четверг, 15 марта 2012 г.

Johnson beats Dodgers lowers ERA to ML-best 1.70

Josh Johnson scattered six hits over eight innings and lowered his major league-leading ERA to 1.70 to help the Florida Marlins to a 4-0 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night.

Johnson (9-3) threw 117 pitches and came within three outs of his first shutout in 94 big league …

Researchers study compost effects on farm soils

On Kip Wooten's south-central Idaho farm between Kimberly and Hansen, University of Idaho scientists have begun a five-year research study "to put science into the art of adding compost to agricultural soils," writes Marlene Fritz of the University. With 160,000 dairy cows in the Magic Valley region, the raw materials to make compost and apply it at rates up to 20 tons per acre on typical crop rotations are available. (As reported in July BioCycle, a regional company called Compost West, Inc. is processing and marketing cow manure.)

According to Bob …

3 British residents return to U.K. after release from Guantanamo

Three longtime British residents held in the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay returned to Britain on Wednesday and two were arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, police said.

Jamil el-Banna, 45, of Jordan, Libyan-born Omar Deghayes, 38, and Abdennour Sameur, 34, of Algeria, landed at Luton airport, north of London, at about 1900 GMT, said Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer for the British legal charity Reprieve, which has assisted the men.

Police said officers accompanying the three arrested Deghayes and Sameur under the Terrorism Act shortly before their chartered aircraft landed. They were arrested on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism …

Far-out theory: Earth once had two moons

Earth once had two moons, astronomers now think. But the smaller one smashed into the other in what is being called the "big splat."

The result: Our planet was left with a single bulked-up and ever-so-slightly lopsided moon.

The astronomers came up with the scenario to explain why the moon's far side is so much more hilly than the one that is always facing Earth.

According to the theory, outlined Wednesday in the journal Nature, this happened about 4.4 billion years ago, long before there was any life on Earth to gaze up and see the strange sight of dual moons. The moons were young, formed about 100 million years earlier when a giant planet smashed into …

среда, 14 марта 2012 г.

Indian Politics Stymie U.S.-Indian Nuclear Deal

With U.S. officials warning that time is iunning out on an initiative to rollback restrictions on global nuclear trade with India, that country's coalition government failed March 17 to persuade its leftist allies to drop their opposition to the U.S.-Indian effort. Another meeting to sway the holdouts is supposed to take place sometime in April.

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to win over the leftist parties because they have threatened to withdraw support for the ruling coalition if it takes certain steps toward implementing what the leftists charge is a deal that will erode India's sovereignty and security. Such a split could trigger early elections that …

21 Palestinians, 1 Israeli Soldier Killed

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip - Palestinian militants armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades battled Israeli helicopters and tanks Thursday in the bloodiest day since Israel invaded Gaza over a soldier's capture. At least 21 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier died.

Israeli troops retook three empty Jewish settlements nearly a year after abandoning them, seeking to carve out a temporary buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip to prevent militants from firing more rockets into Israel.

After touring Gaza main hospital, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamic militant group Hamas called for international intervention to stop the Israeli offensive, which …

Rashied Ali, free-jazz drummer, dies in NYC at 76

Rashied Ali, a free-jazz drummer who backed John Coltrane and accompanied him in a duet album in the final months of the jazz master's life, has died. He was 76.

The Philadelphia native died at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital of a blood clot in his lung on Wednesday, said his wife, Patricia Ali.

When Coltrane decided to use two drummers at a performance at the Village Gate in November 1965, he chose Ali to back up drummer Elvin Jones. He recorded with both men on the 1965 album "Meditations," and accompanied Coltrane alone on the duet album "Interstellar Space," recorded shortly before Coltrane died of cancer in 1967.

After the …