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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...

Researchers are racing to find the first planet that might support life as we know it.Gliese 876 is a modest star, just one-third the mass of our sun and only 15 light-years away, but it has a history-making planetary system all its own. In 1998 a team led by Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley detected the first sign of something interesting there: a giant planet, twice the mass of Jupiter, circling Gliese 876 once every two months, its gravity yanking the star back and forth at the speed of a jet plane. Three years later the...

The transit method — observing a distant planet as it moves in front of its star as seen from Earth — is a prime tool for exoplanet detection. But transits are hardly limited to planets around their primaries. The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) is demonstration of that, an attempt to find tiny Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) in the range between 0.5 and 28 kilometers. As you would imagine, at a distance like this such objects cannot be seen directly, but an occultation — the dimming of a star when one of the KBOs passes in front of it —...

Astronomers believe they have taken the first amazing photo of a planet around another star like the Sun. The alien world shows up as a tiny orange disk in the image captured by Canadian scientists with a giant telescope in Hawaii. Previous pictures of so-called extrasolar planets orbiting other stars have been painted by artists. The new world was spotted 500 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius, the scorpion. Astronomers were puzzled by its distance from its parent star which is 330 times further than we are from the sun. But they carried out detective work with...

When Senator John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate two Fridays ago, the first-term governor and would-be vice president was a complete stranger to the vast majority of Americans. But, as we soon found out, she had already charmed not just her fellow Alaskans and a devoted University of Colorado at Colorado Springs undergraduate student--the one who launched "Draft Sarah Palin" early in 2007--but also some of the most influential members of D.C.'s conservative establishment. Who were her earliest boosters in the chattering class, and how did they fall so hard, so fast?

Rocker Bon Jovi Hosts Obama Fundraiser Friday, September 5, 2008 11:03 PM Article Font Size Unlike his Republican opponent, Democrat Barack Obama is still raising money for his presidential campaign, and he turned Friday to rock legend Jon Bon Jovi for help. Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea, hosted more than 100 people for dinner on their mansion lawn by the Navesink River in Middletown, N.J. The price was $30,800 a person, to be divided between the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. "When I look at Barack, I see an old man," Bon Jovi said in introducing his...

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2008 – Two years ago, Steve Newton, founder of Silver Star Families of America, asked the governors of all 50 states and the mayor of the District of Columbia to sign a proclamation to observe May 1 as Silver Star Banner Day, honoring wounded and ill servicemembers from all wars. “We asked the governors to make this day a permanent and official day of observance each year thereafter,” Newton said. “This is a community outreach program that can be implemented by each governor to benefit the wounded and ill troop population in this unique way.” Governors...

This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. Newswise — A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago. On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed...

ADS GmbH and BAE Systems Hägglunds have initiated a cooperation to integrate the Active Armor Concept (AAC), the Swedish version of AMAP-ADS, on the SEP platform. The design goal is to accomplish a highly mobile, light-weight and superiorly protected vehicle. The integrated concept was demonstrated on the 17th of April in Sweden and showed an excellent ability to withstand a typical urban warfare scenario in different aspects. During the demonstration the following attacks were performed: * Firing with 7.62 as an example of a non-threat (threat rejection) * Firing with 2 RPG-7 at the same hit point as an example...

In a distant galaxy, a star orbiting a massive central black hole strays too close to the insatiable giant and is torn apart. But before it can be devoured, the star lets out one last scream in a flare of light that slowly echoes across the galaxy. Astronomers on Earth pick up this faint call and use it to map the nucleus of the galaxy from which it emanated. This scenario is no bit of science fiction …quot; a team of astronomers discovered one of these rare and dramatic events while combing through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey last December....

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2008 – Last year, 44 states and the District of Columbia proclaimed May 1 as Silver Star Day. This year, Silver Star Families of America, which began the grassroots movement, is hoping all 50 states will remember and honor their wounded and ill veterans May 1 to kick off Military Appreciation Month. “While we want every state to join with us, this year we are going to the cities and asking them to help,” Janie Orman, the organization’s president, said. “We wanted 50 cities across the United States to hold ceremonies and remember our honored wounded.” Cities...

Roger Waters used his headlining set at the Coachella Festival in Los Angeles yesterday (April 27th) to deliver a strong political statement against the US Government. Following a performance which included a complete rendition of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, Waters dispatched an inflatable pig across the crowd. On the side of the pig was the message "Don't be led to the slaughter", which was accompanied by a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The underside of the pig had the name of Barack Obama along with a ticked ballot box, reports the Associated Press. Waters,...

The Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a public charter school in Inver Grove, MN that “offers tuition-free education to all students upon admission” is in full swing with Islamic centered traditions at taxpayer’s expense. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the school serves halal food- Islamic permissible food-and that students participate in ritual washing and prayers. It offers Islamic studies and requires students to study Arabic as a second language. The school’s calendar also reflects that it is closed for an entire week in October in observance of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2008 – Servicemembers’ friends and families living in west-central California have a shoulder to lean on if they should need it. Members of Delta Blue Star Moms prepare care packages to send to deployed troops. The group, an official chapter of Blue Star Mothers of America, is based in Knightsen, Calif. Photo courtesy of Delta Blue Star Moms  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “Our group offers a supportive environment for family members, primarily moms, of service personnel,” said Tammy Callahan, president of the Delta Blue Star Moms, based in Knightsen, Calif. “It is most difficult...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 24, 2008 – Heroes are made, not born. And a hero like Army Spc. Monica Brown, 19, is no different. Army Spc. Monica Brown, a medic from the 782nd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, stands over Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khowst province, Afghanistan. Brown is the second woman since World War II to earn a Silver Star for gallantry in combat. (Photo by Spc. Micah E. Clare, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Brown, recognized for her gallant actions during combat in Afghanistan in 2007, is the...

WASHINGTON - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye. The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday. The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. However, NASA...

US weaponry goliath Northrop Grumman says it has achieved the "first major building block" necessary for manufacture of a 100 kilowatt solid-state laser - that is, a viable battlefield raygun. The company said yesterday that its Joint High-Powered Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) programme has "exceeded all target requirements of its second major demonstration milestone". This was the trial of a "laser chain" with 15 kilowatt power. Northrop intends to combine eight such units to produce a single laser beam of more than 100 kilowatts - which is generally considered the level at which energy beams would become useful combat weapons....

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait, March 11, 2008 – It’s hard to imagine that Frank Cavanagh, a tall thin Army Reserve sergeant with a shaved head, once had hair nearly to his shoulders and played bass for the rock band Filter. Richard Patrick (left), lead vocalist for the band Filter, and former band mate turned Army Reserve Sgt. Frank Cavanagh share the stage for a reunion song during the Operation MySpace concert at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 10, 2008. Defense Dept. photos by Samantha L. Quigley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Cavanaugh said he didn’t tell anyone he’d gone...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) — Somehow, being the first Indian-American and the youngest person ever elected to govern a US state wasn't enough. Within weeks of taking office, rising Republican star Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's name was thrown into the ring as a possible vice-presidential candidate by influential conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. And some say the 36-year-old son of Punjabi immigrants could make a great president if he plays his cards right. A cowboy boot-wearing social conservative, Jindal built his political support among Christian conservatives and middle-class whites with his promises to cut taxes, tighten government spending and impose...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - A teenage boy is accused of fatally shooting his mother and her two little girls, one of whom was the 4-year-old daughter of rap star Juvenile. Anthony Tyrone Terrell Jr., 17, was charged Friday with murder in the deaths at the family home near Lawrenceville, where the bodies were found the night before, said police spokeswoman Illana Spellman. She identified the victims as Gwinnett County Sheriff's Deputy Joy Deleston, 39, and her two daughters, Micaiah, 11, and Jelani, 4. The motive was still unclear.

He’s won a Grammy, published best-selling books and taken the lead in the Democratic presidential race, so can an Oscar be far behind? You won’t see Obama donning a tuxedo for this Sunday’s Academy Awards show, but next year he might very well be there on stage, if not in spirit. A major documentary about the Democratic presidential candidate is in the works, offering an inside view of his campaign with filmmakers shooting “staggering amounts” of revealing behind-the-scenes footage. The project, currently untitled, has been ongoing for roughly two years, backed by actor-producer Edward Norton’s Class 5 Productions banner and...

FORT HUACHUCA — The commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca will present the Bronze Star Medal to World War II veteran Hans Spear on Wednesday. The event for the 89-year-old Tucson resident will be at 10:30 a.m. at Alvarado Hall. Maj. Gen. John Custer will make the presentation. Every member of Spear’s unit, with the exception of him and another German-born Jewish soldier, received the Bronze Star for supervising interrogation under fire. He was denied the medal due to anti-Semitism and discrimination because Spear was categorized an enemy alien. The Army awards regulation, in effect...

Because Bill Clinton has been very busy helping his dear wife in her campaign to put a neo-Stalinist in the White House and give him another opportunity to abuse women there, he might not have had much time to shop for Valentines Day. Of course, he probably gave out about a hundred copies of LEAVES OF GRASS. Just in case he didn't have time to shop for Hillary, I thought I would give him some assistance. I heard the commercial for naming a star after someone, but that was too expensive and is actually a ripoff. As an aside, I...

A young star speeding away from the Milky Way is in fact an alien visitor, astronomers have confirmed. The wayward object is one of several rogues that are giving astronomers a glimpse into the volatile nature of our galaxy and others. Astronomers have found about 10 stars hurtling away from our galaxy, at speeds that exceed its gravitational grasp. While most stars rush through space at speeds on the order of hundreds of kilometers per second, these aptly-named "hypervelocity stars" are rocketing away at least twice as fast. Most of these speedy stars are thought to be exiles from the...

Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell has hit back after she was named the world's most annoying celebrity by insisting all stars are irritating.

Could the purchase of an ancient coin have led to an important clue about the Star of Bethlehem? The above illustration is a Roman coin from Antioch, Syria which shows the zodiacal sign, Aries the Ram. In trying to understand the meaning behind this coin, I found that Aries was the sign of the Jews. Realizing that this is where ancient stargazers would have watched for the Star of Bethlehem, I embarked on searching for the celestial event that signified the birth of the Messiah in Judea. Superposed on the photograph of the coin is what I found: Jupiter underwent...

Conservative Activist Blames Poverty on LiberalismBy Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer September 17, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Blaming poverty on liberalism and the federal government, a conservative activist on Friday said: "It is very sad what the liberals have done with their war on the poor in this country." "After 40 years of failure, they still insist that they want to expand this war, that they think they should pour more money into this war," said Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. "Already, over $3 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty, and so...

ROME (AP) - Luciano Pavarotti, opera's biggest superstar of the late 20th century, died Thursday. He was 71. He was the son of a singing baker and became the king of the high C's. Pavarotti, who had been diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer and underwent treatment last month, died at his home in his native Modena at 5 a.m., his manager told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement. His wife, Nicoletta, four daughters and sister were among family and friends at his side, manager Terri Robson said. "The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer,"...