Has NASA Found Alien Life? - PC Magazine

NASA has incited the excitement of space camp alums everywhere with the announcement of a Thursday press conference that could discuss findings of life beyond earth.

"NASA will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," NASA said in a Wednesday statement. "Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe."

Although NASA only gave vague details as to what would be discussed at the press conference, it provided just enough information to cause mass speculation around the Web.

According to a Yahoo News report, it's doubtful that alien life has been found. In the unlikely event that it has, Yahoo said it's probably from Mars, considering the Exploration Rover Spirit has been sitting idle on the red planet after getting trapped in sand about a year ago. This amount of time would allow the rover, which has been examining Mars since 2004, to monitor chemical changes that would imply the presence of life.

The impending findings will be published in a scientific journal, but are being kept under wraps until Thursday morning. Blogger Jason Kottke has speculated that it could be a finding concerning Titan or Rhea, two of Saturn's moons.

"If I had to guess at what NASA is going to reveal on Thursday, I'd say that they've discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis (by following the elements)," Kottke wrote.

However, until Thursday morning, bloggers have free reign to make guesses that sound like they came straight from the pages of the Weekly World News.

View the original article here

Polygamist leader held for sex charges in Texas - Reuters

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO, Texas | Wed Dec 1, 2010 4:15pm EST

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, whose rape conviction in Utah was overturned on appeal in July, has been extradited to Texas, where he was ordered held without bond on Wednesday on sexual assault and bigamy charges.

Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God's will by thousands of followers, is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect known to practice illegal plural marriages.

Jeffs was indicted by a Texas grand jury in July 2008 following a raid on an FLDS ranch near the tiny west Texas town of Eldorado. He is charged with bigamy and with sexual assault involving two girls, aged 12 and 13, whom he allegedly took as wives.

All three counts are felonies that carry penalties ranging from five to 99 years in prison if convicted.

State authorities removed more than 400 children from the FLDS compound at the time of the raid, sparking a child custody battle that gripped the nation with lurid allegations of adolescent brides and teenage pregnancies. But the children were all later returned to relatives.

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon faith, renounced polygamy more than a century ago as Utah was seeking statehood and tries to distance itself from splinter groups that still espouse it.

FLDS men typically marry one legal wife while taking others as their "spiritual wives" -- a practice that attempts to skirt the law and entitles the women and their children to various welfare benefits.

Female members of the sect wear long, pioneer-style dresses, keep their hair in long-braided plaits and are raised to be submissive to their husbands. Church members are generally suspicious of outsiders.

Revered as infallible by some and reviled as power-crazed by others, Jeffs has been characterized by his lawyers as an "unpopular religious figure" unfairly singled out for prosecution on the basis of unorthodox beliefs and teachings.

He spent 15 months on the run and made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list of fugitives before his August 2006 arrest near Las Vegas.

Jeffs was convicted in Utah in September 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice, stemming from a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin performed by Jeffs over the girl's objections.

At the time of the April 2008 raid on the sect's ranch in Texas, he was serving a prison sentence of 10 years to life in the Utah case and awaiting trial on a similar charge in Arizona, which was later dropped.

The Utah Supreme Court threw out his conviction in July of this year and ordered a new trial, ruling the presiding judge had given faulty instructions.

Last week, Utah's high court ruled Jeffs could be extradited to Texas, a move defense lawyers said would effectively end the case against him in Utah by denying his rights to a speedy retrial.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Jeffs was picked up in Utah by Texas Rangers on Tuesday night and "escorted into the state," where he was booked into the county jail in San Angelo, about 200 miles northwest of San Antonio.

Twelve other FLDS men from the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado were indicted on charges ranging from setting up sham marriages to bigamy and child sexual assault. Seven of those have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and have been sentenced to prison.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton)

View the original article here

Plan could charge some users higher Internet fees - USA Today

People who spend a lot of time watching videos or downloading files from the Internet could pay higher prices as part of a controversial proposal that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled Wednesday.He will ask the five-member regulatory agency to vote on Dec. 21 on rules that he says would "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet." President Obama has said that protecting what's known as net neutrality would be a top goal.

Genachowski said that his proposal would bar "unreasonable" efforts by Internet providers — led by cable and phone companies — to help some services and hurt others. For example, providers couldn't provide smooth and uninterrupted transmissions for communication services that they own, and jittery or delayed transmissions for competitors such as YouTube or Skype.

But Genachowski apparently hopes to win cable and phone company support by endorsing their right to make heavy Internet users pay more. It's been unclear whether the FCC would deem such pricing plans to be discriminatory: For example, consumers might favor unlimited conventional cable TV over a Web video service such as Netflix if broadband prices were tied to how many minutes or megabytes they use.

"The thrust of the proposal has shifted from purely preserving 'openness' to now simultaneously acknowledging the need for broadband rationing," says analyst Craig Moffett of financial services firm Bernstein Research.

Genachowski also made a concession to cable and phone companies by abandoning his effort to reclassify the Internet as a regulated communications service, similar to telephone connections.

Internet providers vigorously objected to that effort, launched in May following a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling. Justices said the FCC lacked authority to set rules for the Internet because the agency has classified it as an unregulated information service.

Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell challenged the FCC's authority to adopt what he called an "ill-advised" and "highly interventionist" plan. House Republicans are "promising to attack the FCC move to write rules," says analyst Rebecca Arbogast at financial services firm Stifel Nicolaus.

Net neutrality supporters were divided. Free Press CEO Josh Silver called the proposal "disappointing." Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said it would "help ensure certainty in markets while also preserving the openness ... of the Internet."

Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.

View the original article here