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9/3/2009 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq (AFNS) -- On a deployment, a multitude of distractions can make sleep challenging for some servicemembers including F-16 Fighting Falcons roaring on the flightline and helicopters thundering through the air. Also putting rest to the test are 70-pound Labrador retrievers taking up half the bed. For Air Force and Army military working dog handlers at Joint Base Balad, the deployed environment requires not only working, but also living with a canine comrade. "Military working dogs normally stay in a kennel when not training or working," said Staff Sgt. Melinda Miller, 732nd Expeditionary Security Forces...

TEL AVIV – President Obama's controversial "Green Jobs" adviser, Van Jones, signed a statement that alleges the Bush administration may have deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, perhaps as a pretext for war. The Gateway Pundit blog found Jones' name among 100 signatories of notable American citizens in the 9/11 statement, which called for an investigation and the formation of an independent inquiry to determine whether members of the Bush administration were involved in the attacks. Jones signed the 2004 statement as the director of the Ella Baker Human Rights Center. The statement, facilitated by the 911truth.org conspiracy website, calls for...

The controversy stems from a notice on the Organizing for America Web site urging reform advocates to use the anniversary of the terror attacks to call on lawmakers to pass health care reform. President Obama's grassroots advocacy group is coming under fire for a supporter who pulled the Sept. 11 attacks into the health care debate. The controversy stems from a notice on the Organizing for America Web site urging reform advocates to use the anniversary of the terror attacks to call on lawmakers to pass health care reform. "All 50 states are coordinating in this -- as we fight...

Georgia May Jagger: look at her now In August this year, Georgia May landed her first big modelling assignment. Chosen as the face of premium denim label Hudson Jeans' autumn/winter 2009 campaign, the 17 year-old was shot by Mario Sorrenti, the renowned fashion photographer famous for shooting a young Kate Moss topless for the Calvin Klein Obsession adverts.

According to Winn's conclusions, HAT-P-7b either revolves around its star at a tilt of about 180°, or it orbits the star's poles, at a 90° tilt. In any case, it was found to have a wildly tilted orbit, when compared to its star's equator. "We don't know if it's a slowly rotating star that we're seeing edge-on, or a really rapidly rotating star that we're seeing pole-on. It could be like the solar system – but reversed, or it could be going pole over pole. Either way it's cool," Winn says. Further observations from Kepler could solve this mystery, as...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2009 – Enemies of America remain in Afghanistan, and the United States must stay there to defeat the terrorists, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today. That is the focus of President Barack Obama’s regional strategy announced in March, Gates said. The secretary said he is studying the assessment Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, submitted earlier this week. Gates and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke during a Pentagon news conference. Gates said he has passed McChrystal’s assessment on to the White...

The US has said Iran is "taking a step backward" by appointing a cabinet minister suspected of terrorism. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chose Ahmad Vahidi, wanted by Argentina over the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre, as his new defence minister. Mr Vahidi was strongly supported by Irna's parliament, the Majlis, with 227 MPs backing him out of 286, Iranian Speaker Ali Larijani said. The US State Department described the appointment as "disturbing". "Iran today is taking a step backward by putting into a high office a well-known individual suspected of participation in a terrorist act," said state department official...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2009 – An Air Force firefighting squadron is making a big difference in Iraq by training firefighters and helping local children. The 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron Fire Protection Flight, a 40-man team of firefighters who provides fire response and airfield operations to Ali Base, Iraq, are training Iraqi firefighters in lifesaving and firefighting skills. The team provides fire response for airfield operations and all coalition forces assigned to the base, about 13,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, said Air Force Master Sgt. Charles M. Harrison, the flight’s operations chief. “The team responds to everything on the...

FRESNO, Calif. – Top Obama administration officials are taking California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to task for blaming the state's water crisis on federal environmental restrictions. The governor sent a letter to Washington Wednesday demanding a response to "catastrophic impacts" he said were caused by environmental rules that have slashed water deliveries.

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill., Sept. 3, 2009 – Air Force medical evacuation airmen had the benefit of flying with a leading U.S. trauma surgeon during a recent mission to Iraq as part of a program to link military and civilian medical professionals. Thomas Scalea, physician in chief at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, flew aboard a C-17 Globemaster III transport jet on an Aug. 19 and 20 aeromedical evacuation mission to help to shape future training for military medical teams worldwide, Air Mobility Command officials said. Scalea served as a lead contributor to the Air...

Truthers are stranger than fiction.I've been reporting for a while about what a radical whackjob President Obama's green jobs czar Van Jones is --not was, is-- and then out of the blue we learn Jones thinks President Bush orchestrated the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.Sweet.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2009 – Global climate change is a hotly debated topic, and the U.S. government is looking to Alaska to assess how it may affect the nation. White House and federal agency officials participating in the new Ocean Policy Task Force traveled throughout Alaska and the Arctic from Aug. 17 to 21 to observe activities in the region and meet with local leaders and industry representatives. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad W. Allen, who took part in the trip, discussed in a Sept. 1 “DoDLive” bloggers roundtable how the increasingly accessible and active Arctic region has significant security,...

The key to stopping Obama's far-left agenda is to understand where his heart is. If politicians let their guard down and compromise, the Obama steamroller will regain its momentum and forge ahead to gobble up our individual liberties. Obama's heart is and always has been on the farthest reaches of the left wing of politics. His driving ambition is to force fundamental change on America. That should go without saying, but it must be repeated -- and repeated -- lest people's forgiving spirits and short memories generate just enough complacency to allow Obama to get back on track. It is...

In March, NASA launched its Kepler telescope with the hopes of discovering an Earth-like planet that could be hospitable to extraterrestrial life. However, one team of scientists has gone as far to say that the orbiting telescope will likely discover habitable "exomoons" as well. Writing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr David Kipping and colleagues of University College London created a detailed method that scientists would need to follow while looking for exomoons. However, many experts were unable to tell if the technology needed to detect these exomoons even existed. Kipping's team created a model of...

It's an age-old tale: site becomes popular, slags and hags use it for financial gain, the olds get mad. And Twitter is not immune. Thus, Business Week's Sarah Lacy warns the company to clean up its act. Though she once praised Twitter, Lacy has since become disillusioned by the amount of skin-centric span that's clogging her and her friends' feeds. Yes, there are ways to block the site's cabal of sluts, but Lacy argues it's far too hard, so she's offering Twitter her own advice — and knocks Tila Tequila in the process: There's no reason why Twitter shouldn't be...

How can we detect design in nature? One idea, proposed by Michael Behe, is irreducible complexity. Behe explains that a machine is irreducibly complex if it has several different parts which all are necessary. Remove any one of those needed parts, and the machine doesn’t function. An internal combustion engine is irreducibly complexity, for instance. Take away the valve, or the piston, or the spark plug, or the wire, and it does not function. Such machines are not likely to be created by blind natural laws--they require forward-looking thought. Assembly is required, and there is no payback until the final...

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals. Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose. Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments. Writing in the journal Science, they say this confirms that the Arctic is very sensitive both to changes in solar heating and to greenhouse warming. The 23 sites sampled were good enough to provide a decade-by-decade picture of temperatures across the region. The result is a "hockey stick"-like curve...

WASHINGTON – American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc. (hereinafter together "Pfizer") have agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, the Justice Department announced today. Pharmacia & Upjohn Company has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead. Bextra is an anti-inflammatory drug that Pfizer pulled from the market in...

Jaycee Lee Dugard: new photos released Previously unseen photographs of Jaycee Lee Dugard have been released by her aunt. By Nick Allen in Antioch 03 Sep 2009 [Pics in URL] The images were distributed at a press conference by Tina Dugard who revealed how Jaycee taught her two daughters how to read and write in captivity using the internet Photo: AP The photographs show a smiling Jaycee as a three-year-old ballerina, dressed as punk rocker, and attending Los Angeles' Rose Parade in 1991. The images were distributed at a press conference by Tina Dugard who revealed how Jaycee taught her...