Chinese President Hu Jintao met with a top North Korean envoy in a reaffirmation of traditional ties following Chinese pique over Pyongyang’s recent attempted rocket launch.

State broadcaster CCTV made no mention of the failed April 13 launch in its report on Hu’s meeting Monday with Workers’ Party international relations chief Kim Yong Il at the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing.

Hu sent his congratulations to North Korea’s young new leader Kim Jong Un on his assuming the title of Workers’ Party first secretary and said strengthening ties with North Korea was a key priority for China’s ruling communists.

“We will carry on this tradition … boost strategic communication and coordination on key international issues and work for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” CCTV quoted Hu, who also leads the Chinese Communist Party, as saying.

Kim Jong Un concurred in a statement carried late Monday by the official Korean Central News Agency. “It is the steadfast stand of our party and government to invariably develop the traditional DPRK-China friendship provided and cultivated by the leaders of elder generations of the two countries,” the statement said.

The high-profile reception for Kim’s envoy illustrates how Beijing is determined to maintain strong ties with its communist neighbor despite exasperation over its provocations against the South and Pyongyang’s refusal to embark on economic reforms that would reduce its dependency on foreign aid.

CONTINUED at NY Times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdGJaGbLj5E

How the hell does SGTreport have election results for a Republican primary in Illinois which has yet to take place? We have long argued that the fix is in but this… um… leaves us speechless.

Posted tonight — MONDAY, March 19th — on the web site of Chicago ABC News Affiliate WLS-TV are the following election results, clearly labeled as “Illinois Races, Federal Offices”. If we have this wrong, please let us know why this information exists in ANY form. Or, if we are indeed living in a banana republic, copy that. You now have our blessing to move out of the country.

The content in my videos and on the SGTbull07 channel are provided for informational purposes only. Use the information found in my videos as a starting point for conducting your own research and conduct your own due diligence (DD) BEFORE making any significant investing decisions. SGTbull07 assumes all information to be truthful and reliable; however, I cannot and do not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Police responding to a report of a reckless vehicle on Fderal Highway were treated to a strip dance by a woman who claimed she couldn’t perform DUI tests because of the size of her breasts.

The self-described top-heavy suspect, Maureen Jane Raymond, was pulled over in her gray 1999 Toyota Camry, double-parking at a Walgreens drug store, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office probable cause affidavit for her arrest.

The responding deputy reported that Raymond, 49, of the 2600 block of Gowin Drive in Port St. Lucie, tried three times to exit her Camry after being told to remain in the car and was drinking from a cup of what she called tea with another cup in the vehicle the deputy said smelled of alcohol.

The deputy said Raymond staggered when she was told to exit the car, had glassy and bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and the “strong odor” of alcohol on her breath.

According to the affedavit, when told she was going to be put through some roadside tests to determine if she was safe to drive, Raymond explained that if she was asked to close her eyes and keep her balance she wasn’t going to do well because, “big breast you don’t balance well.”

When Raymond, identified as 5’6″ and 216 pounds, was asked to do a walk and turn task, the deputy reported “I asked the defendant to stand in the starting position and she asked me if I realized that she had a big chest. I asked her if she felt she could walk heel to toe and she stated ‘I never can.’ She then stated ‘OK, whatever’ and began walking down the line … when she reached the end of the line she began to dance.”

Raymond said she would try a second time if the deputy would hold her hand. Then she seemed doubtful, then tried again “and when I told her to keep her hands at her side she stated ‘hell no not with these.’ Telling me again she can’t do it, not with her big boobies.”

During the one-legged stand test, Raymond offered to show her breast to the deputy, who refused and stopped her from doing so. Ultimately, she decided against the one-legged stand, according to the affidavit.

When given instruction to put her finger to her nose, Raymond said she could spin and began doing so until the deputy stopped her. As she performed the task, she swayed in a circular motion, the deputy reported.

When told her breath was to be tested, she struggled to understand the “implied consent” rule and then asked to pray while the testing equipment was being calibrated. When the device was ready, she said she was praying and that the “officer needed to relax because she is praying and God is first.” The officer warned her that if she didn’t take the test it would be charged as a refusal and she would forfeit her license, and she continued to pray, then stood up and started to provide a sample, but didn’t blow into it long enough. On a second attempt she prayed out loud, but ultimately never provided a valid breath test sample, MCSO reported.

Raymond turns 50 Feb. 23.

Source: CBS 12.

But federal agency still refuses to retest machines after cancer warnings.

Following reports of cancer clusters at Boston-Logan Airport, the TSA is set to test its naked body scanner operators for radiation exposure, but still refuses to test the actual machines that thousands of Americans are forced to pass through each day.

“After years of rebuffing health concerns over airport scanners, the Transportation Security Administration plans to conduct new tests on the potential radiation exposure from the machines at more than 100 airports nationwide,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Details of the tests were not announced publicly by the federal agency, they were leaked as a result of a request sent to government vendors to provide wearable dosimeters that provide measurements of individual radiation exposure.

The tests follow apparent efforts by the TSA to cover-up a “cluster” of cancer cases amongst scanner operators at Boston-Logan airport. According to FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, when Union representatives in Boston discovered a “cancer cluster” amongst TSA workers linked with radiation from the body scanners, the TSA sought to downplay the matter and refused to issue employees with dosimeters to measure levels of exposure.

The documents indicated how, “A large number of workers have been falling victim to cancer, strokes and heart disease.”

Numerous studies conducted by prestigious universities and health authorities, including Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, the University of California, and the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, have warned that the devices will lead to an increase in cancers.

Despite the fact that almost every independent study has concluded that the machines will cause cancer cases to increase, the TSA routinely denies the threat, and even claimed that the Johns Hopkins study validated the safety of the scanners, when in fact it said the opposite.

Johns Hopkins’ biophysics expert Dr Michael Love warned that, “statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” after conducting a study of the naked body scanners.

In addition, documents obtained by EPIC show how the TSA “publicly mischaracterized” the findings of a National Institute of Standards and Technology, in stating that NIST had positively confirmed the safety of full body scanners in tests.

The NIST study warned that airport screeners should avoid standing next to full body scanners in order to keep exposure to harmful radiation “as low as reasonably achievable.”

After making assurances that the DHS would conduct further studies into the safety of X-ray scanning devices, TSA head John Pistole reneged on the promise in November.

As we reported last week, the Department of Homeland Security is also set to expand the use of X-ray scanning machines at US border crossings, despite the availability of millimeter-wave machines that do the same job without emitting harmful radiation.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles off its east coast on Monday, the same day it announced the death of leader Kim Jong-Il,South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

The agency quoted an unnamed government official as saying the launches were unrelated to the announcement that Kim had died Saturday of a heart attack.

“The missiles are estimated to have a range of about 120 kilometres (72 miles),” the official said on condition of anonymity.

“We believe the North test-fired the missiles to try to improve their capabilities and range. We don’t see this as more than test-firing.”

Seoul’s defence ministry declined to confirm the reported launches.

North Korea has been testing its new KN-06 missile, a modified version of the KN-01 and KN-02 ground-to-ground missiles, Yonhap said.

The communist country has frequently conducted short-range missile tests in recent years. South Korean officials say they are part of routine exercises but the tests are sometimes timed to coincide with periods of tension.

South Korea put its military on alert as the North’s state television announced at noon that the 69-year-old leader had died.

Source: Yahoo News.

An unannounced test of a soon to be mandatory emergency alert system caused panic in New Jersey today after Verizon customers received text messages warning them that a “civil emergency” was in progress and to “take shelter,” prompting alarmed citizens to flood 911 lines with anxious calls.

However, media reports concerning the alarm completely ignore the fact that Verizon was almost certainly running a test for the federal government’s soon to be mandatory PLAN alert program, which the company has signed up for.

“A mass text message warning New Jersey cell phone users of a “civil emergency” was sent out by Verizon Wireless earlier today,”reports the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Verizon Wireless later apologized to its customers for causing alarm.

The alert message included the text “U.S. Govern,” suggesting to customers the text had come from the federal government itself, which undoubtedly fueled the panic.

Residents in three different counties received the message, titled “Emergency alert seek shelter by 1:24 p.m,” which was not labeled as a test. Police departments and country authorities fielded four times the usual number of calls, many of them from distressed citizens who wanted to know whether a real emergency was in progress. “There is no reason to panic here,” said Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden. “It is a false text done maliciously today at 12:27 p.m.”

The Department of Homeland Security was also forced to put out a tweet confirming that there was no emergency after concerned citizens also turned to Twitter for advice, saying they were, “scared and didn’t know how to react.”

Verizon company spokesman David Samberg told the Star-Ledger that the message was part of a “test emergency notification,” apologizing “for any inconvenience or concern this message may have caused.” The messages were received by Verizon customers with, “Droid-operated phones in Monmouth and Ocean counties and other parts of central New Jersey.”

Though completely absent from reports concerning the scare, the unannounced test was almost certainly conducted in preparation for FEMA’s PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to Americans’ cell phones using a new chip embedded in the receiver. The system is scheduled to be operational across the country by the end of next year.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

*Taken from CBS News.

A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light — stunning the world of physics — has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.

The “positive outcome of the [second] test makes us more confident in the result,” said Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement released late Thursday. Ferroni is one of 160 physicists involved in the international collaboration known as OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus) that performed the experiment.

While the second experiment “has made an important test of consistency of its result,” Ferroni added, “a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world.”

That is, more tests are needed, and on other experimental setups. There is still a large crowd of skeptical physicists who suspect that the original measurement done in September was an error.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Yahoo News.

The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.

Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific “at hypersonic speed” before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.

Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Business Insider.

At 2 pm today the National Emergency Alert System is supposed be tested for the first time in its history on a federal level. As of 2:03 the system has yet to be activated.

Every TV and radio station in the nation is supposed to broadcast the test alert — sent from inside the White House — for 30 seconds.

The system was created in 1963 to allow the President to address the nation in the time of nuclear attack or other national crisis.

The best Part: UPDATE 7 2:59pm: Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” play during the test. Some Comcast subscribers saw their cable boxes turn to QVC before the alert, while Time Warner Cable customers in New York did not see any alert at all.

CONTINUED..