telegraph - The solar fireworks at the weekend were recorded by several satellites, including Nasa’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory which watched its shock wave rippling outwards.
Astronomers from all over the world witnessed the huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of the Earth, which they linked to an even larger eruption across the surface of Sun.
The explosion, called a coronal mass ejection, was aimed directly towards Earth, which then sent a “solar tsunami” racing 93 million miles across space.
Images from the SDO hint at a shock wave travelling from the flare into space, the New Scientist reported.
Experts said the wave of supercharged gas will likely reach the Earth on Tuesday, when it will buffet the natural magnetic shield protecting Earth.
It is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.
"This eruption is directed right at us," said Leon Golub, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
"It's the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time."
Scientists have warned that a really big solar eruption could destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe if it happened today.
Nasa recently warned that Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”.
The Daily Telegraph disclosed in June that senior space agency scientists believed the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013.
It remains unclear, however, how much damage this latest eruption will cause the world’s communication tools.
Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey, followed the flare-ups using Japan's orbiting Hinode telescope.
"What wonderful fireworks the Sun has been producing,” the UK solar expert said.
“This was a very rare event – not one, but two almost simultaneous eruptions from different locations on the sun were launched toward the Earth.
"These eruptions occur when immense magnetic structures in the solar atmosphere lose their stability and can no longer be held down by the Sun's huge gravitational pull. Just like a coiled spring suddenly being released, they erupt into space.”
She added: "It looks like the first eruption was so large that it changed the magnetic fields throughout half the Sun's visible atmosphere and provided the right conditions for the second eruption.
"Both eruptions could be Earth-directed but may be travelling at different speeds.
“This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes."
iol - A grieving mom got a creepy visit from her dead son when his body mysteriously arrived on a local orphanage's stoep.
Little Simamkele Maphini's decomposing body was found in the tiny white coffin he was buried in nearly three months ago after he died of meningitis.
Now the orphanage owner has been taken in for questioning after Simamkele's mother and the community accused her of turning the boy into a zombie.
The Du Noon house in Benelle Street was a hive of activity early Monday morning when a neighbour saw the coffin and went to alert orphanage owner Tozi Gonya.
Tozi is a well-known face in the area because she looks after abandoned and abused kids.
When the boy's mom Fundiswa Maphini arrived at the scene, she confirmed that the tiny corpse was her dead four-year-old son and told the Daily Voice she knows Tozi well.
Fundiswa said Tozi had approached her a day before her son died in April, offering to look after the cute little boy.
"I refused her offer and a day later my boy wouldn't wake up," she said.
"His body felt numb and he died later that day."
Fundiswa said her suspicions that Tozi was practising witchcraft were confirmed when the orphans told her the 54-year-old woman was keeping Simamkele in a cupboard.
"The kids came to tell me they saw my child crying in the house," she said.
"They told me she was feeding him (sugar water) because she couldn't afford the Coke he used to drink with me."
Out of desperation, Fundiswa consulted a sangoma who told her Simamkele would be returning home on August 2.
"That is not my real son I buried but a second body. She is using my son as a zombie," she claimed.
On Monday, even cops were too scared to open the dirty white coffin and forensic officials had the grim task of lifting the lid and peering inside.
A terrified Tozi tells the Daily Voice Fundiswa is nothing but a grieving mother desperate to blame her.
"She believes that I killed her baby. All I know is her baby died of meningitis," she said.
"She accused me of witchcraft and of keeping her baby as my zombie.
"She must have hired people to dig the coffin and dump it in my yard."
Milnerton police spokeswoman Daphne Dell said the boy's coffin and body were dug up from Maitland Cemetery.
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Accused Witch Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Leaves Lawyer in Ruins
A Toronto lawyer caught out by a fraudster originally accused of practicing witchcraft used his victim impact statement to rail against what he sees as the lax approach to white-collar crime in Canada.
Vishwantee Persaud pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud last week, but the Crown withdrew a rarely laid witchcraft charge.
Noel Daley, an experienced criminal lawyer originally from Newfoundland, was in court last week to see Vishwantee Persaud plead guilty to four counts of fraud.
Persaud fooled Daley into believing she was a law student, defrauding him in the process of at least $27,000, although he claims the real figure is much higher.
The Crown withdrew a rarely laid witchcraft charge against Persaud as part of a plea deal. In the meantime, Daley says her crimes have left him shunned by the legal profession and his career in ruins. Continue reading at Accused Witch Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Leaves Lawyer in Ruins
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Game Reserve Owner Plans To Inject Rhino Horns With Poison
swns - The owner of a South African game reserve intends to inject his rhino’s horns with poison to deter poachers. Ed Hern, owner of the Rhino and Lion Reserve near Johannesburg, hopes this extreme measure will dissuade poachers who have slaughtered more than 150 rhinos this year. He believes the only way to stop the thriving black market trade would be to make the horns deadly to humans.
“The aim would be to kill, or make seriously ill anyone who consumes the horn,” Hern said. “If someone in China eats it and gets violently sick, they’re not going to buy it again.” In China, powdered rhino horn is believed to be an aphrodisiac and recent demand has led to a dramatic new wave of rhino poaching across South African game parks.
The animals, including the critically endangered black rhino, are being massacred at the rate of two or three a week with horns fetching up to £45,000 on the black market. Poachers use helicopters and night vision equipment to track down and target their prey, with more than 150 killed this year. Hern’s idea to poison the horns of his herd of white rhino has provoked uproar among conservationists although he claims the animals will not be harmed.
“We are experimenting by injecting a little of the substance every day into one of the rhino, and monitoring him carefully for any effects,” Hern said. He admitted while his plan might seem barbaric, he stressed “what’s really outrageous is the sight of a dead rhino with its horn sawn off”. Research has proved the keratin inside rhino horns has no medicinal value yet myth surrounding its properties continues to drive illegal trade.
********** Florida Man Kills and Skins Pet Dog...Thinks It's Satan
pnj - A Gulf Breeze man is charged with killing and skinning the family dog on Sunday because he believed it was possessed by the devil.
Matthew O. Foote, 25, is being held without bond on a third-degree felony of cruelty to animals. He is expected to make his first appearance in court this afternoon.
Foote told investigators he believed the 7-year-old dachshund Chihuahua mix, named Sasha, was possessed by Satan, according to a Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office report.
He vividly described slitting the dog's throat and chest with a knife several times, then when she did not die, holding the dog's mouth shut to suffocate her, the report says.
He then took the dog into the back yard and skinned her body. He dug a shallow grave, doused the body with gasoline and lit it on fire. A bag with the dog's skin and entrails was found in a nearby wooded area.
In her report, Deputy Virginia Rush described Foote as "very matter-of-fact," calm, cooperative and showing no emotion as he discussed the dog's death. He said his parents were at Mass when he killed the dog.
"He told me he did not really know why he killed his dog except that he thought the dog was Jesus," Rush wrote. "He then corrected himself and said Satan."
Foote also said he spent the preceding weekend in Louisiana where he met a lot of "evil people." He told the investigator that he also punched a girl on a bus and believed that "something was put in the water," the arrest report says.
Sheriff's deputies learned of the death after Foote's father, Gerald Foote, called 911 from their Reservation Road home. The elder Foote told the dispatcher that his son had killed the dog.
bernews - 41% of people believe that the Bermuda Triangle is a danger, according to tests done on Queendom.com. The company says the results come from collecting data from “over 20,000 people from all walks of life.”
The Bermuda Triangle seems to be intricately linked with Bermuda for many people. Countless Bermudians when traveling abroad have said they are from Bermuda and faced the “Oh…the Bermuda triangle” response.
Popular culture has attributed disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle to the paranormal, however documented evidence indicates that some incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and official agencies have stated that the disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean.
Queendom.com say their data also revealed interesting differences among ethnic groups. Native Americans, who have a rich history and a deep respect for spiritual matters, were the group that believed the most strongly in the paranormal. Those from the Middle East scored highest in religious belief and belief in witchcraft, while Native Americans outscored the rest of the ethnic groups in belief in the afterlife (average score of 71), folklore/myths/legends (54), fate (66), psychics (68), and telekinesis (56). Latinos believed the most strongly in Aliens and UFOs, while the concept of karma was more widely accepted by the African American/African/Caribbean group. Finally, although the average score for superstitious beliefs was actually quite low (23), it was the Jewish group that took the top score, with 30.
NOTE: I really don't know what to make of the incidents that supposedly occur in this area but it's in the back of my mind when I travel through it. I lean towards a more natural explanation as opposed to paranormal activity but some of the evidence is intriguing. Honestly, the survey results are higher than I would expect though, the hype definitely had an influence on the final results...Lon
NOTE: As you may have noticed, I recently added a few 'DONATE' buttons to the blog. When I started 'Phantoms and Monsters' it was made clear that I would not charge for use of the information provided on the blog and the delivery of the daily email newsletter. That policy will continue. Because of the format I use with the blog and the wiki, my expenses are minimal...mostly monthly use fees to keep large and loud corporate banners off the sites as well as a few odds and ends. Of course, I do place some advertising...but most are banners and text links for associates and friends who I am proud to highlight. So, why the 'DONATE" buttons? Well, I'll leave that question up to you to answer. Anyway, 'Phantoms and Monsters' is a labor of love that I hope I can continue for many years. Thanks for reading! I appreciate your support...Lon
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The following is an interesting piece by Scott Corrales at Inexplicata. It includes an overview of the Monterrey Flying Witch or Flying Humanoid events as well:
A curious story occupied the headlines of a number of Mexican newspapers in 2006 regarding the startling re-emergence of strange entities best described as “witches” in parts of the country, but mainly in the area of Monterrey, Mexico’s second most important city. According to Matamoros’ El Mañana newspaper on September 19, 2006, Gerardo Garza Carvajal (Carbajal, in some newspaper accounts) a policeman from Santa Catarina claimed having seen two witches while on a routine patrol near a graveyard months earlier.
With five years’ seniority with the Monterrey police department, Garza stepped forward with the story of his bizarre experience only because a fellow officer agreed to substantiate the experience. The young police officer had a glowing record and had never experienced any mental issues or hallucinations, as substantiated by tests performed on him at the Municipal Clinic.
Gerardo Garza’s brush with the supernatural occurred near the Panteon Municipal cemetery, a short distance from the road leading to Villa Garcia.” I was inside the guardhouse when I heard the sound of pebbles being thrown against the door. I went outside to see what was going on, and it was then that I saw two witches with faces like old women, with red eyes and black hats tipped backward; they had feathered wings and claws on the ends of those extremities. They began laughing horribly, and I got back into the guardhouse and saw what they were doing through a peephole. They were flying in circles, so I reported the situation to my fellow officers.”
Garza said that he immediately requested backup, and in a matter of minutes was surrounded by several municipal police cars even some from the Ministerial Police.
"The witches flew off, but the police officers who came to my aid saw what I saw. They can attest to the fact that I didn't imagine anything. What I saw was real. I'd never been so scared before," said the officer. He added that he was subsequently taken to a medical center, since his blood pressure dropped excessively. He soon recovered from the powerful shock.
Local media gave the event a humorous twist, saying that law enforcement seemed to have a hard time dealing with organized crime, but oddly capable at dealing with the paranormal. Police spokesmen did their best to play down the report involving the strange “witches”, but there already existed an uncomfortable precedent for the case: the January 16, 2004 experience that involved another police officer – Leonardo Samaniego – who had seen an entity similar to the one reported by Garza in the Valles de la Silla neighborhood at 3:15 am. near the mountain that dominates the city of Monterrey. The 21 year old Samaniego reported to his superiors that a “creature resembling a witch” had manifested itself suddenly in the residential area, and even pursued his cruiser in full flight as the terrified officer drove away in reverse, his eyes riveted all the time on the frightening manifestation.
“When the witch began chasing me,” he explained, “I requested support from other police units over the radio. At that point, the witch descended between two trees at an elevation of six meters. She stopped and came down slowly. I saw her when she turned around – she was a completely black shape. She made a full turn and the light in her eyes vanished. Her eyes were just black sockets, without eyelids.”
Like in the very best horror movies, the nightmarish figure’s pursuit did not end there. According to Samaniego, the figure flew against the squad car, landing against the windshield and staring at him fixedly. “That’s when I lifted my hands, screamed and passed out.” One can hardly blame him.
Police dispatcher Angelina Guerrero’s version of the event was only slightly different. “The officer reported that the woman approached him and gave him a nasty look, that she stuck to the windshield of the cruiser, pulled back and then rose into the night sky until she vanished.
It was suggested at the time that the unholy apparition had not hurt Samaniego Gallegos because he had an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe hanging from the rear view mirror. Another interesting note was that the vehicle’s windows were fully lowered at the time.
The reader can imagine the teasing and practical jokes that the young law enforcement officer probably had to endure at the hands of his fellow policemen, but his experience prompted residents of Colonia La Playa – a residential district adjacent to Valles de la Silla – to come forward with their own accounts of high strangeness.
Norma Hernandez, 22, claimed having seen a black figure similar to a human being flying through the air two weeks prior to the policeman’s hair-raising experience. Mrs. Hernández told the press that she had been doing laundry and hanging clothes out to dry when she became aware of the “black form” flying near her house. Frightened, the young housewife set aside her chores to run into the house and alert her husband, who scoffed at the suggestion. By the time Norma went out again, the entity was gone. “It was the size of a person,” she said. “That’s what frightened me the most.”
The Hernandez experience was in turn corroborated by Seferino Gutiérrez, another resident of Colonia La Playa, who remarked that several years earlier he had seen a black-colored shape with clearly animal characteristics flying over their street.
Mexico’s tradition of “witches” goes back into the Aztec past, and small communities have always maintained traditions that are an amalgamation of European Christian belief and native lore in this regard. Many regiomontano farmers and ranchers have the same fear of owls that the Aztecs felt for Tacolotl, the great horned owl, an evil far more terrible than the dreaded Tezcatlipoca. 19th century beliefs maintained that witches would adopt owl form to disturb the inhabitants of lonely farmsteads and would engage in curious animal mutilations – killing cats and stealing their eyes in order to see in the dark. It was also believed that witches in owl-shape could be made to fall out of the sky by reciting the Lord’s Prayer backward. The Witch Caught on Videotape?
Stories involving the “witches of Monterrey” – much more aerobatic and frightful than the witches of Eastwick or TV series like Charmed – captured the public’s imagination and the media’s as a result of Officer Garza’s experience at the cemetery. A video dated May 17, 2006 was received by a Monterrey TV station, allegedly showing the flight of a “black shape” like the one described, only this time on a broomstick. The intriguing recording had been taken in the vicinity of Cerro de la Silla, unleashing a firestorm of controversy, and it remains to this day on YouTube.
The video begins with Garza providing a description of the attacking entity to an illustrator, who prepares a drawing based on his eyewitness account. “[Her] height was a meter, meter and a half, at most...[she] was dressed like a bird, with feathers, you know, she had feathers...seeing her face, it was an old lady’s face, wrinkled, red eyes, black hair. What I really noticed were her black claws..and the hair. In other words, that’s what shocked me the most. It was a bird’s body and a face like a human’s.”
The news broadcast then cuts to the footage provided by Tomás Amador of the OVNIClub organization, showing the date and time stamp on the lower right hand corner. The “witch” can be seen as a small speck over a ridge at a considerable distance from the camera, but the camera manages to zoom in on the object, which remarkably looks like a classic Halloween witch on a broom, or at least a human moving across the air at considerable speed in a crouching position. The object flies across a wooded hillside and the video clip comes to an end. The voiceover corresponds to the two television reporters, remarking on the fact that the footage shows no sign of having been made with, or altered by, a computer, and the time sequence shown is uninterrupted.
It must be a hoax, one thinks automatically, since witches don’t exist, or at least not in that particular form. Or do they? As the old Spanish saying goes: las brujas no existen, pero las hay – witches don’t exist, but they’re there.
A Fascinating Coincidence
When we approached our colleague Ing. Marco Reynoso of the Monterrey-based Fundación Cosmos A.C. for his comments, he attested to the factual nature of the video presented on the evening news and reported an even stranger wrinkle in this mind-bending sequents of events.
"In this case," says Reynoso, referring to the Samaniego encounter of 2004, "I was contacted by a person professing to be a white witch or sorceress for my opinion on the case, as she had cast a spell to bring down a witch who was about to cause physical harm to the grandchildren of one of her clients."
The magic user explained to the grandparents, continues Reynoso in his message to Inexplicata, and that they rejected her advice. They eventually embraced her advice and recommendations to perform certain rituals under the sorceress's guidance, incluiding a series of prayers. As events turned out, the very same evening that these rituals were performed to "bring down the witch", a strange creature fell out of a tree - the same bizarre entity that plastered itself against the windshield of Officer Samaniego's small patrol car.
At this point one wonders is rather than the hook-nosed crone of Hansel & Gretel, the so-called witches Monterrey correspond more to an elemental order of beings, perhaps even the lamias of ancient mythology, who were greatly feared by the peasantry of the Roman Empire. Curiously enough, tradition concerning the witches of Spain's Basque Country holds that the evil associated with Mt. Azpilicueta en the valley of Baztán is associated not to the area’s extensive witch lore, but to the corpses of two lamias buried in the valley at some point in antiquity. Even more suggestive is the consideration that lamias were allowed to remove their eyes from their sockets at will, and the witch seen by Samaniego had nothing but empty black eye sockets, and the vampiric tendencies of the classical lamias dovetail with the northern Mexican belief that witches drain newborns of their blood.
Not Just Witches, Either...
Residents of a house in the municipality of Apodaca, also located in the state of Nuevo Leon, informed the Archivo Insolito website in 2006 of a problem they had been having for a while with an unwanted guest: the black, shadowy form of child. The grim shade would unexpectedly appear in different parts of the house, oftentimes weeping. Concepción Arreola, who owns the property, reported that a female lodger had once reported seeing the shadow entity appear under the staircase, crying, and that her own son had seen it materialize out of thin air in his own bedroom.
Fearful that the shadow entity might harbor unwholesome intentions, Mrs. Arreola contacted Father Hilario Gonzalez of the Monterrey Seminary for his expert opinion. The religious remarked that it was indispensable to determine the possibility of a natural origin to the phenomenon. Otherwise, he counseled, it would be best to study religious teachings to find a measure of peace.
When this answer did not satisfy, the homeowner approached Ricardo Escamilla, a researcher of the paranormal, who informed her that ghostly phenomena do not involve things have suddenly presented themselves but rather, something that has been there all along. "There have been cases," he added, "in which ghosts appear to choose a home at random, in some way. However, one usually deals with a situation that has occurred beforehand and manifestations begin to take place after a certain length of time." Escamilla expressed his willingness to look into this "shadow people" case from the standpoint of paranormal research, but adding that a religious approach is a way of solving these situations.
Cases involving “shadow people” have become increasingly common not only in the United States but around the world. Contemporary researchers, while classifying them as ghosts, still consider them to belong to a rather unique category. As far back as 1969, Oscar Gonzalez Quevedo had placed them under a separate classification in his landmark book Las Fuerzas Físicas de la Mente" (Spain: Editorial Sal Terrae,1969). Quevedo’s classification of ghosts broke the restless apparitions into two categories: Group A, which included phantoms of human origin and nature, manifestations of the unconscious and human desire, along the lines of the “tulpas” of the Tibetan tradition; Group B, fraudulent ghost reports or misidentifications, and Group C, containing manifestations of the undead. The “shadow people” reported in the 21st century would correspond to the third set of insubstantial beings in the category. “Shadows,” writes Quevedo, “have the peculiar characteristic of altering the temperature at the site of their materialization and feed on human fear. They are practically a silhouette or cutout image, rarely showing their features and traveling in groups. They appear in places where a death is about to occur and frequently remind the living of deceased relatives or those who are about to die. Animals react to their presence with tearful, frightened reactions. Shadows have the capacity of darkening the environment, and even if people cannot see them, it is unusual that they cannot feel them or sense their coming.”
NOTE: Thanks to Scott Corrales for the great article! This phenomena has fascinated me for a long time, especially since the 'Flying Humanoid' sightings began. I have posted some of the videos and other information below...Lon
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The Flying Witches of Monterrey
Click for video This was posted originally about a year ago but new sightings of the 'flying witches' are again being reported from Mexico. A police officer had a close encounter with one of these humanoids.
Testimony from dozens of persons and police officers depict seeing what appear to be witches flying through the skies of remote Mexican towns. Several people videotaped the strange phenomenon. The creatures appear to infest the skies over an old cemetery.
********** Originally posted 5/9/2008
Flying Humanoid / UFO - Moctezuma District, Mexico City
Lic. Daniel Sanchez Rosales, a resident of Mexico City, recorded an unidentified flying object that he describes as having humanoid characteristics.
The video was taken on February 28 of this year in the Moctezuma district, not far from Mexico City International Airport, at 6:50 a.m.
It should be mentioned that the first one to see it was his nephew Quique (Erik) as left home toward his middle school. It was then that he woke his uncle Daniel and they observed the phenomenon through binoculars, at first. During this observation, the witnesses described it as "a flying humanoid" resembling an astronaut. They claimed that it was facing them and it seemed to survey its surroundings.
As part of this investigation, I visited the household and interviewed the witnesses. Both seemed like honest people to me, and are not looking for either fame or fortune, merely a chance to share their experience. Daniel Sanchez Rosales,36, is a graduate of the UNAM School of Law.
Research
After reviewing the video with filters, my conclusion is that it is authentic, but it is still necessary to determine the nature of what was recorded.
Objectively, we are aware that this could have an explanation: perhaps a balloon, but there are three aspects that draw our attention:
1. The recording has a 12-minute duation, and if we add to this the observation time through binoculars, the sighting was around 15 minutes, an uncommon period of time when we deal with balloons, as these are carried away by the wind, and it is hard to see them for an extended period of time.
2. At a given point in the video, the object or alleged humanoid makes descending movements, then remains static for a while and subsequently rises again. This ascending and descending isn't quite so common with balloon.
3. At two moments during the recording, the dogs' reaction can be heard. The appear to be keening or expressing fear. This does not occur when balloons are involved, unless it is a huge coincidence (the witness has 2 Labrador Retrievers).
The object remains close to an air corridor. The background information here is that researcher Alfonso Salazar had reported the presence of UFOs near MCIA.
henleystandard - The "Black Wildcat of the Chilterns" saga continues.
Andrew Cleary, 45, was running between his home in Mill End and Dairy Lane when a large cat-like animal ran across his path.
He said: “Just a couple of feet in front of me this black animal went streaking across.
“It was much too big to be a house cat. It was about the size of a Labrador but it didn’t move anything like a dog. It moved like a cat and I could see its long tail as it disappeared into the bushes.”
Mr Cleary’s sighting brings the number in the past 12 years to 14 but he wasn’t aware of the previous ones because he only recently returned from four years in Columbia working as a teacher.
He said: “I have no thoughts one way or another as to whether all of these big cat rumours are true but I definitely saw something, so who knows?”
The sightings began in 1998 when there were several over a period of a few months in Goring, Stoke Row, Fawley, Ipsden and Woodcote.
A big cat was seen in Nuffield in 2001 and in 2005 a train driver reported seeing one near Wargrave station and a shopkeeper did the same in Binfield Health.
In 2006, an angler claimed to have seen a seven stone cat-like animal in Sonning Eye and another was reported at Nettlebed.
Last year, Nigel Spiers of Farm Road, Henley, described seeing a big cat at the roadside, Jane Alexander saw one in Nettlebed high street and rower Ben Lewis, 30, came across an animal on his morning run in Valley Road, Henley.
********** Originally posted 5/26/2009
Big Cat Observed Near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
The “Wildcat of the Chilterns” has been spotted again.
The latest sighting was made by Nigel Spiers, who was driving to work early on Tuesday morning when he came across what he believes may have been a black panther.
He was in Greys Road just before Highlands Farm when he saw the creature sitting at the roadside.
Mr Spiers, 45, of Farm Road, Henley, said: “He was sitting down and just looking at me and didn’t seem at all bothered I was there. He just stood up, ducked his head and, with two loping strides, was through the hedge and into the field.”
He said the animal was about the size of a labrador.
“It was jet black,” said Mr Spiers. “I know my wildlife and it was not a dog. I am certain it was a big cat. It looked just like a panther. It had the most beautiful tail, which was like that of a cheetah, designed to help balance when running.”
Mr Spiers, a sash window renovator, said the animal could have been hunting rabbits.
He added: “I was aware that big cats like this had been seen before. My boss saw one once so I was not that surprised.”
There has been a catalogue of sightings of similar creatures in the area. In 1998, in the space of just a few months, there were reports of a panther-like animal in Goring, Stoke Row, Fawley, Ipsden and Woodcote.
In May 2001, one was spotted in Nuffield and in June 2005 a beige big cat was seen by a train driver near Wargrave station.
In the same month, the shopkeeper at Binfield Heath stores saw a big cat resembling a panther walking through the centre of the village and a woman spotted one a week earlier in Harpsden.
In September 2006, there were reports from Nettlebed and Sonning Eye, where an angler said the creature was larger than his 7st dog,
The last sighting before Tuesday’s was at Cookley Green when a large cat-like creature was seen jumping a stie by the B481.
Paul Westwood, who runs Big Cat Monitors, said South Oxfordshire was a hotspot for sightings.
“There has been quite a lot of activity in the area,” he said. “I am convinced these creatures are either panthers or black leopards.”
He advised anyone who came across a not to panic.
“Stand still and don’t run,” he said. “Avoid making eye contact and just slowly back away.”
Mr Westwood said it is possible the animals were kept in a private collection and had escaped.
There is no distinct species as black panther. The term is used to describe a number of wild black-coated cats, normally leopards or jaguars. They get their colour from excessive production of melanin and are normally found in the dense, tropical rain forests of south east Asia.
Giant Hailstone Found in South Dakota Smashes US Record
A giant hailstone that fell in South Dakota has been, ahem, hailed as the biggest ever. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that the hailstone, found in the town of Vivian, SD on July 23, measures a whopping eight inches in diameter and weighs a hefty one pound, 15 ounces. The committee says the South Dakota ice chunk breaks records set by hailstones discovered in Nebraska and Kansas.
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Rare Albino Raccoon Captured in Tennessee
knoxnews - The masked bandits of the great outdoors may be donning a new disguise.
Randy Wolfe, owner of Varmint Busters Wildlife Management Services, trapped a male albino raccoon Thursday near Nubbin Ridge in West Knox County.
Wolfe estimated the raccoon to be about a year old.
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency wildlife biologist David Brandenburg said finding an albino raccoon is very uncommon.
"You don't see more of them because natural selection usually takes care of that," he said. "White is not a good color for a wildlife creature."
Wolfe, who has caught four albino raccoons in his 22-year career, said the white animal's look is very "striking."
"It's so unusual looking," he said. "At first I thought it was a possum because of the long snout, but then I noticed it had a big, bushy tail, not a thin, rat-like tail. It's a unique creature."
Bradenburg said albino animals have a rare gene that "just shows up" and that almost any wildlife creature, including squirrels, rabbits and deer, can be albino.
Wolfe said because of an overpopulation of raccoons and the presence of raccoon-strain rabies in East Tennessee, TWRA regulations forced him to euthanize the albino raccoon. Raccoons can carry diseases harmful to humans and other mammals, including rabies, parvo and raccoon roundworm.
Exceptions to this policy include raccoon mothers and the young, which may be sent to licensed wildlife rehabilitation centers, Wolfe said.
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Garbage Threatens to Jam China's Three Gorges Hydro-Electric Dam
abc.net - Layers of trash floating in the Yangtze river are threatening to jam China's massive Three Gorges hydro-electric dam.
Chinese state media reports the garbage is so thick in parts of the river that people can walk on the surface.
China Daily says nearly three tonnes of refuse are collected from the dam every day, but operators are struggling with inadequate manpower and equipment as rubbish accumulates more quickly due to rain-triggered floods.
"The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the mitre gate of the Three Gorges Dam," China Three Gorges corporation official Chen Lei said in the newspaper.
More than 150 million people live upstream from the dam.
In several nearby cities, household garbage is dumped directly into the river - China's longest - because municipalities are not equipped for trash disposal.
Mr Lei said 160,000 cubic metres of trash was collected from the dam last year.
The newspaper says the China Three Gorges corporation spends about 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) per year to clear floating waste.
According to state newspaper Hubei Daily, a 60-centimetre thick layer of garbage covering an area of more than 50,000 square metres began to form in front of the dam when the rainy season started in early July.
China considers the $22 billion Three Gorges Dam a modern wonder.
Since its completion in 2008, it has pumped out much-needed hydro-electricity, increased shipping on the Yangtze and helped reduce flooding.
But critics say the world's largest dam has caused ecological damage and increased landslides in the area.
About 1.4 million people were displaced when the dam was built and several heritage sites have been put deep underwater. NOTE: More proof that China is an ecological time bomb...that the West will end up being forced to help clean up! Not that we don't have our own problems...Lon
********** Benny Hinn and His Miraculous Magic Jacket!
Witness the almighty healing power of televangelist Benny Hinn (and his magic jacket)! Hinn claims to have the “anointing”, a special power given to him by God to heal the sick. At Hinn’s Miracle Crusades, he has allegedly healed attendees of blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS, and severe physical injuries through his powers. Apparently these super-human powers extend to his jacket, which he uses as an instrument of God to cure the sick during his events.
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Armed Robber Calls To Complain About Loot Amount
Police say a man who robbed a fast-food restaurant with a gun was so mad about the amount of loot that he called back twice to complain.
The man walked up to the drive-through window of an Atlanta Wendy's late Saturday night, wearing a ski mask and holding a gun.
He demanded the cash drawer, grabbed it and ran away.
But police say he later called the fast food restaurant to complain about the amount of cash.
Police say in one call he said that "next time there better be more than $586."
dailymail - Immense rivers that dwarf the Thames have been found at the bottom of the ocean by British scientists.
Like those on land, the submarine waterways carve out channels, tributaries, flood plains, rapids and even waterfalls.
One river, discovered underneath the Black Sea, is up to 115ft deep in places and more than half a mile wide.
If found on land, scientists estimate the so-far unnamed waterway would be the world's sixth largest river in terms of the amount of water flowing through it.
The flow – carrying highly salty water and sediment - is 350 times greater than the Thames, according to a Leeds University team who used a robotic submarine to scan the seabed near Turkey.
The undersea river - the only active one to have been found so far - stems from salty water spilling through the Bosphorus Strait from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea, where the water has a lower salt content.
This causes the dense water from the Mediterranean to flow like a river along the sea bed, carving a channel and deep banks.
The discovery could help explain how life manages to survive in the deep ocean far out to sea away from the nutrient rich waters that are found close to land, as the rivers carry sediment and nutrients with them.
Dr Dan Parsons, who led a team from the university's school of earth and environment, told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘The water in the channels is denser than the surrounding seawater because it has higher salinity and is carrying so much sediment.
‘It flows down the sea shelf and out into the abyssal plain much like a river on land.
The abyssal plains of our oceans are like the deserts of the marine world, but these channels can deliver nutrients and ingredients needed for life out over these deserts.
‘This means they could be vitally important, like arteries providing life to the deep ocean.
‘The key difference we found from terrestrial rivers was that as the flow goes round the bend, the water spirals in the opposite way to rivers on land.’
Scientists have long suspected seabed rivers can form, after sonar scans revealed meandering channels in many of the world's oceans.
But none have been found before to be have currents of water flowing through them.
Among the largest of these channels is off the coast of Brazil where the Amazon enters the Atlantic Ocean.
Most are believed to have formed when sea levels were much lower and the channels have been found to be up to 2,500 miles long and be several miles wide.
The channel in the Black Sea, although much smaller, is the only one to be found still flowing and proves that these mysterious channels are formed by underwater rivers.
Unlike ocean trenches, which are geological formations that form at the deepest parts of the ocean due to movements of the tectonic plates, the undersea river channels meander like rivers on land and form banks in the same way by eroding the silt from the bottom of the channel and building it up at the edges.
Dr Parsons found that the Black Sea river is flowing at around four miles per hour with 22,000 cubic metres of water passing through the channel every second – 10 times greater than Europe's biggest river, the Rhine.
The Black Sea river flows only for around 37 miles until it reaches the edge of the sea shelf and dissipates into the deep sea.
Dr Parsons said data from the research will also be important for oil companies looking to drill in areas where these rivers exist.
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telegraph - The solar fireworks at the weekend were recorded by several satellites, including Nasa’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory which watched its shock wave rippling outwards.
