Free Republic

(AP) - Scientists in Israel have concentrated free sunlight into a high-intensity beam typically reserved for expensive laser surgery. Details of the liver surgery experiments on mice appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It would be especially valuable in my university's medical center, which has not been able to afford a single laser fiber-optic surgical system," said the study's lead author, Jeffery M. Gordon of Ben-Gurion University in Tel Aviv. Sophisticated laser surgery equipment costs more than $100,000, while the sunlight scalpel system is assembled with off-the-shelf parts. Gordon and partner Daniel Feuermann used a rooftop mirror less...

Moscow, 16 June: The Russian Strategic Missile Troops [RSMT] together with the [Moscow-based] Askond company have started the programme of scrapping train-mounted mobile strategic missile systems, decommissioned from the land-based strategic nuclear forces. The decommissioning is part of Russia's obligations under the Soviet-American Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START-1), the RSMT press service told ITAR-TASS today. In accordance with the approved procedure for disposal of railway-based missile systems, not all their components will be scrapped, but mobile launching systems alone. These launching systems are used for transporting, storing and launching three-stage solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) RS-22B (SS-24 Scalpel by western...