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WELLINGTON (AFP) - The largest squid ever caught began to reveal its secrets Wednesday, including beach ball-sized eyes that scientists said were the biggest known in the animal kingdom. The 495-kilogram (1,090-pound) colossal squid -- accidentally caught by a fishing boat in Antarctic waters in February 2007 -- is slowly thawing under the fascinated gaze of a team of scientists at the Museum of New Zealand. While defrosting took longer than expected Wednesday, one of the earliest revelations were eyes measuring 27 centimetres (11 inches) across with lenses of 10 to 12 centimetres in diameter. In comparison, a human eye...

AUSTIN, Texas - Everything's big in Texas — big pickup trucks, big SUVs and the state's big carbon footprint, too. Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation. The headquarters state of America's oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second-...

The quasar OJ287 contains two black holes (this slightly dated illustration lists the larger black hole's mass as 17 billion Suns, though researchers now estimate it is 18 billion Suns). The smaller black hole crashes through a disc of material around the larger one twice every orbit, creating bright outbursts (Illustration: VISPA) The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever...

'Biggest diamond ever' is found in South Africa By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg Last Updated: 8:48pm BST 28/08/2007 It is either the greatest diamond find in history, or a case of fool's gold. The diamond claim was met with scepticism South Africa's diamond industry was surprised by reports that a small mining firm had found a stone estimated at 7,000 carats, twice the size of the Cullinan diamond, the largest ever found. Gems cut from the 3,106-carat Cullinan, including the Great Star of Africa, became part of the Crown Jewels after it was found in Gauteng Province in 1905. But...

We've seen the world's smallest revolver already, and the Pfeifer Zeliska is the world's largest according to Guinness World Records. At over four feet in length, Zeliska copied the Remington model 1859...a bit bigger than it was produced the first time. If only Crocodile Dundee were still making movies to see it. "Watch out, he's got a gun!" "That ain't a gun. This is a gun." "What are you talking about, that's just a knife! And they suck against guns!"

Standing 6ft 5in on its hind legs and tipping the scales at 19st 10lb, Samson is a giant in every sense of the word. As Britain's biggest dog with a fearsome set of jaws to match, even the slightest growl is enough to make the bravest of postmen think twice before heading up the garden path.He boasts a 59in chest and a 29in neck, meaning he has to wear pony coats when it rains and has had to have an extra large collar fitted. The dog's paws are almost the size of dinner plates. While Samson's awesome build is impressive...

The killing of Mullah Dadullah Akhund in a joint military operation by US, Nato and Afghan army forces on 12 May is the biggest blow to the Taleban since it lost power in Afghanistan in December 2001. In recent months the Taleban have suffered a number of setbacks. Previous reports of his death or capture had proved untrue

Bay Area officials reacted with disappointment and anger to state planners' recommendation that $500 million worth of transportation bonds pay for rural highway projects such as the Willits Bypass, leaving the Bay Area with less than half of what officials requested. The staff of the California Transportation Commission on Friday released its project choices for the $4.5 billion Corridor Mobility Improvement Account, the biggest program within the $20 billion transportation bond state voters approved Nov. 7. The commission is scheduled to make the final choice on projects to be funded on Feb. 28 in Irvine. Only $707 million worth of...

Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US' By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 29/08/2006) Britain now presents a greater security threat to the United States than Iran or Iraq, an American magazine said yesterday. In an article on Islamists headlined "Kashmir on the Thames", the New Republic painted Britain's Muslim communities as a breeding ground for violent extremism. Citing recent opinion poll evidence suggesting that one in four British Muslims believed that last year's London Tube bombings were justified, the magazine said: "In the wake of this month's high-profile arrests, it can now be argued that the biggest threat...

6/7/2006 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- Patrolling the sky over Iraq for more than 2,250 hours in May, the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron here leads the largest unmanned aerial vehicle operation in the world with one of the Air Force’s smallest aircraft -- the MQ-1 Predator. Providing “real-time eyes-in-the-sky,” the squadron of about 20 aircraft is often the critical link between ground commanders and what is around the next corner in combat. “We’re the largest game in town and an integral part of just about every large joint operation in Iraq,” said Capt. Fred Atwater, 46th ERS commander....

Massachusetts' attorney general is demanding that contractors refund $108 million for poor work on Boston's "Big Dig," which is the biggest public works project in U.S. history and has been plagued by leaks and delays. Attorney General Tom Reilly's office plans to sue Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff and other companies if the two sides do not reach an agreement over some 200 complaints of shoddy work in putting a major highway running through downtown Boston underground... Costs for building the 7.8 mile underground roadway through Boston ballooned from under $3 billion to the current $14.6 billion.

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2006 – Al Qaeda is still the biggest short-term threat facing the United States, President Bush said here today, adding that North Korea and Iran pose equal security threats to the U.S. "They would like to attack us again," Bush said of al Qaeda at the National Newspaper Association's Government Affairs Conference. "I think about al Qaeda and their potential to attack all the time." The president also recalled his "axis of evil" remark in his 2002 State of the Union Address, in which he said North Korea, Iraq and Iran were threats to the United States....

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2006 – Terrorism remains the pre-eminent threat to U.S. national security and interests abroad. But if progress continues at the current pace in Iraq, the terrorists can be defeated there and the U.S. can gain a foothold in the war on terror, a top U.S. official said here today. Entrenched grievances such as corruption, injustice and the slow pace of economic, social and political change in many Muslim nations continue to fuel the global jihadist movement, and nowhere is that movement more acutely seen than in Iraq, said John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, at a...

11/3/05 Khajeh mountain, biggest unbaked mud architecture of Parthian era Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchestan prov, Nov 2, IRNA-Khajeh Mountain Complex, the biggest model of unbaked mud architecture remaining in Sistan area, is one of the most remarkable relics of the Parthian, Sassanid and Islamic eras. It is the only natural height left behind in Sistan area, where a palace, fire temple, pilgrimage center called Khajeh Mehdi and graveyard reminiscent of the past are still in good condition. The trapezoid-shaped basalt lava, situated 609 meters from the sea level, with a diameter ranging from two to 2.5 kilometers stands 17 kms to the...

EUREKA -- Rob Arkley has apparently given more to help pass Proposition 75 than any other single individual in the state of California. According to the California secretary of state’s website, Arkley heads up a long list of big donors supporting Proposition 75 with a total of $302,000 given to groups supporting its passage. The contributions came in two different contributions, one for $250,001 in September and another for $52,000 made earlier in August. Arkley did not return a call for comment by deadline. But an employee for Security National, owned by Arkley, called the Times-Standard and said his boss...

LaPorte County, IN - About 3,000 to 5,000 marijuana plants, some the size of Christmas trees, have been found about a half mile north of State Road 4 between 600 and 700 East in LaPorte County, just west of Fish Lake. Officials are calling it the largest outdoor marijuana bust in Indiana since the 1980s. The plants are growing in three to five clusters, hidden on the ground in a two-acre plot full of trees. Police discovered the hidden plants over a week ago but it wasn’t until yesterday that they decided to bust up the drug ring. Police say...

. . . and churn up big waves, too Sid Perkins From New Orleans, at the Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union As Hurricane Ivan approached the U.S. Gulf Coast last September, it passed right over an array of seafloor sensors. The network detected the largest wave ever measured by instruments—one that towered more than 27 meters from trough to crest. The 50-kilometer-wide group of 14 instruments was deployed in May 2004 to measure currents on the ocean floor, says William J. Teague, an oceanographer at the Naval Research Laboratory at Bay St. Louis, Miss. Late on the evening...

GENEVA – The booming U.S. private equity market could be heading for a crash as interest rates rise and hedge funds, desperately seeking higher returns, pour money into the sector, the chief investment officer for the biggest pension fund in the United States warned on Wednesday. "The biggest one (asset bubble) I'm afraid of at the moment is private equity," Mark Anson, CIO for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), told the International Fund Management 2005 conference organised by ICBI. "The current overhang of leveraged buyouts committed but not invested is $182 billion (end-2003 figure). A lot of money...

Barbara Boxer needs to give it a rest – heck, she needs to give us a rest. We’ve got six more years to go with Boxer in the Senate, and perhaps the worst part is that she seems intent on making us, and everyone else, remember it. Week before last, Boxer put on her tin-foil hat and objected to the certification of President Bush’s victory in Ohio, thereby forcing a debate of the issue. And although some of her Democratic Senate colleagues paid lip service to the needless (and meaningless) disruption, when it came time actually to vote on whether...

Scientific treasure hunters Nov 4th 2004 | CLUSIUM, OR POSSIBLY NOT From The Economist print edition Archaeologists may have found what was once the biggest city in Italy REAL archaeology bears about as much resemblance to an Indiana Jones movie as real spying bears to James Bond. Excavation—at least if it is to be meaningfully different from grave robbing—is a matter of painstaking trowel work, not gung-ho gold-grabbing. But there is still a glimmer of the grave robber in many archaeologists, and the search for a juicy royal tomb can stimulate more than just rational, scientific instincts. Few tombs would...

Frédéric Desagneaux, consul general of France for San Francisco, is not happy with the light being shown on his country’s involvement with U.N. corruption in Iraq. Poor thing. Yesterday, the independent committee investigating corruption in the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program for Iraq made public the names of 3,545 companies that sold goods to Saddam. Also published were the names of 248 companies which received Iraqi oil under the program. Through oil-for-food, Saddam stole “$10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers.” Leave it to the U.N. to pull off one of the biggest scandals in world history. Evidence is emerging...

The American way On the other side of the Atlantic, where juries are revered, UK lawyers’ squeamishness about serving is given short shrift, as everyone over there is expected to do their bit. “Juries are one of the hallmarks of a well-functioning democracy,” says Covington & Burling white collar crime partner Lanny Breuer, who is the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment proceedings. “A citizen can’t be imprisoned or have his or her liberty taken away simply by the act of an official such as a judge, and that’s why we put juries on such a pedestal.” In...

KENDAL, Indonesia (Reuters) - It's still a big snake, just not a record-breaker. When a recreation park in Indonesia put a huge reticulated python on show last week, keepers insisted to reporters it was 49 feet long. That made it the longest ever caught. But amid growing skepticism of the claim, a photographer working for Reuters returned to the Curugsewu park in the small central Java town of Kendal Wednesday with a measuring tape. The snake's true length -- around 21 feet "I have no idea why the snake has shrunk," said one keeper when asked about the discrepancy, as...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT scientists have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded -- only half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The work, to be reported in the Sept. 12 issue of Science, bests the previous record by a factor of six, and is the first time that a gas was cooled below 1 nanokelvin (one-billionth of a degree). "To go below one nanokelvin is a little like running a mile under four minutes for the first time," said Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle, co-leader of the team. Ketterle is MIT's John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics....

HAVANA (AP) -- A Cuban cigar maker has shattered his own record for the world's longest cigar by rolling a 45-foot-long stogie, the Guinness Book of World Records said. It took Jose Castelar Cairo five days to manufacture the cigar - a feat that far surpassed his 35-foot cigar that set the record in 2000. The latest and greatest cigar was rolled in November, but only recently certified by Guinness. Castelar proudly displayed both Guinness certificates on Thursday. Castelar's first milestone was a 9-foot cigar he and his buddies rolled in 1999 as a way to attract passing tourists. "We...

Bush Prescription Drug Program Biggest Social Spending Plan In 40 Years June 16, 2003 The proposal to add a prescription drug Medicare benefit keeps growing. This leads me to an Associated Press story by Tom Raum, who writes that President Bush has a tradition going back to his days as Texas governor of taking a firm stand, holding fast - but eventually making crucial concessions to opponents and then claiming victory. This goes back to "The BIG Theory" I exposed in recent weeks, about Bush taking Democrat issues away from them by passing 20%, 30% or 40% of what they...

US threatens to use biggest bomb as hunt switches north By Donald Macintyre at US Central Command Qatar 11 April 2003 The United States stepped up the military and psychological pressure on the Baathist stronghold of Tikrit yesterday as the hunt for Saddam Hussein and leading members of his regime began to focus on areas to the north and west of Baghdad. In what looked to be a calculated propaganda move, the Pentagon issued a thinly disguised threat to deploy – for the first time in the war – the biggest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal, the 21,000lb massive ordnance...

<p>MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq - A battle Friday for a crucial crossroads 12 miles southeast of Baghdad involved the heaviest combat Marines had undertaken so far in Iraq, commanders said, as members of the Republican Guard put up what one commander called "a coordinated defense."</p>

Europe's biggest volcano spews lava as earthquakes signal latest return to life By Cahal Milmo 28 October 2002 Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, exploded into life again yesterday, spurting molten rock 650ft into the air above Sicily and producing streams of lava that engulfed small buildings on the island. Officials evacuated the area in the path of the lava flows after a new vent opened early yesterday morning. There were no reports of injuries. By late afternoon, the eruption had destroyed a line of ski-lift pylons used to reach the summit, as well as a pine forest....