Weird Links

The Russian space agency [has] accused its old rival Nasa of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration. The claim comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the United States is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming.

While the Americans have either been coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar programme is the industrial extraction of helium-3.

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap. Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period. Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

Hurricane forecaster William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, claims that ocean circulation patterns are behind a decades-long [global] warming cycle. He has argued previously that the strength of these patterns can affect how much cold water rises to the surface, which in turn affects how warm or cold the atmosphere is.

Gray complained that politics and research into global warming have created "almost an industry" that has unfairly frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices.

She's a former Miss UK who likes dating footballers and going on reality TV gameshows. But don't they all? Different fuking world, my friends.

This is fuking scandalous if it's true:

The government of Ecuador will wait up to one year to see if the international community offers to compensate the country for not developing a major oil field in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, Energy Minister Alberto Acosta says. The area of lush, primary rainforest shelters a unique diversity of animals and plants.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and his government say that if the international community can compensate the country with half of the forecasted lost revenues, Ecuador will leave the oil in Yasuni National Park undisturbed to protect the park's biodiversity and indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

The House on Wednesday narrowly approved a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, setting the stage for the first veto fight between President Bush and majority Democrats.

The Senate is expected on Thursday to approve identical legislation [edit: they did, see below for link], which provides more than $95 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30, with the money conditioned on the administration’s willingness to accept a timetable for withdrawal and new benchmarks to assess the progress of the Iraqi government.

Failure to prepare may mean mankind will have to dig in and fight with improvised weapons and hit-and-run tactics, much the same way Islamic extremists have battled the U.S. military in Iraq.

"You'd have to create an insurgency, a mujahideen-type resistance, The insurgents know how to win this war against us. It also tells us that if we were attacked by aliens, this is our best defense."

The research team used the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) 3.6-m telescope to discover the super-Earth, which has a mass about five times that of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet.

[The authors] have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid.

Women with a lifetime history of migraine have less cognitive decline over time than women without migraine. It's possible, researchers suggest, that antimigraine medications, as well as diet and behavior changes, play a role in the apparent protective effect of migraine on cognition.

A pill that can correct a wide range of faulty genes which cause crippling illnesses should be available within three years, promising a revolution in the treatment of thousands of conditions.

As well as offering hope of a first effective treatment for two conditions that are at present incurable, the drug [called PTC124] should also work against more than 1,800 other genetic illnesses, [because it] targets a particular type of mutation that can cause very different symptoms according to the gene that is disrupted.