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It was a seemingly normal day as Charmaine Keevy walked her dog Georgie in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on April 3. The 63-year-old and her Dachshund mix usually take a different route, but for some reason, Keevy decided to walk elsewhere and their journey took them past a storm drain. All of a sudden, Georgie started barking as they walked by the drain. “I first thought it was a cat because he is scared of cats, but then when I heard the cries again, I realized it was a baby,” Keevy said. She quickly flagged down Cornie Viljoen’s car on...

On December 18, the Hubble Space Telescope slewed to Comet ISON’s expected position and found nothing down to the incredibly faint magnitude of 25. According to astronomer Hal Weaver, who planned the ISON search, that limit implies any remaining fragments would have to be smaller than about 500 feet (160 meters) in diameter.

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. -- A deputy said the strip search of a "belligerent" man after a traffic stop turned up crack cocaine in a plastic bag tucked between the man’s buttocks. The Spartanburg County deputy using speed radar on U.S. Highway 176 said that at about 3 a.m. Tuesday, a vehicle passed him going 51 mph in a 35 mph zone, according to a police report. The officer said that he pulled over the 2006 black Nissan Altima in the vicinity of Springfield Road. The driver was identified as 23-year-old Marvel Foster. He was the only person in the car,...

A Cairo teenager found a priceless statue of Pharaoh Akhenaton near a garbage bin after it was stolen from the Egyptian Museum during anti-regime protests, Egypt's antiquities chief said Thursday. The museum's world renowned collection was burgled and several artifacts went missing last month, including statues of King Tutankhamun and Pharaoh Akhenaton. A 16-year-old protester found the sculpture near a rubbish bin in Tahrir Square,

In Senate testimony, constitutional experts say the president has the right to appoint independent advisors as long as the distinction between practical and legal authority is rigorously maintained. Reporting from Washington - Five constitutional experts testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday that President Obama's extensive use of policy "czars" is legal -- as long as the officials do not overstep their authority.

Half of Californians are not particularly worried about the swine flu, and most people trust that the state has the resources to keep them healthy if an influenza outbreak occurs, according to a recent Field Poll survey released Monday. Despite repeated messages from federal and state officials that the swine flu - a form of influenza Type A, subtype H1N1 - could be a serious public health threat, 49 percent of survey respondents said they were not very concerned about the virus or not concerned at all. Bay Area respondents were especially worry-free - 54 percent said they were not...

One of the nation’s leading rental car companies recently ordered thousands of cars without side impact airbags in an attempt to save millions of dollars, then later sold the cars to buyers without the standard safety feature, according to a report from the Kansas City Star. According to the report, Enterprise Rent-A-Car ordered a fleet of Chevy Impalas without the side impact

(IsraelNN.com) United Nations investigators have found traces of uranium contamination at the site of an Israeli air strike in Syria, diplomats told Reuters and German media sources on Monday. The report is the first sign of a “smoking gun” proving that Syria was in fact building a secret nuclear reactor on the site, as Israel and the United States have insisted. The diplomats said the traces of uranium were first found in June. What has been found so far is not conclusive evidence of nuclear activity, but “raises questions,” they said. Officials in the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...

Don't get the idea that we've found every kind of astronomical object there is in the universe. In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers working on the Supernova Cosmology Project report finding a new kind of something that they cannot make any sense of. Now you don't see it, now you do. Something in Bootes truly in the middle of nowhere — apparently not even in a galaxy — brightened by at least 120 times during more than three months and then faded away. Its spectrum was like nothing ever seen, write the discoverers, with "five broad...

Contact: Michael Seldin mfseldin@ucdavis.edu 530-754-6016 University of California, Davis - Health System UC Davis study finds distinct genetic profiles Results promise to improve genetic studies of human disease (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) --An international team of scientists lead by researchers at UC Davis Health System has found that, with respect to genetics, modern Europeans fall into two groups: a Northern group and a Southern, or Mediterranean one. The findings, published in the Sept. 14 edition of Public Library of Science Genetics (www.plos.org), are important because they provide a method for scientists to take into account European ancestry when looking for genes involved...

(Sept. 19) - Adopted two days after her first birthday, Sarah Culberson grew up the youngest daughter in a close-knit family from Morgantown, W.Va. She was surrounded by love in her home, but always wondered about her roots. Searching to unlock the secrets of her past, at age 22, Culberson began searching for her birth parents. She quickly learned that her mom had died a dozen years earlier from cancer. Culberson was crushed. A few years later, a private investigator helped her locate her birth father, along with an unbelievable surprise. Culberson wasn't an average suburban girl -- she was...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2006 -- A group of American seamstresses is working to apply an old-fashioned skill -- sewing -- to help today’s wounded veterans. The nonprofit group “Sew Much Comfort” includes more than 2,000 people who sew specially made clothing for wounded servicemembers, who often find clothing off the rack doesn’t accommodate a variety of medical devices. Sew Much Comfort is a member of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, which highlights grassroots and corporate efforts to support U.S. troops and their families. Several of the groups set up tables at the end of the America Supports...

U.S. finds low-risk H5N1 bird flu strain in ducks Fri Sep 1, 2006 5:43pm ET By Charles Abbott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mallard ducks in Maryland have tested positive for bird flu, apparently a common, less pathogenic strain that poses no risk to humans, the U.S. Agriculture and Interior departments said on Friday. The H5N1 avian influenza virus was found in fecal samples from "resident wild" mallards in Queen Anne's County in Maryland, on the U.S. central Atlantic coast. "Testing has ruled out the possibility of this being the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that has spread through birds in Asia, Europe...

Gout forced Charles V abdication, study finds By Gene Emery BOSTON (Reuters) - Tests of a 500-year-old pinky finger confirm that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was debilitated by gout and the painful joints it produces, Spanish researchers reported on Wednesday. Jaume Ordi of the University of Barcelona and colleagues used a microscope to examine the tip of one of Charles' pinkie fingers, which was preserved separately from his body in a small red velvet box. After rehydrating and slicing the mummified fingertip, the Ordi team found telltale signs of gout, including the buildup of uric acid crystals. At the...

Scientists said Monday they have found the first widespread evidence of giant hydrocarbon lakes on the surface of Saturn's planet-size moon Titan. The cluster of hydrocarbon lakes was spotted near Titan's frigid north pole during a weekend flyby by the international Cassini spacecraft, which flew within 590 miles of the moon. Researchers counted about a dozen lakes ranging from 6 miles to 62 miles wide. Some lakes, which appeared as dark patches in radar images, were connected by channels while others had tributaries flowing into them. Several were dried up, but the ones that contained liquid were most likely a...

WASHINGTON - Sens. Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, both Pennsylvania Republicans, couldn't be further apart on the issue of embryonic stem cell research. Santorum, a conservative struggling to win re-election, is against it, equating the process to abortion. He says harvesting the master cells from embryos less than a week old and killing the embryos in the process "destroys human life." Specter, a cancer survivor, is leading the fight to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, taking on President Bush and siding with medical researchers who say it could someday produce cures for cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and...

Mars rover Spirit finds metallic meteorites 13:00 13 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee Allan Hills, one of the iron meteorites discovered by the Mars rover Spirit (right foreground), appears lighter and smoother than surrounding rocks (Image: NASA/JPL/Cornell) Two iron meteorites have been spotted by the Mars rover Spirit, mission scientists have announced. The finds are the first meteorites identified by Spirit, although its twin, Opportunity, discovered a similar space rock on the other side of the planet in January 2005. Spirit photographed the rocks in April 2006, just after it parked at Low Ridge Haven, a northern-tilting slope...

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2006 – Coalition forces confiscated weapons caches in five Afghanistan locations yesterday, and a U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber struck a terrorist stronghold May 17, military officials reported. Forces discovered seven mortar rounds, three rocket-propelled grenade rounds and three rockets near Bagram Air Base in Parwan province. A second cache consisting of 100 mortar rounds was discovered near Bagram after an Afghan citizen reported the cache to coalition forces. A coalition patrol sent to the location determined all the rounds were in working order. Afghan National Army soldiers took control of the rounds. "Recovering and disposing of...

AL ASAD, Iraq (May 17, 2006) -- Content in the solitude of a miniature half wood, half vinyl tent fortress and wrapped up in numerous '80s one hit wonders, a Marine deployed to Iraq finds peace in life working with lumber and power tools. Although riddled with an extensive workload, Lance Cpl. Thomas R. Hunter, a native of Tacoma, Wash., finds time to make it out to his 'Guru's' work shed to pass the time. This combat engineer by trade is augmented to Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, from his home unit, Marine Wing Support Squadron...

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2006 – Afghan National Police found an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan's Khowst province May 6, and coalition forces discovered a weapons cache and detained terror suspects in Kunar province the same day, military officials reported. The police discovered the IED in the middle of a main road in the Matun Valley near Paturri Village. The Afghan police secured the site, and a coalition explosive ordnance disposal team responded to the scene to secure the bomb. The team rendered the device harmless and destroyed it in place. In other news, a coalition patrol discovered a weapons cache...