Nasa extends Saturn probe mission

The US space agency (Nasa) has extended the international Cassini-Huygens mission by two years.

The unmanned Cassini-Huygens spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 on a mission that was supposed to come to an end in July this year.

The two-year mission extension will encompass some 60 extra orbits of Saturn and more flybys of its moons.

These will include 26 flybys of Titan – its biggest moon – seven of Enceladus, and one each of Dione, Rhea and Helene.

Bob Mitchell, programme manager for Cassini-Huygens at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in California, commented: “The spacecraft is performing exceptionally well and the team is highly motivated, so we’re excited at the prospect of another two years.”

Dr Rosaly Lopes, also from JPL, told BBC News: “We’re very pleased. We were expecting Nasa to extend Cassini for another two years, we had been told to plan for it, so we had already done a lot of the planning and decided what the tour was going to look like.

“But it’s nice to actually have the news out, because you never know up until the point when they sign on the dotted line.”

‘Earth-like’ world

The mission has made stunning discoveries about the Saturn system since it arrived at the ringed planet four years ago.

Its studies of the largest moon, Titan, have provided a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved. Conditions on the moon are believed to resemble those on our own planet 4.6 billion years ago. …

The Enceladus moon, regarded as “just another ball of ice” until Cassini arrived, has now become a high priority for further exploration.

The spacecraft found evidence for geysers of water-ice jetting from the surface.

These geysers, which shoot out at a distance three times the diameter of the moon itself, feed particles into Saturn’s outermost ring. – bbc

Electric carmaker Tesla sues designer

The Tesla Roadster and the Fisker Karma share a sleek, sexy vision of an alternative-fuel future. But their green path has become a rocky road.

Tesla, the Silicon Valley electric-car start-up, has accused Henrik Fisker of fraud and stealing company secrets. In a suit filed Monday in San Mateo County Superior Court, Tesla said it paid Fisker, a car designer, $875,000 in 2007 to create the look of its second model. Instead, Tesla said, Fisker supplied a design that was “substandard” while creating his own car and his own company at the same time.

The suit asks for unspecified damages and seeks an injunction to prevent Fisker from using knowledge he obtained while working with Tesla.

In a statement, Fisker described the allegations as “without merit, and we intend to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Said Adam Belsky, the San Francisco attorney representing Tesla: “Obviously, if they had said, ‘We’d like to develop a directly competitive car,’ they never would have hired them in the first place.”

In January, Fisker unveiled the four-seat Karma. Scheduled to go on sale in late 2009, the plug-in hybrid sedan will sell for about $80,000.

Tesla, which started making its $100,000 Roadster earlier this year, said it plans to release a second model, a sports sedan that will compete with the BMW 5-Series and sell for about $50,000 to $60,000 in 2010.

Tesla’s headquarters are in San Carlos- mn

Fring Brings VoIP to Hacked iPhones

Fring, the company founded by Avi Shechter, the former co–CEO of ICQ and VP at AOL, has announced that it released a test version of its popular application which brings Skype, as well as MSN, Google Talk and AIM to Apple’s iPhone.

“This special pre-release version of fring, developed in conjunction with the Holon Institute of Technology academic research labs is a direct response to iPhone users kicking our behind to get fring for their COOOOOL devices,” the company said on its website.

“Part of the objective here (besides getting you all excited with fring for iPhone) is to get feedback prior to release of the full-feature version and create a truly superb user experience for iPhone users,” Fring says.

The fring application is only available to those who jailbroke their iPhones or iPod Touches. The application is not endorsed by Apple which is against VoIP applications for its gadgets. This is the case because access to free calls could dramatically cut into the profit margins of the carriers licensed to supply the handset, and everything Apple does is about large profit margins (like its Mac desktop computers). Also, application runs in the background, which is forbidden by Apple.

Of course, the iPod Touch does not have a microphone so you need the Touchmods dock connector microphone.

Fring, also co-founded by Boaz Zilberman and Alex Nerst, is headquartered in Israel, and has representation in Italy, UK and Germany. In February, BusinessWeek reported that more than 100,000 new users from 160 countries were downloading, installing, and registering to use fring each month. – eflux

Second Terror Mistrial Hurts Bush Administration, Critics Say

Federal prosecutors again failed to win convictions for six Florida men on terror-related charges, as a deadlocked jury led a judge to declare a mistrial in the case Wednesday.

The men, part of a group dubbed the “Liberty City Seven,” were charged with planning an attack on Chicago’s Sears Tower following a 2006 FBI raid on a warehouse that served as their headquarters and “temple” in Liberty City, one of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods.

An earlier jury acquitted one man and deadlocked over counts against the other six in December.

Critics accused the Bush administration of “see[ing] terrorism under every rock,” and of essentially fabricating a major terror case against seven men using a paid informant. – abc

Yep. That sums it up.

Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Kentucky’s method of putting criminals to death by lethal injection, not only clearing the way for Kentucky to resume executions but ending an unofficial moratorium in the 35 other states that have the death penalty.

However, Justice John Paul Stevens, while concurring reluctantly with the judgment of the court, wrote that he now believed capital punishment itself is unconstitutional, and that Wednesday’s ruling might serve to reignite the debate over whether it should exist in the United States.

By 7 to 2, the court rejected challenges to the Kentucky execution procedure brought by two death-row inmates, holding that they had failed to show that the risks of pain from mistakes in an otherwise “humane lethal execution protocol” amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, which is banned by the Constitution.

The prisoners had contended that the three-drug procedure used on death row — one drug each to sedate, paralyze and end life — was unconstitutional, and that in any event there were strong indications that Kentucky had bungled some executions, creating unnecessary pain for the condemned. Through their lawyers, they maintained that problems could be largely solved by administering a single overwhelming dose of a barbiturate, as opposed to the three-drug procedure.

The prisoners’ challenge had implications far beyond Kentucky. Of the 36 states with the death penalty, all but Nebraska, which uses the electric chair, rely on the same three-drug procedure that Kentucky uses. So does the federal government. Now, with the Kentucky challenge disposed of, other states that had set aside executions seem poised to begin them again. – nytimes

Disgusting. The current system is a drug induced paralyzed torture resulting in a very slow painful death. Some innocent people have been executed this way. Guilty or not, ANY revenge killing, where no life is at currently risk from the convicted person, is the filthy work of a barbaric uncivilized society. Two wrongs make two wrongs.

Supreme Court: Say no to revenge killings

Louisiana wants to execute a child rapist. The crime is heinous, but the death penalty is too harsh. Even as a punishment for murder, the death penalty in this country is administered so inconsistently and after such prolonged delays that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Today, the state of Louisiana will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to compound the injustice by allowing it to execute rapists as well as murderers. The court should decline the invitation.

It has been 44 years since anyone in the United States has been executed for rape. In 1977, the Supreme Court seemed to rule out future such executions when it overturned the death sentence of a Georgia rapist. “Rape is without doubt deserving of serious punishment,” Justice Byron R. White wrote in the main opinion, “but in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life.”

The victim in the 1977 Georgia case was a young adult. Today, Louisiana will ask the justices to come to a different conclusion when the victim is a child. It is asking the court to uphold the death sentence of Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted in 2003 of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. In its brief, the state argues that death “is not cruel and unusual punishment for the rape of a child” and thus doesn’t violate the 8th Amendment.

Leave aside the question of whether state-sanctioned killing can ever be morally justified (a question this page would answer in the negative). The legal issue before the Supreme Court is whether punishing child rape with death is cruel and unusual, based on evolving standards of decency. The court must also consider whether abandoning the principle of “a life for a life” will invite miscarriages of justice.

On all counts, the court should reject Louisiana’s argument. In a 2005 case, the court surveyed the states and concluded that they were moving away from executing juveniles, a finding it used to bolster a ruling rejecting that practice. A similar analysis today argues against executing those who rape children; just six states, including Louisiana, allow the death sentence for child rape. Finally, as Kennedy’s lawyers point out, in cases based on a child’s testimony about sexual abuse, “the risk of wrongful conviction is especially pronounced.”

As a punishment for murder, the death penalty is dysfunctional and divisive. Expanding its application to other heinous crimes — child rape, torture, acts of racial violence — might be politically popular, but it would make an unjust and unworkable system even worse. The Supreme Court should hold the line. – latimes

I understand the rage. This is one of the worst crimes imaginable. But because it is, we must get to the root of the problem. Use the execution money to stop the child abuse before it starts. Killing a perpetrator doesn’t help the kid who was abused. To really help, focus on prevention and education, not revenge killings.