Damascus shook with loud explosions on Monday as Syrian warplanes reportedly launched their heaviest air strikes yet after a failed bid to halt the country's violence for a Muslim holiday.

The blasts, heard coming from several districts, were among the most intense in the capital since the beginning of Syria's 19-month conflict, an AFP correspondent said.

They were followed by a car bombing that state television said killed at least 10 people in the predominantly Christian and Druze area of Jaramana, just outside Damascus.

The fresh violence came as world powers looked to pick up the pieces of the failed ceasefire effort, with UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in Moscow and due in China later this week, as he prepares to present new ideas to the UN Security Council.

Monday, the final day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, saw the Syrian military launch 34 air strikes across the country over just three hours of the morning, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"These are the heaviest air strikes since warplanes were first deployed over the summer," the watchdog's director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

After talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Brahimi lamented the failure of the truce, telling reporters: "The situation is bad and getting worse."

Warplanes struck at least eight targets in Damascus, the Observatory said, with attacks focused on rebel positions in a northeastern belt of the capital where the regime has been battling to take over opposition strongholds.

A Syrian security official told AFP the military was trying to prevent the rebels from boosting their hold on the area.

"The army is conducting raids on agricultural lands and orchards around the capital because the rebels are trying to regroup and to strengthen their positions there," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The four-day truce proposed by Brahimi for Eid that started on Friday fell apart amid clashes, shelling and car bombings only hours after it had been due to take effect.

Nearly 400 people have died since the start of Eid according to the Observatory, which relies on a countrywide network of activists, lawyers and medics in civilian and military hospitals. It says its tolls take into account civilian, military, and rebel casualties.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday he was "deeply disappointed" by the collapse of the truce and urged all sides "to live up to their obligations and promote a ceasefire".

UN diplomats say Brahimi was realistic about the ceasefire's chances and is now looking ahead to new efforts to tackle the crisis.

Diplomats told AFP that he will go back to the Security Council with fresh proposals in November after the visits to Russia and China – who have repeatedly vetoed resolutions threatening action against Assad's regime.

Russia has blamed the rebels for the failure to contain the violence, with deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov charging that "the opposition foiled the ceasefire," making clear its "intent to continue violence."

Regime forces and the main rebel Free Syrian Army have blamed each other for the ceasefire's collapse, with both saying they have only responded to attacks.

In a statement on Sunday, the army accused the rebels of "brazen violations" of the truce and vowed to hit them "with an iron fist ... to save the nation from their evils."

Monday also saw heavy clashes erupting in the northern commercial hub Aleppo, where fighting has raged since mid-July, residents said.

The Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011 as a peaceful movement, has steadily militarised after being met with brutal state repression and has left more than 35,000 people dead, according to rights groups.

Most rebels, like the population, are Sunni Muslims in a country dominated by a minority regime of Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Source: AFP

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Taiwan said Monday that three retired military officers have been arrested on suspicion of leaking military secrets to China, in what legislators described as one of the island's worst espionage cases.

Chang Chih-hsin, formerly in charge of political warfare at the navy's METOC (meteorology and oceanography) office, is among those held, the defence ministry said in a statement.

"Chang, who initiated contacts with Chinese mainland officials while still serving in the navy, was suspected of luring his former colleagues and making illegal gains," it said.

Defence ministry spokesman David Lo confirmed two other former military officers have also been arrested in the case.

Lo did not say what kind of military information Chang allegedly sold to China but played down the damage to Taiwan's security, saying he had limited access to sensitive information.

Apple Daily newspaper said a total of eight former military officers had been arrested.

It quoted a retired naval general as saying the naval METOC kept highly classified information such as maps and charts used by the island's submarines and other warships.

If China had such information, it could learn more about the operations of Taiwan's submarines, the ex-general warned.

"This has gravely endangered Taiwan's security. It's a shame for the military," legislator Lin Yu-fang of the ruling Kuomintang party told reporters.

Wung Ming-hsien, a professor at Taipei's Tamkang University, said increased contacts between Taiwan and its former bitter rival China over the past few years had blurred the line between friend and foe.

"The case again indicates that because of closer civil contacts across the Taiwan Strait, the national identity is collapsing, therefore posing a great threat to Taiwan's security," he said.

Legislator Tsai Huang-lang of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party said the case shows China has "fully infiltrated" the armed forces.

"Taiwan's submarines could be easily destroyed and became iron coffins should war break out across the strait," he said.

Relations have improved markedly since President Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang came to power in 2008 on a platform of strengthening trade and tourism links.

But China still regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

In July last year a Taiwanese general lured by a honey trap into spying for China was jailed for life in one of the island's worst espionage cases for half a century.

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To serve as a Sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery is considered one of the greatest honors in the military. The tomb itself has been under continuous guard, every second of every day, since 1948.

Tomb Sentinel is a volunteer position that accepts fewer than 20 percent of all applicants, and of those only a small percentage go on to become actual Tomb Guards. The high attrition rate makes it the second least awarded US military decoration after the Army Astronaut Badge.

This is not the first time guards have experienced a hurricane. In 2003, for the first time in American history, the sentinels, as the post marchers are called, were given the choice to seek shelter away from Hurricane Isabel. They did not. The choice was given them again in 2011, when Irene stormed ashore. And again, they did not leave their post.

Today, the sentinels face Hurricane Sandy. The winds may reach 120 mph, and the sentinels have the option to take refuge in a safe house, the "trophy room," which overlooks the tombs.

Our guess is that they'll remain on post throughout. 

This photo was posted to the First Army's Division East Facebook page today, with a graph stating that the guards are still on post in weather conditions surrounding Hurricane Sandy.

The picture has gone viral, and while the photographer points out it was taken in September, the guards are standing there right now.

The Sentinels Creed:

My dedication to this sacred duty is total and wholehearted. In the responsibility bestowed on me never will I falter. And with dignity and perseverance my standard will remain perfection. Through the years of diligence and praise and the discomfort of the elements, I will walk my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability. It is he who commands the respect I protect. His bravery that made us so proud. Surrounded by well meaning crowds by day alone in the thoughtful peace of night, this soldier will in honored glory rest under my eternal vigilance.

Now: See how close the world came to nuclear war in 1995 >

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Despite congressional foot dragging, or maybe because of it, most defense and technology analysts are screaming dire warnings of impending cyber attacks, whether by Internet hacks or infected thumb drives.

Iran is ratcheting up "copy cat" cyber attacks on the U.S., and as per a report soon to be out, China has a vast military infrastructure set up to launch web-based attacks on foreign infrastructure. And that doesn't even factor in the 'lone wolf' Anonymous-type hackers who are just in it for the "Lulz."

Yes, folks, the Cyber War is going on right now, and it's a World War like nothing ever before seen.

Bill Gertz of the conservative-leaning Washington Free Beacon reports:

The Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank that focuses on Asian security issues, concluded that groups operating from Chinese territory have been “waging a coordinated cyber espionage campaign targeting U.S. government, industrial, and think tank computer networks.”

This "coordinated cyber espionage campaign" is waged from a new wing of the Chinese Military Industrial Complex called the "Beijing North Computing Center." Gertz goes on to say that analysts are calling this center another "department" since it's "similar to the United States National Security Agency, because of its signals intelligence work, its high-performance computing work, and its linguistic and code-breaking specialists."

And it's not just nation-states in the mix, civilian hacking groups from Russia and the Middle East (The Arab Electronic Army) are also targeting U.S. and foreign targets around the globe. Less vitriolic and militant, the hacktivist group Anonymous seems to target anybody whom they perceive to be blocking the "free flow of information" on the net.

The U.S. isn't standing down though — even if Congress won't pull the trigger on the cyber security bill, the military is leading the way in cyber deterrence and militarization. At the Air Force Academy there is training for permanent personnel wholly dedicated to fighting cyber wars.

Indeed, even the Marine Corps is getting in on the mix, in the hopes that they can weaponize cyber warfare to the point that it can supplement troops on the ground in small unit tactics.

Which brings the war full circle: as the military invests and Congress (grudgingly) forces infrastructure companies to update and harden networks, the most likely culprit in a cyber attack becomes the same culprit in the famous Stuxnet attack — a thumb drive.

Washington designed Stuxnet and then waited with bated breath for one of their on the ground 'assets' to slip it to an unsuspecting Iranian nuclear scientist.

From a report by Mashable:

The answer turned out to be simpler than U.S. officials thought, since some plant personnel weren’t very careful with the thumb drives they were carrying. Thumb drives were “critical” in the initial Stuxnet attacks — which began in 2008 — although unspecified “more sophisticated” means were later used.

“It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand,” one of the program’s architects said.

If a network is hardened, and military redundancies, offensive as well as defensive, are put into place, then the next best option is a manual insertion, like with Stuxnet. In fact, it doesn't even need to be a thumb drive, it can be a phone or a PDA.

Recently, the National Security Agency has begun testing BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, and hardening networks as cloud computing begins to take hold in defense agencies.

"It's very simple: 'I want one device.' I don't think it's any more complicated than that," Robert Carey, principal deputy CIO at the Department of Defense. Carey told TechWorld of the growing demand for BYOD policies. "Balancing ease of use and security is always the dynamic. Security is the antithesis of convenience."

What Carey is trying to say, is that there are gaping holes in security with regard to storage devices. Employees bringing in mobile devices is exactly where the Iranians went wrong in terms of Stuxnet.

More from the TechWorld report:

Carey noted that the Pentagon is currently running multiple pilot programs to test various devices from other manufacturers, and working with vendors to harden mobile operating systems to meet DoD security requirements. But he held RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry, apart from other device makers for its focus on enterprise-grade security from the outset, while Apple, Android and other operating systems began with a consumer-centric approach, and have only been beefing up security in response to concerns from corporate and government customers.

"We have to manage this very carefully as we move into the future and make sure that these are not additional attack surfaces," Carey said to TechWorld. "I don't know that we'll quite get to a pure BYOD environment."

Soon, the weak networks of private American infrastructure companies will become hardened, if for any reason because the military's cyber skills toughen by the day — a quote from the Marines' "top cyber warrior," Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, on Aug. 15 about cyber warfare against the Taliban sums up America's future web defense:

"I was able to get inside [enemy networks], and affect his command and control and, in fact, defend myself against his almost constant incursions to get inside my [cyber] wire to effect my operations," Mills said.

There are three rules of nationwide cyber security, laid out to us by Jarno Limnell, a cyber security expert:

1. — Resilience (defense): We must be able to withstand an attack.

2. — Attribution: We must be able to locate the attacker.

3. — Offense: We must be able to locate and destroy the attacker.

So the likelihood is that a terrorist action, a 'copy cat' terrorist action, by the Iranians, Chinese or anyone, would take place over a mobile digital storage device.

The reason for this is that it eliminates the last two rules: Iran suspected it was the U.S. and Israel who infected their nuclear sites, but didn't know for sure until the Obama administration leaked its responsibility.

Without knowing attribution, then you can't locate an enemy, and you can't launch an offense.

That's why the the next WMD won't be a suitcase bomb, it won't be chemicals wired to blow in Times Square, it'll be a well-placed thumb drive or a black berry which contains malicious code, placed by a homegrown terror agent, and brought in by an unwitting employee.

NOW SEE: The US Invited Iran To Launch Cyber Attacks On Domestic Banks >

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One of the world's most famous ships, the HMS Bounty is a victim of Hurricane Sandy.

Initially the ship was reported to be "intact and upright" but subsequent reports say it has sunk.

The Bounty departed Connecticut last week and was underway to Florida, making efforts to sidestep the large hurricane moving up from the south.

According to a picture posted from the ship October 25, "Bounty has departed New London CT...Next Port of Call...St. Petersburg, Florida.
Bounty will be sailing due East out to sea before heading South to avoid the brunt of Hurricane Sandy."

Unfortunately, the ship succumbed to what initial reports are saying were 18-foot-seas, when the Bounty's Captain ordered everyone aboard to abandon ship.

UPDATE 18:25 EDT: A female crew member has been found dead, according to BNO's Michael van Poppel.

That leaves one crew member, the captain Robin Walbridge, 63, still missing, with 14 people rescued.

The HMS Bounty is a replica of the original 18th-century ship captained by William Bligh, who had an infamous disagreement with his acting Sailing Master, Fletcher Christian.

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Superstorm Sandy had a devastating impact on New York City.

(For coverage of storm damage from Jamaica to Canada, click here >)

At least 10 New Yorkers died, with more fatalities expected.

New Yorkers face 3-4 days without full power and 4-5 days without subways, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. LaGuardia Airport is extremely damaged and will remain closed at least another day, while JFK may open tomorrow.

Eighty homes were destroyed by fire in Breezy Point, Queens. Central Park is a mess; Stuyvesant Town is a mess. A construction crane collapsed from a Midtown building, and the front fell off a building in Chelsea.

And there's absolutely incredible flooding.

A lone pedestrian stand with his scooter near a message about superstorm Sandy in New York's Times Square, early Tuesday

A construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan dangles precariously after collapsing in high winds Monday

Firefighters look up at the facade of a four-story building on 14th Street and 8th Avenue that collapsed onto the sidewalk Monday

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A rare wartime book documenting the ingenious James Bond-style gadgets invented by British 'spooks' to help prisoners of war escape has been discovered.

The 1942 classified catalogue contains the designs for the covert equipment including tiny compasses concealed in gold teeth and coat buttons.

Many of the inventions were the brainchild of Christopher Hutton - a real-life 'Q' from the James Bond movies - who worked for the government's little-known MI9 agency.

Less than 100 of the instruction manuals were printed and given to US intelligence officers who were lagging behind the British in espionage design after entering the war late.

The 76 page book details what the gadgets were and how they were made and concealed in innocuous domestic items.

The gadgets were placed in food parcels and sent to British PoWs in camps like Colditz or the 'Great Escape' prison, Stalag Luft III.

Some of the fascinating gadgets include maps of Germany printed on silk so that they didn't rustle and crammed inside pencils, vinyl records, cigars and pipes.

Another map was hidden under the surface of 54 playing cards that, when pieced together, formed a large map of Germany and Europe.

Small hacksaws were secreted in dart boards while a tiny camera was hidden inside a cigarette lighter and small radio receivers in cigar boxes.

The extremely rare copy of the book called 'Per Ardua Libertas' - Liberty Through Adversity - that has come to light was a dummy version retained by the London printing company.

It is now being sold at auction by a Devon man who inherited it from one of the executives of the company.

The page that contains the playing cards shows a corner of the surface of the Queen of Clubs peeled back to expose part of a map.

The instructions read: "Each pack is one map. 48 cards covered a map. The 4 Aces are a small map of Europe. The Joker is the key. The outside card contains the instructions."

For the compass concealed in a gold tooth, the instructions reads: "Tooth - Gold Fitting made to measure.

"Small medium luminous compass fits in jaws on left and thin gold tube holding message or map slides on the two prongs at the bottom. They are concealed through being in between the cheek and the gum."

Lionel Willis, a specialist at auctioneers Bonhams which is selling the book, said it was an exceptionally rare find.

He said: "The MI9 department was set up in 1939 to aid escapees and resistance fighters.

"They very quickly realised that two things were vital if you were going to escape in a foreign country and they were a map and a compass.

"They produced maps on pieces of silk that could be rolled up and secreted in extremely small spaces inside innocuous domestic items and this books show how they were concealed in things like pencils and cigars.

"Food parcels and rations packs were sent to prisoners of war and every sixth parcel contained some of these inventions that helped them escape.

"The British were way ahead of the US and in 1942, after America had entered the war, the US intelligence service sent a group of people to London to see what we were up to and how we were doing it.

"MI9 produced this book to give to the Americans, probably less than 100 were printed.

"Very few of these catalogues are known to have survived. I believe the Australian War Museum has a copy.

"It gives a fascinating insight into the ingenuity employed to assist the war effort."

As well as PoWs, Allied spies and resistance fighters were also sent the gadgets to help them either escape or outsmart the Nazis

The book is being sold by Bonhams next January with a pre-sale estimate of £800.

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The body of Yasser Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), will be exhumed next month in order to determine exactly how he died, according to the Associated Press.

Arafat was believed to have died of a stroke in November of 2004. But many were suspicious of the official cause of his death at the time and remain so today.

The recent interest regarding the demise of Arafat is mainly due to the findings of a Swiss laboratory that were reported this summer. The lab discovered trace amounts of "Polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope, on clothes said to be his."

A French official told the AP that criminal investigators from France will travel to the West bank city of Ramallah between November 24 and 26 to start the process, and a Swiss team will conduct its own investigation simultaneously. The French team will be acting on behalf of Arafat's widow, Suha Arafat, while the Swiss team has been tasked by the Palestinian authority. Both Suha Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have "misgivings about the other's investigation."

The Palestinian authority approved a plan to exhume Arafat's body to test for Polonium-210 this summer.

ALSO: An Expert Says The Poisonous Polonium Found On Yasser Arafat's Clothing Must Have Been Planted >

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Army and Air National Guard units responded after Hurricane Sandy unleashed billions of dollars of damage, left millions without power, and killed a reported 12 people.

"We had to be ready to respond big and fast -- so the National Guard ramped up in multiple states this weekend preparing to support local, state and federal civilian authorities," said Army Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau in Washington. "We are part of a whole-of-government response to support state, local, and federal agencies tackling the effects of this storm."

This meant assembling and staging Guard troops across the eastern seaboard to be ready to go. Many were called on to support civil authorities and first-responders in evacuations and rescues.

Officials today said more than 7,500 Guardsmen were on duty by Monday night.

Some units are deploying from outside the storm-hit areas.  A C-130 from the Nevada National Guard’s 152nd Airlift Wing is slated to pick up a boat and several pararescue airmen from California’s 129th Rescue Wing on Monday and fly them east, the bureau said.

Others could come as needed.

"Additional Army Guard forces, from outside the immediate hurricane affected states, are prepared to meet gaps in essential functions, if requested," said Army Lt. Gen. William E. Ingram, Jr., director of the Army National Guard.

Guard officials say more than 85,000 Guardsmen can be made available to the storm-ravaged areas, along with nearly 140 rotary-winged aircraft for conducting search and rescue, reconnaissance and personnel or cargo-carrying missions. In addition, the Guard may deploy up to 75 Zodiac boats and more than 3,100 high-water vehicles, officials said.

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Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates had his official portrait unveiled in a small ceremony in the Pentagon Tuesday while the rest of the East Coast hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gates pressed on with the ceremony as Washington D.C. shut down under weather conditions that seemed fitting for a leader who took over the Pentagon at one of the country’s most turbulent times. Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld, a historically unpopular defense secretary with military leaders, as the U.S. was quickly losing control of a growing insurgency in Iraq.

Panetta summed up Gates’ approach to the job from the beginning.

“Bob has said, that he had three priorities when he came into the job as secretary:  Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.  And he came into this building on a war footing, determined to provide the commanders on the ground and their troops everything they needed in order to succeed,” Panetta said.

Gates faced “the massive and sometimes entrenched bureaucracy at the Pentagon,” Panetta said. He responded by not accepting excuses and demanding service and defense industry leaders remove the roadblocks to get troops the equipment and vehicles they needed to defeat the network of improvised explosive devices that butchered troops in Iraq.

“When it came to his attention that acquiring more heavily armed MRAPs could help protect troops from the threat of lethal IEDs, he refused to accept any excuses from a defense establishment that had ignored pleas upon pleas from the battlefield,” Panetta said.

“Hearing from our troops how much they valued that protection is, I think, a lasting legacy of Bob.  He helped save lives.”

Plenty of time was spent appropriately lauding Gates’ significant accomplishments as head of the Pentagon, but Panetta, and later Gates, made sure to keep it light as they shared stories while also poking fun at themselves and a few of Gates senior aides.

Panetta shared a story about his time flying into Iraq as a member of the Iraq Study Group with Gates and the moment the two finally got a chance to share something a bit stronger than tea.

“I’ll never forget — I’ve mentioned this before — going into Baghdad in 2006.  It’s not a — not a pleasant experience.  You had to do a kind of corkscrew landing going into Baghdad in order to avoid fire.  And then we shot off with armed helicopters to our location,” Panetta said.

“And then as you all know, every meeting we held, we drank tea after tea after tea after tea, and finally Bob and I looked at each other, and he hustled me off to the CIA headquarters and bar.  And we finally had a decent drink. That’s when I knew that Bob was really my kind of guy.”

Gates then took his turn, not afraid to share a bit of self deprecating humor. First, he discussed the implications of having your portrait done twice by Ray Kinstler, the noted artist who has painted seven presidents and more than 60 cabinet officers. Gates’ first portrait was done in 1993 at the conclusion of his run as the director of the CIA.

“Recently, I took another look at Ray’s official portrait of me from 1993.  It didn’t seem all that different, a few pounds lighter, maybe a couple of inches taller. The hair a more useful shade of white. A sure sign you’ve been in Washington too long is when Ray Kinstler has more than one crack at your portrait a generation apart,” Gates said.

He didn’t let his staff, many of whom attended the ceremony, off the hook either. Gates poked fun at his longtime spokesman, Geoff Morell and his sense of fashion.

“Other curiosities — other curiosities that linger, include Geoff Morell’s sense of fashion, which I’ve never seen before or since. Best described as Tommy Hilfiger meets Thurston Howell,” Gates joked, referencing the Gilligan’s Island character.

Gates’ love for barbecue was well know. Many of the defense reporters who traveled with Gates referred to his plane as  the “Big Brisket” as barbecue was often the meal served on the plane. Gates noted that the plane has since received a new nickname under Panetta’s leadership.

“I’ve heard there have been a number of changes around here since the Panetta regime took over.  I’ve heard the E-4B has a new nickname. It’s no longer the ‘Big Brisket,’ but ‘Airborne Cannoli,’” Gates said referencing Panetta’s Italian heritage.

Gates made sure to end on a serious not as he mulled what his legacy will be going forward — a legacy he has had time to consider as he works on a book in retirement.

“If they come away with nothing else from my tenure as secretary, I hope it is recognition that I came to work every day with the simple question:  Are we doing everything we can to get the troops everything they need to succeed in their mission, to come home safely, and if wounded, to get the best possible care when they come home?” Gates said.

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The U.S. military shut down a ferry landing at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent for a bomb disposal team from Florida on Tuesday after Hurricane Sandy churned up a suspicious object in the bay that might be a live, 500-pound bomb.

The object was discovered at 10 a.m. Tuesday, said Jose Ruiz, spokesman at the Pentagon Southern Command in Miami. "We don't know conclusively what type of bomb it was and whether it was live or inert."

Base officials evacuated the area around the bomb and dispatched a Navy plane to Mayport, Fla., to fetch the special bomb disposal crew, known as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. The experts were due at the base Tuesday night to determine if it was a live bomb.

"If it is," Ruiz said, "they'll neutralize it and then they'll dispose of it."

Guantanamo disclosed the discovery of "an object that appears to be unexploded ordnance" in a news release advising the 6,000 or so residents on the remote base in southeast Cuba of suspension of regular ferry service from the base's Windward side across the bay.

Instead, a smaller boat was ferrying residents from a dock near the Officer's Club, on Windward, to the Leeward side.

Base workers were still cleaning up the damage from last week's Category 2 hurricane, notably debris and broken glass around the Pentagon's crude Camp Justice compound that was built for the Sept. 11 and USS Cole capital murder tribunals.

The storm tore up tents and tarps around the Expeditionary Legal Complex. But it was still not known Tuesday if any water seeped inside and did damage to the state-of-the-art courtroom that beams proceedings to special viewing sites on U.S. soil.

Guantanamo's recreational beaches were still closed Tuesday. Movies were once again being screened for troops, however, at the base's open-air theater -- ParaNorman and Frankenweenie, respectively, on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. ___

(c)2012 The Miami Herald

Visit The Miami Herald at www.miamiherald.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

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Polish investigators conducting the inquiry into the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in 2010 have detected "chemical structures similar to those in high-energy materials such as, for example, explosive materials" in the wreckage. However these materials could have come from many sources, including pesticides, according to prosecutors.

Ireneusz Szelag, head of the military prosecutor's office in Warsaw, said only further tests could determine the source of the structures.

The announcement follows a report in Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper which claimed traces of explosives including nitroglycerine and TNT had been discovered amid the wreckage of the TU-154 plane. Traces of the chemicals were found on the wings and in the cabin, including on 30 seats, during analysis in Russia, the paper reported.

The article triggered outrage in Poland, where suspicion is mounting over the circumstances surrounding Kaczynski's death. More than a quarter of the Poles surveyed – 26% – believe the president was assassinated, according to a poll published this week.

Meanwhile, Jarosław Kaczynski, the twin brother of the late president and leader of Poland's largest opposition party, Law and Justice, said the prosecutor's statement "looked like a big lie".

He said the fallout from the crash had caused the prime minister, Donald Tusk, to lose the "moral authority" to rule the country and called for his resignation. Kaczynski has previously claimed Tusk botched the investigation into the crash.

In a further twist, it was revealed on Monday that a key witness to the investigation had been found hanged. Remigiusz Mus, a flight engineer who had landed a plane in Smolensk airport minutes before the disaster, claimed to have heard two explosions before the president's plane went down.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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For some veterans, transitioning from military service to college life is a bigger challenge than they expected.

The wheels of the VA churn slowly, making payments a bit late. Post-traumatic stress disorder can make it hard to pay attention to classes. Many veterans have been halfway around the world before their classmates even left their hometowns. 

But a growing number of universities are trying to make life easier for veteran students. The Associated Press reported on a writing workshop for veterans at George Washington University. The two-day seminar aims to teach former service members the therapeutic qualities of writing. But it's hardly the most comprehensive program out there. 

At Arizona State University, a doctoral student surveyed student veterans on what programs they needed, and the school ran with her results. Vets told Dana Weber they wanted their own place, somewhere they could go and be around people with similar experiences. They said they wanted a class to help them learn how to take advantage of the school's resources. 

In response, ASU built the Pat Tillman Veterans Center on its Tempe campus, putting student and academic support in one place. It also started offering a special orientation class for transitioning veterans. 

Another school reaching out to veterans is University of Tampa. Along with also offering a veteran-specific orientation, the college accepts transfer credits from several of the schools troops often take online classes through, such as Central Texas College. The university gives credit for military training and experience. And it also waives the application fee for veterans. 

All of these schools made G.I. Jobs magazine's Military Friendly School list, now in its fourth year. 

Getting an education on the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill should be a great opportunity for veterans. With a little research, the benefits of college can definitely outweigh the negatives. 

Now check out the heroes coming to the rescue after Sandy >

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A fire sparked by celebratory gunfire has killed at least 25 people at a wedding in Saudi Arabia, media reported on Wednesday.

The bullets struck electric decorations that triggered a short-circuit, igniting a women-only marquee at the wedding on Tuesday night in Eastern Province, said Al-Yaoum newspaper, citing civil defence chief General Abdullah Khsheiman.

Al-Yaoum, which is based in the province, said at least 28 people died in the fire, although various other reports put the death toll at 25, all of them women and children.

The governor of the oil-rich region, Prince Mohammed bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, ordered a prompt investigation into the incident, the Okaz daily reported.

Only women and small children were in the tent in line with strict rules of segregation in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

In July 1999, 76 people died in a similar incident in Eastern Province.

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With Sandy gone, and the worst of the damage assessed, all eyes are looking up to the twisted crane atop One57 — 1,000 feet above the ground.

Mayor Bloomberg in his press conference yesterday promised that experts would strap the crane to the adjoining building at the first opportunity. Bloomberg insisted this would make the crane a "non-issue" and allow the city to wait for experts that could properly remove and replace it. 

The New York Times reports a "double gust" of wind twisted the crane backward from its unique hurricane ready position and sent it to its current condition.

Channel 4 reports it could take four to six weeks for another tower crane to be raised and bring the broken crane down. In the meantime local residents and workers have been evacuated, and steam lines beneath the street shut down.

The following pictures were taken Tuesday as the wind blew and rain fell. If anyone has a suggestion of a spot to shoot pictures at height, from a local building that has upper access, please shoot me an email and I'll head over there when workers attempt to strap the crane to One57's frame.

Now: Tour Sandy's damage on New York's Upper West Side >

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Count Space Shuttle Enterprise as another one of Sandy's victims.

The 60-foot-high pavilion protecting the space shuttle aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum's flight deck collapsed during the superstorm Monday night. The shuttle may also have sustained some damage. 

According to collectSpace:

The orbiter's vertical stabilizer, or tail, is protruding out the top, where it looks like part of the spacecraft may have been torn away.

The museum is now closed after unprecedented flooding knocked out the main power source and backup generators, a spokeswoman told the AP. 

The Enterprise was moved to the Intrepid in June and opened to the public in July. 

Here's a photo of the exposed shuttle from Instagram user John de Guzmán. It looks like part of the tail is missing. 

See more pictures of storm damage in New York City >

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Despite efforts to combat the cultivation opium in Southeast Asia, production of the cash crop has doubled in the last six years and the price has risen dramatically, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In Myanmar, opium poppy cultivation has risen by 17 percent since 2011. And according to the report, over 300,000 households in the country have engage in opium cultivation in 2012.

But the increase in drug production is only part of a bigger story in the country; the failure of law enforcement to rein in opium production is just one example of the Myanmar government's inability to execute state functions, during a period of democratic political transition nonetheless.

The state also known as Burma is responsible for approximately 25 percent of the world's illicit opium cultivation — second only to Afghanistan — despite the fact that it has been following a 15-year plan to eradicate opium by 2014. "The opium numbers continue to head in the wrong direction", says UNODC Regional Representative for East Asia and the Pacific, Gary Lewis.

The state also lacks the resources to stifle recent civil strife and ethnic violence, which have led to scores of fatalities in recent months. The government claims that the bloodshed in the western region of the state could develop into "armed terrorist acts."

This clear struggle to carry out normal state functions — protect its population, enforce the law — is all the more worrisome based on the current state of Myanmar politics today. The country is on a slow yet steady path towards democracy, instituting key reforms which in turn to have led to the lifting of international sanctions and an influx of international investment.

Myanmar's government is at a crossroads. If the transition to democracy ends up a failure, it could destabilize the entire region. Asian demand for heroin has grown significantly in the last year — China alone has over a million registered heroin users. If the Myanmar government cannot control opium production, the trade itself will only rise in value, destabilizing the path to democracy within the country, and empowering the criminal groups that control the drug trade in the region.

Since opium poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle (made up of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand) hit its trough in 2006, it has risen from 21,600 hectares in 2006 to 51,000 hectares in 2012 — an increase of 136 percent:

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President Barack Obama has been getting slammed for his act allowing the indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, remotely connected to terrorist groups.

But would the Mitt Romney Administration be any better?

Earlier this year during one of the Republican presidential debates, Romney was asked point blank if he would sign the NDAA as it's currently written.

"Yes I would have," he responded, causing the crowd to begin vehemently booing. "And I do believe that it's appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country."

Watch the full clip, first brought to our attention by the Examiner:

DON'T MISS: Why Losing Indefinite Detention Powers Would Be A Disaster For Obama >

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Tension over the islands known as  in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese has spilled over in recent months, resulting in multiple tense diplomatic exchanges and even widespread anti-Japanese rioting in Chinese cities.

The big question is if this thing could actually boil over into a real war.

According to Bloomberg News, some former US officials really think it could, and will be warning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the possibility.

A bipartisan delegation, which included Democrats Joseph Nye and James Steinberg and Republicans Richard Armitage and Stephen Hadley, was sent to meet with Chinese and Japanese leaders last week. Delegation members told Bloomberg that they plan to warn Clinton that "surprisingly poor communications and serious misunderstandings between China and Japan increase the risk that the territorial dispute could escalate if their ships collide or there’s some other mishap".

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ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard halted its search Thursday for the captain of a tall ship that sank off the North Carolina coast during Hurricane Sandy after more than three days of around-the-clock effort.

The Coast Guard for 90 hours searched for 63-year-old Robin Walbridge of St. Petersburg, Fla., using ships, helicopters, and large planes before suspending its efforts at approximately 6:42 p.m., said Lt. Michael Patterson.

"Suspending a search and rescue case is one of the hardest decisions we have to make," said Capt. Doug Cameron, the chief of incident response for the Coast Guard 5th District.

The HMS Bounty was originally built for the 1962 film "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando, and it was featured in several other films over the years, including one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.

Walbridge was captain of the three-masted tall ship, which sank before dawn Monday in hurricane-churned waters about 90 miles off Cape Hatteras. The crew abandoned ship in two life rafts, and the Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members. Claudene Christian, 42, was among those rescued, but she died.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Walbridge and Christian families," Cameron said.

The search persisted for days despite rough seas in hopes the healthy, expert seaman could stay alive in his survival suit in the relatively warm waters near the site of the shipwreck, the Coast Guard said. The water temperature was 79 degrees Thursday, but seas rocked waves of 4 feet and the winds were 30 mph.

The ship's connection to its namesake went back to the original Bounty, whose crew famously took over the ship from its commander, Lt. William Bligh, in April 1789. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian, and Claudene Christian said she was his great-great-great-great-great granddaughter.

Walbridge believed he could navigate the ship around Hurricane Sandy when the Bounty set sail last week from Connecticut. After two days in rough seas, he realized his journey would be far more difficult.

"I think we are going to be into this for several days," Walbridge said in a message posted Sunday on the vessel's Facebook site, which reads like a ship's log of its activities. "We are just going to keep trying to go fast."

By Monday morning, the vessel had started taking on water, its engines failed and the crew had to abandon ship as it went down in 18-foot waves. By the time the first rescue helicopter arrived, all that was visible of the ship was a strobe light atop the vessel's submerged masts. The roiling Atlantic Ocean had claimed the rest.

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