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Winter air temperatures over Antarctica have risen by more than 2C in the last 30 years, a new study shows.Research published in the US journal Science says the warming is seen across the whole of the continent and much of the Southern Ocean. The study questions the reliability of current climate models that fail to simulate the temperature rise. In addition, the scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) say the cause of the warming is not clear. It could be linked to increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or natural variations in Antarctica's climate system. Scientists are keen...

Look! It's a Bird, It's a Plane…It's an LG Cell Phone? LG Electronics announced Thursday its plans for a "2006 European Balloon Tour" for its major business partners in Europe as part of its marketing aimed at the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) market in Europe. A large LG mobile phone-shaped air balloon floats along as part of the LG Electronics' "2006 European Balloon Tour" in Chateau d'Oex in Switzerland on Thursday./Yonhap LG Electronics will invite its major European business partners from Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland and entice them with an array of perks including a catered...

Below is what I just sent via email to the editors of the Washington ComPost. And I ask the same question to everyone in FR land - why should I report anything when no one seems to take it serious?

Indian millionaire Vijaypat Singhania today broke the world record for the highest flight in a hot air balloon, reaching the fringes of space, his son claimed. Singhania, 67, hit 21,000 metres a little more than two hours after taking off in his 40-tonne balloon, and has started his descent, his son Gautam said. "We have the world record at 69,000 feet" (21,000 metres), said Gautam Singhania. "We're bringing him down now." The previous world record was 19,811 metres, set by Sweden's Per Lindstrand in Plano, Texas, in June 1988. Singhania lifted off from downtown Bombay at 6.45am (1215 AEDT) enclosed...

November 24, 2005 2 Sisters Injured as Parade Balloon Crashes Into Lamppost By SEWELL CHAN A giant balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, swinging out of control in sudden bursts of wind, struck a light pole in the heart of Times Square today, injuring two spectators and scaring scores of others in an eerie replay of a 1997 accident that had prompted pledges of safety reforms. The M&M balloon, a 515-pound plastic contraption filled with 13,335 cubic feet of helium, began to list erratically as it entered Times Square around 11:40 a.m., witnesses said, before it crashed into a...

Time is running out for Mousie the mouse who, tied to two birthday balloons, was last seen soaring helplessly over the Berkeley hills toward points east. Mousie has been gone for a week now. Mousie's owner, an 11-year-old girl who tied him to the balloons in the first place, is as distraught as an 11-year-old girl can be. "It's a tragedy,'' said Caroline Nielsen. "I feel terrible. It should never have happened. Mousie is a member of the family.''

A nanocell that can burrow into a tumour, cut off its blood supply and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins has been developed.The double-action therapy, which comes packed in a tiny double chamber, leaves healthy cells unscathed. It has proved safe and effective against melanoma and a form of lung cancer in mice. Details of the technique, developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are published in Nature. The technique combines two methods of combating cancer - poisoning tumour cells and cutting off the blood supply to the tumour. Previously, the dual strategy has proved difficult as chemotherapy could...

Put your caption here!!!! (Fax 617-779-3467 or e-mail howiecarr@wrko.com your caption ideas!)

Men Arrested For Landing 'Go Kerry' Balloon In Central Park POSTED: 3:25 pm EDT October 29, 2004 UPDATED: 3:26 pm EDT October 29, 2004 NEW YORK -- Two men were taken into custody on Friday after illegally landing a hot-air in Central Park, police said. ELECTION 2004 Interactives Battleground States Balance Of Power 2004 Debates Read Battleground State Poll Info., Issues Meet The Candidates The Money | The Issues Discuss Election The balloon was emblazoned with a "Go Kerry" sign, an apparent reference to presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry. It was unclear if it had any connection to the campaign....

There is a hot air balloon emblazoned with: "Kerry/ Edwards Honest Policy= Fewer Enemies" It is flying over the Verrazano bridge right now. Any visuals or photos would be appreciated. Is this balloon flying where it is supposed to?

Was it "The Curse of the Foiled Balloon Drop"? It didn't seem all that significant, at the Democratic convention a month ago, when the balloons didn't rain down as planned on presidential nominee John Kerry. But it probably didn't seem all that important back in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter suffered a similar balloon-drop malfunction before facing off against Ronald Reagan. But now that former frontrunner Kerry is badly trailing President Bush — whose convention balloon-drop was a triumph — we're left with the sad image of those thousands of balloons trapped in the ceiling of Boston's FleetCenter. A looming...

August 31, 2004 -- Secret Service agents last night hauled away a man who got too close to Vice President Dick Cheney in a VIP area at Madison Square Garden. Police sources said the 21-year-old man, who had a pass allowing him into the Garden, had either a knife or some kind of tool on him when he was nabbed as he tried to flee.

Ten years after the U.S. Air Force closed its books on the claim that a UFO crashed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947, a top Democratic Party figure wants to reopen the investigation into the cosmic legend. Despite denials by federal officials, many UFO buffs cherish the notion that in early summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in rural Roswell, scattering alien bodies and saucer debris across the terrain. Now Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who chaired the recent Democratic convention in Boston, says in his foreword to a new book that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never...

Last week, Juliet Eilperin reported in the Washington Post(1) that "House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would like to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the current tax system with either a flat tax, a national sales tax or a value-added tax." As reported, Hastert suggests that a new tax system would increase productivity and "double the economy" over the next 15 years. "All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won't seem so daunting anymore," The Post reports Hastert wrote. "People ask me if I'm really calling for the elimination...

Welcome to Balloon World Thanks to an audio feed snafu on CNN at the end of Sen. Kerry's speech, in which the Democrat’s convention producer could be heard giving frantic directions to underlings, in order to assure that the American public had no doubts about the important “message” Democrats wanted to communicate to us, the pithy sound bite that will forever immortalize the 2004 Democrat National Convention/Presidential campaign rang out like the “shot heard ‘round the world” from a Boston suburb some 229 years earlier: “More balloons..... MORE BALLOONS!! MORE BALLOONS, DAMMIT!!! WHERE THE F*CK ARE THE BALLOONS?” While arguably...

Next month, a V-shaped airship bigger than a baseball diamond is due to rise from the West Texas desert to an altitude of 100,000 feet (30.5 kilometers), navigate by remote control, linger above the clouds and drift back to earth. For the U.S. Air Force, the feat will demonstrate the feasibility of a new kind of semi-autonomous craft that could hover in "near space," to do reconnaissance and relay battlefield communications.

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A U.S. brain surgeon said on Friday he had removed a normally unreachable brain tumor in a child by using a tiny, inflatable balloon in a new technique that could save thousands of lives.</p> <p>The team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center said the 9-year-old patient was doing well.</p>

Remote-controlled balloons carrying armies of mini-robots could be filling Mars' skies if a project by Californian scientists takes off. Nasa-funded researchers are developing the StratoSail, a balloon with a wing, that can be accurately steered through Mars' winds for months. Like weather balloons, the StratoSail could carry cameras and gadgets to spot potential areas for human missions. The hi-tech devices could also launch robotic probes to monitor the surface. "The ability of long-duration guided planetary balloons to alter their flight path in the atmosphere, to deploy surface probes, and to carry out detailed reconnaissance make them a very powerful tool...

Beijing bursts balloon plot Reuters in Beijing Thursday January 1, 2004 The Guardian (UK) An American and a New Zealander were jailed in Beijing yesterday on charges of plotting to explode balloons by remote control above Tiananmen Square and scatter pro-democracy leaflets. The New Zealander, Sun Gang, 44, who was born in China, was sentenced to five years and the American, Lan Yupeng, born in Taiwan, to three-and-a-half-years, the Xinhua news agency said. Both were fined unspecified amounts and ordered to be deported, it added, but did not say whether this would be immediately or after serving their sentences. The...

Just when you think you've seen the silliest of summonses, here comes another bang-up ticket. Police wrote Queens hospital worker George Pulido a summons for making unreasonable noise because his son Christopher's Winnie the Pooh balloon popped on the street. "I couldn't believe it," Pulido, 29, of Queens Village, said last night. "It was just a normal-size party balloon and it was an accident. You'd make more noise closing the door of a police car." Pulido's trip into the ticket twilight zone began innocently the afternoon of Nov. 22 when he took his wife, Christina, 27, an accountant, and sons,...