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'Major Discovery' Primed To Unleash Solar Revolution
ScienceDaily -- In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy. Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon." --snip-- Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year. James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale. "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem." --snip-- Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past. More...
NASA Confirms Water On Mars
Antikythera Mechanism: Scientists Crack Secrets Of 2,000-Year-Old Astronomical Computer
ScienceDaily -- Cardiff University experts have led an international team in unravelling the secrets of a 2,000-year-old computer which could transform the way we think about the ancient world. --snip-- The findings suggest that Greek technology was far more advanced than previously thought. No other civilisation is known to have created anything as complicated for another thousand years. --snip-- Professor Edmunds said: "It does raise the question what else were they making at the time. In term of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." More...
Atheists To Have 'Coming Out Party'
American atheists are holding a "Coming Out Party" in Westerville, Ohio, this Saturday. More...
Workers' Religious Freedom Vs. Patients' Rights
A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients' rights. More...
Preacher Killed Wife, Stuffed Body In Freezer
Preacher is charged with murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest. More...
Priest Stole From Church
UK -- A ROMAN Catholic priest was jailed today after admitting stealing more than 90,000 left to his church in a will. More...
Condemn Homosexuality, Vatican Official Tells Lambeth Conference
Homosexuality is a disordered behaviour that must be condemned, a Vatican official said yesterday. More...
Surge In Attacks On Jewish Students
UK -- Anti-Semitic incidents rose from 26 in the first half of 2007 to 49 in the same period this year, according to the study. More than half of the offences took place on campus. More...
Saudi Religious Police Ban Pet Cats And Dogs
Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned selling cats and dogs or exercising them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said. More...See also: Saudi capital bans pet walking, buying
Danish Muslim Groups To Appeal To Supreme Court Over Cartoons
Copenhagen - Seven Danish Muslim associations were planning to appeal to Denmark's highest court over the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked violent protests in 2006, reports said Thursday. A spokesman for the Islamic Society told Danish media that a lawyer was working on the appeal to the Supreme Court. More...
Hassan Tabbakh Found Guilty Of Making Homemade Bombs
UK -- A former chemistry student who made bombs in his home was jailed for seven years today under the Terrorism Act. More...
E-mail Warns Of More Bombs In India
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The Japanese Embassy has received an e-mail warning of a bomb in a New Delhi market, and has warned its citizens to stay away from crowded public places, a notice posted on its Web site said Thursday. More...
Taliban Warn 'Un-Islamic' Businesses Of Dire Consequences
LAHORE: Tehreek-e-Islami Taliban Pakistan (TITP) has distributed a fifteen-days notice to several "un-Islamic" businesses in Kot Addu to shut down or face dire consequences. The TTIP wrote threatening letters to owners of CDs shops, Internet cafes and cable service providers urging them to close down their activities. Similarly, the group warned that women must wear hijab to ensure their safety. --snip-- The second paragraph said that within five days of the receipt of the letter, every woman not wearing Hijab would be disfigured with acid. More...
Afghan Clashes Kill 30 Taliban Militants
Giant Lake Confirmed On Saturn's Moon Titan
Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Thinking About Morality
Cognitive science and moral philosophy might seem like strange bedfellows, but in the past decade they have become partners. In a recent issue of Cognition, the Harvard University psychologist Joshua Greene and colleagues extend this trend. Their experiment utilizes conventional behavioral methods, but it was designed to test a hypothesis stemming from previous fMRI investigations into the neural bases of moral judgments. More...
Cheesus! Jesus Spotted In A Cheeto
A New Attack On Birth Control
The proposed rule, while claiming to protect the rights of nurses and doctors, would interfere with patients' rights. A woman seeking treatment could be denied birth control and not even be aware that the service was available - only denied to her because of the unexpressed personal beliefs of the practitioner. More...
Turkey Showdown Averted, For Now
Turkey's popularly elected, Islamist-rooted government survived to rule another day, after the country's top court narrowly ruled today against banning the ruling party. In a narrow 6-5 opinion, Constitutional Court judges held that there was insufficient evidence backing the charge that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was undermining Turkey's secular democracy and seeking to turn the country into an Islamic state. More...
Violence In Iraq Takes On New Face
Curfew Imposed Amid Fighting In Pakistan Valley
(AP) Pakistan imposed a round-the-clock curfew in a restive mountain valley in the northwest on Wednesday as the army claimed more than 20 militants died in clashes with security forces. More...See also: CIA Details Pakistan's Ties To Militants
Afghanistan Surpasses Iraq As Deadliest Spot For U.S. Troops
BAGHDAD -- Nearly twice as many U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq so far this month, marking the lowest death toll of any month since the U.S. invaded Iraq and putting July on course to be the first month in which the American military suffered more casualties in Afghanistan than in Iraq. More...See also: Taliban commander: Afghan officials are helping kill Americans
Palestinian Factions Trample Rights, Watchdog Group Says
(CNN) -- Infighting between the two main Palestinian factions has led to arbitrary arrests, torture and abuse of detainees by both sides, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday. More...
Church Exorcism Protected By First Amendment
A woman who claims she was injured during an exorcism performed by a Texas church group is reportedly planning to take her case to the US Supreme Court after state judges ruled the actions of the church were protected by the First Amendment. More...
Council Ban On Atheist Websites
UK -- A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism. Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was "discriminatory" and they would consider legal action. More...
Parish Priest Jailed For Sex Abuse
India: Police Defuse 18 Bombs At Market
AHMEDABAD, India (AP) -- Police in India have defused 18 bombs found Tuesday near the main diamond markets in the city of Surat. More...
Will Peace Hold In Sadr City?
Abbas seems friendly enough, and laughs easily. As his car breezes through Iraqi army checkpoints at the entrance to Baghdad's notorious and sprawling Sadr City slum, he talks about killing Sunnis. "We caught Takfiris [members of a fundamentalist Sunni Islamist sect] who were [working] with the Americans. We didn't want to kill them, but the government was too weak to do anything at the time. So we killed them all and put them in a big grave." More...
Diamonds May Hold Clue To Origins Of Life
One of the greatest mysteries in science is how life began. Now one group of researchers says diamonds may have been life's best friend. More...
Space Plane's Mothership Makes A Splash
MOJAVE, Calif. - British billionaire Richard Branson showed off a key piece of his fledgling commercial space program Monday, unveiling a carrier aircraft designed to launch a passenger-carrying spaceship. More...
Animal Threesomes, Females Who Eat Their Mates
Did you ever wonder what a bonobo's orgasm sounds like? Or how barnacles reproduce? Did you know that over 300 living species display homosexual behavior? More...
2 Killed In Tennessee Church Shooting; Suspect Charged
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- A shotgun-wielding man opened fire at a Unitarian church during a children's play Sunday morning, killing two adults and wounding seven others before being overpowered by congregants, officials said. --snip-- The church's minister, Chris Buice, said he was on vacation when the shooting happened but rushed back when he heard what occurred. Sunday afternoon -- after McKendry's death but before Kraeger's -- he spoke briefly to reporters. "Please pray for this congregation, because we are grieving the loss of a wonderful man," Buice said as he choked back tears. More...See also: Police: Church Shooting Suspect Angry Over Liberals, Job Hunt
Five Members Of Polygamous Sect Surrender
(CNN) -- Five members of a polygamous sect who were indicted alongside leader Warren Jeffs last week turned themselves in Monday to face sexual assault charges, Texas authorities said. More...
Groups To Pray For Lower Prices At Gas Stations
(AP) Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis. More...
Church Delay May Have Wasted $2.4M
THE Catholic Church waited so long to tell the State Government its World Youth Day pilgrim numbers had changed that the Government was forced to install far more showers and smoke alarms than needed in schools intended to house them. More...
Turkish Court To Deliberate Whether Ruling Party Should Be Banned For Islamic Principles
Malaysian Islamic Court Sends 4 Muslim Men To Jail For Cross-Dressing
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: An official says an Islamic court in northern Malaysia has jailed four Muslim men for taking part in a transvestite beauty pageant. More...
Beijing Jittery In Wake Of Olympic Threats
(AP) Just over a week before the Beijing Olympics, a militant Islamic group's claims of responsibility for bombings in China have fueled unease about security. More...
India: Police Raid Homes After Bombings
(CNN) -- Anti-terror squads have carried out raids in the search for leads into the deadly synchronized bombings that killed at least 49 people in western India over the weekend, according to reports. More...
Power Rising, Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiites
Four Suicide Bombers Kill Scores In Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four female suicide bombers and a gunman killed at least 70 people and wounded almost 300 others during a string of attacks in central Baghdad and Kirkuk on Monday, officials said. More...
George Carlin Laughs In The Face Of Death
His final album comes out Tuesday, may be comic's best ever. More...
A Third Of Muslim Students Back Killings
Catholic Groups Pray Against Passage Of Population Bill
MANILA, Philippines -- Dubbed the "Rally for Life," the event was a nationwide campaign opposing the House bill filed by Representative Edcel Lagman and co-authored by Janet Garin legalizing the use of contraceptives in family planning, in an effort to curb population growth in the Philippines. More...See also: The Pope vs. the Pill
Homosexual Bishops Face Anglican Church Ban
Homosexual clergy will be barred from becoming bishops in the Anglican communion under controversial new plans backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. More...
First Test Of Decency Laws As Gallery Faces Court Over 'Obscene' Statue Of Christ
A leading art gallery is being taken to court over claims that it outraged public decency by displaying a statue depicting Christ with an erection. More...
Police Save Man From Death By Angry Mob
KARACHI: Residents of Ittehad Town tried to kill the man for blasphemy within the jurisdiction of Baldia Police Station. More...
Muslim Group Declares War On Olympics
A CHINESE terrorist organisation has warned it will create havoc at next month's Olympics and has claimed responsibility for a deadly Shanghai bus bombing in May. A group monitoring terrorism threats on the internet said Commander Seyfullah of the Turkestan Islamic Party claimed responsibility for several attacks in China less than a fortnight out from the Olympics. More...
India: The Terrorists Within
A day after major Indian cities were placed on high alert following blasts in the IT city of Bangalore, as many as 17 blasts ripped through Ahmedabad, capital of the affluent western Indian state of Gujarat. Some 30 people were killed, some at hospitals where bombs were timed to go off when the injured from other blasts were being brought in.... Investigators pointed fingers at the usual Islamist suspects: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul Jihadi Islami (HUJI) and the indigenous Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). But even as the police searched for clues, the Ahmedabad attacks were owned up by a group calling itself the "Indian Mujahideen." More...See also: India on alert as death toll from bombs risesIndia Detains 30 Over Mass BombingsGroup Takes Credit For India Blasts
Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility For Yemen Attack
(CNN) -- Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen has claimed responsibility for Friday's suicide bombing attack on a building housing Yemeni security forces. More...
Seven Pilgrims Killed In Attack In Iraq
Dozens Of Militants Killed In Afghanistan Clash
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Some Afghan police officers and dozens of insurgents were killed in a battle in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, the NATO-led alliance said. More...
Faith-Based Day Cares Face Pre-K Challenges
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Jane Rothman wants her pre-kindergarten students to learn about baby Jesus around Christmas and hear the resurrection story at Easter. Children pray at snack time and in other spots throughout the day at Charleston Baptist Temple. More...
Vatican Rejects Condom Stance Criticism
The Vatican has hit back at allegations made by dissident Catholic groups calling on Pope Benedict XVI to reverse what they said was the Catholic church's "catastrophic" stance on contraception. More...
Anglican Version Of The 'Inquisition' Proposed To Avoid Future Schism
An Anglican version of the Roman Catholic church's "inquisition" is proposed today in a document seen by The Times. More...
Death Threat For Editor Najam Sethi Over Islamic Cartoon
A newspaper editor has received death threats from militant groups for publishing a cartoon of a radical woman Islamic leader encouraging her pupils to wage holy war. More...
U.S.: Iraq Inmates Imposed Islamic Justice
(AP) For years, extremist Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody held self-styled Islamic courts and tortured or killed inmates who refused to join them, military officials said, disclosing new details about the use of American prisons to recruit for the insurgency. More...
Dozens Killed, Wounded In India Blasts
Hamas Arrests Fatah Rivals After Gaza Blasts
GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Hamas security forces arrested more than 100 rival Fatah members in Gaza Friday night and Saturday while searching for suspects in bombings that killed five Hamas militants and a child, a security source said. More...
Six Die In Lebanon Fighting
BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Six people have been killed and 52 wounded since Thursday night in battles between pro- and anti-government forces in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, security forces told CNN. More...
Researchers Discover New States Of Electrons That Behave Like Light
ScienceDaily -- A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light. More...See also: Tracking Down Origin Of Matter And Antimatter
Texas Fiction Science
There's nothing the evil overlords of the fictional future like more than a nice, healthy round of brainwashing. Whether it's George Orwell's totalitarian government of Oceania thwarting rebellious citizens in 1984, the "conditioning" of children in Brave New World, or the large-scale human reprogramming in The Matrix, mind control is all the rage for governments looking to cultivate a herd of submissive subjects. And it's so simple, too! All that's necessary are a few moldable minds and a strict party line. But here's a bit of nonfiction: The Texas State Board of Education has just those two things. Moldable minds, in the form of Texas schoolchildren, and a party line that favors teaching the "weaknesses" of biological evolutionary theory and, by implication, the strengths of the latest pseudo-scholarly variation on creationism: "intelligent design." Last fall, in the latest episode of that eternal Texas struggle, the Texas Education Agency, which is regulated by the SBOE, fired its science director for distributing information about a pro-evolution seminar. And now, the SBOE is beginning hearings on updated science curricula that teaches the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary theory. More...
Another Courtroom Victory For Religious Colleges
A federal appeals court ruling that a Christian university in Colorado can receive state scholarship money is the latest in a string of legal victories for religious schools seeking public dollars. More...
Turning Up The Heat On Polygamists
The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) had basked in victory after the Texas Supreme Court ordered the return of the children taken from its ranch in Eldorado in April. But the state's attorney general Greg Abbott pledged to prosecute FLDS members to the full extent of the law. And this week, after going through evidence taken from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, Abbott indicted Warren Jeffs - the "Prophet" of the polygamists - along with four of his followers on charges of first-degree felony sexual assault of a minor. (The four men were not named, and law-enforcement officials are still seeking their arrest.) Evidence gathered during the raid included two photographs of young girls - one age 12, the other 13 - sitting in Jeffs' lap and embracing him, and kissing him in one photo. One was marked "first anniversary," the other as a marriage photo. More...
Catholics To Pope: Lift Birth Control Ban
Tanzanian Witchdoctors Killing Albinos For Good Luck
At least 173 people, including witchdoctors and organised gangs, have been arrested for involvement in the killings, according to the Daily News, a newspaper based in Dar es Salaam. More...
Pakistan Court Rules Conversion Of Kidnapped Christian Girls Is Legal
Bangalore, India (ENI). A Christian father in Pakistan is trying without success through the courts to gain custody of his two pre-teen daughters who were kidnapped and made to convert to Islam. On 12 July, a judge in Pakistan's Punjab province ignored pleas that Saba Younis, aged 12, and her 10 year old sister, Anila Younis, who went missing on 26 June from the small town of Chowk Munda, had been kidnapped while on their way to their uncle's residence and ruled that their conversion to Islam was legal. More...See also: The moment of truthIn death's shadow
Taliban Tightens Grip Near Northern Pakistan Border
UK, Danish Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan
At Least 4 Dead In Lebanon Clashes
BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- At least four people were killed in a gunbattle between opposing forces in northern Lebanon Friday, a senior security source told CNN. Gunmen loyal to the Shiite Hezbollah-led opposition fought Sunni supporters from the Western-backed parliamentary majority in the port city of Tripoli. More...
Six Die In Gaza City Explosions
GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Six people, including two Hamas militants, were killed Friday in separate Gaza City explosions, Shiva Hospital spokesman said. More...
8 Die In Iraq In Suicide Bombing, Apparently By Woman
BAGHDAD -- At first, a car bomb seemed the only explanation for the huge blast on Thursday on one of Baquba's main thoroughfares that killed a pro-American Sunni militia leader, an Iraqi police captain, a local politician, and five other people. More...See also: Baghdad Muralists Resist Push For Sectarian Themes
Deadly Bomb Blasts Rock Bangalore
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- One person was killed and several others were injured on Friday in a string of bomb blasts in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police said. More...
Car Bomb Kills At Least 4 In Yemen
(CNN) -- A car bomb exploded at a building housing security forces in Yemen on Thursday night, killing at least four people, authorities said. More...
Largest Sample Of Very Distant Galaxies Ever Seen Provide New Insights Into Early Universe
 ScienceDaily -- New Hubble Space Telescope observations of six spectacular galaxy clusters acting as gravitational lenses have given significant insights into the early stages of the Universe. Scientists have found the largest sample of very distant galaxies seen to date: ten promising candidates thought to lie at a distance of 13 billion light-years (~redshift 7.5). More...See also: NASA spacecraft reveal cause of auroras
Army Base Cannot Coerce Soldier Trainees To Attend Church Services, Says Americans United
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate an Army base's practice of coercing soldiers to attend church services during their training. Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri offers "Free Day Away" as one of only two opportunities for soldiers to leave the base during eight weeks of vigorous Army training. (The other day is the day before graduation, which can be spent with parents and guests.) During "Free Day Away," trainees are picked up by a bus sent from the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lebanon, Mo., to participate in a day full of recreational activities, followed by dinner and a required church service. Trainees are given the impression that the event is sponsored by the Army and that they must attend. If they do not attend, they have to remain on the base and continue with training, while those who attend the event have a break for the day. More...
Senator: Polygamous Sects Are 'Form Of Organized Crime'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Polygamous sects that have spread throughout the United States and beyond are "a form of organized crime," largely unchecked by law enforcement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday. More...
Nun Asks To Take Back Guilty Plea
OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha nun who was sentenced to prison for theft said this week that she wants to change her guilty plea. More...
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