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Hugo Chavez, who has been fighting cancer, was rushed to a military hospital for emergency care following kidney failure, according to reports.

Weather Science: Climate alarmists are now explaining away their failed predictions by claiming China's power plants emit sulfur dioxide that cancels out carbon dioxide emissions. So should we burn more coal? Among the emails unearthed during ClimateGate, when scientists working at or with Britain's Climate Research Unit conspired to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, is one from Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research to Michael Mann, inventor of the now-discredited "hockey stick" graph that purported to show sudden and dangerous man-induced temperature rise. Trenberth says: "Well, I have my own article on where the heck is...

IDF sources claimed Monday night that new intelligence information obtained by Israel in recent days shows that participants of the flotilla planning to break Israel’s sea blockade over the Gaza Strip later this week plan to kill IDF soldiers who board their ships. According to the information obtained by the IDF, some of the participants have prepared a number of sacks with sulfur, which they plan to pour on the soldiers as they board the vessels. “This is a chemical weapon and if poured on a soldier it can paralyze him,” an IDF source told The Jerusalem Post Monday night....

The chemicals were stored in vats in the basement of an Egyptian restaurant in downtown Brussels. The suicide bomber, a former soccer player who had fallen into drug use and petty crime, had been selected. The target, the American Embassy in Paris, had been scouted. All that remained was the signal from Osama bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan to strike. The nod was to come from a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was on his way back from training in Afghanistan. But he was arrested in transit, and he talked, spilling to French interrogators details of what could have been ...

Samples of a mineral present on the Moon and on Earth have been found to contain almost the same concentrations of hydrogen, chlorine and sulfur, adding weight to questions over how the Moon formed and evolved. The interior of the Moon was generally believed to be depleted of volatile elements as they were thought to have escaped into space during the Moon's formation... Jeremy Boyce at the California Institute of Technology and colleagues at other US institutions... analysing a mineral called apatite... ubiquitous in trace amounts in lunar rocks... Using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), the researchers measured concentrations of...

Nathan Myhrvold is a former technology officer for Microsoft who has found his own company, Intellectual Ventures, which is involved in a number of technology development programs, including new forms of energy generation. Nathan Myhrvold also thinks that he has found a cheap and reliable way to solve global warming, which does not involve upending and perhaps destroying the world's economy. The global warming solution proposed by Nathan Myhvold involves Nathan Myhrvold's Anti Global Warming Scheme running a hose up to the stratosphere with balloons and using that hose to pump out enough sulfur particles to dim the sun's heat...

U.N. 'doesn't smell of sulfur anymore,' says Chavezupdated 4 hours, 22 minutes ago UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Drawing on 2006 remarks in which he compared former U.S. President George Bush to the devil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the United Nations Thursday, said, "It doesn't smell like sulfur anymore." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke highly of President Obama at the United Nations on Thursday. In a rambling speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Chavez spoke highly of current President Obama, saying he is an "intelligent man" and comparing him to President John F. Kennedy. "I hope God will protect...

Some home builders already struggling in Florida's dismal housing market are facing another headache: The Chinese-made drywall they used is causing unpleasant odors and possibly leading to electric problems in dozens of homes constructed during the housing boom.

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Skyrocketing energy prices are hammering Americans. Five years ago this week, gasoline cost an average of $1.43 a gallon at the pump; this week, it's $3.94. And home electricity averaged 5.43 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2003; it was up to 10.31 cents in December. The underlying cause, of course, is that oil, coal and natural-gas prices have all gone berserk - with no relief in sight. What to do? Individually, of course, most of us will start conserving - people are already driving less, buying more fuel-efficient cars, etc. We'll keep on finding ways to save as prices stay high....

In Case We Can't Give Up the Cars -- Try 16 Trillion Mirrors What if we wait too long to act on global warming? What if nothing we do is enough? Already, scientists are working up plans of last resort: stratospheric sprays of sulfur, trillions of orbiting mirrors and thousands of huge off-shore saltwater fountains. Each is designed to counteract global warming by deliberately deflecting sunlight, rather than by retooling the world's economy to eliminate carbon-rich oil, coal and natural gas. More at link (a must read) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118246650280644111.html Another related article from February 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6298507.stm

That dynamic duo of demagoguery -- Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran -- visited the United Nations earlier this month. Their outrageous addresses before the U.N. brings to mind the definition of "demagogue" proffered by H.L. Mencken. He said a demagogue was "one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." Thus, any reasonable person who failed to walk out of the U.N. as these two leaders babbled on deserve the label of "idiot."

CHAVEZ (through translator): "Representatives of the governments of the world, good morning to all of you. First of all, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to those who have not read this book, to read it. Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious American and world intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, and this is one of his most recent books, 'Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.'" [Holds up book, waves it in front of General Assembly.] "It's an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century,...

Bloomberg cannot be posted to FR, so here is a link to the story:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBZvrM76tIlk&refer=worldwide_news

WASHINGTON, D.C. – What are the limits of organic life in planetary systems? It’s a heady question that, if answered, may reveal just how crowded the cosmos could be with alien biology. A study arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council (NRC), has pulled together a task group of specialists to tackle the issue of alternative life forms -- a.k.a. "weird life". To get things rolling, a workshop on the prospects for finding life on other worlds is being held here May 10-11. The meeting is a joint activity of the NRC’s Space Studies Board's Task...

If you’ve got a nose for news, here’s a bulletin: Mars may smell to high heaven. Recent revelations about the red planet from NASA’s two Mars exploration rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- have relayed back details about the volcanic and water-laden landscape. For example, at the Meridiani Planum site in which the wheeled Opportunity now roves, the robotic field geologist found a very high concentration of sulfur. The chemical form of this sulfur appears to be in magnesium, iron or other sulfate salts. Using its science gear, the robot has detected a hydrated iron sulfate mineral called jarosite. On...

The first use of the tools on the arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit reveals puzzles about the soil it examined and raises anticipation about what the tool will find during its studies of a martian rock. Today and overnight tonight, Spirit is using its microscope and two up-close spectrometers on a football-sized rock called Adirondack, said Jennifer Trosper, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We're really happy with the way the spacecraft continues to work for us," Trosper said. The large amount of data -- nearly 100 megabits -- transmitted from Spirit in a single...

A combined oceanographic and geologic image today. Click the image below to see the larger image, which is only 515 MB. I was struck both by the phenomenon caught by the satellite and also the amazing colors of the Namibian landscape. See the link at the bottom for another Namibian feature of note, which is north of the area seen in this image. Web page: Sulfur plume off Namibia Brandberg Massif The Brandberg Massif is a highly- visible geologic feature that is familar to astronauts.

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. 2002 December 18 Io Volcano Culann Patera Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: What causes the unusual colors surrounding Io's volcanoes? Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter, is known to be the most tumultuous body in the Solar System. Approximately the size of Earth's Moon, Io undergoes nearly continuous volcanic eruptions from an interior heated by gravitational tides from Jupiter and Jupiter's other large moons. The robot...