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Saturday, February 23, 2013
Double funeral after husband dies on way to wife's wake
Norma Hendrickson / Reuters
Gwen and Norman Hendrickson pose for a photograph in their backyard in Cambridge, New York, in this undated family handout photo.
Norman Hendrickson was known for telling jokes and never wasting money. So when he died suddenly while en route to his wife's funeral, the couple's daughters knew there was only one thing to do: Hold a doubleheader service.
The 94-year-old World War II veteran's impromptu wake was held Saturday at the same eastern New York funeral home where his wife Gwen's funeral was already scheduled. She was 89 when she died on Feb. 8. After Norman died just steps from the funeral home, the daughters decided their parents would be mourned together at the same time.?
The daughters said it was a fitting way to say goodbye to a couple who had been together since meeting in Europe during World War II and who had been married for nearly 66 years.?
"After we had a little time to process the shock and horror, we felt we couldn't have written a more perfect script," Norma Howland told the Post-Star of Glens Falls. "My sister said the only thing he didn't do was fall into the casket."?
Norman, a former assistant postmaster in Cambridge, 35 miles northeast of Albany, was being driven in a limousine to the Ackley and Ross Funeral Home for his wife's service when he stopped breathing. After the limo pulled up, funeral director Jim Gariepy, who is also the local coroner, and funeral home owner Elizabeth Nichols-Ross helped move Norman to the sidewalk outside the business.?
Gariepy began CPR while Nichols-Ross and one Norman's sons-in-law raced across town to retrieve his do-not-resuscitate orders from the Hendricksons' refrigerator door. Once the orders were in hand, an emergency crew that had arrived ceased attempts to revive Norman. He died on the sidewalk.?
Nichols-Ross said daughter Merrilyne Hendrickson then requested that her father's body be put into a casket and placed in the viewing room with her mother's cremated remains, which had been placed in an urn. Mourners who started arriving soon after for Gwen's funeral were greeted by a note Merrilyne posted at the entrance: "Surprise ? It's a doubleheader ? Gwen and Norman Hendrickson ? Feb. 16, 2013."?
Nichols-Ross said she didn't charge the family for Norman's wake. On his prayer card, she jokingly wrote that Hendrickson got the idea to die in the limo headed to the funeral so he could get "a buy-one-get-one-free deal."?
"If it had happened with somebody else like this it would have been sad, but with Norm it wasn't," Nichols-Ross said. "It was just so much like Norm."?
Norman was overseas with the U.S. Army when he met Gwen, who was serving in the British Royal Air Force. She immigrated to the U.S. and they were married in May 1947.?
Howland said her parents had jokingly promised to never leave one spouse behind. After her mother died, Howland said she overheard her father say aloud, "We have had a good long life together. I love you. I'll miss you and watch for me."?
By The Associated Press
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Russia Meteor Renews Focus on Asteroid Threats
Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
IRA FLATOW, HOST:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. A week ago, a meteor exploded over Russia, injuring more than 1,000 people, shattering windows, raining meteorite fragments over a Siberian town. On that same day, an asteroid half the size of a football field gave us a close shave as it flew closely by Earth, coming closer to our planets than the satellites in orbit that work your cell phones.
Astronomers say the two incidents are unrelated. But should this cosmic coincidence be a wakeup call? Are we doing enough to protect our planet from wayward space rocks? What needs to be done to discover and track these near-Earth objects, and who's going to pay for it? Yeah.
Let me introduce my guests. Donald Yeomans is a senior research scientist and manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, that's at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He's also author of the new book "Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us." Welcome to the program.
DONALD YEOMANS: Thank you very much.
FLATOW: Your book came out just at the right time, it looks like.
YEOMANS: Excellent timing, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: John Tonry is a professor at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
JOHN TONRY: Good afternoon, Ira. How are you?
FLATOW: Fine, how are you? Don, let's start by talking about and possibly clearing up something. Was the Russian meteor at all connected to the asteroid fly-by?
YEOMANS: No, definitely not. Its composition (unintelligible) the two objects, and their orbits are completely different. The fireball was in an orbit that had a period of about 2.2 years, and the other asteroid, 2012 DA14, was in a one-year orbit.
FLATOW: So it isn't possible that the asteroid came by before, in another circle around the sun, let loose something from it, and they sort of went into different orbits and came back together?
YEOMANS: No, there's not a real easy dynamical way to do that. In fact, it's very tough. So I think they're completely different.
FLATOW: OK, let's talk - it's been a week since the fireball over Russia. What do we know more about it today than we knew literally exactly one week ago at this moment?
YEOMANS: Well, we know its approximate size. It was about 20 meters in diameter. It came out of the sun, which explains why we didn't see it ahead of time. It would have been tough to see even if it were in the nighttime sky because it's so faint, it was - didn't get down below 24th magnitude until two hours prior to closest approach.
We know from the fragments that are being collected in Russia that it's made of what we call ordinary chondritic material, which is the most common type of asteroid in the inner belt. So that makes sense. It just took us by surprise by coming out of the sun.
FLATOW: What do you mean coming out of the sun? Why could we not see it during the day because we - telescopes looking at it are all visual telescopes?
YEOMANS: That's correct. The NASA-supported Near-Earth Object Survey Telescopes are operating in the U.S. Southwest and Hawaii. They're all optical telescopes, and of course they need the nighttime sky to do their observations.
FLATOW: Now John Tonry, you're working on a project that would basically add as a last-minute asteroid warning system at a time that it would be too late to divert an asteroid if we saw it, but we would possibly know where it's going to hit us.
TONRY: Yeah, that's exactly right. The NASA NEO program is supporting a variety of efforts, and this ATLAS thing is a bit complementary to the other ones. It's a little bit less sensitive, but it basically surveys the whole sky a couple times a night, and so it has a better chance of catching something just before it hits us.
FLATOW: And so how much warning would it give us?
TONRY: Well, it depends on the size of the asteroid. So something like the 2012 DA14, maybe five days or something like that. But it sort of depends on a bunch of factors, like it better not be coming out of the nighttime - the daytime sky. 2012 DA14 happened to be coming up from the south, and you can't see that from Hawaii.
And of course it's always possible to be cloudy.
FLATOW: And so you would make a prediction pretty accurately about where it might hit on the Earth?
TONRY: Oh, it's really astonishing how accurate we can be. There was this impact in 2008 where it was discovered basically a day before impact, and all sorts of people jumped on it, sent off the information to JPL, and the prediction of where and when it hit was just unbelievably accurate, like one mile and one second.
FLATOW: So you could - you're saying, then, you'd alert people to evacuate that spot, a big city perhaps, you have 24 hours to get out?
TONRY: That's exactly right, yeah.
FLATOW: Don...
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: I've seen the movies, right, we've all seen those movies about it's coming, and no one's going to be able to escape in time. There's got to be a better way than this, doesn't there?
YEOMANS: Well, yeah, NASA's goal, of course, is to find these objects early enough that we could use our existing technologies to deflect them. So that's the goal. And we've actually discovered more than 95 percent of the large near-Earth objects, larger than a kilometer, and none of them represent a threat in the next 100 years.
And so we're now working on the 140-meter-sized objects and larger, and we've discovered 40 percent of that population, and none of those represent a threat. So we're looking for the big ones first because they could cause global problems rather than regional problems.
But as pointed out by John, we need to, we need to expand our capabilities and start aggressively looking for these small objects. And John's ATLAS system is one way to do that quite effectively.
FLATOW: But you're saying that we can't see them if they come out of the sun. You're talking now about expanding it to something a little more useful than hopefully not just the daytime.
YEOMANS: Well, yeah, these objects typically are in Earth-like orbits because those are the most dangerous, also the easiest to reach in terms of human exploration. But they typically make several close-Earth approaches before a final impacting approach. And so it would be during these previous close-Earth approaches that a system like John's would pick them up, and then we would predict when it might be a problem in the future.
FLATOW: Is this an orbiting satellite, an orbiting telescope, or how would it work? Or is it all ground-based telescopes?
TONRY: Well, you know, there are sort of two issues. The first is if the thing is literally coming out of the sun, and it's never seen before, as was this one over Chelyabinsk, you basically need an orbiting satellite, one that can look very, very close to the sun to have a chance of catching it.
But as Don was saying, the hope is that actually this 2012 DA14 made a number of previous close passages, like it was found in 2012. And so if you can catch it up there, there's a chance that you'll see it in the nighttime sky even though the final approach happens during the daytime. So in that way you'd be able to predict the daytime impact.
And also if you can find it early enough, then you actually have the time to mount a mission to possibly nudge it.
FLATOW: Let's talk about the asteroid DA14 that came by last week. If ATLAS had been up, if your project had been up and running, could we have found it sooner?
TONRY: I think probably yes. If I look at the actual discovery by the Spanish, I think probably ATLAS would have picked it up maybe several weeks earlier, and it's fantastic that they were able to find it, actually. They had an upgraded system, and they were - they happened to be looking in a funny direction, and they happened to pick it up.
It's a little bit luck in that case, whereas ATLAS is much more thorough. It basically - there's very little that can sneak by, at least in the portion of the sky that ATLAS can look at.
FLATOW: But is ATLAS just something on the drawing board now?
TONRY: ATLAS is a little bit more than drawing board. NASA has funded the construction. We're a month and a half in now, and we're just now deciding on what the telescope design will look like, and then that's the first critical decision. So we're hoping that we can actually be online sometime next year and fully operational by the end of 2015.
FLATOW: Is there any way to expand it from its early stage to get more...?
TONRY: Well, we could accelerate it a little bit if we had the funding, but I don't think that that's really critical. What's much more interesting is the possibility of putting multiple ATLAS units all around the planet because any given one is subject to weather, it's subject to daytime, nighttime. All those factors cut down the efficiency. And if we could replicate it and put it in, let's say, six places around the planet instead of one, then we'd have much more thorough coverage of the sky.
FLATOW: And who's going to pay for that?
TONRY: Well, that's to be determined. But I think it's appropriate to get the first one going and demonstrate that we can actually be as effective as we say we're going to be.
FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to the phones, to Gary(ph) in St. Louis. Hi Gary.
GARY: Hi. We're - you were talking about how accurate we can be in predicting, and yet last week, everybody was predicting that the closest point that DA14 was going to be to Earth was about 2:25 Eastern. And it ended up on your show being about four minutes earlier than that, which - four minutes seems like a pretty big gap.
YEOMANS: Well, the uncertainties of the object are by far the most in the long-track direction, and as this one was coming from the south to the north, so the distance off-track or perpendicular to the motion of the object was the most important. And that was good to a kilometer or so. It's true that the motion of the object a long track, the longest orbital track is the least well-known. And that you pointed out that the - there was a couple of several hundred kilometer uncertainty there. But that really wasn't the most important component.
FLATOW: Thanks for the call. How long before this meteor frenzy, asteroid frenzy fades and we start this all over again?
(LAUGHTER)
YEOMANS: Well, who's to say? I mean the event over Russia, the fireball event is for an object of that size, you'd expect something like that to hit about every hundred years on average. On the other hand, basketball-sized objects hit the Earth's atmosphere every day. Volkswagen objects hit the Earth's atmosphere every couple of weeks. They just cause fireball events. They don't cause any ground damage. But this type of thing happens all the time. Mother Nature...
FLATOW: So what I'm asking was, is this - was this a game-changer? Will people really pay attention? Will governments invest money? Will the satellites be put up? Or is it just, you know, we talk about it and then it becomes something of the past. We move on to the next new cycle.
YEOMANS: Well...
TONRY: Well, I think that's real hard to say, but NASA has had a significant program in place for more than 10 years and has been steadily chipping away on finding things, starting from the biggest and most dangerous ones and working down. So it's conceivable that this will actually spur some congressional hearings, and NASA will get a pat on the back and maybe some more money. And conceivably, private individuals will step forward and fund some of this stuff. But regardless of the new cycle, NASA is steadily working on this.
YEOMANS: Yeah. That's a good point. It's important to point out that NASA's budget actually increased threefold in 2012. So NASA is aggressively pursuing this phenomenon.
FLATOW: And we had a gentleman on last week from B612 project, I think it was called, in which that's a privately funded satellite they want to put into orbit to look at asteroids.
YEOMANS: That's true. If you want the most efficient way to find these objects is in the infrared, which means you have to have satellites in Earth orbit or perhaps in space, like the B612 concept. So these objects radiate primarily in the infrared, and they're mostly easily found there. But it's also the most expensive way, of course.
FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. Talking with Donald Yeomans and John Tonry. I guess what I'm saying is, do people feel that this is really a threat to national security? Of that ilk? If you have something like that asteroid that - like the meteor shower that hit Russia, if it had actually landed and not broken up on a major city and created like the Arizona crater, would that have gotten more attention?
(LAUGHTER)
YEOMANS: Oh, yes.
TONRY: There's no question, yes.
YEOMANS: Yeah.
FLATOW: But it's a real possibility?
TONRY: It's a possibility...
YEOMANS: It is.
TONRY: ...and there are, as Don had been saying, there's a wide variety of sizes. The little ones, the little explosions are far more common and far less dangerous. And the integrated risk from this thing is not really high. It's not something for people to seriously worry about, but it's not negligible either. And we simply don't know. It's conceivable that New York will be destroyed tomorrow. It is literally possible that New York will be destroyed tomorrow. But the chances of it are just really, really small.
However, it seems as though now that we have the technology to actually do something about it actually find the things and conceivably even move them out of the way, we ought to do it. It's just an insurance policy.
FLATOW: And what about creating the technology to push one or to move the asteroid itself instead of moving all the people?
YEOMANS: Well, NASA is actively studying the deflection concepts that make the most sense, as is the European Space Agency and some of our international partners. The easiest, cheapest and fastest technique, to my mind, is simply to run into an object with a massive spacecraft and change its orbital period a little bit so that in 10 or 20 years when it was predicted to hit the Earth, it would miss by a wide margin. And we've demonstrated that technology with the Deep Impact mission back in July of 2005 when we purposely ran into Comet Tempel 1.
FLATOW: And did we move its orbit?
YEOMANS: Well, that was a large comet. It was a six-kilometer comet. We moved its orbit but only by about 100 meters, which is undetectable.
FLATOW: But we don't have any ready standby capability to do something like that.
YEOMANS: Well, I don't think we actually need a standby capability. What we do need to do is find them early enough so that we can develop the mission concept to go up and run into it. So you need to find them early. That's the key, and that's exactly what NASA is planning to do.
FLATOW: And if they found one early, what would they do?
YEOMANS: Well, they would design a mission to intercept it to perhaps run into it with a spacecraft so that you would either slow it down or speed it up, change its orbital period so that it - when it was predicted to hit the Earth 10, 20 years down the road, it wouldn't.
FLATOW: And we have the money to do that?
YEOMANS: Well, I would guess we would find the money if...
(LAUGHTER)
YEOMANS: ...that were a real threat.
FLATOW: Well, we're not spending any money on things these days. So where would we take it from? I'm sort of being facetious about this. I understand though there's not a real answer to it, but it's a real question that I - just as a layman watching this over the last 30 years, never see anybody have answer to. It's always 30 years away and someone else's problem.
TONRY: Well, you know, Ira, there really are a lot of launches. People aren't aware of it too much, but communication satellites wear out all the time. There are launches to replace them. It's not as though there aren't a lot of launches that happen all the time. And purposing a launch to go after a comet or an incoming asteroid would involve a payload that would actually have its own propulsion and its own mass and all that sort of stuff. But it's not crazy to think that, basically, the human race could spin on a dime and get something going within a year or two.
But the real trick is that this nudges are just tiny, tiny, tiny compared to the velocity of these dangerous asteroids. And so, therefore, time is the key. You really want to be able to do it way ahead of time so that the little nudge can accumulate so that it misses the Earth.
FLATOW: OK. We enjoyed the conversation. We'll - this is something that we've been following for many years and will continue to follow and, actually, talk to some people who have ideas on how to do the nudge. So thank you both, Donald Yeomans and John Tonry, for taking time to talk with us today.
TONRY: You're very welcome.
FLATOW: Have a good weekend.
YEOMANS: My pleasure.
FLATOW: You're welcome. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll take a look at what's causing severe air pollution in the interior of Alaska, pollution worse that what we see in Beijing. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.
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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/02/22/172696688/russia-meteor-renews-focus-on-asteroid-threats?ft=1&f=1007
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Fred T. Foard looking for a new head football coach
NEWTON, NC (WBTV) -
Jason Phelps has resigned today?as head football coach at Fred T. Foard.
Phelps came to Foard back in 2011 and in 2 seasons compiled a record of 5-15.?
The Tigers finished in last in the Northwestern Conference last season as they went 0-6 in conference play.? The year before, they went 2-4 with one of those wins coming via forfeit from Hickory.
Since 2000,?the Fred T. Foard?program has only had?3 winning seasons (2000, 2006, 2008).?
Phelps is an alum of Watauga High School who currently has an opening at the head coaching position as well in football.
Copyright 2013 WBTV. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.wbtv.com/story/21299209/fred-t-foard-looking-for-a-new-head-football-coach
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Friday, February 22, 2013
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Brand-new Jersey Governor Bob Christie can be nike nfl jerseys marshalling the particular Republicans? A-list regarding Massachusetts politicos for your top-dollar Birkenstock boston fundraiser, a new go almost certainly going to stoke speculation in relation to Christie?s 2016 presidential aspirations. Christie could be the client regarding recognize at the $3, 800-a-head dining fundraiser with Friday night time, Walk a single with the house regarding Ambassador Captain christopher Egan and also the her conversation, Jean, throughout Birkenstock boston. Egan, president of the Westborough about the house corporation Carruth Money, was fitted by means of President George W. Bush for being the particular Oughout. Verts. ambassador into the Paris-based Company for Global financial Co-operation and also Development. According to a new copy of the call purchased by means of authentic nfl jerseys MassLive.com, other hosts include former Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown and Charlie Baker, the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nominee. Both Brown and Baker are rumored to be considering runs for office ? Baker has not ruled out a run for governor in 2014, while Brown could potentially run for Senator or governor that year. That could put them both in positions of political influence should Christie launch a 2016 presidential campaign. Various other associates of the coordinator committee consist of Republican Country wide Committeeman Ron Kaufman, that is a new former agent for you to President George They would. W. Bush and also 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney; former Springfield Urban center Councilor and also Paper Urban center Development companion Anthony Ravosa; former Oughout. Verts. Attorney at law and also likely Oughout. Verts. Senate candidate Jordan Sullivan; Chris are friends . Tamasi, a number one GOP fundraiser for Romney and also Brownish; Craig Carlson, CEO of the Carlson Class, an motor technological know-how and also innovation asking corporation; and also Serta Meyers and also Seth Gelber, the particular CEO and also main managing policeman of the university student loan company Primary Marblehead Companie. The presentation can advantage Christie?s gubernatorial marketing campaign committee. Sometimes Randy Moss can explain this Tennessee Titans vast recipient Kenny Britt includes the capability becoming a particular gambler within the NFL. Sad to say, the main Britt narratives continue to revolve all over leg surgical treatments and also police research. Fot it stage: The particular Tennessean described Wednesday this Jersey Urban center, N. J., police are generally new nfl jerseys even now needing Britt for you to cooperate with these in regards to a new capturing and also stabbing this took place very last nfl jerseys cheap 30 days throughout Brand-new Jersey. Britt transported a pal whom have been stabbed with a clinic, in that case finally spoken for you to police in regards to the event soon after lengthy cat-and-mouse adventure. Today the particular police wish to always soeak with Britt for a second time soon after asking you throughout network considering the event. Simply no chance so far. "Mr. Britt includes pushed aside our request for your getting together with for you to talk about added inquiries the particular JCPD includes pertaining to the particular study, " explained Jersey Urban center police captain Edgar Martinez, whom all of us surmise includes just about acquired the load regarding a single Kenneth Britt. Britt's attorney at law explained he has already been explained to by means of police there may be "zero chance" the purchaser are going to be arrested throughout network considering the capturing and also stabbing. That begs the particular dilemma: The reason in that case lug the task away? For your person managing cheap nfl jersey an photograph dilemma, aging create a lot regarding sense.
Source: http://www.worldsings.com/blog/view/id_94890
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Early life stress may take early toll on heart function
Feb. 21, 2013 ? Early life stress like that experienced by ill newborns appears to take an early toll of the heart, affecting its ability to relax and refill with oxygen-rich blood, researchers report.
Rat pups separated from their mothers a few hours each day, experienced a significant decrease in this basic heart function when -- as life tends to do -- an extra stressor was added to raise blood pressure, said Dr. Catalina Bazacliu, neonatologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Children's Hospital of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. Bazacliu worked under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Pollock, biochemist in the Section of Experimental Medicine in the MCG Department of Medicine.
The relaxation and filling rate remained low in the separation model, although decreases stabilized by ages two and six months, as the rats neared middle age. Both the model and controls experienced decreases in those functions that come naturally with age.
Interestingly, the force with which the heart ejected blood remained unchanged with the additional stressor, angiotensin II, a powerful constrictor of blood vessels. Echocardiography was used to evaluate heart function.
"We expected the heart's ability to relax and refill to lag behind in our model," said Bazacliu, whose research earned her a Young Investigator Award from the Southern Society for Pediatric Research. She is reporting her findings Feb. 22 during the Southern Regional Meetings in New Orleans, sponsored by the society as well as several other groups including the Southern Section of the American Federation for Medical Research.
"We believe these babies may be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease and we are working to understand exactly what puts them at risk," Bazacliu said. She believes hers is the first animal study of this aspect of heart function.
Dr. Analia S. Loria, assistant research scientist in Pollock's lab and also a co-author on the new abstract, has shown that the blood pressure of maternally separated rats goes up more in response to angiotensin II and their heart rates go higher as well. Normally, a compensatory mechanism drives the heart rate down a little when blood pressure goes up.
Work by others has shown persistent blood vessel changes in the early stress model, including increased contraction and reduced relaxation when similarly stressed.
Longitudinal studies in humans have shown long-term cardiovascular implications, such as babies born to mothers during the Dutch famine of World War II, growing up at increased risk for cardiovascular disease as well as diabetes, obesity and other health problems.
Bazacliu's earlier studies in a similar animal model indicated that babies whose growth was restricted in utero by conditions such as preeclampsia -- maternal high blood pressure during pregnancy -- were at increased risk of cardiovascular disease as adults. This was true whether the babies were born prematurely or at full term. Increased pressure during development reduces blood flow from mother to baby; reduced nutrition and oxygen to the baby is considered an environmental stress.
Bazacliu's interest in early life stress grew out of the reality that, while obviously intended to save premature and otherwise critically ill newborns, neonatal intensive care units can further stress these babies. "All the procedures we must do, the separation from the mother, the environment, even though the babies need the help, it represents a stress." NICUs such as the one at Children's Hospital of Georgia work to minimize negative impact with strategies such as open visiting hours, minimalizing noise and other family-centered care strategies.
Bazacliu came to MCG in 2011 from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
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Al-Qaida tipsheet on avoiding drones found in Mali
FILE In this Aug. 31, 2012 file photo, fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamist group Ansar Dine stand guard in Timbuktu, Mali, as they prepare to publicly lash a member of the Islamic Police found guilty of adultery. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo, File)
FILE In this Aug. 31, 2012 file photo, fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamist group Ansar Dine stand guard in Timbuktu, Mali, as they prepare to publicly lash a member of the Islamic Police found guilty of adultery. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo, File)
FILE In this Jan. 21, 2013 file photo, French troops inspect the charred remains of trucks used by radical Islamists, on the outskirts of Diabaly, Mali. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
FILE In this undated handout file photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, an MQ-9 Reaper, armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, is piloted by Col. Lex Turner during a combat mission over southern Afghanistan. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6, 2013 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo/Lt. Col.. Leslie Pratt, US Air Force, File)
In this Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 photo, a young vendor waits for clients alongside woven reed mats of the type purchased by fleeing Islamists, apparently to camouflage their vehicles, in Timbuktu, Mali. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo/Rukmini Callimachi)
FILE In this Jan. 19, 2013 file photo, French soldiers arrive in Niono, Mali, en route to Diabaly. An instruction on camouflaging cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention in January. The tip sheet, found Feb. 6 by an AP reporter in Timbuktu, reflects how al-Qaida?s chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) ? One of the last things the bearded fighters did before leaving this city was to drive to the market where traders lay their carpets out in the sand.
The al-Qaida extremists bypassed the brightly-colored, high-end synthetic floor coverings and stopped their pickup truck in front of a man selling more modest mats woven from desert grass, priced at $1.40 apiece. There they bought two bales of 25 mats each, and asked him to bundle them on top of the car, along with a stack of sticks.
"It's the first time someone has bought such a large amount," said the mat seller, Leitny Cisse al-Djoumat. "They didn't explain why they wanted so many."
Military officials can tell why: The fighters are stretching the mats across the tops of their cars on poles to form natural carports, so that drones cannot detect them from the air.
The instruction to camouflage cars is one of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French military intervention last month. A Xeroxed copy of the document, which was first published on a jihadist forum two years ago, was found by The Associated Press in a manila envelope on the floor of a building here occupied by al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb.
The tipsheet reflects how al-Qaida's chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the battleground in the war on terror worldwide is shifting from boots on the ground to unmanned planes in the air. The presence of the document in Mali, first authored by a Yemeni, also shows the coordination between al-Qaida chapters, which security experts have called a source of increasing concern.
"This new document... shows we are no longer dealing with an isolated local problem, but with an enemy which is reaching across continents to share advice," said Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, now the director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institute.
The tips in the document range from the broad (No. 7, hide from being directly or indirectly spotted, especially at night) to the specific (No 18, formation of fake gatherings, for example by using dolls and statues placed outside false ditches to mislead the enemy.) The use of the mats appears to be a West African twist on No. 3, which advises camouflaging the tops of cars and the roofs of buildings, possibly by spreading reflective glass.
While some of the tips are outdated or far-fetched, taken together, they suggest the Islamists in Mali are responding to the threat of drones with sound, common-sense advice that may help them to melt into the desert in between attacks, leaving barely a trace.
"These are not dumb techniques. It shows that they are acting pretty astutely," said Col. Cedric Leighton, a 26-year-veteran of the United States Air Force, who helped set up the Predator drone program, which later tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. "What it does is, it buys them a little bit more time ? and in this conflict, time is key. And they will use it to move away from an area, from a bombing raid, and do it very quickly."
The success of some of the tips will depend on the circumstances and the model of drones used, Leighton said. For example, from the air, where perceptions of depth become obfuscated, an imagery sensor would interpret a mat stretched over the top of a car as one lying on the ground, concealing the vehicle.
New models of drones, such as the Harfung used by the French or the MQ-9 "Reaper," sometimes have infrared sensors that can pick up the heat signature of a car whose engine has just been shut off. However, even an infrared sensor would have trouble detecting a car left under a mat tent overnight, so that its temperature is the same as on the surrounding ground, Leighton said.
Unarmed drones are already being used by the French in Mali to collect intelligence on al-Qaida groups, and U.S. officials have said plans are underway to establish a new drone base in northwestern Africa. The U.S. recently signed a "status of forces agreement" with Niger, one of the nations bordering Mali, suggesting the drone base may be situated there and would be primarily used to gather intelligence to help the French.
The author of the tipsheet found in Timbuktu is Abdallah bin Muhammad, the nom de guerre for a senior commander of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the terror network. The document was first published in Arabic on an extremist website on June 2, 2011, a month after bin Laden's death, according to Mathieu Guidere, a professor at the University of Toulouse. Guidere runs a database of statements by extremist groups, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and he reviewed and authenticated the document found by the AP.
The tipsheet is still little known, if at all, in English, though it has been republished at least three times in Arabic on other jihadist forums after drone strikes took out U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September 2011 and al-Qaida second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan in June 2012. It was most recently issued two weeks ago on another extremist website after plans for the possible U.S. drone base in Niger began surfacing, Guidere said.
"This document supports the fact that they knew there are secret U.S. bases for drones, and were preparing themselves," he said. "They were thinking about this issue for a long time."
The idea of hiding under trees to avoid drones, which is tip No. 10, appears to be coming from the highest levels of the terror network. In a letter written by bin Laden and first published by the U.S. Center for Combating Terrorism, the terror mastermind instructs his followers to deliver a message to Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, whose fighters have been active in Mali for at least a decade.
"I want the brothers in the Islamic Maghreb to know that planting trees helps the mujahedeen and gives them cover," bin Laden writes in the missive. "Trees will give the mujahedeen the freedom to move around especially if the enemy sends spying aircrafts to the area."
Hiding under trees is exactly what the al-Qaida fighters did in Mali, according to residents in Diabaly, the last town they took before the French stemmed their advance last month. Just after French warplanes incinerated rebel cars that had been left outside, the fighters began to commandeer houses with large mango trees and park their four-by-fours in the shade of their rubbery leaves.
Hamidou Sissouma, a schoolteacher, said the Islamists chose his house because of its generous trees, and rammed their trucks through his earthen wall to drive right into his courtyard. Another resident showed the gash the occupiers had made in his mango tree by parking their pickup too close to the trunk.
In Timbuktu also, fighters hid their cars under trees, and disembarked from them in a hurry when they were being chased, in accordance with tip No. 13.
Moustapha al-Housseini, an appliance repairman, was outside his shop fixing a client's broken radio on the day the aerial bombardments began. He said he heard the sound of the planes and saw the Islamists at almost the same moment. Abou Zeid, the senior al-Qaida emir in the region, rushed to jam his car under a pair of tamarind trees outside the store.
"He and his men got out of the car and dove under the awning," said al-Housseini. "As for what I did? Me and my employees? We also ran. As fast as we could."
Along with the grass mats, the al-Qaida men in Mali made creative use of another natural resource to hide their cars: Mud.
Asse Ag Imahalit, a gardener at a building in Timbuktu, said he was at first puzzled to see that the fighters sleeping inside the compound sent for large bags of sugar every day. Then, he said, he observed them mixing the sugar with dirt, adding water and using the sticky mixture to "paint" their cars. Residents said the cars of the al-Qaida fighters are permanently covered in mud.
The drone tipsheet, discovered in the regional tax department occupied by Abou Zeid, shows how familiar al-Qaida has become with drone attacks, which have allowed the U.S. to take out senior leaders in the terrorist group without a messy ground battle. The preface and epilogue of the tipsheet make it clear that al-Qaida well realizes the advantages of drones: They are relatively cheap in terms of money and lives, alleviating "the pressure of American public opinion."
Ironically, the first drone attack on an al-Qaida figure in 2002 took out the head of the branch in Yemen ? the same branch that authored the document found in Mali, according to Riedel. Drones began to be used in Iraq in 2006 and in Pakistan in 2007, but it wasn't until 2009 that they became a hallmark of the war on terror, he said.
"Since we do not want to put boots on the ground in places like Mali, they are certain to be the way of the future," he said. "They are already the future."
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Associated Press writers Baba Ahmed in Timbuktu, Mali, Robert Burns in Washington and Dalatou Mamane in Niamey, Niger contributed to this report.
The document can be seen in Arabic and English at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-drones.pdf.
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Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi
Baba Ahmed can be reached at www.twitter.com/babahmed1
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