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The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days. The FBI denied Rossini...

This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. Newswise — A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed...

Supporters of the anti-illegal immigration measure adopted in Prince William County last week have argued that its most important purpose is to send a powerful signal to the county's mostly Latino illegal immigrants that they are no longer welcome. It appears the message has already been received: Terrified that new policies will lead to mass deportations, illegal immigrants and the many legal immigrant relatives and friends who live with them have been moving out of Prince William ever since July, when county supervisors first approved the plan's outline.

Illegal immigrant ice cream vendors might be spreading leprosy in Manassas. Prince William County has been infiltrated by "unassimilated marxist radicals." Manassas Park police covered up the predations of five Hispanic men who gang-raped a woman in the street in June. These claims, among others, have been made in recent months by Greg Letiecq, whose popular blog, Black Velvet Bruce Li, offers "Blog-Fu for Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park politics" -- often making up in passion what it lacks in proof.

The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II. Sixty years after the event, NOVA follows a team of archeologists as they search the site of Stalag Luft III for new evidence of the clandestine operation, which involved 600 prisoners digging three highly sophisticated tunnels, code-named Tom, Dick, and Harry. Each tunnel was made with railways,...

After seven fat years, elected officials in Northern Virginia are grappling with their first lean one, and tax increases are looming almost everywhere. Swollen by surging real estate assessments, area budgets have ballooned, rising sharply from a cumulative total of more than $3.7 billion in 2000 to more than $6.3 billion for the coming fiscal year. Loudoun County's budget tripled in that period, Alexandria's rose 76 percent, and Fairfax County surpassed the $3 billion mark. Now, however, with the housing market in a slump, politicians are caught between raising taxes or reducing high-quality services that residents have come to expect....

<p>Homeland Security: Authorities across the pond now fear that even more Muslims — possibly numbering in the thousands — are plotting terror. On this end, however, U.S. officials still can't see anything in the pipeline.</p> <p>Either the British have better intelligence than we do, or we don't have any radicalized Muslim communities here in America. Sanguine U.S. authorities are guessing the latter.</p>

Virginia conservatives say they are galvanizing their base and raising money to elect candidates who share their core principles, even if that means campaigning against Republicans. "We're looking at good, fiscal conservative candidates for 2007 and are very excited about getting them elected to the Virginia Senate, where we believe the real leadership problems exists," said Robin DeJarnette, executive director of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC (VCAP). Virginia's conservative campaign mirrors a national movement that ascribes the Republicans' historic losses in Congress last month to the Bush administration and national Republicans' abandonment of conservative tenets such as limited spending, lower...

"Dimming the Sun" investigates the discovery that the sunlight reaching Earth has been growing dimmer, which may seem surprising given all the international concern over global warming. At first glance, less sunlight might hardly seem to matter when our planet is stewing in greenhouse gases. But the discovery of global dimming has led several scientists to revise their models of the climate and how fast it's changing. According to one recent and highly controversial model, the worst-case warming scenario could be worse than anyone has predicted. "Dimming the Sun" unravels this baffling climate conundrum and the implications for Earth's future.

Who is Air America? Vanity A summary of some of the key persons involved in the Air-A scandals, and their friends, August 19, 2005 Some of you out there probably have located most of this information before. The following is based on a series of emails I sent to Michelle Malkin and Radio Equalizer over the last few days. I am sure others have sent them similar items, as well as posting them at FR. [My comments are in brackets; some key names, dates, places, organizations and links are highlighted in bold letters] [Michelle Malkin and Radio Equalizer (Brian Maloney)...

Researchers at the Iowa Great Ape Trust are putting eight intelligent bonobos in a human-like living situation to study how culture may emerge. From the Associated Press: The bonobos will be able to cook in their own kitchen, tap vending machines for snacks, go for walks in the woods and communicate with researchers through computer touchscreens. The decor in their 18-room home includes an indoor waterfall and climbing areas 30 feet high... Using a network of cameras and computers, the bonobos can see visitors who ring the doorbell -- and will be able to choose through a computer touchscreen who...

That's all I have so far.

A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival. But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light. The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). The commotion was caused by...

It was a bitterly cold day, and Robert Krulwich was momentarily fascinated by the amount of static electricity that had built up on his wool overcoat as he slipped it off. Mr. Krulwich is, in fact, fascinated by a dizzying array of things. In the first few minutes of a lunchtime conversation , he jumped enthusiastically from thought to thought: There's the discovery of tiny, archaic humans on the Indonesian island of Flores, who battled giant rats and hunted dwarf elephants and Komodo dragons. And there's the changing nature of currencies used in international black markets. Not long ago, 94...

Early Christians hid the origins of the Bethlehem star 13:15 21 December 01 Marcus Chown A US astronomer claims he has found the first mention of the star of Bethlehem outside the Bible. The reference is in a 4th-century manuscript written by a Roman astrologer and Christian convert called Firmicus Maternus. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library Michael Molnar, formerly of Rutgers University in New Jersey, is the originator of the idea that the star of Bethlehem was not a spectacular astronomical event such as a supernova or a comet but an obscure astrological one. The event would nevertheless have been ...

This is an article that I think deserves some attention. Trust me, I have no love lost over a New York Times reporter getting a little jail time for outing a CIA-type, regardless of the fact that the CIA officer is married to an idiot, but why is it that the lukewarm "conservative"(?) Robert Novak can do the outing and no one seems to want to hold his feet to the fire? By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - A federal judge held a reporter in contempt Thursday for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 November 10 An Intermediate Polar Binary System Illustration Credit & Copyright: Mark Garlick (Space-art) Explanation: How can two stars create such a strange and intricate structure? Most stars are members of multiple-star systems. Some stars are members of close binary systems where material from one star swirls around the other in an accretion disk. Only a handful of stars, however, are members of an intermediate polar, a...

STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOODon Scott The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site has run several discussions of the "variable star" V838 Monocerotis. Today they have another one. Astronomy Picture of the Day - V838 Monocerotis but also see Astronomy Picture of the Day - V838 Light Echo: The Movie They include comments like, "V838 Mon may be a totally new addition to the astronomical zoo." I object to this "new" characterization. This zoo animal disproves standard fusion models. In fact this star (together with several others) simply demonstrates stellar evolution wholly NOT in keeping with thermonuclear stellar theory....

Alexandria, Va. -- Once upon a lifetime ago, Shelly Pennefather was the sweetest of shooting stars, an All-American at Villanova and the 1987 national player of the year. Since 1991, she has lived here, in the Poor Clare Monastery, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a very modest middle-class neighborhood. Pennefather has taken her vows and the name Sister Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels. She renounced her worldly life, including a six-figure salary as a professional basketball star in Japan, to answer her true calling: To serve God as a cloistered Poor Clare nun.

In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy.The mysterious star has long since faded back to obscurity, but observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star. The results appear this week in the journal Nature. "Like some past celebrities, this star had its 15 minutes of...

Artist's impression of Rho Cassiopeiae (Pic: Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias)   A massive and very unstable star in our galaxy is likely to explode any day, ejecting mass equal to 10,000 Earths, astronomers have predicted. The giant star, known as Rho Cassiopeiae, was first observed shedding an equivalent mass of material three years ago by the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes - more than astronomers have ever witnessed in a single stellar eruption. Recently, they have noted the star exhibiting some of the same behaviour that lead to that explosion. A study of the build-up is published in...

Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Each with a deadweight of 35,000 to 40,000 tonnes, the ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources. The vessels left port in late November, just a few days after UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix began their search for the alleged Iraqi arsenal on their return to the country. Uncovering such a deadly...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 3 V838 Mon: Mystery Star Credit: Lisa Crause (Univ. Cape Town), Warrick Lawson (Australian Defence Force Academy) Explanation: A leading candidate for the most mysterious star found in recent times is variable star V838 Monocerotis. At a distance of about 8,000 light-years, V838 Mon was discovered to be in outburst in January of this year. Initially thought to be a familiar type of classical nova, astronomers...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 25 Nebula Nova Cygni Turns On Credit: Peter Garnavich (Notre Dame), 1.2-m Telescope, Whipple Observatory Explanation: Old photographs show no evidence of the above nebula. In 1992, a white dwarf star toward the constellation of Cygnus blew off its outer layers in a classical nova explosion: an event called Nova Cygni 1992. Light flooded the local interstellar neighborhood, illuminated this existing gas cloud, excited the existing...

    Supernova poised to go off near Earth   10:30 23 May 02 Eugenie Samuel   A student at Harvard University has stumbled across the terrifying spectacle of a star in our galactic backyard that is on the brink of exploding in a supernova. It is so close that if it were to blow up before moving away from us, it could wipe out life on Earth. (Photo: SPL) Most supernovae occur when large stars run out of fuel and then collapse under their own weight. As atoms in the star are squeezed together, they rebound outwards, blowing off energy in...

The image seems familiar: investigators poking around a junkyard looking for clues to a crime. A horrendous crime has in fact been committed, but these men are engineers, not detectives. By examining steel beams taken from rubble, they are trying to figure out if the way the World Trade Center was built made the tragedy there worse than it might have been. The engineering post-mortem feels urgent as plans for the reconstruction of the area are being developed. Tonight on "Why the Towers Fell," PBS's "Nova" series gives a lucid and compelling account of the investigation conducted by the American...