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ACRE, Israel – A family-owned company said it brought Bible verses to life after the Israeli government certified it as the first to discover precious gems in the Holy Land. The verse, found in the book of Isaiah, states that Israel's foundations will be laid with sapphires and its borders with precious stones. After the Taubs discovered various gems through its mining firm, the Israeli family launched a new company in 2022 to sell them. "... I will lay your foundations with sapphires and I will make your windows of jasper and your gates of carbuncle stones, and all your...

A diamond is forever but what happens if you throw a parrot into the mix? On Tuesday (June 22), Frosty, a pet parrot in Bangkok, Thailand, raided its owner's jewellery box and appeared to be enamoured of what it had found inside. A diamond necklace caught the bird's eye and that spelt trouble — Frosty decided to gobble the sparkly jewels up for breakfast. By lunchtime, the eight-month-old sun parakeet looked weak and had lost its appetite. Noticing something was off, the bird's owner quickly brought it to the nearby Animal Space Hospital for an X-ray. Chances are she (and...

As Elizabeth Taylor once said: “I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.” It’s a good philosophy, because when it comes to the world’s biggest, rarest and most extraordinary gemstone discoveries, no one—not even billionaire President Donald Trump—could afford the possession. We’re not talking about the average diamond engagement ring that sets you back $4,000 and was probably grown in a lab. And we’re not talking about the $3,000 ruby that was probably treated. We’re talking about the rarest gemstones in the world, like the ‘Guinness Emerald’ that came...

This thread is created for reports of Election fraud with particular focus on electronic manipulation of results. If you witness discrepancies in hand tallies and electronic tallies or you witness arguments and disturbances regarding election integrity, report the following here: 1. Polling location Precinct, City/Town, County, and State. 2. Time 4. Type of incident (Electronic or Other) 4. Bried description of the incident 5. Any action taken

Is there anyone Bill Clinton wouldn't take money from? The jury is out on that one. And I do mean a jury, rather than a Sharia court. Former President Bill Clinton collected $5.6 million in fees from GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company that teaches Sharia Law through its network of more than 100 schools in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. The company’s finances strictly adhere to “Sharia Finance,” which includes giving “zakat,” a religious tax of which one-eighth of the proceeds is dedicated to funding Islamic jihad. The company also contributed...

Votes are being counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers. As we know, there are a number of ways to rig an election. Bev Harris, at blackboxvoting.org, is exploring a specific “cheat sheet” that has vast implications for the Trump vs. Hillary contest. It’s a vote-counting system called GEMS. I urge you to dive into her multi-part series, Fraction Magic (Part-1 here). Here are key Harris quotes. They’re all shockers: “Our testing [of GEMS] shows that one vote can be counted 25 times, another only one one-thousandth of a time, effectively converting some votes to zero.” “This report summarizes...

The 1982 treasure hunt book, The Secret, has clues to 12 hidden gems. Only two have been found. James Renner is on a quest to discover the others, and he invites you to join the hunt.The Secret: A Treasure Hunt! first set its hooks in me when I was eight years old. My mother had taken me to the little library in Bedford, outside Cleveland, and in the stacks there, I discovered this small bound book with a strange painting on the cover that hinted at some fantastic mystery. I took the book home with me and read about the...

An Albany, Georgia dog apparently has a taste for the finer things in life. The pooch dined on a meal of $10,000 worth of diamonds. Honey Bun often walks the counters at John Ross Jewelers. He's not much of a guard dog, but he is great with customer relations. "He's been loved," said co-owner Chuck Roberts. Customers sometimes hide treats in their purse for Honey Bun, but the Roberts' recently learned this pampered pooch has more expensive taste. It happened two weeks ago when a customer came in. "A customer came in and I jumped up out of my chair...

An “exceptional” 196ct rough white diamond was recovered from Gem Diamonds Ltd’s majority-owned Letseng mine in Lesotho last month. On announcing its August 24 recovery, the company said: “this remarkable rough diamond is expected to achieve a substantial price per carat as preliminary examinations indicate that it is expected to produce top colour and top clarity polished diamonds”. The Letseng mine has produced three of the world’s 20 largest diamonds since Gem Diamonds acquired the asset in 2006. These include the 603ct Lesotho Promise (in August 2006) worth US$12.4 million, the 493ct Letseng Legacy (in September 2007) worth US$10.4 million,...

HIDDENITE, N.C., Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Experts said a 64-carat emerald discovered by a gem miner in North Carolina is the largest cut emerald ever found in the United States. Terry Ledford, 53, who dug up the gem in August 2009 in Hiddenite, said the rock -- 310 carats uncut -- "looked like an empty 7 Up bottle" when he discovered it, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer reported Friday. Ledford, who named the stone The Carolina Emperor, said he expects selling the emerald to be "completely life-changing." C.R. "Cap" Beesley, a New York gemologist, said Ledford is likely correct, as the...

You've heard the stories about gold prices being high (currently $868 an ounce). You've seen the ads to sell back your gold. You might have heard about gold parties where guests sell their gold. But what about diamonds? This week, Marketplace reports on the downward sales on diamond jewelry. It is of little surprise that sales of expensive jewelry are down, but why would the price of gold be high, but the price of diamonds be low? Gold is purchased as a way to protect against inflation. Even if your dollars buy you less, you can hold onto your gold....

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says it is holding an emerald estimated to be worth as much as $370 million while the stone's owner is determined. A department spokesman said the 850-pound gem will be in safekeeping until a federal judge determines who rightfully owns it. The "Bahia Emerald" was reported stolen in September from a secured vault in South El Monte, Calif. CNN reported the emerald has been at the center of a dispute between a California man who claimed ownership, a company with which he contracted to sell it and a...

Gems, al-Qaida and murder. Mystery over killing of Osama Bin Laden's friend · Saudi man's death was political, say his family· US secret service was monitoring his activities Nick Fielding Friday March 2, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Pallbearers carry the coffin of Muhammad Jamal Khalifa at Ivato airport in Antananarivo, in Madagascar. Photograph: Jasleen Sethi/Reuters When Muhammad Jamal Khalifa was found dead at a remote gemstone mine in south-eastern Madagascar at the end of January, local police quickly put the murder down to a business deal gone wrong. The Saudi businessman, 49, had had to call in local police to...

First of all, another waterfall with basalt columnar jointing in Iceland (not a surprise, but another stop for the dream-trip itinerary): Aldeyjarfoss From childhood, I was always fascinated by the semi-precious gemstone tiger-eye. What is it? "Tiger eye is quartz that contains oriented fibres of crocidolite that have been replaced by silica. Tiger eye is displaying chatoyancy (a vertical luminescent band like that of a cat's eye) . Tiger eye typically has lustrous alternating yellow or brown bands." There's a word to impress your friends -- chatoyancy. Nice examples: Though yellow-brown-gold is the most common, tiger-eye also occurs in other...

ET Gems: Black Diamonds Come from Outer Space Jeanna Bryner LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Mon Jan 8, 7:20 PM ET If you’re looking for a space-age way to propose marriage, a black-diamond ring might be the way to go. Long baffled by their origin, scientists now have evidence that these charcoal-colored gems formed in outer space. Stephen Haggerty and Jozsef Garai, both of Florida International University, analyzed the hydrogen in black diamond samples using infrared-detection instruments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and found that the quantity indicated that the mineral formed in a supernova explosion. Also called carbonado diamonds, meaning...

Diamonds are forever -- and now mom, dad and grandma can be, too -- thanks to a process that converts ashes from their cremated remains into gems. ``My wife and I had already decided on cremation when we die,'' said Scott Mason of the Adams-Mason Memorial Chapel in Akron. ``She never wants me to talk about business at home, but when I brought up the diamond option, it piqued her interest. ``We like the idea that when we die, we will be able to leave a lasting gift and a special memory to our family.'' The ashes-to-diamond cremation option was...

Confusion surrounded the recent whereabouts of the right-hand man of Saddam Hussein's oldest son Uday after Iraqi exile groups claimed he had defected last week after disappearing from a hotel in Beirut. The reports circulated for several days before Adeeb Shabaan emerged in Damascus last night and insisted that he was in Syria on an unspecified work trip and had not defected. Mr Shaaban, 47, is officially head of the Iraqi Photographic Association and a Baghdad newspaper editor, but in practice he has for the past five years run Uday's private office and acted as his press officer. He is...

Look at this:The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security holeSubmitted by Bev HarrisThu, 08/26/2004 Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time. By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date...

You'd be hard-pressed to find similarities between the Amazonian jungles of Brazil and the mountains of Afghanistan, but there are some. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, kicked off a trip to South America with a stop here in the capital of Amazonia. During a briefing from Brazilian Maj. Gen. Eduardo Dias da Costa Villa Boas, the commander of army forces in the region, Myers was struck by the similarity of tactics the coalition uses in Afghanistan and tactics the Brazilian government is using in this far-flung region of the country. The Brazilian...

<p>Gary Thrapp has studied countless diamonds in his 30-year career, but he never has seen one like this.</p> <p>"It looks flawless," says the Indianapolis jeweler.</p> <p>What he has in front of his jeweler's loupe is not the product of millions of years of nature, but a couple of hours in a laboratory.</p>