A Record Worth Wilting For: Death Valley Is Hotter Than …

USA-CALIFORNIA/DEATH VALLEY STS073-E-5119 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CALIFORNIA/DEATH VALLEY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

FURNACE CREEK, CALIFORNIA — For Death Valley, a place that embraces its extremes, this has long been an affront: As furnace-hot as it gets here, it could not lay claim to being the hottest place on earth.  That honor, as it were, has gone since 1922 to a city on the northwestern tip of Libya.

Until now. After a yearlong investigation by a team of climate scientists, the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency of the United Nations, announced this fall that it was throwing out a reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah on Sept. 13, 1922.  It made official what anyone who has soldiered through a Death Valley summer afternoon here could attest to.  There is no place hotter in the world.  A 134-degree reading registered on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch here is now the official world record.

And while people were not quite jumping up and down at the honor, the 134-degree reading has inspired the kind of civic pride that for most communities might come with having a winning Little League baseball team.

“For those of us who survive here in the summer, it was no surprise that it’s the hottest place on the world,” said Charlie Callaghan, a Death Valley National Park ranger who personally recorded a 129-degree day here a few years back.

Read more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/science/earth/death-valley-temperature-record-is-restored.html?hp&_r=0

Anti-American Protests Over Film Enter 4th Day

CAIRO — Anti-American protests inspired by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad entered a fourth straight day here in the Egyptian capital and other demonstrations erupted in much of the Middle East after Friday Prayer — an occasion often associated with public displays of dissent.

Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared on Tuesday — the day J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in an attack in neighboring Libya — continued sporadically early Friday, with protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas.

In Lebanon, one person was killed and 25 injured as protesters attacked restaurants, while in Sudan demonstrations flared outside of the German and British embassies. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq. Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, and held protests in the West Bank and Gaza.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/world/middleeast/anti-american-protests-over-film-enter-4th-day.html?_r=1&hp

Deposed Lybian Despot, Moammar Kadafi Reported Killed

REPORTING FROM BEIRUT — Libya’s provisional prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, said Thursday that ousted leader Moammar Kadafi has been killed.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Jibril told a news conference in the capital, Tripoli, according to the Associated Press. “Moammar Kadafi has been killed.”…

Read the entire article: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/libya-prime-minister-says-moammar-kadafi-is-dead.html

Moammar Takes A Powder – Regime Falls, Tripoli Taken, Son Seif al-Islam Captured

Wackadoo dictator Moammar Gadhafi has lost his 42-year death grip strangle hold on Libya.   I must say it couldn’t happen to a nicer sociopath mass murdered guy.  Moammar’s whereabouts are unknown at this time but it will not be long until somebody “squeals” and he get captured or surrenders.  Another son is talking to rebels about surrender.

Evidently his detractors call him frizz-head, LOL!

Now that Green Square has been taken, and Tripoli has fallen, it is only a matter of time until the cookie crumbles and Moammar heads off the The Hague to face “crimes against humanity” charges like his former tyrannical psychopath pal Saddam Hussein.  I would bet he meets the same noose fate.