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After months of dodging questions about the breakup of his marriage, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa acknowledged Monday that he is involved in a romantic relationship with television newswoman Mirthala Salinas. Since January, the mayor has repeatedly faced questioning that began when reporters noticed he and his wife, Corina, had stopped making public appearances together and his gold wedding band was missing from his ring finger. The mayor glibly rebuffed all probes when the questions reached a peak in January, and aides said he had been working out a lot and lost weight so the ring was at the jeweler's getting resized....

(IsraelNN.com) Former American President Jimmy Carter's activist foundation received hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries, the Washington Times reported. , founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, helped the ex-President establish the Carter Center. Abedi had said he wanted the bank to be "the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists."

Britain's human history revealed By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, Norwich The story has been filled out but human remains are scarce Eight times humans came to try to live in Britain and on at least seven occasions they failed - beaten back by freezing conditions. Scientists think they can now write a reasonably comprehensive history of the occupation of these isles. It stretches from 700,000 years ago and the first known settlers at Pakefield in Suffolk, through to the most recent incomers just 12,000 years or so ago. The evidence comes from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain...

SACRAMENTO – A sweeping $3 billion agreement to give hundreds of low-performing schools smaller classes, more qualified teachers and additional counselors was revealed yesterday by the Schwarzenegger administration and the California Teachers Association. The proposal would create one of the largest pilot programs in state history, targeting 600 struggling schools heavily populated with minority students. As the Legislature worked feverishly to complete business for the year by tomorrow night's deadline, lawmakers also advanced several notable bills that would: Provide prescription drug discounts for about 5 million uninsured or underinsured residents. Make illegal immigrant students eligible for higher education financial aid...

15 held in Pakistan as scale and intricacy of threat is revealed New York police briefing sheds light on alleged conspiracy Duncan Campbell in Islamabad, Randeep Ramesh in Lahore and Vikram Dodd Tuesday August 15, 2006 The Guardian (UK) Up to 50 people across the world may have been part of the alleged conspiracy to explode bombs on planes heading from Britain to the United States, it emerged yesterday. New details about the alleged plot are contained in a briefing document from the counter-terrorism section of the New York police department. It says: "Bombs were to be placed on up...

SAN FRANCISCO – Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers. Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works. The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. “We are...

Muslim extremist admits he was spy who revealed Canada bomb plot By Toby Harnden (Filed: 16/07/2006) Muslim leaders in Canada have reacted with fury after a radical advocate of Sharia law revealed that he had been a government spy who helped to uncover an alleged al-Qaeda plot, writes Toby Harnden. Mubin Shaikh, 29, came forward to confirm that he was recruited by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's equivalent of MI5, and directed a 10-day winter training course in guerrilla tactics. During the course, which Mr Shaikh set up in a field in the remote village of Washago,...

Hillary's Secret '08 Election Strategy Revealed!Tom Bevan Thu Jul 13, 10:28 AM ET The only interesting part of Lois Romano's frontpage rehash of voters' doubt about Hillary Clinton in this morning's Washington Post comes at the very end: "She will define herself, and we will have the money to do it," said one close adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Clinton has forbidden those close to her to speculate publicly about 2008. "People have to get to know her, know that she was once a Republican, that she's a big Methodist. . . . That will happen."...

Seat of female libido revealed 22:00 26 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan The precise part of the brain likely to be the seat of heterosexual desire in women has been revealed by experiments on mice. The study confirms that the hormone oestrogen is vital for arousal, but only in the specific area of the brain called the ventromedial nucleus (VMN) in the hypothalamus. Sonoko Ogawa of the University of Tsukuba in Japan and her collaborators in the US discovered this by blocking the effects of oestrogen exclusively in that part of the brain in mice. They did this...

UC regents and state lawmakers harshly criticized the University of California's pay practices Wednesday as an internal audit revealed scores of violations of university policy and UC President Robert Dynes admitted to a culture in his office of "trying to get away with as much as possible and disclose as little as possible." University auditors told the UC Board of Regents they had found that 143 exceptions to the university's compensation policies had been made to give extra pay or benefits to 113 senior managers. That's on top of the 91 exceptions identified last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors for a...

Tsunami risk of asteroid strikes revealed 18:18 12 May 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht The researchers modelled the asteroid impact believed to have led to the demise of the dinosaurs – this frame shows tsunami wave heights 4 hours after the impact of the 10-kilomtre-wide asteroid (Image: Steve Ward)Related Articles Tsunamis triggered by asteroid impacts cause a disaster similar to the 2004 Asian tsunami once every 6000 years on average, according to the first detailed analysis of their effects. Researchers have assumed that tsunamis would make ocean impacts more deadly than those on land. But Steve Chesley at the...

Graves of the Pacific's First Seafarers Revealed Richard Stone INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20-26 MARCH 2006, MANILA Little is known about the Lapita peoples, the first settlers of the Western Pacific, other than their ubiquitous calling card: red pottery fragments with intricate designs. But in what's being hailed as one of the most dramatic finds in years, researchers at the meeting offered a glimpse of the first-known early Lapita cemetery. "This is the closest we're going to get to the first Polynesians," says archaeologist Matthew Spriggs of Australia National University (ANU) in Canberra, a member of the excavation team. Face...

Revealed: the secret No 10 plan to tackle bird flu food shortages By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor (Filed: 09/04/2006) Emergency plans to tackle widespread food shortages in the event of a bird flu pandemic are being drawn up by ministers, according to secret Cabinet documents. Off-duty firemen and retired lorry drivers would be pressed into service to ensure that essential food and drink supplies were delivered. Laws that restrict the daily hours of drivers and other vital workers would be suspended. An extract from the secret Cabinet documents The confidential papers - seen by the Sunday Telegraph - show that...

Bird flu's human-attack pathway revealed 18:00 22 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie Two separate research groups have independently discovered why the H5N1 bird flu virus causes lethal pneumonia in people, but is – so far – hard for people to catch. In the process, they have found a way to predict which mutations might make the virus more contagious, and potentially become a pandemic strain. To date, confirmed human deaths from the disease stand at 103 worldwide The H5N1 virus binds to sugars on the surface of cells deep in human lungs, but not to cells lining the...

The remains of an ancient Greek cargo ship that sank more than 2,300 years ago have been uncovered with a deep-sea robot, archaeologists announced today. The ship was carrying hundreds of ceramic jars of wine and olive oil and went down off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea sometime around 350 B.C. Archeologists speculate that a fire or rough weather may have sunk the ship. The wreckage was found submerged beneath 200 feet (60 meters) of water. The researchers hope that the shipwreck will provide clues about the trade network that existed between the ancient Greek...

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed By Adam Brookes BBC Pentagon correspondent A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks. The document says information is "critical to military success" Bloggers beware. As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer. From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war. The declassified document is called...

What a Viking's smile revealed 07 January 2006 VIKING warriors may have filed deep grooves into their teeth to indicate class or military rank. Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board analysed 557 skeletons from four major Viking-age Swedish cemeteries and discovered that around 10 per cent of men, but none of the women, bore horizontal grooves across the upper front teeth. The marks, which were cut deep into the enamel, are often found in pairs or triplets and appear precisely made. They might have marked certain men as members of a group of tradesmen or warriors, or signified their...

Revealed: the runners of 20,000BC Email Print Normal font Large font By Deborah Smith Science Editor December 22, 2005 Steps back in time … the prints in Mungo National Park. Photo: Michael Amendolia, with traditional landowners' permission HUNDREDS of human footprints dating back to about 20,000BC - the oldest in Australia and the largest collection of its kind in the world - have been discovered in Mungo National Park in western NSW. They were left by children, adolescents and adults at the height of the last ice age as they ran and walked across a moist clay area near the...

Like most people, I had long wondered about the identity of Deep Throat. Now that W. Mark Felt has stepped forward confessing to having been Mr. Throat, I can scratch the two likeliest suspects from my short list. That would be Richard Nixon and me. I suppose some explanation is required. For openers, I never for a moment suspected Alexander Haig. He always loved the spotlight far too much to hide in the shadows, lurking in parking structures, whispering secrets to Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I had a couple of reasons for thinking that President Nixon had orchestrated his...

At a time when the public display and discourse about matters of faith have been under attack, a new poll indicates most Americans – 63 percent – believe the Bible is literally true and the Word of God. The survey taken Thursday and Friday by Rasmussen Reports found just 24 percent thinking otherwise. When broken down into different demographics, the poll showed 77 percent of Republicans believe in the literal truth of the Bible as do 59 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of those not affiliated with either major party. Among Evangelical Christians, 89 percent believe the Bible is...