Sheriff Says We're Going to See 2nd American Revolution

German Court Expands Adoption Rights of Gay Couples

Germany's constitutional court handed same-sex couples a victory on Tuesday by ruling that gay people should be allowed to adopt a child already adopted by their partner.

The court said an existing ban on the practice—known as successive adoption—violated the principle of equal treatment of people regardless of their sexual orientation.

It said the status quo also harmed the rights of the children involved.

"The exclusion of successive adoption by registered partners violates the general principle of equality," said the court, based in Karlsruhe in southwest Germany.

The government has until July 2014 to amend the law to incorporate the ruling, which applies to gay people in civil partnerships.

Under German law, a gay person can already adopt the biological children of his or her registered partner.

In Germany homosexuals can form civil partnerships but are not allowed to marry. The law already allows a married person to adopt a partner's adopted children.

Opposition parties and gay activists accuse Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government of dragging its feet on equality for gay couples. Civil partnerships are denied the tax privileges accorded to married couples.

Lawmaker Volker Beck of the opposition Greens said on Tuesday the government was failing in its responsibilities by leaving the constitutional court to tackle issues of gay equality on a case-by-case basis.

"The federal constitutional court has already said in many other cases in the past that there can be no differentiation made between marriage and civil partnerships when there are no good grounds for it," he told German radio.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told a briefing on Tuesday the government would study the ruling to decide how best to proceed in amending the law. "The wellbeing of the children will always be the benchmark for the government," he said.

Two lawmakers from the liberal Free Democrats, Merkel's junior coalition partner, welcomed the ruling.

"Gay men and lesbians make just as good parents as heterosexual men and women. Thousands of children are growing up already in 'rainbow' families," said Stephan Thomae and Michael Kauch in a joint statement.

In a separate case, an Austrian lesbian couple who want to jointly raise one partner's biological child won their case at the European Court for Human Rights, which ruled on Tuesday that Austria's adoption laws discriminated against gay people on that issue.

Charisma News

Meteor Explosion Over Cuba One Day After Russian Event

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Just one day after a spectacular meteor exploded over Russian skies, shattering windows and injuring more than a 1,200 people, Cubans were treated to a similar event, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Many of Cuba’s citizens watched in wonderment as a small fireball soared across the early evening skies on Friday before exploding. Startled residents described seeing the bright light in the sky just seconds before a thunderous boom sent shockwaves through the air, shaking windows and walls. While the Cuban meteor explosion was similar to the Russian event, it was by far smaller and, as a result, no injuries or damages were reported.

The Cuban event also occurred on the same day many Californians witnessed a small shooting star (meteorite) burning up in the night sky as it fell through Earth’s atmosphere over San Francisco.

According to NBC, one couple said they were surprised by the “bright, white fireball” streaking across the night sky. Around the same time residents in northern California witnessed a meteorite blazing across the skies overhead.

Jonathan Braidman, an instructor at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, told NBC that the California fireball was actually a small piece of asteroid. He said it is a fairly “common occurrence,” although they occur more commonly over sparsely-populated areas, perhaps where it is less likely that witnesses will observe them.

Several anonymous reports from citizens in Cuba said the explosion was impressive. One woman told state TV news agency CubaSi that her “home shook completely” and that she “never heard such a strange thing.”

It is not clear yet if the Cuban explosion was indeed from a meteor. Because Cuba lies so closely to the shores of southern Florida, it seems a major meteor streaking across the skies would have likely been spotted there as well, to which no reports have yet to surface. And a California-based telescope monitoring that specific area of sky had not picked up any unusual activity.

Scientists say that small meteorites hit the Earth several times per year, but larger events like the one over Russia are much rarer.

Professor Edwin Bergin, of the University of Michigan’s Astronomy department, told redOrbit on Friday that meteors like the Russian one “occur every 10 to 30 years or so.” And even larger ones, those larger than a half-mile wide, “occur once or twice every million years.”

As for the Russian event, a local scientist today recovered the first fragments of the giant meteor on the edge of a giant hole in a frozen lake near Chelyabinsk after a sizeable chunk of the exploded meteor came crashing down, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian officials had searched the lake on Friday and Saturday but had turned up no results and suggested the hole may not have actually been caused by a meteor fragment.

However, Mikhail Udovinko, who is studying metallurgy at a local university, said he had found a small stone near the edge of the hole at the lake, and believes it is part of Friday’s meteor. He said that the stone responds to magnetism and has some weak radioactive properties.

Paul Abell, a scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has compiled new data for the meteor strike and said it was traveling at 46,000 mph when it hit the Earth’s atmosphere. Earlier reports placed the top speed at around 33,000 mph.

Abell said, according to ABC News, the meteor exploded in the atmosphere because its composition is stony, rather than metallic. The famous Tunguska asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 was also stony, which is why it didn’t impact the Earth.

Metallic meteors are more likely to impact earth, leaving huge craters, much like a famous one found in Arizona.

More astonishing, was the fact that the Russian, Cuban and Californian events occurred on, or around, the same day that the 2012 DA14 asteroid made a historic close approach of Earth, flying by at nearly 17,000 miles overhead, closer than our own geosynchronous satellites, which typically orbit us at 22,000 miles.

But despite the occurrences coming on the same day as the 2012 DA14 flyby, experts said that none of the meteor events are associated with that asteroid.

However, these events are causing some level of concern about what else may be out there lurking in the dark and whether the planet can be protected from future events– ones that could possibly be ten, or even a hundred, times more destructive than the Russian event.

Members of The United Nations, The White House, and even Congress have all asked to be briefed on these events, Abell said.

One ambitious plan to take out asteroids and large meteors before they take us out has already been proposed by two California scientists on Friday as well.

The proposed system, called DE-STAR, would be designed to shift the orbit of large asteroids, possibly deflecting them away from the Earth. This system is designed to utilize the energy of the Sun, converting it into an array of lasers that can also destroy, or evaporate comets and meteors.

Space News

Retail Apocalypse: Why Are Major Retail Chains All Over America Collapsing?

If the economy is improving, then why are many of the largest retail chains in America closing hundreds of stores?  When I was growing up, Sears, J.C. Penney, Best Buy and RadioShack were all considered to be unstoppable retail powerhouses.  But now it is being projected that all of them will close hundreds of stores before the end of 2013.  Even Wal-Mart is running into problems.  A recent internal Wal-Mart memo that was leaked to Bloombergdescribed February sales as a "total disaster".  So why is this happening?  Why are major retail chains all over America collapsing?  Is the "retail apocalypse" upon us?  Well, the truth is that this is just another sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes.  Incomes are declining, taxes are going up, government dependence is at an all-time high, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has been steadily falling since 2006.  The top 10% of all income earners in the U.S. are still doing very well, but most U.S. consumers are either flat broke or are drowning in debt.  The large disposable incomes that the big retail chains have depended upon in the past simply are not there anymore.  So retail chains all over the United States are now closing up unprofitable stores.  This is especially true in low income areas.

When you step back and take a look at the bigger picture, the rapid decline of some of our largest retail chains really is stunning.

It is happening already in some areas, but soon half empty malls and boarded up storefronts will litter the landscapes of cities all over America.

Just check out some of these store closing numbers for 2013.  These numbers are from a recent Yahoo Finance article...

Best Buy

Forecast store closings: 200 to 250

Sears Holding Corp.

Forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125

J.C. Penney

Forecast store closings: 300 to 350

Office Depot

Forecast store closings: 125 to 150

Barnes & Noble

Forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments

Gamestop

Forecast store closings: 500 to 600

OfficeMax

Forecast store closings: 150 to 175

RadioShack

Forecast store closings: 450 to 550

The RadioShack in a nearby town just closed up where I live.  This is all happening so fast that it is hard to believe.

But the truth is that those store closings are not the entire story.  When you dig deeper you find a lot more retailers that are in trouble.

For example, Blockbuster recently announced that this year they will be closing about 300 stores and eliminating about 3,000 jobs.

Toy manufacturer Hasbro recently announced that they will be reducing the size of their workforce by about 10 percent.

Even Wal-Mart is going through a tough stretch right now.  According to documents that were leaked to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart is having an absolutely disastrous February...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. had the worst sales start to a month in seven years as payroll-tax increases hit shoppers already battling a slow economy, according to internal e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News.

“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal- Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company.”

So what in the world is going on here?

The mainstream media continues to proclaim that we are experiencing a robust "economic recovery", but at the same time there are a whole host of indications that things are continually getting worse.

Even global cell phone sales actually declined slightly in 2012.  That was the first time that has happened since the last recession.

Perhaps it is time that we faced the truth.  The middle class is shrinking, incomes are declining and there are not nearly as many jobs as there used to be.

Mort Zuckerman pointed this out in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal...

The U.S. labor market, which peaked in November 2007 when there were 139,143,000 jobs, now encompasses only 132,705,000 workers, a drop of 6.4 million jobs from the peak. The only work that has increased is part-time, and that is because it allows employers to reduce costs through a diminished benefit package or none at all.

So how can the mainstream media be talking about how "good" things are if we still have 6.4 million fewer jobs than we had back in November 2007?

And sadly, things may soon be getting a lot worse.  If Congress does not do anything about the "sequester", millions of federal workers may shortly be facing some very painful furloughs according to CNN...

Federal workers could start facing furloughs as early as April, according to federal agencies trying to prepare for the worst.

Unless Congress steps in, some $85 billion in massive spending reductions will hit the federal government, doling out furloughs to much of the nation's 2.1 million federal workforce, experts say.

If you still live in an area of the country where the stores and the restaurants are booming, you should be very thankful because that is not the reality for most of the country.

I often write about the stunning economic decline of major cities such as Detroit, but there are huge sections of rural America that are in even worse shape than Detroit in many ways.

For example, many Indian reservations all over America have been shamefully neglected by the federal government and have become hotbeds for crime, drugs and poverty.

Business Insider recently profiled the Wind River Indian reservation in western Wyoming.  The following is a brief excerpt from thatoutstanding article...

The Wind River Indian Reservation is not an easy place to get to, but I had to see it for myself.

Thirty-five-hundred square miles of prairie and mountains in western Wyoming, the reservation is home to bitter ancestral enemies: the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes.

Even among reservations, it's renowned for brutal crime, widespread drug use, and legal dumping of toxic waste.

You can see some amazing photos of the Wind River Indian reservationright here.

It is hard to believe that there are places like that in America, but the truth is that conditions like that are spreading to more U.S. communities with each passing day.

We are a nation that is in an advanced state of decline.  But as long as the financial markets are okay, our leaders don't seem too concerned about the suffering that everyone else is going through.

In fact, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan essentially admitted as much during a recent interview with CNBC.  The following is how a Zero Hedge article summarized that interview...

Starting at around 1:50, Greenspan states the odds of sequester occurring are very high - in fact, the playdough-faced ex-Chair-head notes, "I find it very difficult to find a scenario in which [the sequester] doesn't happen" But when asked how this will affect the economy, Awkward Alan is unusually clearly spoken - "the issue is how does it affect the stock market."

While not so many of our leaders have taken the path to direct truthiness, Greenspan somewhat shocks a Botox'd and babbling Bartiromo when he admits "the stock market is the key player in the game of economic growth."

Bartiromo shifts uncomfortably in her seat, strokes her imaginary beard and stares blankly as Greenspan explains that while the sequester will have a real effect on the real economy, "if the stock market can hold up through this, then the effect will be rather minor."

Do you see?

As long as the stock market is moving higher they think that everything is just fine and dandy.

And the Obama administration?

They continue to pursue the same policies that got us into this mess.

Their idea of "economic reform" is to threaten to sue businesses that do not hire ex-convicts.

And of course now that Obama has been re-elected he is putting a tremendous amount of effort into "stimulating the economy".

For example, he spent this weekend golfing in Florida, and the Obamas recently spent about 20 million taxpayer dollarsvacationing in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is getting worse with each passing day.

If you doubt that economic conditions are getting worse, please read this article: "Show This To Anyone That Believes That 'Things Are Getting Better' In America".

When you look at the cold, hard numbers, it is undeniable what is happening to America.

And our leaders are not doing anything to fix our problems.  In fact, most of the time they are just making things worse.

So buckle up and get prepared.  We are in for very bumpy ride, and this is only just the beginning.

Economic Collapse

PETRUS ROMANUS (Pt 7) The False Prophet And The Antichrist Are Here

Ten years before something “pulled his feet” out from under him while he was preparing for an exorcism and Malachi Martin fell and later died (at the time he was working on what he promised would be his most explosive book yet under the telling title: Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order), he had become increasingly outspoken about pedophilic Satanism at the heart of the Vatican throughout the College of Cardinals and all the way down to local parishes, which he said were in league with a secret Masonic diabolicus that began following the “enthronement of the fallen Archangel Lucifer” in the Roman Catholic Citadel on June 29, 1963. This horrid rituale, as Martin had called it, had two primary objectives: 1) to enthrone Lucifer as the real Prince over Rome; and 2) to assure the sorcerous inception and embodiment in flesh of that immaterial spirit that would fill the pope also known as Petrus Romanus.

In The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle of World Dominion, Martin had written:

Most frighteningly for John Paul, he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the “superforce.” Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to “the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary”…an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican.[i]

Martin concealed even greater detail of this luciferic “enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican” in his book, Windswept House:

The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer was effected within the Roman Catholic Citadel on June 29, 1963; a fitting date for the historic promise about to be fulfilled. As the principal agents of this Ceremonial well knew, Satanist tradition had long predicted that the Time of the Prince would be ushered in at the moment when a Pope would take the name of the Apostle Paul [Pope Paul VI]. That requirement—the signal that the Availing Time had begun—had been accomplished just eight days before with the election of the latest Peter-in-the-Line.[ii]

The specific date given by Martin—June 29, 1963—and the combination of the specific names Peter (whom the Pope is successor of in Catholicism) and Paul, is important. June 29 is the Feast or Solemnity of both apostles, Peter and Paul. This is a liturgical feast in honor of the martyrdom of both Saints and a holy day of obligation in the universal Church in which (according to Wikipedia) the faithful are “obliged” to participate in Mass. Among other things, this means on this specific date a perfectly timed sacrilegious parody of the Catholic Mass was completed during the Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer (which occultists know would hold high satanic energy) as well as simultaneously an offense made against the martyrdom of Peter and Paul during the Church’s Feast in their names. This date is important for other reasons as well that readers of our work may be frightened by and that we are not yet ready to include in this online series.

Martin stated publicly on more than one occasion that this enthronement of Lucifer in Rome was based on fact, and that to facilitate the black magic, a parallel ceremony was conducted simultaneously in the United States in Charleston, South Carolina. The reason this location was selected has remained obscure to many, but given what Malachi said about the Masonic connection, it makes sense that South Carolina was chosen: It is the site of the first Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the United States, called “the Mother Lodge of the World,” where in 1859, champion of luciferian dogma for the Masonic-Illuminatus, Albert Pike became Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, where he served the Order of the Quest until his death in Washington DC on April 2, 1892. Pike was known as a Satanist in his adopted state of Arkansas and loved to sit naked in the woods astride a phallic throne while participating for days in drunkenness and debauchery. Today, his body is proudly entombed at the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in Washington DC.

According to the logic of former Sirhan Sirhan attorney, Day Williams, this makes Charleston, at the thirty-third parallel, even more perfect for the sacrifice and parallel ceremony described by Martin because, “If a life is taken close to the…33rd Parallel, this fits with the Masons’ demonic mythology in which they demonstrate their worldly power by spilling human blood at a predetermined locale.”[iii] Martin added additional reasons for the South Carolina location:

Such unobtrusive elements as the Pentagram and the black candles and the appropriate draperies could be part of the Ceremonial in Rome. But other Ruberics—the Bowl of Bones and the Ritual Din, for example, the sacrificial animals and the victim—would be too much. There would have to be a Parallel Enthronement. A Concelebration could be accomplished with the same effect by the Brethren in an Authorized Targeting Chapel. Provided all the participants in both locations “targeted” every element of the Event on the Roman Chapel, then the Event in its fullness would be accomplished specifically in the target area. It would all be a matter of unanimity of hearts, identity of intention and perfect synchronization of words and actions between the Targeting Chapel and the Target Chapel. The living wills and the thinking minds of the Participants concentrated on the specific Aim of the Prince would transcend all distance.[iv]

Martin’s chilling description in Windswept House of the methodical profanation of everything virtuous and innocent during the “Parallel Enthronement” between the Targeting Chapel and the Target Chapel included indescribably foul Invocations, sadistic animal sacrifices, and repeated violations of a young “Ritual Victim” on an altar. For the uninitiated, the very idea this happened strains credulity. Yet when John F. McManus, for The New American, June 9, 1997, asked Father Martin if the Black Mass in South Carolina had actually occurred, it led to an enlightening Q and A:

McManus: Your book begins with a vivid description of a sacrilegious “Black Mass” held in 1963 in Charleston, South Carolina. Did this really happen?

Martin: Yes it did. And the participation by telephone of some high officials of the church in the Vatican is also a fact. The young female who was forced to be a part of this satanic ritual is very much alive and, happily, has been able to marry and lead a normal life. She supplied details about the event.…

McManus: In addition…you depict numerous other cardinals and bishops in a very bad light. Are these characterizations based on fact?

Martin: Yes, among the cardinals and the hierarchy there are satanists, homosexuals, anti-papists, and cooperators in the drive for world rule.[v]

Even more explosive, near the end of Windswept House there is an often overlooked section providing explicit details of the enthronement ceremony and its true purpose to create a satanic pope. Martin provides details of the “Roman Phalanx,” another name for the Vatican satanic cult, as well as describing their ultimate goal:

As a body, they had sworn “the Sacred Oath of Commitment” administered by the Delegate. Then each man had approached the Altar to give “Evidence” of his personal dedication. With blood drawn by the prick of a golden pin, each had pressed his fingerprint beside his name on the Bill of Authorization. Henceforth, the life and work of every member of the Phalanx in the Roman Citadel was to be focused on the transformation of the papacy itself. No longer was the Petrine Office to be an instrument of the “Nameless Weakling” [Jesus]. It was to be fashioned into a willing instrument of the Prince, and a living model for “the New Age of Man.”[vi]

Thus it appears frighteningly evident that, like in the movie Rosemary’s Baby and in the visions and fears of so many Catholic seers, a ceremony for invoking the incarnation of Satan’s seed—or installing it ritualistically inside a young person or chosen priest—was indeed performed, and a blood oath of dedication enacted for its goals by highly placed Satanists inside the Roman Catholic Citadel a little less than fifty years ago.

Whether Martin was killed and his death covered up for revealing this satanic scheme to use the Catholic Church as a launching pad for a luciferic novus ordo seclorum may never be known. One year before he died, however, Martin’s very good friend, Father Alfred Kunz, was brutally murdered at his St. Michael Catholic Church in Dane, Wisconsin. Kunz had been investigating the same Satanism among “priests” that Martin had warned about, and had told Martin in the weeks before his murder that he feared for his life.

When Kunz was found dead with his throat slit, Martin claimed in various media that he had “inside information” that the Vatican “luciferians” had murdered him because he was getting ready to blow the lid off their conspiracy. The satanic animal sacrifice described by Martin in Windswept House as part of the “enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer in the Vatican” seems eerily comparable to what was indeed discovered in Dane County during the first hours of the murder investigation, including a calf which had been found sacrificed on a farm near St. Michael’s Church exactly twenty-four hours before Kunz was last seen alive. According to police reports, the calf’s throat was slit, as was Father Kunz, and its genitals cut off. There are details we will not discuss in this book due to their horrific nature, but deep within occultism there are reasons for removing the genitals of a sacrifice having to do with blasphemy of the Old Testament description of animals being accounted unworthy as offerings to the Lord if their testicles are bruised, crushed, torn, or cut (Lev. 22:24). According to survivors of ritual Satanic abuse (including Egyptian-Masonic Satanism), human sacrificial victims are sometimes laid on a table and their genitals likewise removed in order to make them “unworthy” or unfit for salvation (though versions of such abuse in South Africa are called “muti” murders, and some people pay large sums of money for genitalia from these human sacrifices in the belief it will bring them fertility, health, and good fortune). Then there is the ancient occult idea that decapitated persons cannot partake in the resurrection, thus dark rituals can include mutilation of the head, throat, and genitals where damnation of the victim is meant as a magical curse. In the case of the Dane County murder, was a black ritual performed between the hours of 10 p.m. March 2 and 4 a.m. March 3, 1998, to “target” Father Kunz and to “mark” him unfit for redemption?

During our investigative research for the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here, we made formal requests of the Dane County Sheriff’s Office for pertinent case files (DCSO Case # 98011295) pertaining to the ongoing investigation of the Father Kunz homicide. After first being told the files we requested would be given us, on December 15, 2011 we received a letter from the office of Lieutenant Mark Twombly signed by Sheriff Mahoney that the District Attorney would need to approve the release of the files (in other words it would take a court order) and therefore the request had been denied. Since this is an active, ongoing case, the sensitive records are not to be made public at this time and this is understandable. In filing a second request for less delicate documents, we were able to obtain a packet of files, but none of these provided solid clues to the larger question of conspiracy related to the murder of Father Kunz—specifically, was evidence discovered at the crime scene that his murder was somehow connected to his conservative position on Vatican II, and, more importantly, that he had information on certain pedophile priests and Satanists (that had earned him fierce enemies within the Church) reaching all the way to the Catholic hierarchy in Rome involved in ceremonies or behavior related to the enthronement of Lucifer and a ritual conducted for the purpose of transmigrating a particular spirit into Petrus Romanus?

“In the absence of an arrest, the Kunz case has developed into a sinister religious Rorschach for many—certainly among those close to the case who consider themselves traditionalists within the troubled Roman Catholic Church,”[vii] wrote Chuck Nowlen in the 2001 cover story for Las Vegas Weekly, The Devil and Father Kunz. At that time, Nowlen had interviewed Peter Kelly, a Monroe, Wis., attorney and master’s divinity student who had produced Kunz’s weekly radio show. Given that Kelly was a good friend of Kunz and had spent substantial time with him in private conversations, his response to Nowlen’s questions reveal a lot about what Kelly personally believed lay at the root of the murder: “This is a time of major crisis within the church, and the breakdown tends to be along traditional and conservative versus liberal lines. I think it’s getting almost to the point of complete collapse. And, yeah, I know: Some people delve into a so-called satanic influence in the church, and everybody sort of rolls their eyes and laughs. But, I tell you, the nexus is really there[viii].”

Still, Nowlen wondered, could someone within the Church really have killed Kunz—or ordered him killed?

“Absolutely,” the lawyer confirmed, “as unbelievable as that might sound to some people.”[ix]

In the next entry, we will explain what is happening in Rome at this very moment and why the College of Cardinals are preparing now for the arrival of Petrus Romanus...

Tom Horn

Raidersnewsupdate.com

earthquakes around the world

6.1 Earthquake Strikes New Zealand

A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand's Kermadec Islands early Tuesday, the US Geological Survey reported.

The quake hit at 12:19 am (1219 GMT Monday) at a depth of 34 km (21 miles), about 161 km south of Raoul Island in the Kermadecs.

The largely uninhabited islands are northeast of New Zealand's North Island.


5.0 Earthquake Strikes Greece
The first report of a moderate 5.0 quake in Greece this morning was followed two hours later by reports of a second, according to the US Geological Survey. The double earthquake was not as powerful as others that have rattled the seismically active Mediterranean region, and there are no injuries reported so far.

People can be forgiven for being a little shaken up since it has been an active few days for earth-rattling events. The Russian meteor strike, which injured 1,000 people and has left behind a huge clean-up mess, has been confirmed as the largest meteor strike in a century. An unrelated fireball-sized meteor put on a show Friday night in San Francisco, and a larger, moderately powerful 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck yesterday in on the Philippines island of Mindanao.

Earthquake Strikes Phillipines
An earthquake in the Philippines may have rattled a few nerves Saturday but not much else. According to the Philippines News Agency, the quake hit the island of Mindanao shortly after noon local time.

According to the US Geological Survey, the 6.2 magnitude quake hit 17 miles southeast of Caburan, Philippines. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) recorded the earthquake in the Philippine island at a depth of approximately 100 kilometers deep. Phivolcs stated that the intensity of the Philippines earthquake was as high as a “moderately strong” Intensity IV in some areas.

Earthquake strikes near Rome
A strong earthquake has rocked a rural area about 50 miles southeast of Rome, but authorities say reports from residents indicate no damage or injuries.

Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the quake struck about 10:20 p.m., local time, Saturday and had a 4.8 magnitude.

Seismologists pinpointed the epicenter near the town of Sora, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) from Frosinone, the largely rural area's biggest town.

Frosinone fireman Bruno Levanti told Sky TG24 TV that many residents called authorities seeking reassurances but that there were no reports of damage or injuries.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/02/16/earthquake-strikes-near-rome/#ixzz2LHvJWAVB

Russian Meteor Shower or Kinetic Bombardment Attack?