http://www.liveleak.com/browse?channel_token=dfa_1302937590 Items in channel 'M25' Thu, 23 May 2013 05:11:04 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?channel_token=dfa_1302937590 Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:41:07 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=750_1233711184 M25 "It turns out Christian Bale's expletive-filled, volcanic explosion on the set of "Terminator Salvation" was a "non-event"... according to a guy who wasn't the brunt of Bale's tirade. Bruce Franklin -- assistant director and associate producer on the film -- told us "Christian is a method actor and was completely immersed in his scene ... his reaction was from the heat of the moment." More.. The target of Bale's attack -- a director of photography named Shane Hurlbut -- was not fired from the movie, despite Christian's threat that if Shane screwed up one more time, he should be kicked to the curb. Franklin said Bale was under a lot of pressure because of his crazy "Dark Knight" promotion schedule, and that the crew -- Hurlbut included -- ended up shooting for another seven hours." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=750_1233711184 M25 "T4" Producer -- Bale's Tantrum Was No Biggie Bale, Christian Bale, T4, T4 Salvage, Terminator, terminator 4, Terminator 4 Salvage Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:47:53 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=607_1233704417 M25 "It turns out Christian Bale's expletive-filled, volcanic explosion on the set of "Terminator Salvation" was a "non-event"... according to a guy who wasn't the brunt of Bale's tirade. Bruce Franklin -- assistant director and associate producer on the film -- told us "Christian is a method actor and was completely immersed in his scene ... his reaction was from the heat of the moment." The target of Bale's attack -- a director of photography named Shane Hurlbut -- was not fired from the movie, despite Christian's threat that if Shane screwed up one more time, he should be kicked to the curb. Franklin said Bale was under a lot of pressure because of his crazy "Dark Knight" promotion schedule, and that the crew -- Hurlbut included -- ended up shooting for another seven hours." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=607_1233704417 M25 "T4" Producer -- Bale's Tantrum Was No Biggie Bale, Christian Bale, T4, T4 Salvage, Terminator, terminator 4, Terminator 4 Salvage Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:07:19 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a20_1233637293 M25 "After a dominating victory over B.J. Penn at UFC 94, Georges St. Pierre is clearly the better fighter. GSP left no doubt. And yet now there is, thanks to one of his cornermen, Phil Nurse. It's pretty clear by watching the video that Nurse had some Vaseline on his hands when he rubbed St. Pierre's shoulders, back and chest between the first and second rounds. Why is that a big deal in mixed martial arts? It's significant because of all the grappling and maneuvering that takes place on the ground. St. Pierre was on top of Penn in the second round and the Hawaiian tried several times to shift his legs up to work for a triangle choke or an armbar. Grip and some friction is huge in these cases and a slippery fighter would make it more difficult to lock on one of those holds. Above you can see, Nurse apply Vaseline to GSP's face, then get more Vaseline, then rub his shoulders, arms and back. Penn's trainer Rudy Valentino told InsideFighting that St. Pierre cheated and the Vaseline thwarted his fighter's strategy: "To cheat to win is not honorable. Why need another edge? Our gameplan was on the ground, not striking because we knew Georges had good kicks. We planned to work off the back." Valentino says they warned the Nevada State Athletic Commission before the fight alleging that St. Pierre did it before their meeting in 2006 and that Matt Serra's camp claimed the same thing happened in Serra's second fight against GSP. Greg Jackson, GSP's trainer hurt his reputation according to Valentino: "I respect Greg Jackson but to do something like that, his integrity has been compromised." Jackson told his side of the story to MMAWeekly: "In between rounds, you always want to put on vaseline on (a fighter's face). So Phil Nurse put all the Vaseline on his face, so his hands might have had a miniscule amount left over from that, when he went around the side and rubbed a little point on his back, and tapped on his chest." Watching the scenarios (1, 2, 3), show Nurse did more than tap the chest and rub a little point on GSP's back. Jackson chalked all of this up to an overreaction by the NSAC: "At that point, somebody in the audience thought we were greasing George down, and ran over and told the commission that we were greasing his body down. The commission came in and said 'you can't grease him down,' which didn't work. They said 'you're putting Vaseline on his back,' and Phil's like, 'oh, there might be a little on my fingers, but it wasn't intentional at all, and of course they wiped it right off and it was gone, so it wasn't a factor in the fight at all." "The Commission" was actually NSAC executive director Keith Kizer. He bolted into the cage when he saw Nurse doing the same thing between the second and third rounds. Cage Writer spoke with Kizer after the fight and he was still steaming, saying that the rubbing of the back with Vaseline was completely inappropriate. But he was unsure if it had been done between the first and second. UFC president Dana White also thought it was a serious violation: "I saw the commission jump up there and flip out," said White. "They said one of the guys was rubbing Vaseline on Georges' back in between rounds. It was one and two, I think. I personally didn't see it, the commission did. And that's about as illegal as you can get... I'm sure the commission is going to deal (with it)." White didn't believe that it affected the outcome of the fight but he re-stated that illegal is illegal: "You could have put Vaseline on from head to toe, that wasn't the point, the point was you don't do it. It's illegal. The guy who did it needs to be punished, it's not (St. Pierre's) fault. The question is what happens to a guy that does that. You've got to put the smack down on him. He should lose his license." Ultimately, did the use of the Vaseline win the fight for St. Pierre? No. But Penn's camp does have a right to complain. St. Pierre should be getting props for being the better conditioned fighter, designing and executing the perfect gameplan. The way he wore down Penn in the first round by holding his left leg up on three occasions with the threat of a single-leg takedown, was brilliant. It allowed him takedown a tired Penn with ease in each of the next three rounds. More importantly, GSP was able to pass guard and shift between full guard and side control as if he were fighting a first-year jiu-jitsu student. Now Penn, other fighters who dislike St. Pierre and fans may call for an asterisk on his dominant victory. " http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a20_1233637293 M25 Did GSP's corner cheat to give him an edge? UFC, UFC 94, MMA, GSP, George St. Pierre, Pierre, St. Pierre, BJ Penn, Penn, fight, octagon, Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:32:27 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=718_1233613715 M25 "The setting was a hidden island filled with pint-size men who feasted on pygmy elephants and battled dragons. The story of paleontology's "Hobbits," the extinct human species called Homo floresiensis, packs plenty of drama. But the 2003 discovery by an Australian-Indonesian of the undersize bones inside Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores has long also suffered from a modern-day human rivalry. Add in the scientific back-story - a five-year feud over the whether the original inhabitants of Flores were actually a separate human species - and you have enough material for a novel. The latest chapter of this story comes in the next Journal of Human Evolution, which boasts four reports concerning the hobbits- five years after discovery was first disclosed in the journal Nature. "Here we report the discovery, from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia, of an adult hominin," wrote the authors of that 2004 paper in the formal language of scientists declaring a new species. ("Hominin" is what the cool kids among paleontologists say instead of "hominids" now, or what reporters call "human species." ) Incredibly these "hobbits" stood less than 40 inches tall and had brains about a third the size of modern humans, although they were buried with Stone Age tools, which indicates they had some smarts. "The combination of primitive and derived (modern-looking) features assigns this hominin to a new species, Homo floresiensis. The most likely explanation for its existence on Flores is long-term isolation, with subsequent endemic dwarfing," concluded the team led by Peter Brown of Australia's University of New England. The declaration made the bones of "Liang Bua 1," or LB1, described in the study the "holotype", basically the defining specimen of the new species, much like the fossil of " Lucy" defines the pre-human species Australopithecus afarensis, which lived 3 to 4 million years ago in Africa. For something so sacrosanct, LB1's bones have enjoyed a rough few years, derided by critics such as Jochen Weber of Germany's Leopoldina Hospital as belonging to a microencephalic victim of a small-brained pathology, not a new species. Florida State University neuroscientist Dean Falk countered those claims in other studies, most recently in a 2007 Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper that concluded, "Despite LB1's having brain shape features that sort it with normal humans rather than microencephalics, other shape features and its small brain size are consistent with its assignment to a separate species." The bones even departed from their home in Jakarta's Indonesian Centre for Archaeology without the permission of all of the discoverers, a move that left them damaged and pawns in the politics of paleontology in Indonesia prior to their return. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Africa | Jakarta | Nature | Proceedings | Lucy | University Medical Center | Stone Age | Homo | National Academies of Science | Australopithecus | University of New England | Journal of Human Evolution | Incredibly | Dean Falk | Susan Larson Another look at LB1's much-maligned noggin comes with the new Journal of Human Evolution papers in a study led by anatomical scientist Karen Baab of the Stony Brook (N.Y.) University Medical Center that examines the asymmetry of the skull. Critics of the new-species designation had pointed out the two halves of the skull are lopsided, suggestive of microencephaly. However, Baab's report concludes that "the cranium is fairly asymmetrical, but within the range of asymmetry exhibited by modern humans and all extant African ape species." Packed under 10 feet of wet mud, the skull likely became a bit distorted, a process called taphonomy by fossil researchers. The whole microencephaly debate is nonsense, original team members such as Peter Brown have argued, as they have turned up bones, if not skulls, from about a dozen "hobbits" underneath Liang Bua Cave. The bones all display similar looks. A graveyard for stubby microencephalics in a cave on Flores strikes the discoverers as unlikely. Two papers look at those "post-cranial" remains of LB1 and kin, in other words every thing but the skull. The hips, legs and feet of nine hobbits are examined in a paper led by William Jungers of Stony Brook University. And the arms, collar bones, wrists and fingers of six hobbits are described in another led by his colleague Susan Larson. Those bones "presents a unique mosaic of derived (human-like) and primitive morphologies, the combination of which is never found in either healthy or pathological modern humans." Larson's group reports. The leg bone finds indicate LB1 was most likely female. Overall, the bones most resemble those of Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, suggesting they arrived at the island of Flores a very long time ago. The latest papers include a better description of that cave, which concludes that whatever hobbits were, they ate a lot of Stegodon pygmy elephants. "There are at least 47 individual Stegodon represented in all excavated sectors of Liang Bua," the researchers write, describing findings from 10 holes that held remains from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago, when a volcanic eruption appears to have bumped off both elephants and hobbits. Komodo dragon and giant stork remains also litter the cave, though there is less suspicion the hobbits preyed on those species. More likely they scavenged their carcasses. One thing the cave lacked was seashells, suggesting that hobbits were not big on surf and turf. "Homo floresiensis probably descended from a very early Homo erectus, or from Homo habilis, both human species that are not known to have used marine resources. Homo floresiensis probably did not have the right behavior to exploit marine resources (perhaps fear of entering the water, just like for instance orangutans)," says study lead author Gert van den Bergh of Holland's Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum Naturalis, by e-mail. Or perhaps modern humans lived on the coasts and hobbits were "restricted to the more inaccessible interior of Flores and did not venture into the coastal areas," he says. "You see, still many unanswered questions remain."" http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=718_1233613715 M25 Hobbit feud: scientists argue over mysterious bones hobbit, hobbit feud, Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:28:56 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c38_1233271469 M25 The Illinois state senate on Thursday convicted Governor Rod Blagojevich of abuse of power, removing him from office amid charges that he tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. More than two-thirds of the 59 senators, acting as a jury following the two-term Democrat's impeachment on January 9, voted to find him guilty, effectively ousting him from office. The vote was televised live from the state capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. Blagojevich is the first governor in Illinois history to be impeached and removed from office." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c38_1233271469 M25 Illinois senate votes to oust Governor Blagojevich Blagojevich, Illinois, Governor, abuse of power, Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:54:48 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2ee_1229464282 M25 "HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - A serial killer who died more than a decade ago is the person who decapitated the 6-year-old son of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh in 1981, police in Florida said Tuesday. The announcement brought to a close a case that has vexed the Walsh family for more than two decades, launched the television show about the nation's most notorious criminals and inspired changes in how authorities search for missing children. "Who could take a 6-year-old and murder and decapitate him? Who?" an emotional John Walsh said at Tuesday's news conference. "We needed to know. We needed to know. And today we know. The not knowing has been a torture, but that journey's over." Walsh's wife, Reve, at one point placed a small photo of their son on the podium. The suspect, Ottis Toole, had twice confessed to killing the child, but later recanted. He claimed responsibility for hundreds of murders, but police determined most of the confessions were lies. Toole's niece told the boy's father, John Walsh, her uncle confessed on his deathbed in prison that he killed Adam. Police said Toole was long the prime suspect in the case and that they had conclusively linked him the killing. They declined to be specific about their evidence and noted they had no DNA proof of the crime, but said an extensive review of the case file pointed only to Toole, as John Wash long contended. "Our agency has devoted an inordinate amount of time seeking leads to other potential perpetrators rather than emphasizing Ottis Toole as our primary suspect," said Hollywood Police Chief Chadwick Wagner. "Ottis Toole has continued to be our only real suspect." Wagner acknowledged numerous missteps in the investigation and apologized to the Walshes. "I have no doubt," John Walsh said. "I've never had any doubt." Many names have been mentioned in connection to the case in the years since the killing, including serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but Toole's has persistently nagged detectives. John Walsh has long said he believed the drifter was responsible, saying investigators found at Toole's home in Jacksonville a pair of green shorts and a sandal similar to what Adam was wearing. The Walshes long ago derided the investigation as botched. Still, he praised the Hollywood police department for closing the case. "This is not to look back and point fingers, but it is to let it rest," he said. Adam Walsh went missing from a Hollywood mall on July 27, 1981. Fishermen discovered his severed head in a canal 120 miles away two weeks later. The rest of his body was never found. Authorities made a series of crucial errors, losing the bloodstained carpeting in Toole's car - preventing DNA testing - and the car itself. It was a week after the boy's disappearance before the FBI got involved. "So many mistakes were made," John Walsh said in 1997, upon the release of his book "Tears of Rage," which harshly criticized the Hollywood Police Department's work on the case. "It was shocking, inexcusable and heartbreaking." For all that went wrong in the probe, the case contributed to massive advances in police searches for missing youngsters and a notable shift in the view parents and children hold of the world. Adam's death, and his father's subsequent activism on his behalf, helped put faces on milk cartons, shopping bags and mailbox flyers, started fingerprinting programs and increased security at schools and stores. It spurred the creation of missing persons units at every large police department. It also prompted national legislation to create a national center, database and toll-free line devoted to missing children, and led to the start of "America's Most Wanted," which brought those cases into millions of homes. What it also did, said Mount Holyoke College sociologist and criminologist Richard Moran, is make children and adults alike exponentially more afraid "He ended up really producing a generation of cautious and afraid kids who view all adults and strangers as a threat to them and it made parents extremely paranoid about the safety of their children," Moran said." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2ee_1229464282 M25 Fla. police close books on '81 Walsh killing Walsh Killing Mon, 08 Dec 2008 01:02:58 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=625_1228715861 M25 "TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) - A farmer from Lebanon couldn't believe his eyes when he discovered he had grown a prize-winning potato on his land, he told AFP on Saturday, saying he was hoping to enter the Guinness World Records. "This giant weighs 11.3 kilos (24.9 pounds)," Khalil Semhat said at his farm in the Tyre area, 85 kilometres (50 miles) south of Beirut. "I've been working the land since I was a boy, and it's the first time I've seen anything like it." Semhat, 56, said he had not done anything special to cultivate such a super-sized spud. "I didn't use any chemicals at all," he insisted, adding that he had to ask a friend to help him haul the huge tuber out of the ground. Now he hopes the find will get a mention in the famous Guinness Book of Records, and said he will send in the details for possible inclusion next year. He said he was "very proud" to have grown the enormous specimen on his farm, which took a pounding in 2006 during the war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=625_1228715861 M25 Lebanon farmer grows super-sized spud potato Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:07:24 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bec_1226639244 M25 "AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht. "It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public. Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area. Curfs said he was walking with his detector this spring and was about to go home when he suddenly got a strong signal on his earphones and uncovered the first coin. "It was golden and had a little horse on it - I had no idea what I had found," he said. After posting a photo of the coin on a Web forum, he was told it was a rare find. The following day he went back and found another coin. "It looked totally different - silver, and saucer-shaped," he said. Curfs notified the city of his find, and he and several other hobbyists helped in locating the rest of the coins, in cooperation with archaeologists. Nico Roymans, the archaeologist who led the academic investigation of the find, believes the gold coins in the cache were minted by a tribe called the Eburones that Caesar claimed to have wiped out in 53 B.C. after they conspired with other groups in an attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers. The Eburones "put up strong resistance to Caesar's journeys of conquest," Roymans said. The silver coins were made by tribes further to the north - possible evidence of cooperation against Caesar, he said. Both coin types have triple spirals on the front, a common Celtic symbol. The two other known caches of Eburones coins have been found in neighboring Belgium and Germany. Maastricht city spokeswoman Carla Wetzels said the value of the coins is not known - their worth is primarily historical. The Belgian cache of similar size was estimated at around 175,000 euros ($220,000). The farmer who owned the land agreed to sell his interest to the city for an undisclosed sum. Curfs, a teacher at a nearby junior college, continues to own the 11 coins he found, but has lent them to the City of Maastricht on a long-term basis. The coins will go on display at the Centre Ceramique museum in Maastricht this weekend. Curfs said he considers his metal detector habit a meditative hobby and not an obsession. "I have advice for anybody hoping to get rich like this," Curfs said. "Forget it."" http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bec_1226639244 M25 Ancient Celtic coin cache found in Netherlands Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:53:00 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=065_1226425980 M25 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1858121,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world "A new figure in humanity's history emerged last week when archaeologists announced the discovery of what could be one of the world's oldest known spiritual figures. After years of meticulous excavation just miles from Israel's Mediterranean coast, scientists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that held the remains of a diminutive "shaman" woman. Buried alongside the woman's small, huddled corpse were selected pieces of animal bone, a cowtail, an eagle wing, the foot of another human, and, most curiously, some fifty tortoise shells deliberately arranged around the woman's body - all tell-tale signs, experts say, of her lofty social status at the time. "This is something very special; it stands apart," says Leore Grosman, the project's lead archaeologist. More Related * Punchlines How mankind emerged from Paleolithic prehistory into a world of alphabets and cities is still a story riddled with questions. Even the first settled agriculturalist communities from which our records begin seem far removed from the cave-dwelling, fur-clad hunter-gatherers whom we imagine to be mankind's ancestors. The discovery of a shaman this ancient offers a startling glimpse into this little-known past, a portrait of prehistoric ritual belief and of clear lines of social hierarchy taking shape. The grave is thought to belong to the Natufian culture, a nomadic society which existed along the eastern Mediterranean roughly between 11,500 and 15,000 years ago. Located near other burial sites, the woman's body was distinctly encased in a limestone enclosure, a tomb sealed by a rock slab that Grosman's team managed to lift in 2006. The following two years were spent painstakingly analyzing the remains found within. Pieces of jewelry, ornamental seashells, or the odd tool have been found in other Natufian graves, but the careful arrangement of the woman's body - her back rested against a wall, legs spread and bent inward from the knee - as well as the surrounding ring of tortoise shells piqued the archaeologists' interest. "This kind of assemblage is different from everything you find elsewhere," says Ofer Bar-Yosef, a Harvard anthropologist who has worked on previous Natufian excavations. "It's the sign of a sort of elite emerging among hunter-gatherers." Shamans are mystics whose common function in traditional cultures was that of a healer. Analysis of the woman's remains date her as being 45-years-old, a significant age at a time when life was nasty, brutish and short. She was under five feet tall and deformities in her spinal and pelvic bones give the impression that she may have walked with a limp, or dragged her feet. The presence of the hollowed-out tortoise shells, combined with intact bone pieces of leopards and other creatures - the complete forearm of a wild boar, for example, was placed under the woman's own arm - suggest that those living around her believed she had some sort of animist power. The common narrative of mankind's development generally starts with humans planting crops and settling down in one place to reap what they sow, founding villages that would form the building blocks of human civilization. But further study of the Natufian culture and other parallel societies, such as those living by China's Yellow River, is complicating that belief. Agriculture was not established in the Levant when the Natufians lived there, but they still erected rudimentary structures to inhabit. Traces in the soil of the remains of mice and sparrows - animals that exist most commonly in places of human settlement - point to a significant population boom in the Natufian period. They may not have had seasonal harvests, but the people of this time lived in a complex and perhaps even flourishing society. "What we see is the beginning of a tribal system," says Bar-Yosef. The shaman, buried with her mysteries, looms mercurially over this moment. Grosman speculates that the elaborate ritual behind the shaman's burial probably helped bind people together at a time of great social transformation. The Natufian culture, she says, was "transitional," moving from the era of the nomadic life of hunter-gatherers into a more stable, sedentary mode. Their descendants were likely the inhabitants of West Asia's great kingdoms of antiquity. Somewhere beneath our vision of sceptered monarchs in their pillared palaces, it can be surmised, rests a hobbled woman upon a bed of tortoise shells." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=065_1226425980 M25 12,000-Year-Old Shaman Unearthed in Israel Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:15:15 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=970_1224893715 M25 "Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html?c=y&page=1# "By Andrew Curry Photographs by Berthold Steinhilber Smithsonian magazine, November 2008" http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=970_1224893715 M25 Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple? Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:28:19 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9b6_1227731299 M25 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081126/ts_nm/us_india_mumbai_shootings_8 "MUMBAI (Reuters) - At least 80 people were killed in a series of attacks apparently aimed at tourists in India's financial capital Mumbai on Wednesday night, with television channels saying Westerners were being held hostage at two five-star hotels. At least 250 people have been wounded, police said. There was also an attack on the Cafe Leopold, perhaps the most famous restaurant and hang-out for tourists in the city, and at hospitals and railway stations. "I guess they were after foreigners, because they were asking for British or American passports," said Rakesh Patel, a British witness who lives in Hong Kong and was staying at the Taj hotel on business. "They had bombs." "They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs," he told the NDTV news channel, smoke stains all over his face. "Young boys, maybe 20 years old, 25 years old. They had two guns." Police said targets included the luxury Taj and Oberoi hotels, with television stations showing the lobby of both hotels on fire and people being evacuated from the Oberoi with their hands on their heads. Fresh explosions were heard in the early hours of Thursday. "An encounter is going on at the two hotels, the situation is grave," Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister told CNN-IBN TV. "Our men are on the job." Maharashtra state police chief A.N. Roy said attackers had fired automatic weapons indiscriminately, and used grenades, adding that they were still holed up in some buildings. "These are terrorist strikes in at least seven places," he told the NDTV news channel. "Unknown terrorists have gone with automatic weapons and opened fire indiscriminately. At a few places they even used grenades. Some of the injured were evacuated from the Taj on the hotel's golden luggage carts, while waiters in black and white formal wear and chefs were seen leaving the Oberoi. "The lobby of the Taj hotel is on fire," a police spokesman said. "We are trying to find out how many people are inside the hotel." Sourav Mishra, a Reuters reporter, was with friends at the Cafe Leopold when gunmen opened fire around 9:30 pm. He has received injuries and is in St. George's Hospital. "I heard some gunshots around 9:30. I was with my friends. Something hit me. I ran away and fell on the road. Then somebody picked me up. I have injuries below my shoulder," Mishra said from a hospital bed he was sharing with three other people. The wreckage of a red scooter, the remains of shop awnings and broken glass were strewn across the street. Armed police, rifles cocked at the hip, set up barricades around the explosion site, and local people were seen yelling at each other, angry that another terror attack had hit the city. Vehicles and street vendors' barrows were used to keep locals away, and speeding military four-wheel drives with horns blaring arrived at the bomb site. There were other attacks elsewhere. "They entered the passenger hub of a station and started firing," A.K. Sharma, a Mumbai police government railway police commissioner told local television. Sameeran Chakraborty, a Mumbai resident, told the NDTV news channel he heard a blast inside a car near the city airport. "It was a big noise and one car was involved, definitely not more than that." India has suffered a wave of bomb attacks in recent years. Most have been blamed on Islamist militants, although police have also arrested suspected Hindu extremists thought to be behind some of the attacks." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9b6_1227731299 M25 Multiple attacks kill at 80 in Mumbai Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:38:50 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8df_1227652730 M25 (Description of the picture): Venezuelan sailors stands next to a national flag during a welcoming ceremony for a Russian warship at La Guaira port, Venezuela, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008. Russian warships arrived in Venezuela Tuesday in a show of strength aimed at the United States as Moscow seeks to expand its influence in Latin America. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_bi_ge/lt_venezuela_russia "LA GUAIRA, Venezuela - Russian warships sailed into port in Venezuela on Tuesday in a show of strength as Moscow seeks to counter U.S. influence in Latin America. Russia's first such deployment in the Caribbean since the Cold War is timed to coincide with President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Venezuela, the first ever by a Russian president. Russian sailors dressed in black-and-white uniforms lined up along the bow of the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko as it docked in La Guaira, near Caracas, and Venezuelan troops greeted them with cannons in a 21-gun salute. Two support vessels also docked, and the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, Russia's largest navy ship, anchored offshore. Chavez, basking in the support of a powerful ally and traditional U.S. rival, wants Russian help to build a nuclear reactor, invest in oil and natural gas projects and bolster his leftist opposition to U.S. influence in the region. He also wants weapons - Venezuela has bought more than $4 billion in Russian arms, including Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, and more deals for Russian tanks or other weaponry may be discussed after Medvedev arrives Wednesday. Russia's ambitions in Latin America, however, may be checked by global events. Both Venezuela and Russia are feeling the pinch of slumping oil prices, and their ability to be major benefactors for like-minded leaders is in doubt given the pressures of the world's financial crisis. The deployment of the naval squadron is widely seen as a demonstration of Kremlin anger over the U.S. decision to send warships to deliver aid to Georgia after its battles with Russia, and over U.S. plans for a European missile-defense system. But U.S. officials mocked the show of force. "Are they accompanied by tugboats this time?" U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack joked to reporters in Washington. He noted that Russia's navy is but a shadow of its Soviet-era fleet. "I don't think there's any question about ... who the region looks to in terms of political, economic, diplomatic and as well as military power," McCormack said. "If the Venezuelans and the Russians want to have, you know, a military exercise, that's fine. But we'll obviously be watching it very closely." When Russia sent two strategic bombers to Venezuela in September, some drew comparisons to the Soviet Union's deployments to Cuba during the Cold War. But both countries have shown signs of trying to engage President-elect Barack Obama, and Chavez told reporters that it's ludicrous to invoke the Cold War to describe these naval exercises. "It's not a provocation. It's an exchange between two free countries," Chavez said Monday night. The ship maneuvers inside Venezuela's economic zone in the eastern Caribbean will begin Dec. 1, enabling sailors to practice reconnaissance, anti-drug patrols, anti-terrorism and search and rescue operations. Rear Adm. Luis Morales said the training, including anti-aircraft exercises with Venezuela's newly bought Sukhoi fighter jets, will not involve live ammunition. The maneuvers "should be viewed largely as a propaganda exercise," said analyst Anna Gilmour at Jane's Intelligence Review. "Pragmatic Russian policy suggests that it will content itself with a brief high-profile visit, rather than a longer-term deployment that could cause severe tensions with the U.S., at a time when Russia may be looking to re-engage with the new administration," she said. Medvedev's tour to Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba was planned before the financial crisis, and Russia must now downsize its ambitions in Latin America because its pockets are no longer so deep, said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs Magazine. "Russia will have to put off big projects like the construction of a gas pipeline across South America," Lukyanov said. The proposed natural gas pipeline is Chavez's brainchild, a controversial and ambitious plan for which he has explored Russian investment. But Russia still has an economic interest in selling more weapons and boosting business in Latin America, and Venezuela can help "open the doors," noted Venezuelan political scientist Ricardo Sucre Heredia. "It's a win-win relationship for the two countries," Sucre said. "Russia gains in terms of its international power and its presence, and Venezuela gains in terms of having an ally."" http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8df_1227652730 M25 Venezuela's Chavez welcomes Russian warships