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Looking inside the plasma jet cone of the blazar PKS 1424+240 with a radio telescope of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Credit: NSF/AUI/NRAO/B. Saxton/Y.Y. Kovalev et al. ==================================================================================== A cosmic jet aimed at Earth reveals how blazars hurl particles to extreme energies, solving a long-standing mystery. Key Points * A glimpse into a galaxy’s core: Astronomers have captured a detailed image of the birthplace of a powerful cosmic jet. With its artificial colors, the view strikingly resembles the legendary “Eye of Sauron.” * The neutrino puzzle: PKS 1424+240 stands out as the brightest known source of neutrinos of its...

Look out, Frodo!A bright galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole that spews out cosmic radiation is pointing straight at us. Thankfully, the object, unimaginatively dubbed “PKS 1424+240,” is located roughly 7.4 billion light-years away and likely won’t pose much of a danger. But that hasn’t stopped a group of excited astronomers from renaming it: the “Eye of Sauron,” the symbol adopted by the Dark Lord in JRR Tolkien’s epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. A new image of the object was recently unveiled, revealing a bright, hot center with cosmic waves spinning around it, spewing a jet of plasma...

LONDON — As the shock of the brutal murder of a young member of Parliament began to subside on Friday, there was a growing sense in Britain that something ominous had been unleashed in the country. The increasingly ugly anti-immigrant tone to the campaign over next week’s referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, coupled with the violence of English fans at the European soccer championships and now the killing of a lawmaker on the streets of a small town, has left many here feeling that the boundaries of acceptable behavior are breaking down....

Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year’s elections to disclose their donors. McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress’s leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years. He raised the ire of many Republicans a decade ago for pushing comprehensive reform, and many Republicans still held it against him during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Imagine this scenario: The IRS may soon just do your taxes for you — and send you the bill.If this sounds farfetched, it’s not.With a new congressional “super committee” tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in cuts by November, creative ways to find additional revenue are in high demand. And allowing the IRS to prepare you taxes could be one solution.The idea has been around for a while, but has been picking up steam in recent years. In 2006, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) argued it would close a $345 billion annual difference between what the government believes taxpayers...

IT'S OFFICIAL: 2005 WILL BE the newspaper industry's worst year since the last ad industry recession. And things aren't looking much better for next year either, according to a top Wall Street firm's report on newspaper publishing. "Sadly, 2005 is shaping up as the industry's worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession impacted 2001-2002 period," says the report from Goldman Sachs, adding a warning that meaningful growth in 2006 is "very unlikely."