Free Republic

For all the hopes NASA has pinned on the rover it deposited on Mars last month, one wish has gone unspoken: Please don’t find water. Scientists don’t believe they will. They chose the cold, dry equatorial landing site in Mars’ Gale Crater for its geology, not its prospects for harboring water or ice, which exist elsewhere on the planet. But if by chance the rover Curiosity does find water, a controversy that has simmered at NASA for nearly a year will burst into the open. Curiosity’s drill bits may be contaminated with Earth microbes. If they are, and if those...

JORDAN said yesterday it had uncovered an Iraqi plot to contaminate the water supply of United States troops near the Iraqi border. Jordanian officials said a number of Iraqis had been arrested in connection with a plot to poison a tank that supplied water to hundreds of US troops from at a base at Khao, close to Jordan’s industrial town of Zarqa. In recent days, authorities have questioned scores of Jordanians with links to Saddam Hussein’s administration, including activists from the local Baath Party, officials said. Jordanian authorities have also stepped up security around key installations such as power stations...