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LOS ANGELES — Aviation authorities say a baggage cart was drawn into an engine of a Boeing 747 as it was leaving a terminal gate at Los Angeles International Airport. .. .. a baggage cart was being towed by at the same time and the engine ingested one of the containers. The object was lodged in the outer left-side engine of the four-engine jet.

More than 400 university professors and academic staff have sent a letter of protest to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, objecting to his veto last month of $5.4 million for a University of California labor research program and asking that the money be restored. At a time when unemployment in California is reaching a level not seen in decades, the letter said, the governor's action appears to be politically motivated and an excuse to ax a program his fellow Republicans have sought to kill. Its critics have said it is too close to unions. "It violates the basic principle of the freedom...

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...

Alexander Novgorodov, the reader of the portal R&D.CNews from Moscow Region, has pointed to an object of unusual morphology found on Mars images made by the spacecraft Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. On the images taken from the orbit an unusual mountain formation is depicted, which seems to have resulted from weathering (erosion) and is located amid the frozen ocean. The given formation drop-like shape (in section), its evidently erosion origin and the unusual structure at the base, which might be conventionally called a 'door' for its physical resemblance, are of interest. The object unusual form and the presence of a 'door'...

Long before the Bible's tale of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, a small wannabe star has emerged intact after being engulfed by a neighboring giant star, scientists say. The victim was a brown dwarf, a failed star too small to sustain the nuclear reactions that ignites regular stars. The purpetrator was a red giant, an ancient star that once resembled our Sun but which puffed up to enormous size after its hydrogen fuel was depleted. The red giant has since expelled most of its gas into space and transformed into a dense, Earth-sized star called a white dwarfs. Using...

Embedded in the heart of a supernova remnant 10,000 light-years away is a stellar object the likes of which astronomers have never seen before in our galaxy. At first glance, the object looks like a densely packed stellar corpse known as a neutron star surrounded by a bubble of ejected stellar material, exactly what would be expected in the wake of a supernova explosion. However, a closer 24.5-hour examination with the European Space Agency's XMM Newton X-ray satellite reveals that the energetic X-ray emissions of the blue, point-like object cycles every 6.7 hours-tens of thousands of times longer than expected...

Family Members Object to Rosa Parks' Will Tuesday May 2, 2006 3:01 AM DETROIT (AP) - A dozen nieces and nephews of civil rights icon Rosa Parks have filed an objection to her will in hopes of gaining control of the use of her name and image. The family members, who have been feuding for years with the people Parks appointed to handle her affairs, filed the legal challenge Friday. ``We still are very open to talk settlement in this case, if for no other reason than both sides have a deep respect for Ms. Parks,'' Frederick Toca Jr., an...

Scientists are over the moon at the W.M. Keck Observatory and the California Institute of Technology over a new discovery of a satellite orbiting the Solar System's 10th planet (2003 UB313). The newly discovered moon orbits the farthest object ever seen in the Solar System. The existence of the moon will help astronomers resolve the question of whether 2003 UB313, temporarily nicknamed "Xena," is more massive than Pluto and hence the 10th planet. A paper describing the discovery was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 3, 2005. "We were surprised because this is a completely different type of...

EXETER - There was something odd in the sky last week, something that caused a Navy veteran with 10,000 hours of flight experience to have his own close encounter. The former flight engineer, who wished to be identified only as "David," said of the experience, "this was like nothing I’ve ever seen before." What the retired Navy chief petty officer said he saw last Wednesday could only be classified as a UFO, an unidentified flying object. It was a bright and sunny afternoon, about 3:15 p.m., and David was outside preparing his lawnmower. He had filled the mower with gas,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A life-like prosthetic penis called the Whizzinator and other products promising to help illegal drug users pass urine tests provoked U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday to take legal action with subpoenas of manufacturers. Lawmakers objected to attempts to circumvent drug tests with products such as The Whizzinator, a fake penis that can provide a flow of clean urine "again and again, anytime, anywhere you need it!" according to the Web site www.whizzinator.com. A congressional subcommittee voted to subpoena the owner of Puck Technology of Signal Hill, California, the company that makes the Whizzinator. The panel also voted to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A strange and powerful burst of radio waves from near the center of our galaxy may have come from a previously unknown type of space object, U.S. astronomers reported on Wednesday. Other experts nicknamed the mysterious source a "burper" and said there would be a race to scan for similar radio bursts. "We hit the jackpot," said Scott Hyman, a professor of physics at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, who led the study. "An image of the Galactic center, made by collecting radio waves of about 1 meter (3 feet) in wavelength, revealed multiple bursts from the...

Phishers are taking advantage of Microsoft’s new software anti-piracy initiative by launching a wave of phishing e-mails in an attempt to get credit card numbers from Microsoft customers. The rogue e-mails also allow phishers to install spyware and adware on users’ machines. Last month Microsoft said it would not allow users in some countries install software updates online unless they could prove that their Microsoft software was legitimate. Security company Websense said it has received several reports of two new versions of spoofed e-mails that are being used to install spyware/adware onto end-user's machines and steal credit card details. The...

CHINO, Calif. (AP) - An unidentified object fell from the sky and spooked Roswell residents. Roswell Avenue residents aren't sure what the unidentified falling object was, but it streaked across the sky about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday and apparently hit the ground, touching off a fire that destroyed a neighbor's shed. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said they got calls from Chino residents and motorists on the 210 and 71 freeways reporting that an unidentified object was landing or crashing in town. "Somebody told one of the fire officials that they saw a plane crash," said fire Capt. Kim Johnson,...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

BOISE - UFOs are showing a keen interest in our nuclear weapons facilities, says investigator Robert Hastings, who has spent countless hours analyzing documents dealing with UFO sightings at nuclear missile launch sites and research labs in the United States over the past several decades. "You have reference to these objects hovering, racing away at blinding speed," he told Idaho 2 News. "There is no evidence we have an aircraft that can do that or anyone else on earth." Hastings, who has devoted countless hours researching UFOs and the U.S. government's reaction to them, was in Boise for a lecture...

GLYNDON, Md. -- The mystery may be over as one of the creatures roaming through central Maryland was finally captured on Saturday. According to the veterinarians at Falls Road Animal Hospital, the animal was a male red fox. However, Dr. Michael Herko -- a vet at the animal hospital -- and the man who caught the fox say it is not the mysterious creature videotaped in July, but a relative. Jay Wroe set a trap in his back yard after videotaping an animal that was roaming around. It was an animal he could not immediately identify. The humane trap paid...

Get your TIVOs ready. Brit is about to show the object Kerry pulled out during the debate. (6:30 PM Eastern)

UFO's over Utah? A local photographer snapped a picture this week that has people talking. Tommy Woodard is a photo librarian for the Utah Film Commission, and this past Tuesday he took this photo in Provo Canyon. Tommy Woodard, Photo Librarian, Utah Film Comm.: “Well it has the flying saucer shape that’s so familiar. A saucer, that’s all I can think of.” Tommy was in the canyon shooting still photos for a possible film location. He says when he took the shot of the mountainside, he never noticed the strange object. QUESTION: “Did you see that when you took the...

1:00pm Ancient Aliens TVG, CC 2:00pm Secret UFO Files TVG, CC 3:00pm UFOs: Testing the Evidence TVG, CC 4:00pm UFOs vs. the Government TVG, CC 5:00pm Roswell: Secrets Unveiled TVG, CC 6:00pm ET Tech TVPG, CC 7:00pm Crop Circle Controversy TVG, CC 8:00pm UFOs: What You Didn't Know TVG, CC 9:00pm Flying Pyramids Soaring Stones TVG, CC 12:00am UFOs: What You Didn't Know TVG, CC 1:00am Flying Pyramids Soaring Stones TVG, CC

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. 2004 March 16 Sedna of the Outer Solar System Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech), JPL-Caltech, NASA Explanation: What is the most distant known object in our Solar System? A new answer to this centuries-old question was announced yesterday by NASA with the discovery of a dark red object dubbed Sedna. Although over twice the distance to Pluto, Sedna is near its closest approach to the Sun. Sedna's highly...