Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Tunisia Gets Religious TV Amid Islamist Concern

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's first religious television channel has begun broadcasting, with the blessing of a government keen to ensure growing religious devotion does not fuel the rise of militant Islam.

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Airliner Bomb Trial: Three Muslim Extremists Face Lengthy Jail Terms Over Plot

Three Islamic extremists are facing lengthy prison sentences after being found guilty of conspiring to kill hundreds of people in a terrorist bombing campaign.

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US Finds Clues In Bakery To Foil Iraqi Terror Plot

The U.S. military believes insurgents planned to tunnel underneath the compound's blast walls and blow up the headquarters building. With 250-300 Iraqis working in the governor's office and perhaps hundreds more there for business, casualties from such a blast could have been catastrophic.

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New Cholera Outbreak Hits Iraq

Iraq Palestinians head to Iceland

Guard: Al Qaeda Chief In Pakistan Killed

(CNN) -- The newly appointed al Qaeda chief in Pakistan, Abu Haris, has died of his wounds after a missile attack in northwestern Pakistan, according to a guard who was also wounded in the attack.

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U.S. Strike Hits Pakistan Village

Right at the Edge

Pakistan's Unlikely President

3 U.S. Troops Killed In Afghan Blast

(AP) A NATO bomb missed its target by more than 1.5 miles and hit a house Tuesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding 10 at a time of rising tension between the Afghan government and international troops over the use of airstrikes.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed three U.S. coalition soldiers and an Afghan contractor, the coalition said.

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Saturday, September 06, 2008

Large Hadron Collider Readies For World's Biggest Experiment

IT is the most ambitious and expensive civilian science experiment in history, using the biggest machine yet built. It has sparked alarmist fears that it might create a black hole that will tear the Earth apart, and it has triggered two last-minute legal attempts to stop it.

And next Wednesday, after almost two decades of planning and construction, the project in question will finally get under way.

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Collider Triggers End-of-World Fears

Large Hadron Collider Switch-on Fears Are Completely Unfounded, Report Finds

Earlier:

The Large Hadron Rap

European Probe Zooms Past Asteroid

DARMSTADT, Germany - The Rosetta deep-space probe successfully passed close to an asteroid 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) from Earth, the European Space Agency said Friday night.

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Rosetta Observes Asteroid At Close Quarters

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New partial rings discovered around Saturn

Trichoplax Genome Sequenced: 'Rosetta Stone' For Understanding Evolution

ScienceDaily -- Yale molecular and evolutionary biologists in collaboration with Department of Energy scientists produced the full genome sequence of Trichoplax, one of nature's most primitive multicellular organisms, providing a new insight into the evolution of all higher animals.

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Yale Researchers Find 'Junk DNA' May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes In Human Thumb And Foot

Bettany And Connelly To Star In Creation

Real-life husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly have signed on to play a married couple in Creation, Jon Amiel's project about the life of Charles Darwin, says The Hollywood Reporter.

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Wash. Rampage Suspect In Court: 'I Kill For God'

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) "I kill for God. I listen to God," a man accused of a northwest Washington shooting rampage said Friday at a hearing where six charges of first-degree murder and four of first-degree assault were filed against him.

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Vicar Admits Child Porn Charges

A vicar is behind bars after he admitted possessing more than 55,000 indecent pictures of children.

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Deadly Iraq Bombings Target Market, Politician

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least six people were killed and 50 wounded in a suicide car bombing Saturday at an outdoor market in northern Iraq, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

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Suicide Bomb In Northwest Pakistan Kills 25

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suicide car bomb targeting a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan killed at least 25 people, including 10 police officers, and wounded 50 others, a Peshawar police spokesman said Saturday.

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Ask An Atheist!

Atheism sets its roots from the pre-Socratics. The etymology of atheist can be traced to Ancient Greek from the word atheos meaning without (a-) god (theos).

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Optical Computing Closer To Reality

ScienceDaily -- Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have theorized a way to increase the speed of pulses of light that bound across chains of tiny metal particles to well past the speed of light by altering the particle shape.

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Physicists Discover 'Doubly Strange' Particle

A Fine-tooth Comb To Measure The Accelerating Universe

Do 68 Molecules Hold The Key To Understanding Disease?

ScienceDaily -- Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer.

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Cell Division Study Resolves 50-year-old Debate

Americans United Hails Florida Supreme Court Ruling Removing Deceptive Amendments From Florida Ballot

Americans United for Separation of Church and State hailed today's ruling by the Florida Supreme Court removing two ballot amendments that would have erased religious freedom safeguards and harmed public schools in the state.

The lawsuit, Ford v. Browning, filed by Americans United and other civil liberties and education groups in June, asserted the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission exceeded its authority by approving both ballot amendments and that one of the amendments is worded in a misleading manner.

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Spain Mulls Easing Strict Abortion Law

(AP) Spain has taken a first step toward amending its restrictive law on abortion, a government minister said Thursday, moving to fill one of the last big gaps in a drive for sweeping social change in this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

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Iran Bill To Ease Polygamy Angers Women

(AP) A bill that would allow Iranian men to take additional wives without the consent of their first wife has angered women and the country's top justice official, who say it would undermine women's rights and could be a government attempt to more deeply enshrine its strict Islamic interpretation into law.

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U.S. Troops Crossed Border, Pakistan Says

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Helicopters carried U.S. and Afghan commandos many miles into Pakistan on Wednesday to stage the first U.S. ground attack against a Taliban target inside the country, Pakistani officials said. At least 20 local people died in the raid, according to the officials.

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Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in 'American' attack on its soil

Pakistan, Afghanistan deplore U.S. attacks

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Pakistan PM escapes assassination attempt