Mmissing Australian teenager,,[ 1880 ]

US police search for missing Australian Zahra Baker

Where is she? ... Australian Zahra Claire Baker, 10. Source: The Daily Telegraph

Daily Telegraph Oct 15, 2010

US police will drain a pond and revisit a mulch yard as they intensify their search for a little Australian girl feared murdered in North Carolina.

As a new photograph revealed Zahra Baker, 10, suffered a black eye in the lead-up to her disappearance, the girl's American step-mother yesterday denied any wrongdoing.

Police have fanned out across the town of Hickory looking for clues.

Sniffer dogs scoured a pile of debris on a property linked to the tree-trimming business employing Zahra's Australian father Adam Baker.

Woodchipping equipment and mulch are stored at the property belonging to the family of a company foreman. Police plan to drain a nearby pond and may return to the mulch yard to search for evidence.

Yesterday, as Zahra's step-mother Elisa Baker appeared in court and a candlelight vigil was held for the missing girl, a Baker family friend released a mobile phone picture that shows Zahra with a bruised right eye. The image was taken on August 9.

Police issued an abduction alert for Zahra at the weekend after her father, 33, reported her missing. He told police someone left a ransom note and petrol in his car but has since voiced fears that his wife, 42, was involved in Zahra's disappearance.

Ms Baker has been accused of demanding $1 million in the false ransom note police allege aimed to confuse their search.

In Catawba County Court yesterday, she spoke only briefly, saying "yes" when asked if she understood she had been charged with felony obstruction of justice.

Ms Baker denies any wrongdoing and plans to seek a reduction to the $40,000 bond that prevents her release from jail, her lawyer said.

"She says she is not a killer and had nothing to do with this whatsoever and that she has tried to co-operate with police and that she loves her daughter," he said.

Russian census..[ 1879 ]

Russian census gets underway

All-Russian census-

14:39 14/10/2010

 RIA Novosti. Alexander Kryazhev

MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti)

The second All-Russian census officially kicked off on Thursday in the country's Far East regions of Primorye and Kamchatka.

The census, the second since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, will take place on October 14-25. Its cost is estimated at some 17 billion rubles ($).

In some remote areas of the North Caucasus, South Siberia's Altai and the Far East the census began two weeks before the official starting date, and took place between September 30 and October 14. More than 350,000 people were questioned.

St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko and Bashkortostan President Rustem Khamitov were the first regional leaders to take part in the census.

About 200 census takers will collect information in military bases, military units and the Strategic Missile Forces.

Some 616,000 census takers are to be employed all across Russia, with an average monthly wage of some 5,500 rubles ($183). All of them are insured, and will receive up to 20,000 rubles ($667) in compensation if injured during their work.

During the previous census in 2002 some 500 injuries involving census takers were registered, with almost 70% of them resulting from dog attacks.

NASA Image of the Day, Oct 14th..[ 1878 ]

The latest NASA "Image of the Day" image.

STS-133 Crew Begins Dress Rehearsal

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, STS-133 Commander Steve Lindsey speaks to the media gathered at the Shuttle Landing Facility. From left are Nicole Stott, Michael Barratt, Eric Boe, Tim Kopra and Alvin Drew. The crew is gathered for a practice launch dress rehearsal called the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test (TCDT) in preparation for the upcoming mission. 

TCDT provides each shuttle crew and launch team with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training. 

Space shuttle Discovery and its STS-133 crew will deliver the Permanent Multipurpose Module, packed with supplies and critical spare parts, as well as Robonaut 2, the dexterous humanoid astronaut helper, to the International Space Station. Launch is targeted for Nov. 1 at 4:40 p.m. 

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Πέμπτη, 14 Οκτώβριος 2010 7:00:00 πμ

Greece, protesting workers barricading theAcropolis .. [ 1877 ]

Riot police, protesters clash at Acropolis,

Published October 14, 2010

| Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece –  Riot police clashed with protesting workers barricading the ancient Acropolis on Thursday, using tear gas to clear the entrance to Greece's most famous ancient site.

Up to 100 Culture Ministry workers had shut down the Acropolis on Wednesday morning, complaining they were owed up to 22 months' worth of back pay. The protesters barricaded themselves inside, padlocked the entrance gates and refused to allow any tourists in until their demands were met.

Police in riot gear arrived Thursday morning after a court order said the protesters were hindering access to an ancient site and its 2,500-year-old marble temples.

"Riot police and violence won't break the strike," the protesters chanted, clinging to the entrance gates.

But police used a side entrance to break into the site, then used pepper spray to clear the protesters and journalists covering the standoff from the main gate. At least one protester was led away in handcuffs to a waiting police bus.

Dozens of bemused tourists who had arrived early Thursday morning to visit the ancient site looked on as the standoff unfolded, occasionally snapping pictures of the riot police.

"We know the workers have a right to protest, but it is not fair that people who come from all over the world to see the Acropolis should be prevented from getting in," said Spanish tourist Ainhoa Garcia shortly before the clashes broke out.

Greece is in the midst of a tough austerity program which has cut public workers' salaries and trimmed pensions in an effort to pull the country out of a severe debt crisis. The austerity plan has led to a series of strikes and demonstrations as workers' unions protest the cutbacks.

Guards and workers at archaeological sites have long been complaining they are owed months of back pay, and have shut down the Acropolis before in protest, though usually only for a few hours at a time.

But authorities often are sensitive to protests at the emblematic ancient site, particularly as the country largely relies on tourism for revenue.

And visitors who have traveled from far-flung countries were unimpressed by the protest.

"We think this is a shame. We will not recommend that people come to Greece," said Veronica Traverso, a tourist from Argentina standing with a friend outside the padlocked gates. "We are not to blame for Greece's troubles."

Traverso said she had only two days to spend in Athens and was due to leave the city in a couple of hours — her hopes of visiting the Acropolis dashed.

Astronomers probe 'peculiar' object..[ 1876 ]

High-speed asteroid pile-up prompts X-File

By Lester Haines

Posted in Space, 14th October 2010 10:30 GMT

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion "as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb".

The result is a "peculiar" object - dubbed P/2010 A2 - which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X-shaped formation.

The asteroid belt pile-up happened in early 2009, according to NASA, but it wasn't until January this year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey spotted the tail.

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observations indicate a surviving 400-foot-wide (122m-wide) object, which was hit by a smaller body, "perhaps 10 to 15 feet wide" (3 to 4m). The latter was vapourised in the blast, and its remains and material thrown off from the former were swept into a tail by solar radiation.

Astronomers are keen to find out just how much dust such high-speed encounters eject into interplanetary space, and while they reckon that "modest-sized asteroids smash into each other about once a year", they're difficult to spot.

But P/2010 A2 doesn't conform to the scientists' predictions. David Jewitt, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said: "We expected the debris field to expand dramatically, like shrapnel flying from a hand grenade. But what happened was quite the opposite. We found that the object is expanding very, very slowly."

The X shape, meanwhile, has the boffins stumped. NASA says: "The crisscrossed filaments at the head of the tail suggest that the colliding asteroids were not perfectly symmetrical. Material ejected from the impact, therefore, did not make a symmetrical pattern, a bit like the ragged splash made by throwing a rock into a lake. Larger particles in the X disperse very slowly and give this structure its longevity."

Jewitt and colleagues plan to turn Hubble's attention back to P/2010 A2 next year, in order to "see how far the dust has been swept back by the sun's radiation and how the mysterious X-shaped structure has evolved".