Blocking the sun with reflective particles will also deprive humans of natural sunlight exposure, which is a primary source for naturally generating health-promoting vitamin D in the body. So once again, Bill Gates is at the helms of a project that seeks to control the climate in artificial ways using toxic chemicals, an endeavor that is sure to create all sorts of potentially irreversible problems for humanity and the planet.
Rafael Correa said it would be “suicide” if the UK tried to arrest the WikiLeaks founder, holed up at the London site as he fights extradition to Sweden to face sex charges.
Mr Correa said: “David beat Goliath and with many Davids it’s easier to bring down a number of Goliaths.”
The video shows some very disturbing images including police firing rubber bullets and letting a dog loose on a woman holding a baby. To talk more about what is going on in Anaheim, RT's Kristine Frazao is joined by Michael Prysner of the ANSWER Coalition.
At a sometimes-tense House hearing, Medicare Chief Information Officer Tony Trenkle assured lawmakers that the issue is a priority but couldn't offer a timetable for when the change might be made.
Congressional auditors said in a report Wednesday that an earlier cost estimate of $800 million to $845 million was faulty, partly because of insufficient and inconsistent data.
The Government Accountability office estimated as many as 48 million Medicare beneficiaries risk having their identity stolen because their Social Security numbers are displayed on Medicare cards required by most physicians' offices and other health care providers.
R.K. Nayak, chairman of the Power Grid Corporation of India, told reporters at a new conference in the capital that the problem was difficult to pinpoint given the network’s complexity, but that he hoped to see the system up and running by midnight.
“Some sections might have caused tripping but it is difficult to give you anything at this time,” he added.
By early evening, power officials were reporting that around 40% of the system was operating normally again.
The massive outage -- billed as one of the world’s largest, affecting half of India's 1.2 billion people -- occurred soon after the northern grid was powered back up after a 15-hour failure Monday, only to collapse again shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday That tripped the eastern and northeastern grids in quick succession, leaving much of the country in the dark and the capital with 1% of its usual electricity supply.
Nearly twice as many people were affected by Tuesday’s failure as were without power Monday.
As the outage spread, state officials stepped up their finger-pointing, accusing neighboring states of taking more than their allocated share of power, even as opposition politicians slammed the government for mismanagement and policy paralysis.
“This lowers the esteem of the country in the eyes of the world,” said Prakash Javadekar, a spokesman with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. “The country is suffering.”
As the Delhi Metro ground to a halt, passengers in the capital were forced to clamber down from rail cars and walk or wait until emergency power allowed trains to reach the nearest station. Some 350 trains were affected nationwide.
“This has been a big worry,” said Shobha Agrawal, 49, reached by telephone on a train from Chandigarh to Mathura that usually takes eight hours but had already been delayed for several more. “And my son’s very anxious back at home since I’m traveling alone.”
While major airports and larger hospitals switched to backup generators, smaller hospitals and clinics were forced to postpone medical procedures or make do with ambient light as even bigger ones struggled.
“We are facing a lot of problems,” said Harish Chawla, a manager at Delhi’s Holy Angel Hospital, which does have backup power. “You can’t trust generators to keep running dependably for 10 or 12 hours. We had to reschedule a surgery since it was risky to go ahead. And patients don’t want to risk an operation anyway during a power failure.”
As many as 200 coal miners working at the Eastern Coal Fields mines in West Bengal state were stranded underground when power needed to operate the pulley system went out.
“We are trying to rescue the coal miners,” Mamata Banerjee told reporters in the state capital, Kolkata. “You need power supplies to run the lifts in the underground mines."
Company officials said they had advised miners to move to a location within the mines where there was sufficient ventilation and were trying to get food and water to the men, adding that they were in no immediate danger.
This second disaster in rapid succession -- despite promises by power officials Monday that the problem was fixed -- underscores India’s weak infrastructure and crisis-management systems and the nation’s struggle to satisfy the needs of its increasingly affluent population and growing industry.
Rolling blackouts are common in Indian cities given an aging grid and a 9% electricity shortfall at peak periods, so many houses and companies have backup generators. But the collapse of an entire grid is rare, with the last such failure involving the northern grid occurring in 2001.
Richa Hingorani, who works for a civic group in Delhi, said she figured it was the usual one- or two-hour interruption when electricity first cut out around 2:30 a.m. Monday. But as temperatures rose inside their house, family members became increasingly anxious, fanning themselves for four hours with newspapers until dawn broke.
As Hingorani set off for work, things only got worse.
“With bumper-to-bumper traffic, it took me 40 minutes to travel a distance that should’ve taken 10 minutes,” she said. “Work at the office has suffered. There’s no Internet, and little respite when you leave the office since there are so many crowds.”
The government announced after the first grid failure that it was appointing a three-member panel to study the causes and submit a report within 15 days.
Her landmark deal for Vitol to export Libyan crude heralded the return of commodity houses to their swashbuckling roots, trading oil and grain with countries troubled by war and debt.
After years of backroom work focused on the dry business of building out storage, shipping and logistics operations, a small club of trading houses has jumped at the chance to land some old-fashioned big-profit deals.
They have had plenty of choice over the past year: war or unrest in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, sanctions on Iran, Greece on the brink of default.
"Trading houses are not shying away from places with high risk profiles if these profiles also lead to higher profit margins. It's about risk versus reward," said Ton Schurink at Geneva-based Commodity Finance Trading Advisory Services.
Vitol, Glencore, Gunvor and Trafigura in oil and Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and Bunge in grains have demonstrated that, for some at least, the security, credit and reputational risks are worth taking if the rewards are big enough.
Traders can operate in risky places because their business model is fundamentally different from the likes of BP or ExxonMobil.
Oil majors tend to be more wary of upsetting their home governments or shareholders and are bound to stricter rules when it comes to daily operations.
And because trading companies are mostly private, there is nobody to second-guess their internal decisions and more room for a star trader to take a bold initiative.
"Can you imagine someone at Exxon saying I'm just going to override that rule and send my tanker into pirate waters because it's a good trade? In a trading house, you don't have to listen to the model as it's privately owned," said an industry source working for a European oil firm.
Estimates from rivals suggest a trader who dares to sell grains to sanctions-straitened Iran could pocket $2 million profit per Panamax-size cargo as opposed to $200,000 if the cargo is sold to a low-risk buyer.
Premiums of at least $1.25 million were charged per diesel fuel cargo heading to unrest-prone Egypt in June this year, just days before the presidential election.
"Everyone has the same commodity to sell so you have to take risks to distinguish yourself and then manage them," said Robert Petritsch, Chief Financial Officer of Swiss-based Quadra Commodities.
SAVING GREECE
Greece's credit rating is now worse than many African nations.
Perhaps not surprising then that many firms are cautious about supplying the partly state-owned Greek refiner Hellenic Petroleum with crude oil.
"If a country defaults, then it's a different ball game entirely. Credit dries up. So costs go up," said a trader with a Swiss-based trading house.
The prospect of default hasn't scared off Glencore and Vitol.
The two traders are estimated to have given Greece at least 300 million euros in open credit financing - meaning it does not need guarantees from banks to buy crude. Both firms declined to comment.
The financial might of big trading houses enables them to act as both bank and supplier to clients who have limited access to credit, at the expense of others who either cannot or will not take that risk.
"No doubt the credit comes at a cost and can possibly provide an interesting margin," said Schurink. A Swiss-based oil trader agreed: "Every company tight on credit is prepared to pay a premium to the market."
Industry sources said that the traders had probably also negotiated refined products or oil assets as collateral.
In a similar scenario, Egypt's military rulers sought record supplies of fuel for the summer months, trying to avoid a repeat of shortages that led to public anger earlier this year.
But difficulty obtaining payments for earlier purchases and other costly delays prompted some suppliers to think again before participating in the record tender.
In the end, Egypt purchased close to $1.2 billion worth of fuel from trading houses including Vitol and Glencore, paying above market prices ahead of the first presidential election and amid fears of renewed instability. Again, both firms declined to comment on the deal.
"The premium is considerable - if the threat is real enough ... maybe 25 percent," said one trader with a firm that supplies fuel to Egypt.
A typical diesel cargo of 30,000 metric tons is worth some $25 million at current prices and so even a 5 percent premium would mean an additional cost of $1.25 million.
PLAYING WITH FIRE IN SYRIA
If in Libya traders bet on the rebels, in Syria the gamble was different.
Firms with investments there were reluctant to move out at first, but most dropped out as the death toll mounted and sanctions made it increasingly difficult to operate.
Around September 2011, Vitol and Trafigura abandoned the multi-million dollar Syrian market, but others like Switzerland's AOT Trading, Galaxy Group, based in Monaco, and Greek-based Naftomar exploited gaps in the sanctions regime.
This small pool kept the Syrian state supplied with diesel and heating gas for cooking throughout the winter, risking western opprobrium at a time when Assad's long-time allies Russia and Venezuela were the only other suppliers.
The deliveries were controversial not least because diesel is mainly used to power heavy vehicles including army tanks.
Naftomar, which supplied Syria with about $55 million a month of cooking gas, defended its position on the grounds its fuel may have prevented a worse humanitarian crisis.
Critics said that Naftomar, by delivering the fuel, might have been helping to extend Assad's rule.
Naftomar denied it was supporting Assad. "We were simply executing a contract that we had to sell LPG to a Syrian government related company. We stopped delivering to Syria when the sanctions were imposed," a Naftomar director said.
AOT and Galaxy Group did not respond to a request for comment.
EU sanctions targeting Syria's state-owned fuel distributor Mahrukat had forced trade to a halt by April this year.
Naftomar said that margins during the winter were "not excessive at all" and that it had since turned down requests to deliver fuel with "excellent" margins because of the embargo.
As in Syria, violence has deterred traditional suppliers from Yemen. Attacks on the energy infrastructure are costing up to $15 million a day in lost oil export revenue. Attacks on pipelines have halted flows to Yemen's, leaving the impoverished country even more dependent on imports.
Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has stepped in with donations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But when donations from Riyadh dried up Yemen became more reliant on Vitol and Trafigura for refined products supplies under long-term and spot deals.
"If you get it wrong, Yemen can lose you a lot more money," said a trader with experience of doing business with its government.
Both Vitol and Trafigura declined to comment.
FEEDING IRAN
Gripped by U.S. and European oil and banking sanctions, Iran has become a profitable trade for grains suppliers including U.S.-based Cargill and Bunge, France's Louis Dreyfus and Glencore.
The measures against Iran's disputed nuclear program have led to a complex array of global restrictions on doing business there, stifling Iran's oil sales and forcing Tehran to pay more for food imports.
While grain and sugar trade are not under embargo, a freeze on financial dollar transactions has caused some former suppliers to Iran either to drop out or cut volumes.
But big trading firms with multi-billion dollar credit lines and a team of lawyers are able to find ways of navigating through the restrictions legally, industry sources said.
Margins for grain deliveries can be between $15-$30 a metric ton, industry sources familiar with the deals said, indicating a gross margin of up to $2 million for a typical shipment.
The Swiss-based trading arms of Cargill and Bunge are able to continue food deliveries to Iran using non-dollar payments.
"Dealing with countries under sanctions of the U.S., EU, Switzerland is always more difficult," said Henri Rieux, vice president of corporate affairs at Bunge.
"Nonetheless, such sanctions do always provide the potential trading companies with some, while admittedly limited, latitude to grant the countries under sanctions with the required food for their population," he added.
Glencore confirmed that it was able to continue deliveries of corn and soymeal to Iran in compliance with sanctions without giving details. Louis Dreyfus did not respond to a request for comment. Cargill declined to comment.
"I think with grains that you will never get into moral arguments. Even if you are providing one side of a conflict that is starving the other - is it better to let them starve as well?," a Swiss-based industry source said.
SWISS HAVEN
The majority of the big players are Swiss-based. Traders say Geneva makes a good hub for pulling the strings on deals such as food trade with Iran as traders need no special permission from Swiss authorities.
In theory, Swiss-based firms can still trade Iranian oil as Switzerland is outside the European Union's oil embargo, although most big traders say they have stopped dealing with Tehran.
Marie Avet, spokeswoman for the Swiss federal department responsible for sanctions, said that food payments to Iran needed to be declared to the government and confirmed that these transactions were continuing.
Rules for U.S. companies are more onerous since they require a special license from the Office of Foreign Asset Controls. EU firms have to get clearance from national authorities.
But even this perfectly legal trade comes with some occupational hazards as traders can get hit by fines for delays while waiting for Iranian counterparties to transfer payment.
"You can't get trade finance for deals involving Iran, so transactions have to be "cash against documents", which is risky if anything goes wrong," said lawyer Matthew Parish at Geneva law firm Holman Fenwick Willan.
When payment falls through, it can be hard to negotiate a resale of a distressed cargo to a third party near Iranian waters.
BACKFIRING
Sometimes the big bets backfire in unexpected ways.
In February, Swiss-based Trafigura bought a cargo of discounted oil the South Sudanese government said was seized by Sudan, its northern neighbor.
Trafigura says it made significant efforts to establish ownership but proceeds from the deal were seized by a British court and the matter is legally unresolved.
The row between the two countries led to border fighting and prompted South Sudan to shut oil production despite sourcing 98 percent of its revenue from the commodity.
Also in South Sudan, the government scrapped a contract with Glencore for crude marketing and other services citing unfavorable terms.
But in some places, like Libya, the pay-off can be huge.
In October 2011, Libya's interim council said it owed $1 billion in payments for fuel - a large portion of which was supplied by traders.
Vitol was the first trader to supply Muammar Gaddafi's opponents with a fuel lifeline and was subsequently granted access to half of the crude production from Libya's eastern oil firm Agoco as repayment.
In November, Vitol, Glencore, Gunvor and Trafigura were among those awarded term contracts, in a break with former Libyan policy of restricting sales only to refiners.
"We can't just eliminate the traders. They are a necessary evil," Ahmed Shawki, general manager for oil marketing at Libya's National Oil Corporation, said at the time.
Source: Reuters.com - additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Michael Hogan in Hamburg. Editing by Richard Mably and William Hardy
It is with deep sadness we announce the passing of Jon Lord, who suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism today, Monday 16th July at the London Clinic, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Jon was surrounded by his loving family.
Jon Lord, the legendary keyboard player with Deep Purple co-wrote many of the bands legendary songs including Smoke On The Water and played with many bands and musicians throughout his career.
Best known for his Orchestral work Concerto for Group & Orchestra first performed at Royal Albert Hall with Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 and conducted by the renowned Malcolm Arnold, a feat repeated in 1999 when it was again performed at the Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra and Deep Purple.
Jon’s solo work was universally acclaimed when he eventually retired from Deep Purple in 2002.
Jon passes from Darkness to Light.
Jon Lord 9 June 1941 – 16 July 2012.
Born in Leicester, England, Jon Lord started to play classical piano from the age of five being influenced by Bach, Medieval music and the English tradition of Elgar. At 18 years of age Lord moved to London, originally intending to take up an acting career.
To earn some money in his spare time Lord joined the jazz ensemble Bill Ashton Combo before going on join other bands such as the Artwoods and the Flower Pot Men. It was when he formed the Santa Barbara Machine Head (Which featured Art Wood on vocals and Ronnie Wood on guitar) that Lord found his style of playing the Hammond organ in a heavy blues direction with plenty of distortion. A sound for which Lord would later become world famous for.
During his time as a session player Lord would also provide the keyboards for The Kinks hit 'You Really Got Me' in 1964.
Following a suggestion from his room mate Chris Curtis of the Searchers, Jon Lord met up with manager Tony Edwards in 1967 and met Ritchie Blackmore for the first time to form a band that was originally to be called Roundabout along with Ian Paice on drums and Rod Evans, vocals and Nick Simpler on bass. With a name change to Deep Purple, the band were influenced by American rockers Vanilla Fudge whom Lord had seen in concert the same year. They made their debut, 'Shades Of Deep Purple', and a cover of the Joe South song 'Hush' was a massive hit Stateside.
This line up made three albums with the third self titled album 'Deep Purple' featuring the track 'April' which had a classical introduction written by Lord.
In 1969 Ian Gillan and Roger Glover replaced Evans and Simper in the band and the classic Mk II line up was formed. However the first major task for the new boys was not an easy one as much against the rest of the band's wishes Deep Purple were to perform at the Royal Albert Hall London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to perform a piece written by Jon Lord.
This caused quite a stir at the time with classical loving members of the public being offended that their music was being hijacked by a group of long haired beatniks.
The event was a success and gave Jon Lord and the band some much needed publicity although a certain Blackmore wasn't too happy that Lord was getting all the spotlight and was seen as the main focus of the band.
In 1970 'Deep Purple... In Rock' was released and saw the band move in a much more progressive hard rock direction and paved the way for the band to become one of the biggest heavy rock bands in the word along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
'...In Rock' featured the distorted Hammond sounds of Lord and the fast demonic anger of Blackmore's guitar with screaming vocals from Gillan with thunderbolting rhythm from Glover and Paice and included the classics 'Speed King' and 'Child In Time' which had an eerie intro written by Jon Lord although it was cheekily borrowed from a song called 'Bombay Calling' by the folk band It's A Beautiful Day who would in return steal Purple's 'Wring That Neck' for their own use. The album was a massive hit and really opened them up to the European market.
The Mk II line-up would make three more albums including the experimental 'Fireball' in 71 and for many the ultimate classic with 'Machine Head' in 72 which featured 'Highway Star' and Deep Purple's most popular song 'Smoke On The Water' written after the band witnessed a fire at a Frank Zappa concert whilst recording the album in Montreux, Switzerland.
Deep Purple would also release one of the first milestone live albums with 'Made In Japan' which showcased the improvisations the band were famously were becoming known for in the live setting.
Although Ian Gillan left the band and Roger Glover quickly followed suit there was no let up in the rolling of the Deep Purple machine with the new boys, a young David Coverdale on vocals and from Trapeze, Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals.
With the release of 'Burn' in 1974, Deep Purple were one of the biggest grossing rock bands which saw the band fly around the world in their own private jet and headline the Californian Jam in front of a reported 250,00 people on a bill that also included ELP and Black Sabbath amongst many others.
Later that year they would release another studio album in 'Stormbringer', the last to feature Blackmore who was unhappy in the new funky soul direction the band was moving into.
Whilst all this success was going on Jon Lord still found time to work on classical projects including 'Gemini Suite', 'Windows' and 'Sarabande' as well as an album with Tony Ashton with 'Last Of The Big Bands' and a film soundtrack with 'The Last Rebel'.
There was one more album with Deep Purple in 'Come Taste The Band' in 1975 with new American guitarist Tommy Bolin. After a disastrous Asian tour the band finally imploded after a gig in Liverpool in 76 and Ian Paice and Jon Lord agreed to call Deep Purple a day. The drugs, stress and hard touring had finally taken their toll.
However it didn't take long for Jon Lord and Ian Paice to join forces again with Lord's old buddy Tony Ashton to form the short lived Paice, Ashton, Lord - or PAL for short - to record one album 'Malice In Wonderland', A funky jazz affair which also featured Bernie Marsden on guitar.
Between 1978-84 Jon Lord joined former Purple singer David Coverdale in Whitesnake who at times also had Ian Paice in the band.
Although the band were popular having hit albums and singles, Jon Lord was unhappy at just being a hired gun and not having the room to express himself in his playing as he had in Purple. With Coverdale wanting the age group of the band under the forty age bracket Lord left the band.
Jon Lord also found time to record another solo album in 82 with 'Before I Forget'.
In 1984 the world expressed surprise as one of the first ever reformations of a major rock band took place as it was announced that the classic Deep Purple Mk II line up of Gillan-Glover-Lord-Paice-Blackmore would record a new album and tour the world.
The resulting album, 'Perfect Strangers', didn't set the world alight as before but was still regarded as a good solid rock album. The reformation gave Jon Lord the chance again to hammer away on the Hammond to the delight of many rock fans.
Although the reformed Deep Purple would take many twists and turns throughout the years with Gillan leaving and re-rejoining and Canadian Steve Morse replacing Blackmore, giving Purple yet another new dimension and this line up toured the world harder than ever before.
Jon Lord finally retired from Deep Purple in 2002 reportedly after having trouble after knee surgery, but Lord was also finding life on the road a chore and was very saddened to be away on tour when his best friend Tony Ashton sadly passed away.
Jon Lord played his last official gig with Deep Purple in Ipswich 2002 but has guested with the band on many occasions since then. Jon Lord gave his blessing for Don Airey to be his replacement.
Jon Lord continued to make music and made the classical albums 'Pictured Within', 'Beyond The Notes' and more recently 'To Notice Such Things' which was released in 2010. Lord has continued to do occasional concerts, mainly in Germany and East Europe in places such as Bulgaria and Hungary despite having to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Lord held a positive attitude in fighting the disease and more recently had been touring a re-working of 'Sarabande'.
Jon Lord has moved from darkness to light. He leaves behind his wife Vickie Lord and his daughters Amy and Sara.
Jonathan Douglas Lord 9th June 1941- 16th July 2012
Both tunnels were at least 150 yards long. One, found on Wednesday by the Mexican army, began under a bathroom sink inside a warehouse in Tijuana but was unfinished and did not cross the border into San Diego.
The other was completed and discovered on Saturday in a vacant strip mall storefront in the south-western Arizona city of San Luis.
It showed a level of sophistication not typically associated with other crude smuggling passageways that tie into storm drains in the state.
Douglas Coleman, special agent in charge of the Phoenix division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said: "When you see what is there and the way they designed it, it wasn't something that your average miner could put together.
"You would need someone with some engineering expertise to put something together like this."
As US authorities heighten enforcement on land, tunnels have become an increasingly common way to smuggle loads of heroin, marijuana and other drugs into the country. More than 70 passages have been found on the border since October 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years.
A total of 156 secret tunnels have been found along the border since 1990, the vast majority of them incomplete.
Raids last November on two tunnels linking San Diego and Tijuana netted a combined 52 tonnes of marijuana on both sides of the border. In early December 2009, authorities found an incomplete tunnel that stretched nearly 900ft into San Diego from Tijuana, equipped with a lift at the Mexican entrance.
The latest Arizona tunnel was discovered after state police pulled over a man who had 39 pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle and mentioned the strip mall.
The tunnel was found beneath a water tank in a storage room and stretched across the border to an ice-plant business in the Mexican city of San Luis Rio Colorado. It was reinforced with four-by-six beams and lined with plywood.
Investigators believe the tunnel was not in operation for long because there was little wear on its floor, and 55-gallon drums containing extracted dirt had not been removed from the property.
Mr Coleman said investigators cannot yet say for sure if the tunnel, estimated to cost 1.5 million US dollars (Ł970,000) to build, was operated by the powerful Sinaloa cartel. Authorities suspect cartel involvement because the group from Sinaloa controls smuggling routes into Arizona.
"Another cartel wasn't going to roll into that area and put down that kind of money in Sinaloa territory," Mr Coleman said.
"Nobody is going to construct this tunnel without significant cartel leadership knowing what's going on."
US authorities were investigating the Tijuana tunnel for three months, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Authorities found no connections to the smuggling operation involving the Arizona passageway.
The Tijuana tunnel was discovered inside a building advertised as a recycling plant in an area where industrial warehouses are common on both sides of the border.
The Mexican army said two tractor-trailers were found inside the warehouse, along with shovels, drills, pickaxes, buckets and other excavation tools.
The Mexican army estimated the tunnel was about 150 yards long and more than 10 yards underground. The walls were lined with dirt and wide enough for one person to get through comfortably.
It takes six months to a year to build a tunnel, authorities said. Workers use shovels and pickaxes to slowly dig through the soil, sleeping in buildings where the tunnels begin until the job is done. Sometimes they use pneumatic tools.
In the 18 months since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood has risen swiftly from the cave to the castle. It founded the now-dominant Freedom and Justice Party last April, won a massive plurality in the winter parliamentary elections, and, last week, celebrated as its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won Egypt's presidential elections. After 84 years of using its nationwide social services networks to build an Islamic state in Egypt from the ground up, the Brotherhood is, for the first time, poised to shape Egyptian society from the top down.
Mursi delivers a speech during a ceremony in which the military handed over power to him. (Courtesy Reuters)
There is, however, a catch: most of the Brotherhood's gains exist in name only. In early June, a court order invalidated the parliamentary elections and dissolved the Brotherhood-dominated parliament. Then, just prior to the second round of the presidential elections, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) issued a constitutional declaration that seized executive authority from the presidency, ultimately rendering Morsi a mostly powerless figure.
But after weeks of mounting tension with the SCAF, including mass demonstrations against the junta's power grab, the Brotherhood is dialing things down. It fears that agitating for more authority now could foment unrest and alienate a deeply divided public. It is also wary of what happened in Algeria in 1991, when the country's military-backed government responded to the electoral victory of an Islamist party with a harsh crackdown that culminated in civil war. To avoid further violence and cement its place in Egyptian politics, the Brotherhood now hopes to create a period of calm in the short run so that it can act more assertively in the future...
The Ministry of Defense has put the contracts for 30,000 modern assault rifles out to tender to major arms producers around the world to supply the “civilian police” with the state-of-the-art weaponry by 2014 under the pretext of fighting terrorists and criminal gangs.
Media reports said the police chiefs are already considering arming their officers with the Canadian-made C8 SFW carbine, the same assault rifle the Special Air Service uses in its high-profile operations.
Some of the features the police want to ensure the new rifles have are being adaptable to use of grenade launchers, silencers and different sights.
There are fears that bringing the battlefield weapons to the streets of London and other cities across Britain could be a prelude to even deeper suppression of protest movements after tackling of demonstrations over the past two years sparked condemnations from human rights groups.
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