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The 73-year-old man charged with murder in the shooting at a Jewish community center and retirement community in Overland Park, Kansas, that left three people dead is reportedly the former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Fraiser Glenn Cross Jr., of Aurora, Mo., was taken into custody in the parking lot of an elementary school near the scene of the shootings, and was booked on a charge of first degree murder, according to the Johnson County, Kansas, Sheriff's Office. Cross is an alias for Frasier Glenn Miller, the former KKK leader, according to the Southern...

A retired Marine with nearly two decades of aviation experience has stepped forward with a compelling theory about a mysterious plane that was spotted flying over Texas last month. On March 10, photographers Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett took pictures of three puzzling aircraft flying over Amarillo, and posted them online in hopes of identifying the planes. Retired-Marine James Vineyard has submitted one of the more interesting explanations, telling the Houston Chronicle he believes they are SR-72 Blackbirds - a spy plane that can cross the U.S. in less than an hour, unmanned.

first time. Aviation Week & Space Technology journalist Bill Sweetman has posted photos taken March 10 by two veteran sky watchers, Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett. In his blog post of March 28, Sweetman writes that he and two Aviation Week editors agree that the photos depict "something real." In other words, these pictures aren't easily explained away by reports of known military flights or the work of someone who got carried away with Photoshop. So what can aviation experts say about the object in the photos? "The photos tell us more about what the mysterious stranger isn't than what...

Explanation: If you see a sky like this -- photograph it. A month ago in Iceland, an adventurous photographer (pictured) chanced across a sky full of aurora and did just that. In the foreground lies the stratovolcano Öræfajökull. In the background, among other sky delights, lies the constellation of Orion, visible to the aurora's left. Auroras are sparked by energetic particles from the Sun impacting the magnetic environment around the Earth. Resultant energetic particles such as electrons and protons rain down near the Earth's poles and impact the air. The impacted air molecules obtain excited electrons, and when electrons in...

GARRETTSVILLE, Ohio - Firefighters are battling a massive 3-alarm blaze in the Village of Garrettsville. Flames swept throughout Garrettsville’s historic downtown buildings and businesses on Route 82 (Main Street), just east of the Route 88 intersection, around 1:15 p.m. Saturday. The blaze is not under control, but spreading. Buildings from the 1800's are a total loss. Sources tell NewsChannel 5 that water is being pulled from the Silver Creek River to help battle the massive fire. A person witnessing the blaze said that it feels like the whole downtown portion of the village is on fire. Auburn, Aurora, Bainbridge, Boardman,...

Explanation: Sometimes, after your eyes adapt to the dark, a spectacular sky appears. Such was the case in 2011 March when one of the largest auroral displays in recent years appeared over northern locations like the border between Norway and Russia. Pictured in the above time-lapse movie, auroras flow over snow covered landscapes, trees, clouds, mountains and lakes found near Kirkenes, Norway. Many times the auroras are green, as high energy particles strike the Earth's atmosphere, causing the air to glow as electrons resettle into their oxygen hosts. Other colors are occasionally noticeable as atmospheric nitrogen also becomes affected. In...

Explanation: A remarkably intense auroral band flooded the northern night with shimmering colors on December 7. The stunning sequence captured here was made with a camera fixed to a tripod under cold, clear skies near Ester, just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Left to right, spanning a period of about 30 minutes, the panels follow changes in the dancing curtains of northern lights extending to altitudes of over 100 kilometers in a band arcing directly overhead. The panels span 150 degrees vertically, covering about 500 kilometers of aurora laying across the sky from edge to edge. The auroral activity was triggered...

Explanation: It was Halloween and the sky looked like a creature. Exactly which creature, the astrophotographer was unsure (but possibly you can suggest one). Exactly what caused the eerie apparition was sure: one of the best auroral displays in recent memory. This spectacular aurora had an unusually high degree of detail. Pictured above, the vivid green and purple auroral colors are caused by high atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen reacting to a burst of incoming electrons. Birch trees in Tromsø, Norway formed an also eerie foreground. Many other photogenic auroras have been triggered by recent energetic flares on the Sun.

Over the past several days the Sun has unleashed more than half a dozen major flares including four X-class events. The resulting aurora in some parts of the world have been beautiful. Here’s a collection of recent images taken by Jason Arhns in Alaska. It seems the aurora is just blanketing not only the sky, but the landscape as well! See more below, as well as a video showing 23 of the 26 M- and X-class flares on the sun between Oct. 23 and Oct. 28, 2013, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It also shows the coronal mass...

Explanation: What spooky planet is this? Planet Earth of course, on the dark and stormy night of September 12 at Hverir, a geothermally active area along the volcanic landscape in northeastern Iceland. Geomagnetic storms produced the auroral display in the starry night sky while ghostly towers of steam and gas venting from fumaroles danced against the eerie greenish light. Tonight, there is still a chance for geomagnetic storms triggered by recent solar activity, so high-latitude skygazers should beware. And ghostly shapes may dance in your neighborhood, too.Have a safe and Happy Halloween!!

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Heroes in AuroraPosted By Bruce Bawer On July 24, 2012 @ 12:20 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 7 Comments Three episodes from recent European history: In 2007, the nationally known Swedish politician Anna Lindh was gunned down in a Stockholm shopping mall by a gunman who then fled the scene.  The place was busy.  Several people observed the crime.  But it didn’t occur to anybody to tackle the killer, and nobody rushed to stop him.The next year, on Queen’s Day in Amsterdam, a male model taking part in an outdoor fashion show just off...

In between bowls of chicken poodle soup and deciding to provide air cover for al-Qaeda in Syria, our Dear Leader, Barack Hussein Obama, found time to meet with mayors from our crumbling major cities. From Justin Sink of The Hill: *** "President Obama told a collection of big-city mayors Tuesday at the White House that he would continue to use executive actions to combat gun violence plaguing major cities. In the meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder and the mayors of 18 cities from across the nation, Obama discussed commonly applicable strategies to reduce youth violence. 'He also vowed to...

As for place, Churchill, Manitoba and Tromso, Norway come to mind, but until the transporter is invented, most of will be staying closer to home. The simple answer is north and the farther north the better. In the northern border states of the US, auroras occur fairly regularly around the time of solar maximum, when the sun peaks in storm activity. The current solar cycle tops out this summer and fall, so your chances at seeing northern lights are far better now than a year and a half ago when solar activity saw a steep decline during a protracted minimum.

Controversy erupted in Colorado on Wednesday after a Republican legislator was accused of making racially insensitive remarks when she invoked images of barbecue and fried chicken while discussing the lower life expectancy among black Americans. The comments came during a meeting of the state’s Economic Opportunity and Poverty Reduction Task Force. State Sen. Vicki Marble (R-Fort Collins), who is white, took the opportunity to address what she sees as an ongoing health problem among black citizens: “When you look at life expectancy, there’s certain problems in the black race. Sickle cell anemia is something that comes up. Diabetes is something...

The sun unleashed a powerful storm early Tuesday morning (Aug. 20), sending an enormous cloud of superheated particles rocketing toward Earth. The solar eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), occurred at 4:24 a.m. EDT (0824 GMT) Tuesday and blasted billions of tons of solar particles toward Earth at a mind-boggling speed of 2 million mph (3.3 million km/h). ... Tuesday's blast doesn't appear to have too much disruptive potential. "In the past, geomagnetic storms caused by CMEs of this strength have usually been mild," NASA officials wrote. CMEs that hit Earth can also ramp up the auroras, also...

Explanation: Why would the sky still glow after sunset? Besides stars and the band of our Milky Way galaxy, the sky might glow because it contains either noctilucent clouds or aurora. Rare individually, both are visible in the above time lapse movie taken over Caithness, Scotland, UK taken during a single night earlier this month. First noted in 1885, many noctilucent clouds are known to correlate with atmospheric meteor trails, although details and the origins of others remain a topic of research. These meandering bright filaments of sunlight-reflecting ice crystals are the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere. The above...

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) blasted the Obama administration on Wednesday for suspending tuition assistance benefits for Army and Marine Corps servicemen, and called on the White House to restore funding to the program by paring back U.S. assistance to Egypt. “We are not under any obligation to continue to provide [Egypt] with over a billion and a half dollars in aid every year. Re-prioritizing this funding to our soldiers and Marines is the right thing to do,” said Coffman. Coffman has proposed trimming $500 million from unspent foreign aid to Egypt, and reprogramming the funding to the military tuition...

Went to counter Bloomberg's anti-gun appearance today in Aurora, Colorado. I put most of the pics in the beginning and the videos after. I met a whole bunch of great guys. Had a blast.

Dear Randall, This Friday, July 19th, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, will be doing a rally in Aurora as a part of their nationwide “No More Names” gun control tour. Join us for a peaceful “counter-rally” with other gun rights supporters across the state to tell gun-grabber Bloomberg to keep his hands off of our Constitutional rights. Here are the details: Gun Rights Counter-Rally Friday, July 19th 12:00 p.m. Smoky Hill Shelter Cherry Creek State Park (East Entrance) 4201 S. Parker Road Aurora, Colorado 80014 For your information, there is a $9 fee per vehicle to...

The Sun has unleashed its most powerful eruption of 2013 so far. The solar flare - a sudden release of radiation - peaked at 1705 BST on Monday, and was associated with a huge eruption of matter. When these eruptions reach Earth, they can interfere with electronic systems in satellites and those on the ground. Nasa said this solar explosion - known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) - was not directed at Earth, but it could pass several US spacecraft. The event on Monday was classified as an "X-class" flare - the most intense type - with a designation...