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Rosetta has arrived! After traveling more than ten years, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft reached comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. These most recent images shared from the Rosetta team were obtained from a distance of 285 kilometers above 67P’s surface, and scientists say they surpass all pictures taken from earlier space missions of cometary surfaces. Visible are steep slopes and precipices, sharp-edged rock structure, prominent pits, and smooth, wide plains. “It’s incredible how full of variation this surface is,” said Holger Sierks, the principal investigator of the OSIRIS imaging system on Rosetta. “We have never seen anything like this before in such great detail. “Today,...

The major retailer has joined a group of companies in filing an amicus brief in support of gay marriage

“Too often our department spends weeks or months developing a case, make(s) a great arrest of a drug dealer, and (the defendant is) back out on the street within 24 hours.” Ron Tischer, police chief “If people believe that everyone can be locked up without bond because they’re arrested, before they’re convicted, that’s not a realistic expectation.” Circuit Judge Scott Horne A dispute over the setting of bonds and sentences in La Crosse County Circuit Court isn’t over. While both La Crosse Police Chief Ron Tischer and the county’s judges agree they need to meet, they won’t do so until...

---snip--- Her story has garnered national attention, and Nappen says it's proof that New Jersey's gun laws are "out of control." Gun-control advocates say there's a positive side to all the attention Allen's case has received. "Fortunately, the notoriety of this case will make it less likely Pennsylvanians will carry concealed and loaded handguns in New Jersey, thereby making them and the Garden State safer from gun violence," said Bryan Miller, executive director of Heeding God's Call, a faith-based movement to prevent gun violence.

Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said on Wednesday there has been no agreement to extend a 72-hour ceasefire with Israel that is set to expire on Friday, according to AFP. "There is no agreement to extend the ceasefire," wrote Abu Marzouk on Twitter. He is part of a Palestinian Authority delegation holding indirect talks with Israel in Cairo, the report noted. Israel indicated on Wednesday it was prepared to extend the ceasefire as Egyptian mediators pushed for a durable truce, but Hamas was quick to reject that notion, with a spokesman saying that the sides would "resume fighting immediately...

Hamas terrorists have been encouraged to dress up like ordinary Orthodox Jews, according to Palestinian Media Watch, to carry out suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. Hamas repeatedly broadcasted a video encouraging the attacks, as well as the disguise, according to the watchdog group. The Hamas video glorifies a terrorist dressing up in a black hat, black Hassidic coat or bekishe, and tzitzit - and fully decked with long peyot or sidelocks and a beard - before arming himself with explosives. In addition, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV network broadcast a poem glorifying suicide bombing, specifically in Gaza. The text...

A pet dog's reaction to a family member returning home after 2 years... which in fairness is 14 years in dog years.

The sheriff’s department in Prince Edward Co., Virginia, isn’t returning phone calls about Party. No great surprise. A deputy shot the dog in late June, killing it. The department issued a CYA press release, then dummied up—perhaps in the hope the whole thing would blow over. No wonder: According to a news account, the deputy went to the home of Stephen Carwile to serve a paper in a non-criminal matter. The family wasn’t home. The department’s press release says the deputy “was charged by a vicious dog.” That would be Party—a Golden Retriever. We all know how vicious that breed...

In an ugly twist on the world of online dating scams, ISIS (the Islamic terrorist group responsible for much evil in places like Syria and Iraq) is now actively recruiting girls and women in the West to join their cause. Jamie Detmer reports that ISIS is now using social media to seek out females who want to join the cause, mainly by stressing the domestic life that supports it. The propaganda usually eschews the gore and barbaric images often included in the general fare of jihadist online posts, such as the beheadings last month of dozens of Syrian army soldiers...

Israel has offered to extend a three-day ceasefire in Gaza which began on Tuesday after nearly a month of conflict, Israeli officials say. However, unconfirmed reports on social media suggest the militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, has not agreed to the extension. Egypt has been mediating in indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. More than 1,800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 67 Israelis, mainly soldiers, have died in the conflict. A Thai national in Israel was also killed. A senior Israeli official told the BBC Israel had expressed its readiness to extend the truce under its current terms beyond its expiry on Friday....

The blatant partiality of the United States in favor of Israel has already turned the words “peace process” into a bitter joke. Over many decades, American indulgence of Israel has blighted prospects of any resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. Consequently, occupation has been entrenched and Israeli colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem has metastasized, going from under 200,000 illegal settlers in 1991 to over 600,000 today. This partiality only increases when Israel goes to war. By guaranteeing Israel impunity in its military actions, the United States has contributed massively to the bloodshed in Gaza in recent...

In short: People haven't paid that close attention to these challenges to Obamacare, and they don't totally understand them. But they mostly agree that anyone eligible for a subsidy should be able to receive it, regardless of who's running an exchange. The new Morning Consult poll of about 1,800 registered voters found that 58 percent of those surveyed said all exchanges — whether they're state- or federal-run — should provide subsidies, while 15 percent disagreed and 27 percent didn't offer an opinion. As the below chart shows, those identifying as liberal were more likely to support subsidies in any exchange...

OBAMA HOLDS PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE CONCLUSION OF US-AFRICA SUMMIT

The idea of universal Internet access is a noble one, but taxpayers shouldn’t be strapped with sustaining failing businesses in order to reach that ideal. Innovation and investment by private broadband providers in the free market has put universal access within reach. Private enterprise avoids the risks to taxpayers when municipal government-owned broadband networks go bust. State and local governments have a critical role to play in ensuring universal access to broadband Internet. By ensuring economic conditions favorable to marketplace innovation and investment, states can do more to advance broadband access than risky muni broadband projects.

Video at link begins with video of the pit bull being loving towards it's owners as the newscaster relates that the owners say this dog is the friendliest dog you are likely to meet. This footage appears to have been taken some time after the attack. The next footage shows a private dashcam view of an earlier incident when the pit bull (he "got out") was attacking a leashed german shepherd. The pit bull's owner tries to stop the attack and the pit bull pounces on him, high in the torso, knocking him down hard on the pavement. The german...

When American Ebola patient Dr. Kent Brantly arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, Aug. 2, he had reportedly already had one course of treatment with an experimental drug called ZMAPP made with genetically engineered tobacco. Although it has only been tested previously in animals, the FDA is rumored to have authorized emergency approval for the drug for Brantly and another American who contracted the virus doing medical aid work in Liberia during the ongoing West African Ebola outbreak. MAPP is produced by a small San Diego-based biotech company. The scientists use a common tobacco bacteria, genetically engineered with different components of the...

Professor and political activist Cornel West declared President Barack Obama a “war criminal,” arguing that his support of Israel and his drone policy make him complicit in the deaths of innocent people. The controversial activist made the comments at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, DC on Saturday, according to Talking Points Memo. West began his speech by pointing to the deteriorating situation in Gaza, where more than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 60 Israelis have been killed, criticizing Israel’s offensive in the region in front of a “Free Palestine” banner. His comments regarding President Obama begin at around the three-minute...

In 2009, then Gov. Jennifer Granholm hailed Suniva as a company that would help turn the state into the “epicenter” of manufacturing green energy products. She said Suniva was opening a photovoltaic plant in Saginaw Township that would create 500 jobs over the next five years. That plant never came to fruition, joining several other solar projects that didn't work out in Michigan. But the process is starting again with more job predictions and state subsidies if they come through this time. Suniva, a Georgia-based company, was going to invest $250 million in 2009 and would get a $15 million...

Full article title: Obama's half-brother calls him aloof, distant Set to release bio disputing president's version of family history NEW YORK – Yet another Obama relative is about to surface in the United States to cause the president grief over the credibility of key aspects of the autobiography that helped propel him to the White House, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” Mark Obama Ndesandjo, Barack Obama’s Kenyan half-brother, plans to release Sept. 16 his own autobiography, “An Obama’s Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery across Three Cultures,” published by Globe Pequot Press. WND reported in December...

But now those judges will have to decide whether they want their first high-profile act on the court to be one that is baldly political: overturning a meticulously-reasoned decision that overturned the IRS’s attempt to rewrite the Affordable Care Act. It would make the new judges look like presidential pawns who are attempting to save his bacon, lowering them to the level of the disgraced and politicized IRS itself. Even if the D.C. Circuit judges are willing to take the fall for the President in this case, there probably won’t be time to undo the circuit split before the Supreme...