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Everyone knows President Barack Obama likes a celebrity fix - just ask Johnny Depp. And today, just a day after pictures emerged of his extravagant 2009 Halloween party at the White House, the most powerful man in America was enjoying more VIP company. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie brought some Hollywood star power to Washington D.C. as they stopped by for a chat with the chief executive at the Oval Office.

The modern search for the Star of Bethlehem began with Johannes Kepler (imperial astronomer for Rudolph II of Germany), who shortly before Christmas in 1603 observed a conjunction (pairing) of Jupiter with Saturn from his observatory in Prague. That this occurred in the constellation of Pisces he thought was important as well – perhaps recalling Rabbi Isaac Abarvanel's belief, noted in his 15th-century commentary on Daniel, that not only does a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn foretell important events, but in Pisces this holds a special significance for Israel; and such an event might even foretell the coming of the...

RESEDA, LOS ANGELES -- The scores are in for Southern California students who took the annual STAR exam. Despite cutbacks and layoffs, scores are up for the ninth straight year. They're at their highest levels since the testing began. At a 10th-grade physiology class at Reseda High School, reading and language skills are combined with mathematics, and there are improved results in the latest statewide Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) examinations given to nearly 5 million students in grades 2 through 11. "Despite the cuts we are seeing that kind of significant progress. It's been steady over the last nine...

Who can forget that rare moment of honesty during the campaign to pass Obamacare when Nancy Pelosi said, "We have to pass the bill in order for you to find out what's in it"? Now we have it, and almost daily there are new revelations about the staggering extent to which our private lives and individual freedoms have been stomped on. We learn now that free birth control in the form of contraceptives, morning-after pills, and sterilization is part of the grand Obamacare socialist dream-come-true. The health insurance that Obamacare mandates that all employers provide and that all citizens acquire...

Astronomers have found a nascent star 750 light years from earth that shoots colossal jets of water -- a cosmic fire hose -- out its poles in bullet-like pulses. In a process that almost defies adjectives and analogies, each jet of water is the equivalent of a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second and the speed of the jet is the equivalent of 80 times the muzzle velocity of an AK-47 assault rifle. The blast creates huge shockwaves around the star and the process may be responsible for sprinkling the universe with water. And...

LEVEL 1 - 2 OF 45 STORIES Copyright 1997 Jane's Information Group Limited, All Rights Reserved Jane's Intelligence Review May 1, 1997 SECTION: EUROPE; Vol. 9; No. 5; Pg. 205 LENGTH: 2629 words HEADLINE: RED STAR WARS BYLINE: Steven J Zaloga HIGHLIGHT: As far back as the late 1960s, scientists in the USSR had beensecretly theorising about the possibilities of space-based weaponry.In the early 1980s, however, spurred by US President Ronald Reagan'sannouncement of the Strategic Defense Initiative and a firmconviction that the US space shuttle programme was geared towardmilitary ends, Soviet efforts in this area took on a new...

Stellar sprinklers may help irrigate cosmos, study suggests.Seven hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a young, sunlike star has been found with jets that blast epic quantities of water into interstellar space, shooting out droplets that move faster than a speeding bullet. The discovery suggests that protostars may be seeding the universe with water. These stellar embryos shoot jets of material from their north and south poles as their growth is fed by infalling dust that circles the bodies in vast disks. "If we picture these jets as giant hoses and the water droplets as bullets, the amount shooting out...

The current season of ‘New Star,’ the Palestinian version of ‘American Idol,’ is proving to be a ratings hit. Behind the scenes is a rare mix of Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. KFAR AL-KHADAR, West Bank – It’s Thursday night, and the crowd files rapidly through the metal detectors at the entrance to the impressive auditorium. Dressed in glittery frocks and suits, the men and women chatter excitedly while holding on tightly to oversized banners with glossy portraits of the performers they are about to see. While the scene is reminiscent of the pre-show buzz at just about any...

Hollywood stars and celebrities are generally considered to be a liberal and Democratic-leaning community, but these celebrities are all declared Republicans according to the FEC, or known conservatives. SLIDE SHOW AT THE LINK................

George Clooney has revealed the reason he will never become a politician - he has a bad boy past. The Hollywood star, who has campaigned tirelessly for the people of Sudan, said he wasn't squeaky clean and his past could come back to haunt him if he ever held office. 'I didn't live my life in the right way for politics, you knowI f***ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that's the truth,' he said.

Stargazers now have their Graceland. The Channel Island of Sark, located 80 miles south of England, has been designated as the world's first dark-sky island. Dark-sky communities are places with very little to no light pollution. As a result, the stars are far easier to see and more fun to look at. According to a buzzy article from SPACE.com, Sark is just 4.5 square miles and has "no public street lighting, no paved roads, and no cars." In other words, save for the occasional flashlight or matchstick, there aren't a lot of things to interfere with the nighttime display, which...

Influential US Republican Mike Huckabee and Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight on Monday lent their backing to Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem, by laying the cornerstone for a new neighbourhood. The two were guests of honour at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone of a new settlement initiative called Beit Orot on the edge of the Mount of Olives. "The essence of freedom, the very heart of it, is self determination and self direction," said Huckabee, who has been touted as a possible Republican candidate in 2012.

Robert Redford is one of the main opponents of a plan by the Pacific Union College to build an eco-village in Angwin, California. The college says it needs the funds because of a dire financial situation. The village is close to Redford’s vineyard in the Napa Valley. However while publicly opposing this development “to preserve the rural heritage” Redford has been quietly selling development lots in the Sundance Preserve for $2 million. These lots are intended for vacation homes close to Redford’s Sundance Ski Resort. A short film Robert Redford Hypocrite which has just been released probes the contradictory positions...

THE super-giant red star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion is destined to explode, but maybe not next year as some recent news reports have suggested and will not be as bright as some predicted FoxNews.com reported Betelgeuse has already become a red giant, which indicates it wil explode and become a supernova. But experts say it is not likely to happen soon and it will happen far enough away that it wil not hurt Earth US astronomer Phil Plait noted on his blog that a supernova would have to be no farther than 25 light years away to "fry...

A Harry Potter star was beaten, called a ''slag'' and threatened with death after she met a young man who was not a Muslim, a court heard today. Victim Afshan Azad, 22, played Padma Patil, a classmate of the teenage wizard, in the blockbuster Hollywood films based on the children's books by JK Rowling. She was assaulted and branded a ''prostitute'' after meeting a young Hindu man, a relationship which brought anger from her father, Abul Azad, 53, and brother, Ashraf, 28, Manchester Crown Court heard. The frightened actress later fled through her bedroom window after threats were made to...

Shows the Hollywood star how to handle a falcon during the meeting where Sheikh Hamdan was also present His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, received Hollywood star Tom Cruise who is in Dubai to shoot 'Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol'. The 48-year-old Hollywood actor, whose death-defying stunts atop the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, grabbed global headlines only a day ago, also met Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai during the occasion. Sheikh Mohammed showed Cruise how to handle a...

Neenah, Wisconsin - While much of the political world has been obsessing over the troubles of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, or the sparring over Rand Paul and "Aqua-Buddha" in Kentucky, or the controversies surrounding Sharron Angle in Nevada, another Republican newcomer has been running a quiet, direct, and devastatingly effective campaign. Here in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, a businessman who has never before run for public office, appears poised to pick up a Senate seat for Republicans, defeating Democratic legend Russell Feingold and becoming the first GOP senator elected from the state since 1986.

Star Trek Fan Days are coming to Plano Center this Saturday & Sunday. It’s a celebration of all-things-Star-Trek, and lo & behold…William Shatner will be there, signing autographs, holding a Q&A, EVERYTHING. Christopher Lloyd will be there too. That’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future, and for some reason the dude who plays Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton, is coming, which is still kind of awesome, so get all the details at scifiexpo.com

A one-of-a-kind natural diamond with the design of the Star of David has been discovered, Hidabroot TV revealed. Hidabroot TV, Israel’s first Jewish-oriented television station, broadcast a YouTube video explaining the amazing 8.53 carat jewel last week. The YouTube video clip appears below, courtesy of Hidabroot, part of the Hidabroot organization established by Rabbi Zamir Cohen to bring and spread the Torah's knowledge in Israel and the world. The video refers to the Star of David and Kabbalah.

In central Connecticut there are a lot of two and three family rental properties built in the 1940s through the 1960s. The last few years have been tough for renters paying for natural gas, oil and electricity. Many of those properties could benefit from insulation improvements, yet the federal government says “no way” to landlords looking for an energy rebate to help offset the cost of improvements. Tell me readers ... who loses out?

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The existence of these monsters — millions of times more luminous than the Sun, losing weight through very powerful winds — may provide an answer to the question “how massive can stars be?” A team of astronomers led by Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope...

Livermore, California (CNN) -- Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it's stolen from the plot of an "Austin Powers" movie. But it's no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer. If they're successful, the...

Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it's stolen from the plot of an "Austin Powers" movie. But it's no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the...

(CNSNews.com) – The Environmental Protection Agency certified that a “gas-powered clock radio” was an energy-efficient product under the government’s Energy Star program, despite the fact that neither the clock nor its manufacturer ever existed. The clock and 14 other phony products were part of an investigation into the Energy Star program conducted by the Government Accountability Office, which submitted 20 fraudulent Energy Star applications from four fake companies. The EPA evaluated 16 of those products while the Department of Energy (DOE) evaluated four.

Just for laughs a Capella tribute http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk5_OSsawz4

Last week on Hannity, Star Parker talked about running for congress in a California district. I've been searching the news clips and her facebook page ever since and have seen no details. Does anyone know what district she lives in and any more about this potential race?

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The Magi and the Star January 4th, 2010 by Michael J. Miller During a 2007 BBC radio interview, the archbishop of Canterbury deconstructed elements of the Nativity story. "Stars simply don’t behave like that," Rowan Williams said. Asked about the existence of three wise men, he replied, "It works quite well as legend."But years ago Father Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, published an essay applying the historical-critical method to the question of the Nativity story. (The essay is reprinted without cumbersome footnotes in Light and Shadows: Church History Amid Faith, Fact, and Legend [Ignatius].) He found...

The father who helped his daughter to recover bit by bit from a devastating gunshot wound, died on Sunday. WCCO has covered several stories about Vernice Hall, an innocent girl shot two years ago. The family was told she wouldn't recover but her father never gave up on the daughter he called "Star." This weekend though their story took a terrible turn. Steve Hall collapsed on a relative's couch and died from internal bleeding. They believe it was caused by a bleeding ulcer. "I just don't understand it. I'm shocked, I don't understand," said his wife, Latice Hall. Their family...

The Big Dipper -- part of Ursa Major in astronomy -- may be one of the most recognized features of the night sky, but that doesn't mean it can't stand an occasional improvement. A team from New York's American Museum of Natural History, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, Caltech, and the University of Cambridge in England reports that Alcor, the bright star that forms the bend in the dipper's "handle," has a dim red dwarf star orbiting it. They've put out this very pretty image, in which Alcor is renamed Alcor A, and its newly-found satellite star is called Alcor B....

Milton Friedman said with passion: “The record of history is absolutely clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activity that is unleashed by the free enterprise system.” As imperfect as American capitalism is, it has still made America the “shining city on the hill” where immigrants still stand in line and cross borders to find opportunity. Those who worked hard to earn success and wealth used to be respected; now they’re more likely to be the subject of envy and derision. It’s...

High definition, the final frontier. Where nerds can boldly go where no moviegoer has gone before. With the Blu-ray release of the "Star Trek" movie prequel, these brave fans can obsess over the film's tiny details, including whether or not a very famous robot had a cameo that nobody noticed.

It's a solid doomsday prediction that in about 5 billion years the dying sun will expand as a bloated red giant and engulf the Earth. But imagine if in just a few weeks the middle-aged sun suddenly ballooned out to the orbit of Saturn and immediately vaporized Earth and most of the other planets in the solar system! And, even before this happened, imagine that every morning you awoke the sun was ever more sweltering until it began evaporating the oceans, spontaneously starting forests ablaze, and melting asphalt! This sounds like the stuff of a far-out science fiction movie. But...

Covered in blood, this is Marlon King's victim minutes after he smashed her in the face. Emily Carr was punched so powerfully by the footballer that she felt she had been hit with a brick. Her nose is permanently disfigured. King, 29, a £35,000-a-week striker for Premier League Wigan Athletic, was jailed on Thursday for lashing out at the 20-year-old student when she spurned his crude advances in a club...

Bright Nebulae of M33 Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford (Rancho Del Sol Observatory) Explanation: Gorgeous spiral galaxy M33 seems to have more than its fair share of bright emission nebulae. In fact, narrow-band and broad-band image data are combined in this beautifully detailed composite to trace the reddish emission nebulae, star forming HII regions, sprawling along loose spiral arms that wind toward the galaxy's core. Historically of great interest to astronomers, M33's giant HII regions are some of the largest known stellar nurseries - sites of the formation of short-lived but very massive stars. Intense ultraviolet radiation from the...

Mass and density of smallest exoplanet finally measured The longest set of HARPS measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b, revealing its mass as five times that of Earth's. Combined with CoRoT-7b's known radius, which is less than twice that of our terrestrial home, this tells us that the exoplanet's density is quite similar to the Earth's, suggesting a solid, rocky world. The extensive dataset also reveals the presence of another so-called super-Earth in this alien solar system. "This is science at its thrilling and amazing best," says Didier Queloz,...

'Long live the Taliban" might seem an unlikely thing for a prominent anti-war figure to declare, but that's to-day's peace movement for you. Stranger still, the man who recently uttered those words, Azzam Tamimi, is being promoted by a new Toronto-based institute that says it is embarking upon a national campaign to cultivate wholesome, faith-based civic virtues among Canada's young Muslims.

I believe the healthcare initiative should be renamed the “Big Brother Healthcare Act of 2009.” This takeover starts with the lead person, a commissioner. The commissioner and the person under him will be given authority to carry a gun. I am not sure how this became part of the healthcare act, but it is in there. Their power is great, as they will take control over 16 percent of our economy. Costs will be capped at $5,000 per year for an individual. Costs for a family will be capped at $10,000 per year. Yearly increases will be based on the...

President Barack Obama is no horse whisperer wooing America into embracing change. An articulate bull has been unleashed in America’s china shop. His sweet talk and promises of bipartisanship have given way to a radical liberal bent on transforming America into a socialistic nightmare we can’t afford! He may actually believe that his vision for America is best, but the poll numbers for his plans are dropping fast. Americans are taking off their rose-colored glasses because the economy is not improving. Brian Thompson of the Museum of American Financial History asserts: “Wall Street is predicated on optimism. The very acts...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Gale Storm, whose wholesome appearance and perky personality made her one of early television's biggest stars on "My Little Margie" and "The Gale Storm Show," has died at age 87.

A bright star may soon explode in a supernova, according to data released by U.C. Berkeley researchers Tuesday. The red giant Betelgeuse, once so large it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit if placed in our own solar system, has shrunk by 15 percent over the past decade in a half, although it's just as bright as it's ever been. "To see this change is very striking," said retired Berkeley physics professor Charles Townes, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize for inventing the laser. "We will be watching it carefully over the next few years to see if it will...

WASHINGTON – It was the hottest ticket in town, a black-tie dinner gathering of Washington's political and media elite but Dick Cheney couldn't make it. The former vice president was busy, President Barack Obama joked, working on his memoir "tentatively titled, How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People."

This is not an April 1 prank. A star was named yesterday for Barack Obama. Here is THE LINK TO THE INFORMATION. HERE IS THE CERTIFICATE:

One of the child actors who starred in the Oscar-winning flick "Slumdog Millionaire" received a severe beating from his dad today after the 10-year-old star refused to be put on display like a trophy. Less than a week after strutting down the red carpet in Los Angeles, actor Azharuddin Mohammed was slapped and kicked by his dad Ismail, The London Sun reported today on its Web site. "I was very sorry that I did what I did," he said afterward. "I was so confused and stressed by my son's homecoming that I did not know myself for a minute. I...

On Christmas eve in 1938, the physicist Lise Meitner took a walk in the snowy woods of Kungalv, Sweden, with her nephew, Otto Frisch, also a physicist. A Jewish refugee who had recently escaped from Hitler's Germany, Meitner began discussing with Frisch some puzzling experimental results from a lab in Berlin. By the time their famous walk was over, Meitner had scribbled down for the first time the equations that demonstrated the possibility of extracting huge amounts of energy from the splitting or "fission" of uranium atoms. Seventy years ago today, the woman whom Albert Einstein called "our Madame Curie"...

More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw. It's no big surprise. Scientists have known the light came from a supernova, a huge star explosion. But what kind of supernova? A new study confirms that, as expected, it was the common kind that involves the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star with a nearby companion. The research, which analyzed a "light echo" from the long-ago event, is presented in Thursday's issue of the...

Paramount has revised its recently release trailer for its upcoming "Star Trek" movie. They've added an old, familiar face...Click here to find out who.Requires Quicktime. (720p resolution)

Star Trek Trailer Quick Time Player Required

JJ Abrams wasn't a huge fan of the original Star Trek TV series as a kid, but he does have one unabashed gee-whiz Star Trek memory: watching the first feature film (1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and marveling over the big reveal of the Enterprise during a long sequence in which James T. Kirk takes a slow-boat tour around the iconic starship. "The coolest thing about it—maybe the coolest thing in the movie—was when you flew around the ship, you could see all the different panels that made up the ship," says the director of the forthcoming Trek...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability. Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said Friday that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees. He said 17 buyout applications were rejected. Some staffers already have left, and others are leaving by year's end, many after the elections. "We've got from now to the end of the year to figure out what adjustments we have to make," Willse...