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Akron, Ohio, January 26, 2012 — FirstEnergy Corp. generation subsidiaries will retire six older coal-fired power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1, 2012. The decision to close the power plants is based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations. The total capacity of the competitive plants that will be retired is 2,689 MW. Recently, these plants served mostly as peaking or intermediate facilities, generating, on average, about 10 percent of the electricity produced by the company over the past three years. The following plants...

Closest approach to be 3:28 PST Tuesday afternoon.

QUIX: SHORT EXCERPTS ARE OFFERED IN A SORT OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FIRST--THEN THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE AS AVAILABLE AT SPIRITLESSONS.COM I found this to be another anointed, Biblical narrative about a very convincing Heavenly visitation--actually, as usual, to hell, too. There's an item or 3 in this one to potentially trouble the RC's and Maryolators, . . . as well as some potentially troubling things for some Calvinists, however. Read at your own risk. Those exposed to The Truth are responsible before God for what they do about and with The Truth.On the other hand, ignorance affords no eternal protection....

"What we're really saying," he explains, "is that there's suggestive evidence there might be something out there." And if a new planet exists — something Matese is emphatically not claiming at this point — then the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite should already have an image of it stored somewhere in its enormous database. How suggestive the evidence actually is, though, depends on whom you ask. If you ask Ned Wright, a UCLA astrophysicist and WISE principal investigator, he'll tell you, "It's really kind of flimsy. It's there, but they don't have super data." So while the latest version...

Hawaii, USA — Members of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment (G Coy, 2 RCR) joined the US Marines for six weeks in a unique training environment. G Coy, which holds the non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) task, came to the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) to participate in Exercise RIMPAC. No Club MedThe PTA is located on the Big Island of Hawaii between Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and the Hualalai volcanoes. The extremely rough, austere area is made of old lava fields and hills where, even in the heat of the Hawaiian summer, the morning temperature is around 8ËšC...

This is my latest post for NewsReal. I thought I'd post it here, because I'm pretty sure you guys will enjoy it. You would think that someone who writes a book called A People’s History of the United States would at the very least believe there is such an entity as the “United States,” wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be mistaken in historian and radical leftist Howard Zinn’s case. In his most famous work, he writes: The pretense is that there really is such a thing as “the United States,” subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of...

McCain shares with the devotees of national greatness a deep distrust of freedom. In a speech in 2002, he said: "Our freedom and our industry must aspire to more than acquisition and luxury. We must live out the true meaning of freedom, and accept 'that we have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither.'"

New Comet(Lovejoy): On March 15th, Terry Lovejoy of Thomlands, Australia discovered a new comet (C/2007 E2) in the southern constellation Indus. Remarkably, to make the find he used not a telescope but just a camera- a Canon 350D. At Lovejoy's request John Frummund of Gisborme, New Zealand confirmed the comet with this photo taken through a 0.41-m reflector. The new comet is green, 9th-magnitude, and located approximately at right ascension 20h 42m 55s, declination -50o 43' 14" (ref: International Astronomical union Circular 8819). A detailed ephemeris is not yet available, so it is impossible to say how bright Comet Lovejoy...

I don’t want to get you worried, or even mildly concerned. No need to panic. In fact, just read this little piece, and remark with interest that an asteroid is going to get really really close to the Earth on October 31, 2041. It might - I repeat might - have a small, insignificant chance of hitting the Earth and causing regional devastation. Like a 1 in 40,000 chance. Those are pretty good odds when you think of it. Still not panicking? Good. The asteroid in question is called 2006 XG1. It was discovered on September 20, 2006 by the...

THE scale of the Holocaust has been "greatly exaggerated", Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said today, adding he had visited several former concentration camps in eastern Europe. “When I was ambassador I saw several of these camps in (the former) East Germany and Poland. In my opinion it has been greatly exaggerated. It is far from what is being publicised,” Hamid Reza Asefi said. His comments come ahead of a conference to be held on December 11 in Iran which the Islamic republic hopes will present “hidden aspects” of the slaughter of Jews under Nazi Germany. “Different opinions which affirm and...

Fat is not a feminist issue, as Susie Orbach once claimed. Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat; you see almost no children in private schools who are overweight. Fatness and obesity are directly related to lower education and lower incomes. What is sad is that at a time when this country is richer than ever and ought to have better schools than ever, we have far more fat people than ever — a dangerous explosion of flab. Last week the Department of Health issued a report grimly called Forecasting Obesity to 2010 and its findings...

Don Quijote is an asteroid investigation , geophysical characterisation and deflection technological experiment mission. The mission will contain the following elements: * Two spacecraft which are to be launched in separate interplanetary trajectories. * One spacecraft, which will be referred to as Hidalgo, will impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of at least 10 km/s. * The other spacecraft, called Sancho, will arrive earlier at the same asteroid along a very different route, perform a rendez-vous and remain in orbit around the asteroid for several months before and after the impact. * Sancho will...

THE MATRIX TRILOGY AND CULTURAL TERRORISM James F. Burke The blockbuster science fiction film Matrix: Revolutions stands as the preeminent example of post-communist socialist realism and Nihilistic cultural terrorism. "Cultural terrorism" is a significant underground political phenomenon in the Western world, complete with self-proclaimed "cultural terrorist networks" and manifestos to this ideology commonplace on the Internet (typically in news-groups that are also connected to "radical underground" and left-wing run "rave" scenes). It is a Euro-Left "philosophy" rooted in Marxist Anarchism and political Nihilism, which extends socialist realism (the creation of cultural foundations for a new socialist order) into the realm...

DENVER (Aug. 9) - Fifteen-year-old Heather Herman, who wears leather and eats meat, is an unlikely animal rights activist. Yet largely due to her, Denver voters will decide this week whether to allow the circus to come to town. Herman contends the animals aren't meant to travel the country caged or in train cars, performing for audiences on cue. Her push to petition for a law ensuring abuse-free circuses rather than just passing out leaflets took some supporters by surprise. "I guess you get jaded when you get older," said Ashley Soard, formerly of Rocky Mountain Animal Defense and now...

Communists picket Matrix premiere to celebrate revolution Communists picketed the Moscow premiere of The Matrix: Revolutions to celebrate the jubilee of the Russian revolution. A group of 32 youngsters wore red T-shirts, Soviet army helmets and Matrix-style dark glasses outside the Pushkinskiy cinema. They each held up neon-lit letters which spelt out the slogans "We are NEO-communists" and "Destroy the Matrix". According to Communist Party ideologists, the Matrix series' central hero Neo is a genuine communist, reports Kommersant. Oleg Bondarenko, Communist party youth movement leader, said there was "no difference" between Neo and Lenin as revolutionaries. Story filed: 10:17 Friday...

Please post your predictions about the third Matrix Movie here.

STATUS REPORT Date Released: Monday, July 28, 2003 Ames Research Center NASA NEO News: Open Letter to Congress on Near Earth Objects July 8, 2003 Re: The Imperative to Address the Impact Threat From Near Earth Objects (NEOs) Dear Members of Congress: We write to you today as concerned citizens, convinced that the time has come for our nation to address comprehensively the impact threat from asteroids and comets. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that some of these celestial bodies, also known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs), pose a potentially devastating threat of collision with Earth, capable of...

Flanked by Trinity and Morpheus, Neo meets the Merovingian and his luscious wife Persephone (Monica Bellucci). The Merovingian is a Frenchman out of the Bush Administration bestiary: cruel, supercilious, with a love of cursing in French—which he describes as like "wiping your ass with silk." He refuses to release the Key Maker.

Scientists levitate gold coins Scientists have shown that levitation is not just a trick from a Harry Potter book. Researchers at the University of Nottingham have used magnetism to make solid objects such as coins float in the air. Scientists have already proven strong, varying magnetic fields could exert an upward force on objects in their path. The Nottingham team found this effect could be dramatically enhanced in cold, magnetised oxygen. Magnetic levitation occurs when the magnetic force is strong enough to overcome gravity and balance a body's weight. Cold oxygen provides extra buoyancy through the "magneto-Archimedes" effect -...

The Matrix Makers One year, two sequels—and a revolution in moviemaking. An exclusive look behind the scenes of 2003’s hottest flicks Jan. 6 issue — The Warner Brothers studio lot in Burbank, Calif., is frenetic on most days, but on a Thursday in early November it was really humming. The company’s box-office Bigfoot for 2002, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” was set to open in eight days, and nearly every division of the studio was working furiously to get it ready. Until 2:30 p.m. That’s when everything stopped. For the next half hour, the boy wizard had to...