Luke.Zxz

“Kosovo has issued its first passports, five months after the government declared independence from Serbia. Citizens queued for hours to collect the dark blue documents emblazoned with text in English, Serbian and Albanian. The first of the passports, which each cost 25 euros ($39), was presented by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in the capital Pristina. It is unclear whether the papers will be accepted by countries which have not acknowledged Kosovo’s independence. However, it is expected that UN documents will remain valid for travel to those countries.”

“EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.”

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This list of forms used by the National Security Agency is supposedly complete. The cover letter explains that, even though the print-out indicates that it is 46 pages long, it’s really just 40 pages. Honest. C’mon, would No Such Agency withhold information? Well, maybe it is a little odd that even though the NSA’s purpose is to intercept communications, break codes, and provide communications security, almost none of their forms has anything to do with these activities.

To my knowledge, this list has never been published until now. The Memory Hole has requested blank copies of all listed forms and will post them when and if they are declassified.

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“Littered across the Internet are dozens of home videos of people putting a lit match into their microwave oven, turning it on and waiting for the inevitable chaos to ensue: a spitting, sputtering ball of brilliant white fire that seems to hang magically in the air until it floats upward and scorches the hell out of the microwave ceiling. Some of the mischievous miscreants responsible for turning their kitchens into science experiments claim to have recreated a mysterious natural phenomenon known as “ball lightning,” which resembles the fiery spheres created in the microwave and is thought to be the byproduct of lightning strikes. But are these glowing orbs created in an appliance normally reserved for reheating leftovers really the same thing as ball lightning? Several scientists in the relatively small field of “ball-lightning-ology” say that it isn’t quite the same thing. “It’s not the same as the ball lightning that we are talking about,” says Antonio Pavão, a professor of chemistry at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil who has successfully created a ball lightning-like phenomenon in his lab.”

“A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for scoring too high on an intelligence test. Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training. Mr Jordan launched a federal lawsuit against the city, but lost. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Mr Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test. He said: “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class. I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” He said he does not plan to take any further legal action and has worked as a prison guard since he took the test. The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.”

“It is thought that around one in 1,000 babies are born with an “intersex” condition, the general term for people with chromosomal abnormalities. It may be physically obvious from birth - babies may have ambiguous reproductive organs, for instance - or it may remain unknown to people all their lives. At the Atlanta games in 1996, eight female athletes failed sex tests but were all cleared on appeal; seven were found to have an “intersex” condition. As a result, by the time of the Sydney games in 2000, the IOC had abolished universal sex testing but, as will happen in Beijing, some women still had to prove they really were women.”

“HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe will knock 10 zeros off the country’s hyper-inflated currency next month, making 10 billion dollars one dollar, the nation’s central bank governor said Wednesday. President Robert Mugabe immediately warned in a televised address that he will impose a state of emergency if profiteers take advantage of the change on Aug. 1. ”Don’t drive us further. If you drive us even more we will impose emergency measures. We don’t want to place our country under emergency rule,” Mugabe said. Zimbabwe suffers the highest inflation rate in the world. Inflation is constraining operations of the country’s computer systems, central bank Gov. Gideon Gono said. Computers, electronic calculators and automated teller machines at banks have not been able to handle basic transactions in billions and trillions of dollars. Just last week Gono introduced a new 100 billion-dollar note that is not enough to buy a loaf of bread. Gono said on Aug. 1 the bank will issue a 500-dollar bill equivalent to 5 trillion dollars at the current rate.”