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WASHINGTON, April 22, 2008 – New campaign stars authorized for wear on the Afghanistan and Iraq campaign medals represent tangible recognition and honor for the sacrifices and contributions servicemembers have made in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a senior defense official said today. The Defense Department announced the campaign stars yesterday to recognize participation in specific campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Servicemembers who quality for the Afghanistan Campaign Medal or Iraq Campaign Medal may now display a bronze campaign star on their medals for each designated campaign phase in which they participated. In keeping with military tradition,...

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait, March 11, 2008 – For more than four hours last night, Camp Buehring, in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, became a hard-rocking outdoor amphitheater. Before the music began, about 5,000 servicemembers heard a message of support and appreciation from President Bush. Both Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace, commander of U.S. Army Central and Combined Forces Land Component Command, and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Dennis E. Hardy, visited with the performers and thanked them for their support. Then, before comedian Carlos Mencia got the troops laughing, he gave them some words of thanks. “You guys work...

The first stars to appear in the Universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to US scientists. Normal stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, where hydrogen atoms meld to form heavier helium. But when the Universe was still young, there would have been abundant dark matter, made of particles called Wimps: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These would have fused together and obliterated each other long before nuclear fusion had the chance to start. As a result, the first stars would have looked quite different from the ones we see today, and they may have changed the course...

You would think that a star anywhere from 400 to 200,000 times wider than the Sun would be fairly easy to detect. But not if it’s a ‘dark star,’ the name for a new, theoretical entity about to make its appearance in Physical Review Letters. Astrophysicist Paolo Gondolo (University of Utah) makes the case that dark matter would have affected the temperature and density of the gases that formed the first stars. Dark stars would mostly contain normal matter — hydrogen and helium — but they would have been much larger than the Sun, glowing largely in the infrared. Hypothetical...

EXCLUSIVE Celebs and VIPs snub plea to share private planes and cut CO2 emissions. Just 78 out of 3,500 rich & famous agree to stop flying solo to red carpet. By Susie Boniface 02/12/2007 VIPs have snubbed a plea to go green - by refusing to share their luxury private jets. Thousands of the rich and famous were invited to pool their planes in an effort to cut carbon emissions. But so far just 78 out of 3,500 who either own or regularly use private planes have signed up. Prince Charles, climate campaigner Al Gore, Simon Cowell, Madonna and Kate...

Getting Away with Murder? I was noticing this in the Phil Spector case, often stars seem to get away with murder. While it is impossible to know what really happened it is quite likely that some of these people were at least tangentially involved in the death of a spouse, significant other or someone else. Here are some I can think of: OJ Simpson William Shatner Robert Wagner Robert Blake

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2007 – Top military officials and five servicemember heroes hobnobbed with an army of celebrities here last night during the USO World Gala. Comedian Jeffrey Ross, left, presents the USO's Coast Guardsman of the Year award to Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Daniel J. Walsh during the 66th annual USO World Gala in Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by John J. Kruzel  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Hundreds of guests were on hand at the National Building Museum for the exclusive, black-tie awards ceremony and celebration. The annual party is hosted...

Hollywood star Bill Murray has spoken out about the events that led to him leaving a blood sample at a Stockholm police station last month. While speaking to the press at the Venice Film Festival, Murray was asked by a Swedish journalist to explain just what he was doing driving around Stockholm city centre in a golf cart. "A friend of mine, Jesper Parnevik, invited me to play in a pro-am golf tournament in Stockholm. I was driven to a party celebrating the event in a golf cart," Murray said. "After the party, the people that drove in the golf...

June 7, 2007 — The two heaviest stars ever have been discovered in the southern Milky Way galaxy. The double super heavyweights are actually in orbit around each other, and both break the record — 83 times the sun’s mass — for the most massive stars found to date. The heavier of the two weighs in at a whopping 114 "solar masses," while its little brother is 84 solar masses. The discovery was presented June 7 at the meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. The two big bruiser stars, which...

HONOLULU — Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types, from tiny, dim stars to giants.An artist's concept of the Neptune-sized planet GJ436b (right) orbiting the M-class dwarf star Gliese 436 at a distance of 3 million miles.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dazzlingly detailed image released by NASA scientists on Tuesday shows the chaotic conditions in which stars are born and die -- in this case in a huge nebula in another neighborhood of our Milky Way galaxy. The image, made from a series of 48 shots taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in spring and summer of 2005, depicts star birth in a new level of detail. It provides a view spanning a distance of 50 light years across of the Carina Nebula. A nebula is an immense cloud of hot interstellar gas and dust. This...

WASHINGTON, April 16, 2007 – Stars for Stripes knows troops deployed to remote locations don’t have the luxury of heading out to their favorite venue to take in a concert, so it takes the concerts to them. From left: Army Command Sgt. Maj. William M. Johnson, Jim McMahon, Kevin Butler, Army Col. Jeffrey Bannister, Karri Turner and Dave Price pose for a photo in Iraq. The civilian celebrities entertained servicemembers during a Stars for Stripes tour in December 2006. Bannister is commander of the U.S. Army 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, and Johnson is his senior enlisted...

If symmetry is a sign of splendor, then the newly discovered Red Square nebula is one of the most beautiful objects in the universe. Seen in the infrared, the nebula resembles a giant, glowing red box in the sky, with a bright white inner core. A dying star called MWC 922 is located at the system’s center and spewing its innards from opposite poles into space. (A nebula is an interstellar cloud of gas, dust and plasma where stars can both emerge and die.) “This spectacular event is the death of a star,” said study team member James Lloyd of...

WASHINGTON, March 13, 2007 – Army Spc. Timothy Lott gripped his walking cane as he prepared to meet some of his lifelong heroes. Marine Officer Candidate Justin Gerhardt poses between World Wrestling Entertainment legends Ron Simmons (left) and Jimmy "The Mouth of the South" Hart before WWE's Monday Night Raw event at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., March 12. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I’ve been a wrestling fan for 27 years,” he said at the Verizon Center’s posh Coach’s Club here yesterday evening. Lott was one of about 40 injured veterans Walter Reed Army...

Just more than 200 Silver Stars have been awarded for Operation Iraqi Freedom since it began in 2003, and three of them now belong to Soldiers from one Fort Campbell platoon.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2006 -- Thanks to a partnership with Hollywood Video and Game Craze rental stores in five states, “Tunes 4 the Troops” anticipates sending troops 5,000 DVDs this holiday season. Kaylee Radzyminski of Cleveland, Tenn., attaches “Tunes 4 the Troops” stickers on CDs she sent to servicemembers overseas. Kaylee started the organization in the fall of 2005 with the goal of sending the troops 500,000 CDs, DVDs, and audio books by the 2008 holiday season. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. For $1, customers at 26 Hollywood Video stores and 18 Game Craze stores in...

Stars who could lead Constitution Party in '08 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Jane Chastain -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 Recently, I was taken to task by Howard Phillips, the founder of the U.S. Taxpayer Party – now the Constitution Party – for an error I made in a column titled "What's Wrong with the Two Party System?" In that column, I lamented the fact that, in the last election, I "threw away" two votes by voting for the American Independent because there was no way I could justify voting for either major-party candidate. (The American Independent Party is an affiliate of the Constitution Party...

Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks. A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism [image], a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought—so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years. "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said study leader Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in the UK. "The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right…In terms of historical and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as...

11/3/2006 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- Country music stars Vince Gill, Toby Keith, LeeAnn Womack and George Strait share their favorite holiday memories and traditions in a "Red, White and Air Force Blue Christmas" radio special, slated for release this month. Produced and marketed by the Air Force Recruiting Service's Strategic Communications Division, the one-hour show features in-depth interviews with each of the stars along with songs from their holiday albums. The program will be sent to American Forces Radio and Television Service affiliates and more than 3,300 country radio stations, according to Jimmy Spacek, AFRS broadcasting manager. The show,...

September 14, 2006 - An international research team led by Prof. Michael Kramer of the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, has used three years of observations of the “double pulsar”, a unique pair of natural stellar clocks which they discovered in 2003, to prove that Einstein’s theory of general relativity–the theory of gravity that displaced Newton’s–is correct to within a staggering 0.05%. Their results are published on the14th September in the journal Science and are based on measurements of an effect called the Shapiro Delay. The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in...