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Asteroid Vesta: The 10th Planet? Discovery Brightens Odds of Finding Another Pluto Nemesis: The Million Dollar Question HOUSTON, TEXAS -- Our solar system may have had a fifth terrestrial planet, one that was swallowed up by the Sun. But before it was destroyed, the now missing-in-action world made a mess of things. Space scientists John Chambers and Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center hypothesize that along with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- the terrestrial, rocky planets -- there was a fifth terrestrial world, likely just outside of Mars's orbit and before the inner asteroid belt. Moreover, Planet V...

Jafar Arkani-Hamed of McGill University discovered that five impact basins--dubbed Argyre, Hellas, Isidis, Thaumasia and Utopia--form an arclike pattern on the Martian surface. Three of the basins are well-preserved and remain visible today. The locations of the other two, in contrast, were inferred from measurements of anomalies in the planet's gravitational field... a single source--most likely an asteroid that was initially circling the sun in the same plane as Mars--created all five craters. At one point the asteroid passed close to the Red Planet... and was broken apart by the force of the planet's gravity. The resulting five pieces subsequently...

New Theory: Catastrophe Created Mars' Moons By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 29 July 2003 PASADENA, California – The two moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos – could be the byproducts of a breakup of a huge moon that once circled the red planet, according to a new theory. The capture of a large Martian satellite may have taken place during or shortly after the formation of the planet, with Phobos and Deimos now the surviving remnants. Origin of the two moons presents a longstanding puzzle to which one researcher proposed the new solution at...

European Money The following needs to be taken up and publicised to the Europeans.Forward on to any contacts you may have. Palscam David Frankfurter September 25, 2003 For the last 8 years, the European Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the accounts of the European Commission, saying that they can only be assured that 5% of taxpayers' money is being spent properly. That's tens of billions of whatever-currency-you-chose that the auditors won't vouch for. The European Parliament is abuzz with today’s scheduled announcement of the results of an investigation into the "Eurostat" scandal, where millions of Euro are...

U.S. said near to declaring Iraq victory SYDNEY, April 20 (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces in Iraq will proclaim victory in the next few days, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday, while a top European offical called for the return to Iraq of U.N. arms inspectors. With the war winding down, Downer said final touches were being made to a formal proclamation of victory. "There's just some tidying up going on in relation to the final proclamation," Downer told Australia's Seven Network television. Australia is one of a handful of countries, dubbed the "coalition of the willing" by U.S....

A cross-party group of MEPs yesterday accused Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner, of trying to sabotage an inquiry into claims that European Union aid to the Palestinian Authority has been diverted to terrorists. Infuriated by months of "stonewalling" the group has collected 157 signatures from MEPs, triggering an investigation into the handling of 10 million euros (£6.55 million) donated monthly to Yasser Arafat's administration. The new inquiry, which requires the backing of the full parliament, will have "quasi-judicial" powers to call witnesses, demand confidential documents, and send investigators to the Middle East. One of its tasks will be to...

Chris Patten is used to rudeness. When he was the last governor of Hong Kong, the Chinese used to call him a ‘jade-faced prostitute’ and a ‘tango-dancer for a thousand years’, and other baffling insults. In these very pages he is called EU Marshal Chris Pétain, a byword for general sell-outery. To the neo-conservatives of Washington, he is the consummate Euro-weenie, ever warning us of the dangers of American ‘unilateralism’ and the risks of duffing up Iraq. To a certain kind of British Conservative polemicist, he shows an excessive willingness to listen to the claims of Palestinian terrorists and Irish...

European Union foreign ministers will try to tone down disagreements with the United States over Iraq and the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Saturday - the second day of their informal meeting in the Danish port of Elsinore. They are expected to call again on Iraq to re-admit United Nations weapons inspectors, while agreeing with Washington that the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein represents a threat to regional stability. The EU wants Washington to give diplomacy one more chance. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said there was overwhelming support for the demand that the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein should re-admit weapons...

European Union External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten accused Israel on Sunday of hijacking the U.S.-led war on terror and said its use of force against Palestinians would prove counter-productive. Patten told BBC Television's Breakfast with Frost program that Israel had effectively destroyed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority during its re-occupation of West Bank towns and refugee camps. IDF tanks and troops withdrew Sunday from most of two West Bank cities, Ramallah and Nablus, three weeks after it launched Operation Defensive Shield in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis, but it has kept...