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- STILL NOT CONVINCED DEPARTMENT -

Will Vote Recount Settle Doubts?

A vote recount in New Hampshire on Thursday could shed light on anomalies with election results in that state, voting activists say. And if the recount finds problems with voting machines there, it could open the way for recounts in other states, such as Florida.

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader requested the recount, which will include only a small percentage of voting districts in the state where anomalies appeared in the election results. New Hampshire uses a combination of traditional paper ballots and optical-scan machines -- where voters mark a paper ballot with a pen before officials scan it through an electronic infrared reader. The anomalies occurred mostly in districts that used optical-scan machines.

Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign was closing up shop and paying off its debts when it received several requests to look at data from a number of New Hampshire voting districts. "There was enough to it that made it worthwhile to at least check it out," he said.

The data came from Ida Briggs, a Michigan voter with 20 years of experience as a software programmer, including eight years as a statistical analyst of databases for the telecommunications industry. Briggs compared this year's New Hampshire votes with those cast in 2000.

Most people would have expected John Kerry's performance at the polls this year to be similar to Al Gore's in 2000. And in 229 out of 300 voting districts, or wards as they're called in New Hampshire, that was the case. Kerry either matched the percentage of votes that Gore received in 2000 in those wards or did better than Gore. But in 71 wards, Briggs found, Bush did better in 2004 than he did in 2000.

When Briggs broke the 71 wards down by voting equipment -- separating wards into those that used traditional paper ballots and those that used optical-scan machines -- she discovered that 73 percent of the wards used optical-scan equipment, while only 27 percent used traditional paper ballots. Even more interesting was the breakdown per brand of voting equipment. New Hampshire wards used optical-scan equipment made by Diebold Election Systems and Election Systems & Software. About 62 percent of the wards with anomalous results used Diebold machines.

"Which is pretty high," Briggs said. "Especially in comparison to hand-counted paper ballots, which accounted for only 27 percent of the out-of-trend wards."

In one ward in the city of Manchester, the change was remarkable. In 2000, Gore beat Bush 49 percent to 48 percent. But this year Bush carried the ward with 53 percent of votes. In another Manchester ward where Gore won 52 percent to Bush's 44 percent in 2000, Bush won with 50 percent to Kerry's 49 percent this year.

"The numbers could be real," Briggs said. "But to be this dramatically outside of the trend raises some red flags."

Some people have explained away the numbers as a result of affluent Massachusetts voters moving to New Hampshire to take advantage of its tax system. These transplants would be more likely to vote for Bush. But Briggs thinks this is too anecdotal and shouldn't be used to dismiss the numbers.

"It's also anecdotal that urban voters tend to vote more liberal than rural voters, but in New Hampshire we see that trend reversed," she said.

Briggs said the wards with surprising numbers account for about 235,000 votes, at least 200,000 of which are in wards that used Diebold machines. This is significant because earlier this year, activists found security flaws in the Diebold counting software that could allow someone with access to the system to alter votes.

But Briggs stressed that there was nothing to indicate fraud.

"My take is this could simply be a glitch. And if someone made a mistake, then it's an easy find," she said. "Thank God New Hampshire has a paper trail so we can just sit down and count the paper ballots."

Unlike states and counties using paperless touch-screen voting machines, New Hampshire passed a law in 1994 requiring all voting machines to produce a paper trail, so the paper can easily be used to verify the vote results.

But this isn't why Briggs chose to examine New Hampshire's machines. She chose the state because Kerry won there, with 50 percent of the votes to Bush's 49 percent, and people would be less likely to view her examination as a partisan tactic to overturn Bush's victory.

The recount will consist only of 11 wards, taken from a list of wards that Briggs supplied to the Nader campaign. Because state officials are already busy conducting 15 recounts in close local races, they will only be able to count five of the wards Thursday and will do the remaining six wards at a date to be determined.

Nader paid a $2,000 deposit to secure the recount and will have to pay an additional amount once the state determines the full cost, though it isn't expected to cost much more. If the 11 wards indicate problems with the machines, Nader officials will likely ask to widen the recount to include 44 wards.

Nader spokesman Zeese said New Hampshire officials have been very cooperative. He said his group also evaluated information about anomalies in Florida that were uncovered by a mathematician, but found no reason yet to call for a recount there.

"We're open-minded about looking at any evidence that raises suspicions that has legitimacy," he said. "But we're not going to just jump in and do a recount without reason." He said they looked at data showing that in Florida counties using optical-scan machines numerous Democrats had voted for Bush. But he concluded, as several academics did, that "it's not unusual," since many Democrats in Florida had been voting Republican for years.

But if the New Hampshire recount uncovers problems with the machines, the Nader campaign will consider seeking a recount in Florida, since the state uses many of the same Diebold and ES&S optical-scan machines as those in New Hampshire. The process in Florida, however, would be more complicated and expensive.

"New Hampshire makes it very easy to ask for a recount. But Florida requires you to file a lawsuit. You have to get a court order," Zeese said. "And we need to have a compelling reason to request a recount."

Briggs said that interesting data has also shown up in Ohio and New Mexico, though she has not yet been able to examine all of the figures she needs from those states. She said states vary in the level of data they make public and that finding numbers for individual voting districts rather than for whole counties has so far been difficult to do in Ohio and New Mexico. But at least two candidates are already seeking a recount in Ohio.

Anthony Stevens, New Hampshire's assistant secretary of state, said he thinks the recount in his state is a good thing.

"It will put people's minds at ease," Stevens said. "It will assure (voters) that things are being done right. It also may discourage any future tampering of the machines (if people see that the machines will be examined). So it's a good check and balance of the process."

Both Zeese and Briggs said whatever the recount results, the outcome would be positive.

"It will either show that there wasn't a problem with the machines or we'll find a problem and raise issues that need to be raised," Zeese said.

"Whenever there is even a perception that there is a problem, then there is a problem," Briggs said. "If people are raising questions then by God you sit down and you prove it so nobody has to take anyone's word for it. Why have four years of bitterness and doubt?"

Lingering Doubts

The Internet, that wonderful engine of democracy, is rife with messages purporting to demonstrate how the U.S. presidential election results were manipulated in ways benefiting the Republicans.

To start, voting analyses of selected Florida and Ohio precincts conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Steven Freeman and independent investigator Faun Otter have revealed surprisingly high percentages for Bush. Those skeptical about the results further suggest spoiled ballots and provisional votes, which may have a disproportionate impact on the results in the areas with high concentrations of minority voters, could have made the difference.

The earliest exit poll data released on Nov. 2 indicated Kerry - who had run narrowly behind Bush but within the margin of error for most of the race - was rolling to victory and carrying many of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, by higher than expected margins. These same polls also suggested the Republicans were ahead in most of the tight U.S. Senate races.

By the end of the night, however, the predictions in the presidential exit were wrong while the Senate projections were largely correct.

Exit polling by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, which created the National Election Poll for ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, had shown Kerry leading by 3 percentage points in Florida and by 4 points in Ohio. Kerry lost Florida by 5.2 percent, with Bush running ahead of his 2000 performance in 58 of the state's 67 counties. In Ohio, the margin was 2.5 percent.

Florida's 8.2-percent spread - between the early exits and the results - is more than double the standard error rate. In Ohio, the spread is 6.5 percent.

In Baker County, Fla. located near the city of Jacksonville and just across the border from Georgia, there are 12,887 registered voters: 69.3 percent are Democrats, 24.3 percent are Republicans. Yet 2,180 of county residents voted for Kerry while 7,738 voted for Bush - the opposite of what some election critics say was the typically pattern elsewhere in the United States.

In Florida's Dixie County, located on the Gulf Coast between Tallahassee and Tampa, 77.5 percent of the 4,988 registered voters are Democrats, 15 percent are Republicans. On Election Day, Bush carried the county with 4,433 votes vs. 1,959 for Kerry.

Nationally, few outlets have pursued the story of what happened in Baker and Dixie, why and whether it actually indicates a problem with the counting of the ballots. Most of the coverage of the alleged irregularities has focused on why the exit polls were so far off. Skeptics dismiss them as flawed or somehow favoring Kerry and say that, though they may have influenced the narrative of election coverage, they couldn't affect the outcome.

To explain the difference, some unconvincing theories have been floated including the one offered by the architects of the sampling system used for exit polling. They say Kerry voters were simply more willing to answer the questions. It's called the "chattiness thesis" and it sounds like a weak excuse - but so was the pollsters' earlier claims that the numbers were right, the media just read them wrong. In an article for Tom Paine.com, a liberal Internet publication, Greg Palast, an author and frequent critic of the 2000 election returns in Florida, goes farther.

"Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded," he writes. Palast says he thinks the election was decided by "spoilage," the small part of the vote that is voided and thrown away.

In Ohio, as in Florida four years ago, a large number of spoiled votes were cast on punch cards, 54 percent of which were cast by black voters, according to statisticians investigating the issue for Verified Voting, a group formed by a Stanford University professor to assess electronic voting. Verified Voting has collected 31,000 reports of alleged election abnormalities.

Other factors also could have affected the vote count, including last-minute legal challenges filed in several states, both by Democrats trying to block Ralph Nader from appearing on state ballots and Republicans concerned about lax registration rules. Long lines at precincts in the evening and the large number of total provisional ballots cast across the United States also may have influenced the outcome somewhat.

Taken together, such factors could significantly change the vote in some areas, bringing the count more into line with the exit poll results.

Were the election results manipulated in some way? At the moment, the question invokes the same kind of polarizations generated by the election choice itself; a much more thorough analysis is needed - and will not be quick in the offing - before the Internet chatter can taken seriously, even though some will always believe it did in fact occur.

Even if the thesis can eventually be demonstrated to be accurate, that some form of manipulation did occur, the technology involved is so complex that those responsible will likely escape the consequences.

Postscript: There is as yet no solid proof that a cyber-attack occurred on Nov. 2. For one thing, it would probably require hacking into multiple local computer systems, presumably from one or more remote locations. Nevertheless, suspicions are mounting and evidence is emerging to suggest that the U.S. presidential election results were manipulated to some extent.

Could it be pulled off? As far as we know, the CIA??�s successes in cyber-war include targeting specific bank accounts and shutting down computer systems. But stealing an election is considerably more difficult, requiring the alteration of data in many computers.

According to Robert Parry, writing for Consortium News, "a preprogrammed ???kernel of brain??� would have to be inserted into election computers beforehand, or teams of hackers would be needed to penetrate the lightly protected systems, targeting touch-screen systems without a paper backup for verifying the numbers."

It??�s a form of "information warfare," a hot item within the U.S. military since the mid-1990. The Pentagon has even produced a 13-page booklet, "Information Warfare for Dummies." Indirectly, this primer acknowledges considerable secret capabilities in these areas.

It also recognizes the sensitivity of the topic. "Due to the moral, ethical and legal questions raised by hacking, the military likes to keep a low profile on this issue," it explains.

So, did it happen here? Perhaps time will tell. But as the Pentagon readily admits, cyber-warfare has considerable advantages over other tactics. "The intrusions can be carried out remotely, transcending the boundaries of time and space," the manual explains.

And, best of all, if the fraud is ever discovered, there is such a technological buffer between those responsible and those doing the deed you might say it??�s the state-of-the-art in plausible deniability.

Source: Wired News and Common Dreams
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65736,00.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1116-33.htm

- TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM DEPARTMENT -

Top Scientist Asks: Is Life All Just A Dream?

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Deep Thought, the supercomputer created by novelist Douglas Adams, got there first, but now the astronomer royal has caught up. Professor Sir Martin Rees is to suggest that ???life, the universe and everything??? may be no more than a giant computer simulation with humans reduced to bits of software.

Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, will say that it is now possible to conceive of computers so powerful that they could build an entire virtual universe.

The possibility that what we see around us may not actually exist has been raised by philosophers many times dating back to the ancient Greeks and appears repeatedly in science fiction.

However, many scientists have always been dismissive, saying the universe was far too complex and consistent to be a simulation.

Despite this, the idea has persisted, popularised in films such as Tom Cruise??�s Vanilla Sky and The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves.

It was also the basis for The Hitchhiker??�s Guide to the Galaxy, written by Adams, who died in 2001. In the book, Deep Thought creates the Earth and its human inhabitants as a giant calculating device to answer the ???ultimate question???.

The BBC??�s rerun of the radio version of Hitchhiker finished recently, just as Rees was putting together his contribution to the debate in which he will concede that the depictions by Adams, Cruise and Reeves might have been right after all.

In a television documentary, What We Still Don??�t Know, to be screened on Channel 4 next month, he will say: ???Over a few decades, computers have evolved from being able to simulate only very simple patterns to being able to create virtual worlds with a lot of detail.

???If that trend were to continue, then we can imagine computers which will be able to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we think we??�re living in.

???This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves be in such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing. In a sense we could be ourselves the creations within this simulation.???

Rees will emphasise that this is just a theory. But it is being increasingly discussed by other eminent physicists and cosmologists.

Among them is John Barrow, professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge University. He points out that the universe has a degree of fine tuning that makes it safe for living organisms.

Even a tiny alteration in a fundamental force or a constant such as gravity would make stars burn out, atoms fly apart, and the world as we know it become impossible. Such fine tuning, he has said, could be taken as evidence for some kind of intelligent designer being at work.

???Civilisations only a little more advanced than ourselves will have the capability to simulate universes in which self-conscious entities can emerge and communicate with one another,??? he said.

The idea that life, the universe and everything in it could be an illusion dates back more than 2,000 years. Chuang Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, who died in 295BC, wondered whether his entire life might be no more than a dream.

René Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, raised similar questions. But he famously came down in favour of existence, saying: ???I think, therefore I am.???

The idea was resurrected last century, notably by Bertrand Russell, who suggested that humans could simply be ???brains in a jar??? being stimulated by chemicals or electrical currents ??� an idea that was quickly taken up and developed by science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov.

However, some academics pour cold water on the notion of a machine-created universe. Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such a computer would have to be unimaginably large.

???The Hitchhiker??�s Guide is a great book but it remains fiction,??? he said.

Source: The Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1358588,00.html

- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED DEPARTMENT -

TIMECRAFT 30890/56979_timecraft.jpg src="http://uforeview.tripod.com/cjimages/timecraft.jpg" title="" alt="" style="width: 136px; height: 190px;" hspace="50" vspace="30" align="right">
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This mysterious adventure begins in the life of a young boy who discovers the location of a treasure worth more by far than any pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As he grows up he wonders if it??�s not just the mad ramblings of his grandfather??�s legacy. He deciphers the code and finds a sentient device that can show him all facets of any moment in time. Not a time machine but something far more profound.

We uncover among other things who the ETs really are, their leader and followers, as well as their purpose here on earth. Many other historical facts are not as they appear to be and we find blatant unexpected flaws in our most advanced sciences and theology.

Once you pick up this book, you won't be able to put it down until the very end! Well worth having in anyone's book collection.

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- SPY VS. SPY DEPARTMENT -

Number Stations: Dark Side o 30890/56984_shortwave.jpg

Shortwave radio bands, ignored by commercial broadcasters because of their low fidelity, have long been home to government activity -- whether for national broadcasts such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America and Radio France International, or propaganda broadcasts from the likes of Radio Havana or the U.S.-backed Radio Free Iraq.

Meanwhile, for the last 30 years an altogether more curious kind of international station has been noted on the airwaves.

Across the world, high-powered transmitters with global reach are broadcasting seemingly meaningless strings of numbers or letters, along with a lot of buzzing and beeping noises.

Some have speculated that the signals from these "numbers stations" are operated by drug cartels. However, it's more likely they're run by intelligence agencies, as tacitly acknowledged by the British government, and accidentally by the Cubans.

As shortwave is abandoned by public broadcasters in favor of satellite and the internet, these curious stations continue to broadcast, seemingly unaffected by the end of the Cold War or the development of new technologies. But even listening to the signals is illegal in some countries.

A subculture of obsessive listeners has built up around the stations, despite the fact that they have little hope of ever decoding the signals.

Such is the curiosity value of these oddball transmissions that they have had an impact on popular culture and have been featured in the movie Vanilla Sky and music by Wilco, Porcupine Tree and Stereolab. A U.K.-based label, Irdial Discs, released a four-CD recording of various stations, an odd soundtrack approaching conceptual art.

No government has ever acknowledged a numbers station, but the British Department of Trade and Industry told London's Daily Telegraph in 1997 that there was no mystery and that the stations were not "intended for public consumption."

Spanish-language broadcasts of five-digit numbers targeted at North America are believed to emanate from Cuba. The location was given away by the accidental simulcasting of audio from Radio Havana Cuba. Of course, it's also been suggested the signal is broadcast by the CIA, and the technical problem a disinformation ruse rather than a genuine error.

Number station signals are not low-powered, which would suggest in-the-field broadcasts by clandestine operatives. Rather, they come from powerful transmitters with global reach, requiring massive masts that are not easily hidden.

Spectrographic analysis of the signals has revealed that modulated data bursts are sometimes contained within the transmissions, and sub-audible noises are a regular occurrence.

Though clandestine, some stations have been used by security operatives. On Sept. 22, 2001, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency's senior Cuba analyst, Ana Montes, was arrested. She was known to be receiving messages via Cuban numbers stations.

In the United Kingdom, professor Robin Pearson, who spied for East Germany, received one-way radio communications from his Stasi handlers from 1982 onward.

The conflict in Iraq has spawned at least two stations: E03A, operated from England, probably by MI6; and E25, broadcast from Egypt.

One of the most intriguing stations transmits at 4625 KHz. The station has broadcast the same signal for over 20 years: a buzzing tone, repeated 25 times a minute, which has earned it the nickname "the buzzer." The mast is located 30 kilometers northwest of Moscow.

Apart from the buzzing, 4625 kHz has only twice broadcast voice messages. Why the frequency is being reserved is a mystery.

One avid listener, a shortwave enthusiast who served in the Canadian military, suggested "it is a last-reserve frequency reserved for extreme emergencies, such as just prior to the potential outbreak of nuclear conflict."

Paul Beaumont, a member of the British-based Enigma 2000, a group dedicated to analyzing numbers traffic, suggested the buzzer is "something to do with missiles -- possibly a timepiece."

Kevin Nice, editor of the United Kingdom's Short Wave Magazine, is baffled by the interest in the buzzer.

"It could be a data modem," he said. "There are all sorts of odd noises on shortwave. It could be any number of things. The interest in it specifically is bizarre."

Beaumont said the broadcasts are fascinating, even if listeners will never break the codes. Serious listeners construct schedules and tune into a plethora of stations.

"There are definite schedules and signal characteristics which can be identified," he said. "You'll never decipher a message, but you can perform traffic analysis on them."

British military intelligence is clearly aware of the James Bond cachet of things like numbers stations. Perhaps they are simply recruiting tools.

Take, for example, the recruitment advertisements in the left-of-center Guardian newspaper, which exploit the secret-agent image to hire staff who are likely to spend their entire careers desk-bound. One recent ad for a cleaner featured curious copy:

"Part-time cleaner/domestic support £16903 pro-rata. Some of the work we do makes front page news. Some of it remains strictly behind the scenes. But whether you read all about it or not, we play a vital role in helping protect the UK from threats such as crime, drugs and terrorism. We want you to go under the covers in our London Office and ensure it's clean and tidy. Duties aren't set in stone, so you should be flexible and willing to lend a hand wherever we need it."

Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65698,00.html

- LOOK, UP IN THE SKY DEPARTMENT -

UFO Expert: Aliens May Be Preparing Us For Ultimat 30890/56978_ufowave.jpg

UFOs are showing a keen interest in our nuclear weapons facilities, says investigator Robert Hastings, who has spent countless hours analyzing documents dealing with UFO sightings at nuclear missile launch sites and research labs in the United States over the past several decades.

"You have reference to these objects hovering, racing away at blinding speed," he told Idaho 2 News. "There is no evidence we have an aircraft that can do that or anyone else on earth."

Hastings, who has devoted countless hours researching UFOs and the U.S. government's reaction to them, was in Boise for a lecture and slide show Monday at Boise State University.

Hastings believes we are being visited by aliens who have mastered a faster than light form of space flight. And he speculates they have not openly revealed themselves to avoid public panic.

"What they're doing is engaging in a decades long psychological preparation process whereby slowly but surely people on earth understand this is real, they're here," he said.

Hastings believes three UFOs with aliens on board did crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and points to a 1950 memo to FBI Director J Edgar Hoover saying three so-called flying saucers had been recovered "each one occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall "

And he says the spectacular UFO sighting earlier this year off the Yucatan Peninsula were the real deal. But Hastings is not a believer in the theory aliens and earthlings are working together at Area 51, the top secret base in the Nevada desert, as some suggest.

In the end, Hastings says what's missing -- so far -- is physical evidence, but he says the story is far from over.

Source: KBCI TV Boise
http://www.kbcitv.com/x5154.xml?ParentPageID=x5157&ContentID
=x59663&Layout=KBCI.xsl&AdGroupID=x5154

- MYSTERIES OF THE BUSH DEPARTMENT -

Hunting a Stri 30890/56982_thylacine.jpg

For years, Trudy Richards searched the forests of Tasmania for the elusive creature with the head of a wolf, the pouch of a kangaroo and the stripes of a tiger.

She put motion-sensor cameras and audio recorders in the forest. She built sand traps to capture a footprint. She trekked through the woods, her camera at the ready. She spent hours on stakeouts ??� all in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the ancient thylacine. And then, she says, she finally saw one.

According to her account, a Tasmanian tiger, as the creature is commonly known, walked into her campsite one winter evening just before midnight. Richards says her camera was out of reach but insists there was no mistaking the animal's distinctive black stripes.

There's just one problem. The thylacine has been listed as extinct since 1986 ??� 50 years after the last known specimen died in captivity at Tasmania's Hobart Zoo.

Although some scientists say the animal might have survived into the 1980s, there has been no confirmed sighting in 68 years. Scientists say the species vanished from mainland Australia thousands of years ago.

Such negativity does not deter tiger hunters like Richards. Tasmania, a rugged island of 460,000 people south of the Australian mainland, is known for its independent streak, and many here reject the verdict of science. For them, the survival of the world's largest marsupial carnivore is a matter of faith.

"They're out there," says Richards, 41, who has no scientific training and works as a clerk at a farm supply store. "They've been out there for the last 70 years. You either believe or you don't."

Like the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot, the legend of the Tasmanian tiger has taken on a life of its own. Hundreds of people claim to have seen one. Volumes have been written about it. Several websites are devoted to the search. Media mogul Ted Turner once offered a reward of $100,000 for proof of the creature's continued existence. A handful of tiger hunters dedicate their lives to finding it.

The searchers take hope from the fact that the Tasmanian tiger ??� unlike the mythical creatures of Scotland and the Pacific Northwest ??� once existed, roaming Tasmania and mainland Australia for tens of millions of years.

"So many people have seen it, they can't all be lies," says Col Bailey, one of the most dedicated hunters. "I've smelled it and I've heard it and I believe I saw it in 1967. But I've got no proof."

The tiger hunters are not alone in hoping for the animal's resurgence. While they search the dense forest for evidence of a living thylacine, scientists in Sydney hope to prove that, in the Tasmanian tiger's case, extinction is not forever.

At the Australian Museum in Sydney, scientists have taken the first step in cloning the thylacine from museum exhibits and dream of someday creating a colony in the wild.

In 2002, they reported success in replicating thylacine DNA extracted from a pup that had been preserved in alcohol, but since then the work has slowed. Some suggest that the team's biggest accomplishment has been in generating publicity for the museum.

"It's obviously a very long shot," acknowledges Don Colgan, who is heading the project.

More like a large dog than a tiger, the thylacine had a wolf-like head and jaws that opened remarkably wide. Its body was yellow-brown with black tiger-like stripes on its back and hindquarters. It had a long snout and a thick, stiff tail. The female had a pouch that opened toward the rear, an advantage in protecting the young when it moved through brush.

The thylacine was known to eat only fresh meat, unlike its closest relative, the smaller Tasmanian devil, an aggressive, noisy marsupial notorious for devouring carrion.

When European settlers introduced sheep to Tasmania in the 19th century, the thylacine found a ready source of food. Sheep farmers blamed the tiger for huge losses ??� sometimes unjustly ??� and the creature was soon branded a dangerous pest. In 1888, the government offered a bounty of 1 pound sterling, the equivalent of a week's wages, for each thylacine killed.

Thousands were shot, trapped, snared, clubbed and poisoned. By 1910, the thylacine population had fallen so low that the bounty scheme was abandoned. As the creature was disappearing, museums contributed to its demise by offering large payments for specimens.

Today, the thylacine has become a Tasmanian icon. The tiger can be seen on beer bottles, billboards, postage stamps, license plates, buses, city emblems, the state's coat of arms and the logo of the Tasmanian Cricket Assn. It even found its way onto a postage stamp issued by the African nation of Tanzania. Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service biologist Nick Mooney has spent more than two decades fielding reports of thylacine sightings and following up on those that appeared the most credible.

In 1982, he led one of the biggest official tiger searches after park ranger Hans Naarding reported seeing a thylacine close enough to count 12 stripes on its back. Mooney's team scoured northwestern Tasmania for a year without finding a trace of the animal. Today, Mooney does not rule out the possibility that the thylacine still exists but believes it is highly unlikely.

He has analyzed more than 700 reported sightings and sees a similarity to reported sightings of UFOs. Often, the reports are of brief encounters on a highway at dusk. Many truly believe they have seen a thylacine, he says, but eyewitness accounts are often unreliable.

Some reports come from people who are delusional, he says, like the man who called in 96 sightings, including a tiger stuck in his fence. When Mooney arrived on the scene, the man said he had freed the tiger and had a shredded sweater to show for it.

"With every year that goes by, the evidence is stronger that it's not there," Mooney says. "Common sense would tell you it's not there, but we could be wrong. I would love to be wrong."

The disappearance of the species has spawned a new breed of Tasmanian adventurer ??� the thylacine hunter. Often secretive and solitary, the hunters distrust one another yet have a fundamental optimism and believe in the beleaguered tiger's ability to survive against all odds.

They say their goal is to protect the tiger. But they also talk of the millions of dollars they believe the discovery would be worth.

One of the foremost hunters is Bailey, 66, an affable retired landscape gardener who has spent more than 30 years searching for the tiger. He wrote a book, "Tiger Tales," a collection of stories of purported thylacine sightings and old-timers' accounts of the animal.

At his home in New Norfolk, his den is devoted to the creature. Old photos of thylacines, drawings of the animal and photos of Bailey on the hunt adorn the walls. On a map of Tasmania, hundreds of pins show where tigers were killed long ago under the bounty system.

Bailey says his obsession with the thylacine began when he was 29, after he became convinced that he saw one outside the mainland city of Adelaide not far from his home. He theorizes that the animal he saw had escaped from a zoo decades earlier.

Bailey retired here 15 years ago to pursue his search full time.

"It's a passion, I guess. Maybe I am mad," jokes Bailey, whose father taught him how to find his way in the wilderness by taking him into the woods when he was 4 and leaving him.

He says he fields dozens of calls a year from people who say they have spotted a thylacine. No one has ever found the carcass of a tiger, he says, because Tasmanian devils quickly consume every dead creature in the forest.

He recently spent 12 days tramping alone through the rugged wilderness of southeastern Tasmania following his hunch that the creature was there. He wore a foul-smelling potion he made so the tigers would not get his scent, but he still came up empty.

"I'm just waiting for the day when I really get the proof," he says. "Science has this myth, and it is a myth, that the last one died in Hobart in 1936. But you can't put a date on extinction. To say that was the last one is pretty far-fetched."

Bailey is a bit reluctant to talk about the one he is certain he saw a couple of years ago. He was driving across Tasmania's central highlands and stopped to rest. Leaving his camera gear in the car, he walked a short distance into the woods, he says, and suddenly a thylacine ambled by. The animal was gone before he could retrieve his camera.

"I felt like an idiot," he says. "I wasn't expecting it. This animal is like a phantom. It appears and disappears like an apparition. I don't say much about that one."

The little town of Mole Creek in north-central Tasmania was once in the heart of thylacine country. Today, a popular place to see the animal is at the Tiger Bar on the main street of town. On the wall are dozens of thylacine likenesses: drawings, murals, footprints, news articles, a fake tiger fur, and even a cartoon of Tiger Woods as a golfing thylacine. Customers drink Cascade beer ??� the one with the Tasmanian tiger on the label.

"My grandfather used to see them," says Ron Lee, 57, a retired logger drinking a beer at the bar. "He used to shoot them."

Lee has lived in Mole Creek all his life but says he's never seen a tiger.

"I honestly think they are extinct," he says. "There are more people in the bush than there ever was. With all the loggers and the bush walkers, there hasn't been one photo or any real evidence that the tiger still exists.

"I'd like to think the tiger's still around," he adds, "but I've spent my life in this area and I've never seen any sign at all."

A frequent customer at the Tiger Bar is Trudy Richards, who lives nearby and features in some of the news clippings on the wall.

Richards, whose cattle-ranching ancestors used to snare tigers in the highlands, says her close encounter occurred about 12 miles northeast of Mole Creek. About 11:30 at night, she says, the thylacine strolled into her camp.

"It wasn't a devil. It wasn't a wallaby. It was definitely a tiger," she says. "The stripes really stood out. That's the first thing you see. It's got the most beautiful eyes, really dark, almond-shaped eyes."

She says she shone her flashlight on the animal and observed it for about two minutes from about 40 yards away before it disappeared into the woods. She says she was unable to find footprints later because the soil was dry. But she does not seem distressed that she has no proof of her sighting.

"It took me 20 years to see one, and that's not a bad average," she says, adding, "You never have your camera when you want it."

Source: LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-tigers17nov17,
1,3962363.story?coll=la-headlines-world

- ATLANTIS HERE, ATLANTIS THERE DEPARTMENT -

We've Definitely Found 30890/56981_atlantis.jpg

A US researcher says he has "definitely" found the lost civilisation of Atlantis in the watery deep off Cyprus, adding his theory to a mystery which has baffled explorers for centuries.

Robert Sarmast says a Mediterranean basin was flooded in a deluge about 9,000 BC, submerging a rectangular land mass he believes was Atlantis.

The land mass now lies 1.5 kilometres beneath sea level between Cyprus and Syria.

"We have definitely found it," said Mr Sarmast, who led a team of explorers 80 kilometres off the south-east coast of Cyprus this month.

He says deep water sonar scanning has indicated man-made structures - including a three-kilometre-long wall, a walled hill summit and deep trenches - on a submerged hill.

Mr Sarmast says further explorations are needed.

"We cannot yet provide tangible proof in the form of bricks and mortar as the artefacts are still buried under several metres of sediment but the circumstantial and other evidence is irrefutable," he said.

At a news conference in the port city of Limassol, Mr Sarmast provided only animated simulations of the "hill".

Whether and where Atlantis existed has captured imaginations for centuries.

According to ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis was an island nation where an advanced civilisation developed about 11,500 years ago.

Theories abound as to why it disappeared, from Atlantis being hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster to Greek mythology which describes the civilisation as being so corrupted by greed and power that it was destroyed by God.

Sceptics believe Atlantis was a figment of Plato's imagination.

Mr Sarmast says he was led to Cyprus by clues in Plato's dialogues.

Plato's reference to Atlantis lying opposite the Pillars of Hercules - believed to be the Straits of Gibraltar - have often led explorers to focus on either the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland or the Azores off Portugal.

"People who dismiss this have not really done their homework, sceptics don't really understand," Mr Sarmast said.

"To understand the enigma of Atlantis you have to have good knowledge of ancient history, Biblical references, the Sumerian culture and their tablets and so on."

Although the most prevailing story of a world cataclysm is listed in the Biblical Old Testament, several ancient cultures do list accounts of civilisations being destroyed in floods.

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1243509.htm

- CRYPTIC CRITTERS DEPARTMENT -

Florida's Swamp Creature Spot 30890/56980_floridaswampape.jpg stify;">

When Jennifer Ward drives through the Green Swamp these days, she makes sure she has a camera in her car. She hopes she'll get the chance to capture for others an image is already seared into her memory, and she knows only a picture will persuade others that she really did see something bizarre one evening a few months ago.

"I've heard about Big Foot and stuff," Ward says. "I didn't really think it existed, but I'm convinced now."

Ward, 30, was driving on Moore Road in northern Polk County a few days after Hurricane Charley's passage through the area when she glanced to her left and saw something she says has haunted her ever since. She describes it as a creature with a human form that was covered in dark hair or fur and had whitish rings around its eyes.

Ward says the mysterious animal stood erect in a drainage ditch along the road, and she estimates its height at 8 feet. Based on her description, it might have been foraging in the ditch when she surprised it.

"It looked like it was doing something; it was focused on something," Ward says. "Whenever it saw me, it probably took on the facial expression I had on because I was dumbfounded. It just watched me as I drove by." Asked if it might have been a bear, she replied, "No chance at all."

Ward says she didn't stop because her two daughters were sleeping in the back seat and she feared the animal might attack her Toyota 4Runner if given the chance. She went back to the scene later to search for hair or footprints, but she didn't find any conclusive evidence.

Since the fleeting observation, Ward has obsessively tried to convey to others what she saw. She has filled a drawing pad with sketches of the animal, though she says she lacks the skill to depict it precisely.

"I can't seem to get it off my mind," Ward says. "I hope to see it again some time."Ward doesn't seem surprised that others, including family members and friends, have received her story dubiously. She says her daughters make jokes about the sighting even as they tell her they believe her. Ward's husband, Richard Furnari, an amateur archaeologist who has accumulated bones of prehistoric animals, would like more evidence to support his wife's claim.

"She swears to it," Furnari says. "I was skeptical at first, but . . . I'm certain she saw something. I don't know what."

Ward found an enthusiastic ally in Scott Marlowe, an archaeologist and instructor with the Pangea Institute, an educational entity based in Winter Haven. Marlowe already knew Furnari, who donated a collection of fossils to Pangea Institute earlier this year.

Marlowe has long had an interest in cryptozoology, the study of legendary or unconfirmed species. Upon hearing of Ward's experience, he told her about a long-rumored creature known variously as the Florida swamp ape or Florida skunk ape.

Reported sightings of swamp apes have been arising for years, and in 2000 someone anonymously mailed photos to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department purportedly of the creature taken in the Myakka River area. But Ward says those pictures and other sketches Marlowe showed her didn't match the animal she saw. Marlowe, for his part, suspects some claimed swamp ape sightings actually involved escaped or released orangutans.

Marlowe will teach a class in cryptozoology for Florida Keys Community College next year. He says he would welcome any confirmation of Ward's claim.

"At this point there's been a single sighting," Marlowe says. "I would be really interested to hear from anybody (else) who had a sighting of that. One of the things I will be doing with my class next summer is taking them out on a field study where we actually try to go after a cryptid (unrecognized) animal."

A few animals have made the transition from fabled to confirmed status -- perhaps most notably the coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for 60 million years before one was found alive in 1938. Marlowe says it's conceivable a mystery animal could live deep in the Green Swamp and might have been driven from its normal range by a hurricane.

"We haven't seen anything conclusive to substantiate this sighting, although I do believe the individual (Ward)," Marlowe says. "These things have to be approached very, very carefully."

Source: The Ledger
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20041113/NEWS/411130309/1021

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