Russia plans to send piloted rocket to Mars

Russia plans to develop a new super-heavy carrier rocket that will be used to launch piloted spacecraft to Mars.

“The super-heavy carrier rocket will be based on the design of the Angara rocket and its modifications – Amur and Yenisei,” Anatoly Kuzin, deputy general director of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, said.

Angara rockets – designed to provide lifting capabilities between 2,000 and 40,500 kg into low earth orbit – are expected to become the core of Russia’s carrier rocket fleet, replacing several existing systems.

The rockets have a modular design similar to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), based on a common Universal Rocket Module (URM).

Russia will start testing first Angara rockets in 2013, while the first piloted mission to Mars under a unified Moon-Mars programme is expected to be launched in 2037.

via Russia plans to send piloted rocket to Mars.

Witnesses: UFO emits light, burns and kills fish near Barrancabermeja, Brazil

In Llanitos neighborhood, north of the city of Barrancabermeja, the collective death of two thousand fish is being attributed by the locals, to aliens. Witnesses said that saw an unidentified object that was hovering above the waters of a mangrove. The UFO emited a bright light and then, in few seconds disappeared. After that, the fish began to appear floating dead in the water. These fish showed signs of burns on the scales and gills.

A woman that is community leader from El Llanitos reported that the apparition of UFO phenomenon’s lasted about 20 seconds. In the district of Puente Sogamoso, Puerto Wilches city, others people reported that they also saw the object, which was round and flew over the area with lateral movements.

The Municipal Department of Environment says the deaths are related to lack of oxygen in the waters of the swamp but the Fishermen’s Association has rejected this hypothesis claiming that there was never a fish kills like was registered, now, in Barrancabermeja.

Furthermore, there is no known reason for this supposed lack of oxygen in the water. A committee headed by Environment Secretary, Isaac Lopez will inspect the marsh in order to ascertain the real causes of the phenomenon.

SOURCES
Mortandad de Peces en Barrancabermeja es atribuida a fenómeno sobrenatural.
IN RCN Rádio – published in 25/01/2011 [http://www.rcnradio.com].
Muerte de peces en Colombia es atribuida a “fenómeno sobrenatural”.
IN El Universal – published in 25/01/2011. [http://www.eluniversal.com/].

via Brazil Weird News.

Dude. I told you it was aliens testing a species specific death ray.     No, but seriously, this is highly weird.  Can anyone who speaks the language check out the links and let us know if the witnesses seem credible?

God tells South Carolina woman to kills and burns ‘devil dog’ after pup bites bible.

A South Carolina woman is claiming an act of canine cruelty was simply an act of divine intervention.

Miriam Fowler Smith, 65, told cops on Monday that she hung and burned her nephew’s pit bull after the animal took a bite out of her bible.

She claimed God urged her to kill Diamond, a 1-year-old female dog, because the animal was a “devil dog” and would hurt neighborhood children.

Smith was arrested on Sunday and remains in Spartanburg County jail. She could face faces 180 days or up to five years behind bars if she’s convicted with felony animal cruelty.

She does not have a lawyer yet.

Authorities said Smith confessed to wrapping an extension cord around Diamond’s neck, hung the animal from a tree, and then set the pup on fire.

Andy Fowler, the dog’s owner and Smith’s nephew, left home on Jan. 9. When he returned on Jan. 15, his beloved dog was missing.

When Fowler confronted his aunt, she admitted to killing the dog, according to cops. …

Police found the dead canine nearby under a pile of dried grass. Part of the orange cord was still wrapped around the dog’s neck. The smell of kerosene lingered in the air, according to animal control’s report.

Jaime Nelson, director of the county’s Environmental Enforcement Department, said Smith’s mental state could affect what type of punishment she receives.

He was shocked by the woman’s detached attitude as she recounted the horrific slay. …

via South Carolina woman, Miriam Fowler Smith, kills nephew’s ‘devil dog’ after pup eats her Bible: cops.

Sex change? Anyway, how such demented individual avoided prison for 65 years is the real mystery. What else did God tell her do? Here are some unsolved murders in the area. Might want to check her back yard.

 

First Beatles graduate is announced

A Canadian singer has become the first person in the world to graduate with a Masters degree in The Beatles.

Former Miss Canada finalist Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy, 53, was one of the first students to sign up for the course on the Fab Four when it launched at Liverpool Hope University in March 2009.

Twelve full-time students joined the Master of Arts course in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society that year and Mary-Lu is the first from her class to graduate.

She said: “I am so proud of my achievement. The course was challenging, enjoyable and it provided a great insight into the impact The Beatles had and still have to this day across all aspects of life.

“The faculty and students at Liverpool Hope University were crucial in providing an unforgettable experience and their support was invaluable.” …

via First Beatles graduate is announced – Telegraph.

Accused killer: I performed surgery on myself

While on the lam for 2½ years, a Japanese man wanted for the murder of a British woman says he scissored off his lower lip, dug two moles out of his cheek with a box cutter and gave himself a nose job in an attempt to obscure his identity.

The disclosures come in a book released Wednesday and written from jail by Tatsuya Ichihashi, who will stand trial later this year in the murder and rape of his English teacher, Lindsay Ann Hawker.

Hawker, 22, was found dead in a sand-filled bathtub on the balcony of Ichihashi’s apartment in Chiba, east of Tokyo, in March 2007.

Ichihashi, arrested in 2009 after a lengthy nationwide manhunt, admits to taking Hawker’s life in the book, “Until the Arrest.” But he doesn’t describe the crime or his motives, instead detailing his life at large, during which he traveled up and down the country, in constant fear of arrest and obsessed with cosmetic surgery.

While police say Ichihashi has confessed to assaulting Hawker and that she died from her injuries, he won’t enter a plea until the trial begins. The details in the book do not take responsibility for anything beyond what Ichihashi has already told investigators. If convicted of murder, he could face the death penalty.

After escaping the police who came to his apartment to question him, he bound up his nose with a thread and needle — like a cook trussing a piece of meat — to make it narrower.

At first, Ichihashi, 32, wandered around Tokyo and then drifted north to Aomori prefecture, where he twice tried to cut off part of his lower lip to make it thinner. The first time, he couldn’t follow through because of the excruciating pain, he wrote. He finished it up a few days later in a public bathroom.

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He wore several layers of surgical masks to hide the scars, but apparently didn’t stand out in the spring when many Japanese do the same to escape pollen. …

“Having saved nearly 1 million yen ($12,100) from a string of construction jobs, he spent most of it on two plastic surgery operations, once to acquire a longer and narrower nose, and the second to raise the bridge of his nose.”

via Accused killer: I performed surgery on myself – World news – Asia-Pacific – msnbc.com.

The title and first part of the article are a bit misleading. If you read far enough you see that he had the nose job done at a clinic and this got him reported to the police. Police eventually stopped him on Nov. 10, 2009 at the ferry terminal in Osaka. When asked his name, he “gave his real name for the first time in 2½ years and was arrested.” For a while I was trying to figure out how he could do that by himself to nose …

 

Hubble telescope detects the oldest known galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected what scientists believe may be the oldest galaxy ever observed.

It is thought the galaxy is more than 13 billion years old and existed 480 million years after the Big Bang.

A Nasa team says this was a period when galaxy formation in the early Universe was going into “overdrive”.

The image, which has been published in Nature journal, was detected using Hubble’s recently installed wide field camera.

According to Professor Richard Bouwens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands: “We’re seeing these galaxies – ‘star cities’ – that are building themselves up over cosmic time.”

The research team observed rapid growth over a relatively short period of time: Their sample data showed there was just one galaxy in existence about 500 million years after the Big Bang. But this rises to 10 galaxies some 150 million years later. The tally has doubled about 100 million years later.

“You start out with these little seeds in the very early Universe which would eventually have formed stars, then star clusters, baby galaxies then eventually these large majestic galaxies that we know today,” according to Professor Bouwens. …

via BBC News – Hubble telescope detects the oldest known galaxy.

The moss which only gathers on one stone: Tiny plant in Derbyshire Dale is one of world’s rarest

Ramblers and climbers pass by without a second glance as they focus on the stunning scenery.

But only yards from their feet, in a raging stream, one of the rarest plants on the planet is growing.

A single square yard of stony riverbed in the Peak District contains the world’s entire stock of Derbyshire feather moss.

via The moss which only gathers on one stone: Tiny plant in Derbyshire Dale is one of world’s rarest | Mail Online.

Derbyshire feather-moss is a species of aquatic moss which is only known from one site in the entire world. It is thought to have evolved in this one place in the Peak District and is therefore naturally rare.

Little is known about the environmental requirements of the moss, but the site and the area surrounding it are protected by Natural England, and the water quality is regularly monitored by the Environment Agency

via PeakDistrcit

Disabled Man Banned for Wheelchair Tank

British authorities have told a disabled man he cannot use his wheelchair on public streets because he requires a tank license to drive it.

Jim Starr, 36, has been banned from using his custom-made wheelchair by Britain’s Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which claims it is actually a tank.

“The whole idea of the chair was that I could go down to the beach with the kids,” said Starr. “It is a fantastic machine and can take me anywhere I want to go. It has no limits.

“It is ridiculous that I should have found a chair that could help me do all that … only for the authorities to turn around and say that if I used it on the roads, I would be doing something illegal,” he said.

A former landscape gardener, Starr has required a wheelchair since 1999 because of chronic back and joint conditions, neurological problems and arthritis.The $24,000 chair, given as a Christmas gift by a friend, is made in the United States.

Appropriately named the Tank Chair, the modified wheelchair was invented by Brad Soden, a U.S. Army veteran inspired by his time spent in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. …

via Disabled Man Banned for Wheelchair Tank.

T-Rex hunted like a lion, did not scavenge like a hyena

A new study has revealed that Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn’t a scavenger like a hyena; rather it hunted like a lion.

Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) used an ecological model based on predator relationships in the Serengeti to find out if scavenging would have been an effective feeding strategy for the dinosaur.

“By understanding the ecological forces at work, we have been able to show that scavenging was not a viable option for T.rex as it was out-competed by smaller, more abundant predatory dinosaurs,” said Dr Chris Carbone.

“These smaller species would have discovered carcasses more quickly, making the most of ‘first-come-first-served’ opportunities.”

The study concluded that an individual T.rex would have roamed over large distances to catch its prey.

The research helps experts understand the behaviour of T.rex as a hunter.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

via T-Rex hunted like a lion, did not scavenge like a hyena | Discoveryon.