Trio acquitted of London 7/7 charges

A British jury has cleared three men of charges of conspiring with four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London’s 2005 suicide bombings.

Waheed Ali, Sadeer Saleem, and Mohammed Shakil were acquitted of the most serious offenses at the Kingston Crown Court Tuesday, but two of them were found guilty for lesser charges. The carefully collected evidence against them was largely circumstantial, and could not finally persuade the British jurors of their alleged guilt.

Four bombers and 52 commuters died in the attacks on July 7, 2005 when bombers set off bombs they carried in sacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus.

Ali and Shakil will be jailed Wednesday for a second charge of “conspiring to attend a terror training camp”.

Ali, 25, Shakil, 32, and Saleem, 28, who had been accused of collaborating with the suicide bombers, were the only people ever charged for the deadly bombings, and their acquittals mean that no one has been legally held accountable for the attacks.

In a statement, Saleem accused police and prosecutors of charging him based on “guilt by association”.

“I am indebted to these 12 courageous individuals who have now cleared my name and allowed me the opportunity of seeing my children grow up,” he said in the statement.

This is the latest blow to British authorities who have been forced to release Muslims after arresting them on terrorism charges amid much publicity, only to be forced to release them – often quietly – for lack of evidence.

The latest manifestation of what many describe as ‘Islamophobia’ was the much publicized arrest of eleven Muslim students in Manchester on April 8. …

via Trio acquitted of London 7/7 charges.

Quantum Ghosts Are Helpful

The idea that far distant particles can somehow ‘talk’ to each other worried Einstein so much that he called it ‘spooky action at a distance’.

Having confirmed its existence, scientists today are learning how to use this ‘spooky action’ as a helpful tool. Now a team of physicists at the University of Bristol and Imperial College London have harnessed this phenomenon to shed light on another unusual and previously difficult aspect of quantum physics – that of distinguishing between two similar quantum devices.

In the everyday world any process can be considered as a black box device with an input and an output; if you wish to identify the device you simply apply inputs, measure the outputs and determine what must have happened in between.

But quantum black boxes are different. Distinguishing between them is impossible using only single particle inputs because the outputs are not distinguishable: a fundamental consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics is that only very few states of a quantum particle can be reliably distinguished from one another.

The Bristol-Imperial team has shown how to get around this problem using ‘spooky action’.

Anthony Laing, PhD student in the Department of Physics, who performed the study, said: “Apart from providing insight into the fundamentals of quantum physics, this work may be crucial for future quantum technologies.

via Quantum Ghosts Are Helpful.

Mr. T called for jury duty

He showed up for jury duty, then was dismissed after hours of down time — which he used to sign autographs and pose for pictures.

Mr. T was called for jury duty at Cook County Circuit Court on Monday. The Chicago native said he enjoyed fulfilling his civic responsibilities, even though he found — like countless others — that hours can pass before a judge decides to dismiss you.

He showed up for jury duty in camouflage pants, a T-shirt and a longer version of his usual Mohawk haircut.

Mr. T is best remembered for the 1980s TV series “The A-Team” and as Clubber Lang in “Rocky III,” which his catch phrase come from: “I pity the fool.”

via Mr. T called for jury duty.

He created such a great character.

Foreclosure Prevention Plan Expanded to 2nd Mortgages

The Obama administration unveiled an expansion of its $75 billion foreclosure prevention plan yesterday, providing new subsidies to mortgage lenders and investors.

Under the expanded plan, some homeowners could see their payments fall significantly and the interest rate on their second mortgage pushed down to 1 percent. The announcement comes nearly two months after the administration launched the housing program, called Making Home Affordable. While officials said some borrowers have already received help, the foreclosure rate is rising and it could be months before the program begins to have an impact.

The new efforts address, in part, criticisms from consumer advocates that the administration’s housing plan did not go far enough and that borrowers still face too many barriers to receiving help.

“Ensuring that responsible homeowners can afford to stay in their homes is critical to stabilizing the housing market, which is in turn critical to stabilizing our financial system overall. Every step we take forward is done with that imperative in mind,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in a statement.

via Foreclosure Prevention Plan Expanded to 2nd Mortgages – washingtonpost.com.

Countrywide (now B of A) won’t foreclose on my property … yet … because they are waiting to see if they can offer me this new plan.  I seriously doubt this $1000 per year will help me because I am about $140,000 under water.  Sure, many people have lost a lot more value than this in their homes, but in my case I was talked into an adjustable rate mortgage when I asked for a 30 year fixed rate.  Next year in 2010 when my rate adjusts, I won’t be able to make the payments.

Knowing that, I stopped paying early and rented an apartment… without moving into it.

In my view, my credit should not even be negatively impacted by any of this because I was duped by a predatory lender. Since this was my first home, I had to trust the loan expert when she told me that there were many ways I could refinance even if my home’s value dropped. That was a lie and, although I was very careful about everything along the way, to the point of being very annoying to everyone in trying to understand every detail… the Countrywide loan expert’s mis-information resulted in what has become the worst financial decision of my life.

Why didn’t I insist on the fixed 30 year loan? “Why would you want to pay more?” she asked.  Because I’d have a guarantee that my rates will not go up.  The worst part is waiting to be kicked out of my house and not knowing exactly what the tax consequences will be. Will I owe $30,000 in debt forgiveness to the Federal Govt. because I have too much retirement savings to be considered bankrupt?

New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica

An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said Tuesday.

“The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released,” Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.

Humbert told Reuters about 700 sq km (270.3 sq mile) of ice — bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City — has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs.

She said 370 sq kms of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the U.N. Climate Panel to global warming.

The new icebergs added to 330 sq kms of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Nine other shelves — ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast — have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002.

The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, according to David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey scientist who landed by plane on the Wilkins ice bridge with two Reuters reporters in January.

Humbert said by telephone her estimates were that the Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 sq kms of area after the ice bridge shattered.

via New York City-sized ice collapses off Antarctica.

Rare coin could get more than $2M at Ohio auction

The coin world is abuzz over the auction of a rare silver dollar, one of the most valuable in the world and one of only 15 known to exist from a never-circulated group made for the likes of the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat.

The 1804 Adams-Carter silver dollar fetched more than $2 million in a private sale two years ago and is expected to top that again this week. The coin has been owned by a Boston banker, a Texas publishing mogul and by a collector who sold everything to help build a church school in Ohio.

The auction is a major happening for collectors — even ones who can’t afford the expected price tag — partly because it will be a rare opportunity to see the coin. It’s the highlight of the Central States Numismatic Society Convention that runs Wednesday through Saturday in Cincinnati. Anyone registered to bid on any item in the auction may view the coin, and that could number in the thousands, said Todd Imhof of Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas.

Joe Barrett, co-owner of three Rare Coin Gallery shops in the Cincinnati area, compared the convention to a movie buff’s visit to a film museum, with Kevin Costner as tour guide.

“For coin people, it doesn’t get any better than this,” Barrett said. “For young collectors, this is an opportunity to see things they wouldn’t get a chance to see otherwise.”

Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World magazine, suggested the valuable coin may not be seen in public for another 50 years.

“It’s a rare coin that has a great story,” she said.

via Rare coin could get more than $2M at Ohio auction.

Meet a Woman with a 100 Mile-Per-Hour Sneeze

Meet Sharyn Alfonsi, a reporter from ABC News New York. She says that she was to sneeze the air from her nose would rush out at 100 miles per hour and her bacteria could travel anywhere from 3 feet to 150 feet away.

How did she get this amazing sneezing power? Just by being human. This is true for all of us. Actually, the speed may be even faster according to wikipedia:

While generally harmless in healthy individuals, sneezes are capable of spreading disease through the potentially infectious aerosol droplets that they can expel, which commonly range from 0.5 to 5 µm in diameter. About 40,000 such droplets can be produced by a single sneeze.^[2]

The speed of human sternal release has been the source of much speculation, with the most conservative estimates placing it around 150 kilometers/hour (42 meters/second) or roughly 95 mph (135 feet/second), and the highest estimates -such as the Health World Museum in Barrington, Illinois- which propose a speed as fast as 85% of the speed of sound, corresponding to approximately 1045 kilometers per hour (290 meters/second) or roughly 650 mph (950 feet/second).

Do masks help? Some, but you have to replace them every few hours.

No happily ever after yet for ‘Slumdog’ kid stars

Rubina Ali’s house is flooded with sewer water, and her feet itch. She’s discovered a world of creepy-crawlies in the opaque gray water: scorpions, rats and slithery creatures with lots of legs.

Two months ago, the child star of the hit movie “Slumdog Millionaire” was worrying about what to wear to the Oscars. Now she has come home to a very different problem: How to get the fetid water out of her family’s one-room shack.

The 9-year-old picked up a plastic bucket Monday and began to scoop, but it was hopeless. “There are a lot of rats,” she told the Associated Press with a shudder, standing in water above her ankles. “In the night also.”

Eight Oscars and $326 million in box office receipts have so far done little to improve the lives of the film’s two impoverished child stars.

Rubina and co-star Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail have been showered with gifts and brief bursts of fame, but their day-to-day lives are little changed. In some ways, things have gotten worse: Azhar’s neighborhood has grown crowded and tense. Rubina’s house is flooded. And fame has brought both opportunity and shame.

If there is a happily ever after, Azhar and Rubina haven’t found it yet.

“Slumdog” filmmakers insist they’ve done their best to help. They set up a trust, called Jai Ho, after the hit song from the film, to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They also donated $747,500 to a charity to help slum kids in Mumbai.

…

via No happily ever after yet for ‘Slumdog’ kid stars.

Read the whole article. Disturbing. What can I do to help the most? Fly there? And what then?

Otter-like fossil reveals early seal evolution

Scientists say they’ve found a “missing link” in the early evolution of seals and walruses — the skeleton of a web-footed, otter-like creature that was evolving away from a life on land. Those feet and other anatomical features show an early step on the way to developing flippers and other adaptations for a life in the sea, the scientists said.

One expert called it “a fantastic discovery” that fills a crucial gap in the fossil record.

The 23 million-year-old creature was not a direct ancestor of today’s seals, sea lions and walruses, a group known collectively as pinnipeds. It’s from a different branch. But it does show what an early direct ancestor looked like, said researcher Natalia Rybczynski.

The fossil was found on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, bolstering the notion that the far north was an early center of pinniped evolution, she said.

Rybczynski, a researcher at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and colleagues from the United States report the find in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

They named the creature Puijila darwini (“pew-YEE-lah dar-WIN-eye”). That combines an Inuit word for “young sea mammal,” often a seal, with an homage to Charles Darwin. The famed naturalist had written that a land animal “by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted into an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brave the open ocean.”

Scientists already knew that pinnipeds evolved from land animals. But the earliest known fossil from that group already had flippers. So Puijila shows an earlier stage of evolution, the researchers said.

via Otter-like fossil reveals early seal evolution.

Iraqis display photo of alleged al-Qaida leader

The Iraqi government presented the first image of the alleged leader of an al-Qaida front group Tuesday in a bid to prove the right suspect was in custody despite skepticism that he even exists.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi “the head of evil” and accused him of trying to incite a sectarian civil war and working with other insurgents who remained loyal to Saddam Hussein.

“This criminal had close relations with the former regime and maintained a sinister alliance with Saddam’s followers,” he said in a statement released by his office.

Authorities described al-Baghdadi’s capture, which was announced last week, as a major setback for Sunni insurgents trying to intensify attacks after a relative lull. …

The U.S. military has even said al-Baghdadi could be a fictitious character used to give an Iraqi face to an organization dominated by foreign al-Qaida fighters. Even if he does exist, it was unclear what his role is in the terror group — whether he really runs it or whether he’s a figurehead.

Iraqi officials also have reported al-Baghdadi’s arrest or killing before, only to later say they were wrong.

via Iraqis display photo of alleged al-Qaida leader.