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hese experiments are designed to give agencies a better idea of how humans would interact and cope during a long space journey. The volunteer research subjects start their virtual journey to Phobos on October 1, in a ground-based habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Their home for the 45 days will be a small habitat called the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA - with collected data informing the design of future missions to the Red Planet, expected to happen in the 2030s. HERA is a two-story, four-port cylindrical habitat unit with a total of 636 sq....

Forces scouring Baghdad's upscale neighborhoods have made a startling discovery: Saddam Hussein’s '60s-themed "love shack." Replete with shag carpets, bean bag chairs, mirrored bedrooms, sunken conversation pits, and airbrushed murals that would even make Vargas blush, the "romantic" hideaway is nastier than any set Mike Meyers could have dreamed up. Yeah, baaabeee! Saddam was one wild and craaazy guy! Already the personal palace gomi of the Iraqi elite has revealed astonishing similarities between the real world of Saddam and the fictional world of Austin Powers. Watch the evening news and you will invariably catch a glimpse of super-villain flash that...

Cuban cigar-smoking Uday, with brother Qusay, and the bombed out remains of his Baghdad villa. Photos: AFP His personal zoo has lions, cheetahs and a bear. His storehouse has $1.65 million of fine wines, liquors and heroin. His house has Cuban cigars, cases of champagne and downloaded pictures of prostitutes. While most Iraqis bent under the brunt of UN sanctions that drove their country into poverty, Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday lived a life of fast cars, expensive liquor and easy women, a tour through his bombed Baghdad house showed. The walls of a gym were plastered with photographs...

Soldiers stumble onto Saddam Hussein's love shack. Saddam, you sexy beast! U.S. soldiers searching door-to-door in an upscale central Baghdad neighborhood for cowering Iraqi government officials stumbled upon what they believe is one of the tawdry tyrant's secret love lairs. Replete with statues of topless women, a whirlpool tub, beanbag chairs and a king-size bed surrounded with mirrors, the townhouse evoked a groovy, '60s-era playboy pad that would make another international man of mystery - Austin Powers - feel right at home. "Yeah, baby!" crowed Capt. Chris Carter, commander of A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, a la...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The doors of the town house opened to reveal a playboy's fantasy straight from the 1960s: mirrored bedroom, lamps shaped like women, air-brushed paintings of a topless blonde woman and a mustached hero battling a crocodile. On the wall and in the bedroom were photos of Saddam Hussein and one of his mistresses. Military officials suspect they found one of the paranoid Iraqi leader's many safe houses. "This must have been Saddam's love shack," said Sgt. Spencer Willardson of Logan, Utah. [snip] One of the air-brushed paintings depicted a topless blonde woman, with a green demon...