Witchcraft 'thriving in the Welsh countryside'
Rev Felix Aubel claims occult practices in rural Wales have been increasing during the two decades he has been working in the area.
The minister spoke out after latest figures in the 2011 census has revealed 83 witches and 93 satanists are living in Wales.
He said there was an "unusual connection" between Christianity and witchcraft in some chapel circles in Wales.
Rev Aubel, who is the minister of five Congregational chapels in rural Carmarthenshire, said he has called out an exorcist after a witch placed a curse on one of his parishioners.
He said: "This is not a joke and I would warn people not to get involved in the occult.
"I have been told that a coven of witches still meet locally. There is also a witch living in a nearby village who advertises her services in the local paper."
He revealed in his autobiography that a curse on a parishioner had to be lifted by an exorcist.
He said: "In folk-magic and witchcraft, a poppet is a doll made to represent a person, for casting spells on that person.
"A poppet or effigy would be used with very sharp needles stuck into its 'heart' as a way of doing evil to an enemy.
"It was this 'evil' type of poppet that was used on a chapel member of mine in the Aberaeron area in 1994.
"It took an experienced Anglican exorcist to 'raise' this curse, which had been placed by a witch on the instruction of another former church member.
"The motivation behind this 'evil' was envy that had turned into jealousy."
The Carmarthenshire church minister, who has preached in West Wales for over 20 years, said witches and curses weren't simply the stuff of fairy stories.
He said he had also battled a case of the "evil eye" during his ministerial career.
Rev Aubel said: "This is an ancient belief in the existence of a malevolent power in the glance of some people, which is almost invariably provoked by envy or jealousy.
"In this instance, a lady who had given birth to a baby boy was apparently wished bad luck by the "evil glance" in the eye of a childless spinster neighbour.
"Both mother and child were subsequently taken ill due to acute breathlessness for no apparent medical reason and had to be hospitalised.
"The spinster even visited the mother and child in hospital while I was speaking to them.
"It became obvious to me that the spinster was praising the baby to its mother in a very false and patronising way.
"This is one of the most noticeable characteristics of the utilisation of the "evil eye".
"Realising this, I asked the spinster to say "God bless you" to the baby, having just said what a beautiful child the mother had.
"After that the spinster immediately walked away without uttering another word.
"As a precautionary measure, the mother later placed a horse shoe amulet in the porch of her home in order to protect her baby son and herself from the malevolent effects of the spinster's "evil eye"."
He added: "A witch who lived in the Pennant area of Ceredigion in the early 1990s would occasionally attend the local chapel.
Rev Aubel said he hoped his autobiography, called A Rebel's Story, acted as a warning to people not to get entangled in the occult. - Telegraph
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UFO observed near Area 51
A contact of mine who is a local resident of Alamo, Nevada was walking near to the Windmill Ranch Hotel just outside Alamo when he spotted this sphere moving towards the west and the mountain range which you can see in the picture. Behind the mountains is Area 51 and on this particular day there had been no aircraft activity out of Nellis AFB or Groom Lake. The sun was behind the person who took this picture and you can clearly see this from the shadows on the ground in the picture. The contact had forgotten this image until he recently went through some old SD memory cards and came across it just before Christmas. He contacted me immediately and we cannot find any conventional explanation for this sphere. He does recall seeing flashes in the sky which were also witnessed by staff from the hotel, in total 3 other persons. He cannot find any conventional explantion for this sphere and satelites and astronomical objects have been ruled out. The contact has asked me to share this image and I will respect their wishes by not naming them. None the less this is certainly a decent image and one that should certianly be shared with the public. - MUFON CMS
Click for photo
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51
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Top 2012 Science Breakthroughs
The observation of an elusive sub-atomic particle, known as the Higgs boson, has been heralded by the journal Science as the most important scientific discovery of 2012. This particle, which was first hypothesized more than 40 years ago, holds the key to explaining how other elementary particles (those that aren't made up of smaller particles), such as electrons and quarks, get their mass.
In addition to recognizing the detection of this particle as the 2012 Breakthrough of the Year, Science and its international nonprofit publisher, AAAS, have identified nine other groundbreaking scientific achievements from the past year and compiled them into a top 10 list that will appear in the 21 December issue.
Researchers unveiled evidence of the Higgs boson on 4 July, fitting into place the last missing piece of a puzzle that physicists call the standard model of particle physics. This theory explains how particles interact via electromagnetic forces, weak nuclear forces and strong nuclear forces in order to make up matter in the universe. However, until this year, researchers could not explain how the elementary particles involved got their mass.
"Simply assigning masses to the particles makes the theory go haywire mathematically," explained Science news correspondent Adrian Cho, who wrote about the discovery for the journal's Breakthrough of the Year feature. "So, mass must somehow emerge from interactions of the otherwise mass-less particles themselves. That's where the Higgs comes in."
As Cho explains, physicists assume that space is filled by a "Higgs field," which is similar to an electric field. Particles interact with this Higgs field to obtain energy and—thanks to Einstein's famous mass-energy equivalence—mass as well. "Just as an electric field consists of particles called photons, the Higgs field consists of Higgs bosons woven into the vacuum," he explains. "Physicists have now blasted them out of the vacuum and into brief existence."
But, a view to the Higgs boson did not come easy—or cheap. Thousands of researchers working with a 5.5-billion-dollar atom-smasher at a particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, called CERN, used two gargantuan particle detectors, known as ATLAS and CMS, to spot the long-sought boson.
It is unclear where this discovery will lead the field of particle physics in the future but its impact on the physics community this year has been undeniable, which is why Science calls the detection of the Higgs boson the 2012 Breakthrough of the Year. The special 21 December issue of the journal includes three articles written by researchers at CERN, which help to explain how this breakthrough was achieved.
Science's list of nine other pioneering scientific achievements from 2012 follows.
The Denisovan Genome: A new technique that binds special molecules to single strands of DNA allowed researchers to sequence the complete Denisovan genome from just a fragment of bone from an ancient pinky finger. The genomic sequence has allowed researchers to compare Denisovans—archaic humans closely related to Neandertals—with modern humans. It also revealed that the finger bone belonged to a girl with brown eyes, brown hair and brown skin who died in Siberia between 74,000 and 82,000 years ago.
Making Eggs From Stem Cells: Japanese researchers showed that embryonic stem cells from mice could be coaxed into becoming viable egg cells. They clinched the case when the cells, fertilized by sperm in the laboratory, developed into live mouse pups born of surrogate mothers. The method requires female mice to host the developing eggs in their bodies for a time, so it falls short of scientists' ultimate goal: deriving egg cells entirely in the laboratory. But, it provides a powerful tool for studying genes and other factors that influence fertility and egg cell development.
Curiosity's Landing System: Though unable to test their rover's entire landing system under Martian conditions, mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, safely and precisely placed the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. The 3.3-ton rover entry vehicle was too massive for traditional landings, so the team took inspiration from cranes and helicopters to create a "sky crane" landing system that dangled Curiosity, wheels deployed, at the end of three cables. The flawless landing reassured planners that NASA could someday land a second mission near an earlier rover to pick up samples the rover collected and return them to Earth.
X-ray Laser Provides Protein Structure: Researchers used an X-ray laser, which shines a billion times brighter than traditional synchrotron sources, to determine the structure of an enzyme required by the Trypanosoma brucei parasite, the cause of African sleeping sickness. The advance demonstrated the potential of X-ray lasers to decipher proteins that conventional X-ray sources cannot.
Precision Engineering of Genomes: The revision and deletion of DNA in higher organisms has generally been a hit-or-miss proposition. But, in 2012, a tool known as TALENs, which stands for "transcription activator-like effector nucleases," gave researchers the ability to alter or inactivate specific genes in zebrafish, toads, livestock and other animals—even cells from patients with disease. This technology, along with others that are emerging, is proving to be just as effective as (and cheaper than) established gene-targeting techniques, and it may allow researchers to determine specific roles for genes and mutations in both healthy and diseased individuals.
Majorana Fermions: The existence of Majorana fermions, particles that (among other properties) act as their own antimatter and annihilate themselves, has been debated for more than seven decades. This year, a team of physicists and chemists in The Netherlands provided the first solid evidence that such exotic matter exists, in the form of quasi-particles: groups of interacting electrons that behave like single particles. The discovery has already prompted efforts to incorporate Majorana fermions into quantum computing, as scientists think "qubits" made of these mysterious particles could be more efficient at storing and processing data than the bits currently used in digital computers.
The ENCODE Project: A decade-long study that was reported this year in more than 30 papers revealed that the human genome is more "functional" than researchers had believed. Although only two percent of the genome codes for actual proteins, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or ENCODE, project indicated that about 80 percent of the genome is active, helping to turn genes on or off, for example. These new details should help researchers to understand the ways in which genes are controlled and to clarify some genetic risk factors for diseases.
Brain-Machine Interfaces: The same team that had previously demonstrated how neural recordings from the brain could be used to move a cursor on a computer screen showed in 2012 that paralyzed human patients could move a mechanical arm with their minds and perform complex movements in three dimensions. The technology is still experimental—and extraordinarily expensive—but scientists are hopeful that more advanced algorithms could improve these neural prosthetics to help patients paralyzed by strokes, spinal injuries and other conditions.
Neutrino Mixing Angle: Hundreds of researchers working on the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China reported the last unknown parameter of a model that describes how elusive particles, known as neutrinos, morph from one type or "flavor" to another as they travel at near-light speed. The results show that neutrinos and anti-neutrinos could possibly change flavors differently and suggest that neutrino physics may someday help researchers to explain why the universe contains so much matter and so little antimatter. If physicists cannot identify new particles beyond the Higgs boson, neutrino physics could represent the future of particle physics. - Eurekalert
The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle
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Argentina: Alleged UFO Photographed Over Tucumán
Source:Tucumán a las 7 and Planeta UFO
http://www.tucumanalas7.com.ar/nota.php?id=75405
Date: 12.28.2012
** Highway worker was performing his duties in Yasyamayo Valley. Hugo Cesar López was engaged in his daily routine when he saw a UFO and photographed it**
A strange object appeared in Valle de Yasyamayo and Hugo César del Valle López was able to photograph it.
The man works for the local Highway Authority (Vialidad Provincial) and was working in the area. He took the photos which he inevitably associates with an unidentified flying object.
As Valle López explained, the photo was taken on 20 December 2012 at 16:30 hours. While it is hard to state that what he photographed was indeed a UFO, the image invites us yet again to wonder if we are alone in this world.
[Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO]
Thanks to Scott Corrales - click for UFO photo