Guatemala Sinkhole – Guatemala City was currently affected by the tropical storm Agatha, and it formed a giant sinkhole in its street. The Guatemala sinkhole destroyed a three-storey building and a house. The tropical storm, Agatha, killed more or less 142 people and left thousand of people homeless.

According to the government, at least 123 people died in Guatemala and 59 others are missing.

The sinkhole in Guatemala is not a sinkhole, expert says. Sam Bonis, a geologist says, the gigantic sinkhole is not a sinkhole, ‘sinkhole’ are areas where its bedrock is solid but has been eaten away by ground water and that the situation in the Guatemala City is far more different and much more dangerous.

“Sure, it looks a lot like a sinkhole. And a whale looks a lot like a fish, but calling it one would be very misleading,” he says. He also added that the term “piping feature” is more appropriate for the creation of the 100-foot deep, 66-foot side circular hole.

Sam Bonis was once part of a team of geologists who studied a similar hole. The hole was created after a sewage pipe broke just a few blocks near the current spot last 2007.

The official are still hopeful that the Plum Island will remain as is. And recently, the federal government invested about $50 million into upgrading the facilities.

Oklahoma City officials says five people are dead in an outbreak of  tornadoes, two people were killed in Oklahoma City and three were killed in Tecumseh – said Jerry Lojka, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokesman.

Tornadoes ripped the Oklahoma City, it tossed cars off highways, flipped houses and left several damages in the City. We’ve heard that their are at least 58 people who suffered injuries and two of the injuries were critical.

The five injured people were taken to Moore Medical Center. Ambulances have been dispatched from Normal Region Hospital to the east part of the City, spokeswoman Brenda Finkle said.

Two shelters were opened by the American Red Cross in McCloud, Oklahoma and Tecumseh, Oklahoma. They are treating those who have been injured by the storm.

The 125-ton structure is designed to be placed over the largest source of oil leaking 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The Subsea Oil Recovery System collects the leaking oil and pumps it through a funnel and pipe to a tanker at the surface, which stores it and ships the oil to shore. The structure is a 40-foot tall concrete chimney-like structure that conveys leaking oil to a ship on the surface, oil is separated from water and stored until the ship can return to shore, where it is offloaded and shipped to an on-shore terminal. Last week officials drastically increased their estimate of the size of the spill, from 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day BP has vowed to pay all necessary clean up costs for the massive oil leak, and the company also plans to drill a relief well near the original source in order to relieve pressure.

The world was alarmed when the news about the Times Square bomb threat arises. But who is Faisal Shahzad and wife Huma Mian in the eyes of those who know them? Their neighbor talks about them.

30-year-old Faisal Shahzad is the Pakistan-born, naturalized American citizen who federal authorities charged Tuesday with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in the failed Times Square bombing Saturday. On the other hand, Huma Mian, the 28-year-old American-born wife of Faisal Shahzad, grew up in Colorado and graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder with a degree in accounting.

According to the Shahzad family’s neighbor, Faisal and his family frequently dressed in traditional Muslim clothes. The neighbor says they were friendly but mysterious because they don’t socialize much. She also said that the family left their house on July. According to New York magazine, Mian and Shahzad’s house is currently for sale.

Shahzad Faisal was boarding United Arab Emirates Flight 201 to Dubai when apprehended. The flight had taxied, but returned to the gate and Shahzad was arrested.

Here is a quest for the invisible life, rendered in less than 50 words.

Buy a used Nissan Pathfinder with cash; decline a bill of sale or any other paperwork; communicate about the deal on a prepaid cellphone, registered to no one. Then strip the vehicle identification number, or VIN, from the dashboard. Add a stolen license plate. Tint the windows.

And here, it seems, is the very definition of futility.

These were the tactics that prosecutors say were used by Faisal Shahzad, the man pulled off a plane late Monday night and charged with trying to blow up the Pathfinder in Times Square on Saturday evening, when tens of thousands of people were jammed into the streets.

It was the precise map of the fanatic heart drawn by Yeats: Great hatred, little room.

At virtually every turn, the evasive steps Mr. Shahzad took left digital footprints, a trail that ultimately led to his seat on an Emirates flight that was bound for Dubai, the authorities say. Mr. Shahzad did not make it into court on Tuesday; he is said to be talking, and the authorities seemed unwilling to interrupt the stream of his consciousness.

If Mr. Shahzad is indeed responsible, he would not be the first car-bombing suspect arrested in a matter of days because of the things he left behind. With every breath of modern life, people leave a vast series of markings that are unseen and, usually, unnoticed.

Nearly two decades ago, the first — and so far, only successful — car bomb in the modern history of New York was planted in the basement garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993. Six people were killed. The explosion left an immense crater.

Climbing through the rubble a few days later, Joe Hanlin, a federal explosives investigator, and Donald Sadowy, a detective with the Police Department’s bomb squad, found bits and pieces of a vehicle that had been torn apart, including a severely twisted section of the frame. That section appeared to have been quite close to the explosion. As they began to swab it for chemical residue, a series of raised dots emerged. They formed letters and numbers.

“We couldn’t read all the numbers,” Mr. Hanlin testified later that year, “but we knew they were numbers and could be used to trace the vehicle.”

It turned out that particular fragment had been stamped with the vehicle’s 17-digit VIN, the automotive equivalent of DNA. Each vehicle is assigned a unique series of numbers that shows where it was manufactured and when, and describes in code its body type, make, model, options.

The VIN showed that the demolished vehicle had been a Ford Econoline van, owned by the Ryder Truck and Rental Company, which reported that it had been rented a few weeks earlier in Jersey City by a man named Mohammed A. Salameh.

In fact, by the time the van was linked to the bombing, Mr. Salameh had already reported it stolen. While others who were part of the bomb plot had fled the country, Mr. Salameh was left behind, nearly penniless. As federal investigators descended on the rental company, Mr. Salameh was haggling with Ryder for the return of a $400 deposit.

ON Saturday, when police seized the Nissan Pathfinder left in Times Square, the VIN plate on the dashboard had been removed. But the VIN is also stamped on engine parts and on the frame, and these were intact. That identification quickly led to a 19-year-old Connecticut woman who had sold the Pathfinder a few weeks ago to a man for $1,300 in cash.

The man who bought it had declined the offer of a bill of sale. He had, however, called the seller several times from the prepaid cellphone to arrange the purchase, according to a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday.

That same phone had been used for calls to and from a “Pakistani telephone number associated with Shahzad,” the complaint said.

With Mr. Shahzad’s name, investigators searched his home in Connecticut on Monday, and solved another tiny mystery: The police had found keys in the Pathfinder, and one of them opened the door to Mr. Shahzad’s home. In his garage, they found fertilizer and fireworks, similar to what had been left in the Pathfinder in Times Square.

Later that night, in a seat on board Emirates Flight 202, they found Faisal Shahzad.

Another invisible man, thwarted by a VIN.

The suspect in the failed Times Square bombing told authorities he trained at a terrorism camp in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday as they worked to unravel the events leading up to the nearly catastrophic attack.

Faisal Shahzad was arrested late Monday and charged with trying to blow up a sports utility vehicle in crowded Times Square on Saturday. Attorney General Eric Holder said Shahzad was cooperating with authorities and would face terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges.

Holder said Shahzad had provided valuable information, but the attorney general would not elaborate.

One law enforcement official said Shahzad told the FBI he trained in Pakistan. A second said the training was believed to be in the lawless tribal region of Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban operates with near impunity.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive continuing investigation.

The Pakistani Taliban has taken credit for the bomb plot, but U.S. officials say there is no evidence to back that up.

The report of training raises the possibility the attack was a coordinated international effort, but authorities have not said whether they believe that to be the case.

Roughly 48 hours after he set a car bomb to go off in Times Square, and 24 hours after U.S. authorities learned of his identity, Faisal Shahzad freely boarded an Emirates airline flight to Dubai. Officials stopped the flight before it could take off, pulling it back to the gate to arrest Shahzad. But how did he get so close to slipping away?

The FBI-Grocery Store Slip-Up The New York Post’s Bruce Golding recounts, “The 30-year-old suspect earlier had managed to slip FBI surveillance. Agents supposed to be tailing him in Bridgeport, Conn., Monday saw him leave a grocery store near his home at 3 p.m. and followed him but later lost him. The plan had been to arrest him at his apartment Monday evening.”

The Lucky Break The New York Times’ Scott Shane reports, “Shahzad had evaded the surveillance effort and bought his ticket seven hours after his name went on the no-fly list. But the system gives security officials one more chance to stop a dangerous passenger. As is routine, when boarding was completed for the flight, Emirates Flight EK202, the final passenger manifest was sent to the National Targeting Center, operated in Virginia by Customs and Border Protection. There, at about 11 p.m., analysts discovered that Mr. Shahzad was on the no-fly list and had just boarded a plane. They sounded the alarm, and minutes later, with the jet still at the gate, its door was opened and agents came aboard and took Mr. Shahzad into custody.”

Reveals ‘Holes in Antiterror System’ The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung notes that, although officials succeeded in capturing him, “the fact remained that Faisal Shahzad was allegedly able to train with terrorists in Pakistan, return to the United States to assemble a car bomb in Connecticut and park it in Times Square without anyone in the nation’s vast counterterrorism apparatus knowing anything about it.”

…Especially for Airlines Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press warn, “The night’s events, gradually coming to light, underscored the flaws in the nation’s aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.” Despite having both his name and Passport number placed on the no-fly list, Emirates airline failed to stop him when he bought his ticket.

Does ‘No-Fly List’ Work? Legal blogger Stewart Baker contemplates, “I thought that was impressively fast work — roughly 8 hours from identification through designation, population to the computer system, and identification before takeoff.  But not so fast that it can’t be secondguessed, apparently.  The implicit criticism is that the no-fly list didn’t work, that Shahzad should not have been able to buy a ticket at all.” Given the execution, “it seems as though the blame should fall on Emirates, not TSA.”

The law would require all U.S workers to carry ID cards with biometric information including finger-printing. Names on the cards and other information can be matched up in a national work authorization database.

Now, the question is, do you want to carry a National ID Card everyday to work?

I’m still researching for other countries that implements a National ID Card, I heard from a friend that Chines Taipei or Taiwan have this implemented but this is not yet confirmed. Will update as soon as I get more information.

A large amount of fertilizer rigged with wires and fireworks was found with the bomb, but police said it was not the ammonium nitrate grade that can explode. A surveillance video shows an unidentified white man apparently in his 40s slipping down an alley and taking off a shirt, revealing another underneath

The homemade bomb was made largely with ordinary items, including three barbecue grill-size propane tanks, two 5-gallon gasoline containers, store-bought fireworks and cheap alarm clocks attached to wires. Authorities didn’t know how deadly the bomb could have been, how it failed or who was responsible. The bomb at Times Square, one of the flashiest and best-known places on Earth, was found at the height of dinner hour before theatergoers headed to Saturday night shows. New York’s busiest streets were shut down for 10 hours, unnerving thousands of tourists attending Broadway show, museums and other city sights. Detectives took the stage at the end of some shows to announce to theatergoers that they were looking for witnesses in a bombing attempt. As of now Police are focused on finding a man videotaped shedding his shirt near the rigged SUV at Times Square.