Berkeley Lab Physicist Challenges Speed of Gravity Claim

Kopeikin's calculations appeared to show that the speed at which gravity was being propagated from Jupiter matched the speed of light to within 20 percent. The scientists announced their findings in January at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Samuel argues that Kopeikin erred when he based his calculations on Jupiter's position at the time the quasar's radio waves reached Earth rather than the position of Jupiter when the radio waves passed by that planet.
"The original idea behind the experiment was to use the effects of Jupiter's motion on quasar-signal time-delays to measure the propagation of gravity," he says.
"If gravity acts instantly, then the gravitational force would be determined by the position of Jupiter at the time when the quasar's signal passed by the planet. If, on the other hand, the speed of gravity were finite, then the strength of gravity would be determined by the position of Jupiter at a slightly earlier time so as to allow for the propagation of gravitational effects."

Cosmological Gamma-Ray Bursts and Hypernovae Conclusively Linked

A very bright burst of gamma-rays -- observed on March 29, 2003 by NASA's High Energy Transient Explorer, in a sky region within the constellation Leo -- show the gradual and clear emergence of a supernova spectrum of the most energetic class known, a "hypernova".
Hypernovae are caused by the explosion of a very heavy star - presumably over 25 times heavier than the Sun.
The measured expansion velocity (in excess of 30,000 km/sec) and the total energy released was exceptionally high, even within the elect hypernova class.

US clouds Iraqi civilian deaths

Whenever reporters asked about civilian deaths in the invasion of Iraq, US military officials reflexively plunged into a numbing prattle about the precision of our weaponry, precaution to avoid needless carnage, and promises to investigate possible mistakes.
At the time Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, the deputy director of operations for Central Command, said: ''There is an ongoing investigation..."
Two and a half months after the prattle, we now have the terrible truth. There never was an investigation. That fact was embedded (pun intended) in an Associated Press report this week that it has so far counted 3,240 Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion, including nearly 1,900 in Baghdad.
The AP quoted Central Command spokesman John Morgan confirming the nonexistence of an investigation.

Poll discovers many believe WMDs found in Iraq: "an experience of cognitive dissonance"

A third of the American public believes U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons. Such weapons have not been found in Iraq and were not used.
"It's a striking finding," said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,256 respondents.
"Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."

Likud and Islamicists make strange bedfellows

Hamas is considered one of Israel's greatest threats, but the Islamic terrorist organization found its beginnings in the misguided Israeli effort to encourage the rise of a religious alternative that would undermine the popularity of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat.
The strategy resulted in the birth of Hamas which rose from these Islamic roots. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a member of the government when the policy was developed in the late 1970s.
Although Sharon and his Likud (formerly Herut Party) government colleagues could not anticipate that the Islamic leaders they backed would eventually evolve into Hamas and suicde bombings, the two have benefited from each other's extremism over the years.

Oldest human fossils discovered

DISCOVERED IN ETHIOPIA'S fossil-rich Afar region, the skulls have clearly modern features -- a prominent forehead, flattened face and reduced brow -- that contrast with older humans' projecting, heavy-browed skulls.
They're not quite completely modern, but they're well on their way. They're close enough to call Homo sapiens,' said Tim White, a University of California, Berkeley paleontologist who was co-leader of the international team that excavated and analyzed the skulls.
Previously, the earliest fossils of Homo sapiens found in Africa had been dated to about 130,000 to 100,000 years, although they were less complete and sometimes poorly dated, White said.

Tiny ID chips track almost anything

The global infrastructure that MIT envisions is an Internet tool "that will make it possible for computers to identify any object anywhere in the world instantly. This network will not just provide the means to feed reliable, accurate, real-time information into existing business applications; it will usher in a whole new era of innovation and opportunity."

It's life Jim, but not as we know it

James Ferris at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, has performed experiments showing that RNA sequences of up to 50 nucleotides in length can be formed using a type of clay known as montmorillonite (a hydrated aluminosilicate) as both a template and catalyst for linking the nucleotides together. This is not the first time that clay has played a role in origin of life theories.
The idea was first popularised by the British chemist Graham Cairns-Smith, who suggested that clay may have been the first genetic system. His theory was that irregularities in clay sheets could have acted as catalytic surfaces, as well as providing a template on which new clay could be added. The clay would 'reproduce' by splitting in two, with the new sheet retaining many of the old sheet's irregularities.
At some stage, however, carbon compounds would have become involved, and eventually RNA strands capable of self-catalysis would have been produced, as James Ferris is currently showing experimentally.

We Used To Impeach Liars

Once upon a time, we impeached a sitting President for lying under oath about sexual trysts. No one died, no one had their legs or arms or face or genitals blown off because of the lies of a President who had been caught with his pants down. Today in America, we endure a sitting President who lied for months about the threat posed by a sovereign nation. That nation was invaded and attacked, and thousands died because of it. The aftereffects of this action will be felt for generations to come. The very democracy which gives us meaning as a country has been put in peril by these deeds. When the smoke cleared, every reason for that war was proven to be a lie.

A threadbare emperor tours the world

As Bush makes his triumphal procession from the favorite state of his "new Europe", Poland, to Russia's imperial capital, St Petersburg, to the Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Evian, France, and then to the Middle East to impart some momentum to a "roadmap" for peace between Arabs and Israelis, his entourage may yet hear mutterings of the Ides of March.
After all, the notion that the new world order most closely resembles Caesar's Pax Romana has become commonplace. History, so its advocates argue, is now witnessing a Pax Americana.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but ...

When all three major US newsweeklies - Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report - run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.
And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion - The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal - come out on the same days with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.

Why Saddam was doomed, WMDs or not


While the hawks in the Bush administration attempt to justify the logic behind a preemptive strike against Iraq as the likelihood of finding the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction grows increasingly remote, the truth behind the war is finally coming to light.
In his State of the Union address in January, President George W Bush said intelligence reports from the CIA and the FBI indicated that Saddam Hussein 'had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent', which put the United States in imminent danger of possibly being attacked sometime in the future.

Twins, 114, live and die together

Twin sisters born in Nagda village of Madhya Pradesh 114 years ago died together on Thursday. They have now been cremated side by side.
In a miracle of sorts, the women not only came into the world together. They also married on the same day in the same village, turned widows simultaneously and breathed their last on the same night at almost the same time.

US 'is an empire in denial'

The United States is a "danger to the world" because of its denial that it is a military and economic empire, according to Niall Ferguson, historian and new-found darling of the American right.
Prof Ferguson is author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, the book whose tie-in TV series controversially concentrated on the liberalising latter days of the British empire. He said that America's refusal to admit to "what it was" meant it risked never learning the lessons of British expansionism.

Cities crack down on rising homeless population

"If they catch you sleeping, they tell you you could go to jail," Whatley, 46, said in a decayed section of downtown best described as a makeshift urban-refugee camp where an estimated 4,000 people live in tents and boxes.

World's tallest tree is cooked alive

Dominating the lush Tasmanian rainforest, the tree known as El Grande, the largest hardwood plant on earth, was revered by environmentalists and tourists alike. Many came to gape in awe; it stood four times higher than Gateshead's Angel of the North.
Not any more. The 79-metre (260ft) tree has been accidentally 'cooked to death' after a fire started to provide woodchips raged out of control. 'This is akin to blasting at a Sydney demolition site and saying "Whoops, we got the Opera House as well",' said Bob Brown, a senator for Tasmania's Green party.

Tales of orgies and murder rock France

The claims involve white slavery, sado-masochism, rapes, sex with minors, drug dealing and appalling brutality - all in the heart of the government of one of France's most historic and most civilised cities. The southern city of Toulouse, known as la ville rose because of its sun-drenched Spanish-style buildings, has been scandalised by allegations that public officials protected a barbaric serial killer charged with murdering prostitutes recruited for orgies in the city's courthouse.
Though the accusations are unproved, Justice Minister Dominique Perben sacked Toulouse's prosecutor-general, Jean Volff, last week for covering up links between senior officials and the exploitation of vulnerable girls. Volff has denied any wrongdoing.
The allegations focus on the activities of Patrice Al?gre, a convicted murderer awaiting trial for five other killings. Two former prostitutes have claimed his activities were covered up. A former mayor and three judges have come forward to give their version of events. In a TV appearance, the right-wing former mayor of Toulouse, Dominique Baudis, now head of a broadcasting watchdog, claimed he was being framed by pro-pornography lobbies who wanted to smear him for opposing the showing of X-rated material on national TV.
The three judges have also denied any involvement. They will be questioned about 'acts of torture and barbaric acts, pimping and rapes of under-age girls'.

Rumsfeld trying to make foreign policy

President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other top officials are spending hours coping with frequent, unsolicited attempts by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to make foreign policy, according to senior administration officials who are directly involved.
The officials said Bush himself had to quash a Rumsfeld proposal last month to send Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to South Korea to announce that the United States was pulling American troops off the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.
The announcement, involving no prior consultation with allies, would have come on the eve of new South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's first official visit to Washington.
From his first days in office, Rumsfeld has inundated Washington with a blizzard of memos regarding foreign policy, not usually the responsibility of a defense secretary.
Said one frequent recipient of Rumsfeld's foreign policy ideas and advice: "The theme is control. He wants everyone to have to play on his field."

Halliburton agrees to settle accounting suits

Halliburton Co. said Friday it has agreed to pay $6 million to settle 20 shareholder lawsuits that accused it of using deceptive accounting practices while Vice President Dick Cheney led the company.
The lawsuits challenged the way that the oilfield-services company counted revenue from cost overruns and change orders on long-term fixed-price construction projects.

War on Iran has sequel potential

The May ratings sweeps are over, summer is almost here and more than half the programming on network TV is a rerun.
Because reruns don't pull in the eyeballs they used to, last week the U.S. networks announced some 20 new reality series. As previous summer hits, from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to American Idol, taught the network lemmings, it's an excellent season for fake truth.
Believe it or not, this has everything to do with the upcoming Operation Ayatollah They Had It Coming, or whatever the White House sloganeers will dub their war on Iran.
The next war is already getting heavy advance promotion.
CNN has a graphic going "Inside Iran,'' and Wolf Blitzer has been braying about how Iran may have weapons of mass destruction, could be supporting Hezbollah terrorists and, of course, has connections to ever-elusive Al Qaeda. Friday afternoon, he allowed one of the usual suspects from the Heritage Foundation — don't you love how these right-wing think tanks are named? — to call Iran the "poster child for