China sets its 5th manned space mission for summer

BEIJING (AP) ? China will send three astronauts to its orbiting space station this summer in a mission that's part of preparations to establish an even larger permanent presence above Earth.

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft will take flight sometime between June and August, the country's manned space program said in its statement Thursday. The craft will deliver its crew to the Tiangong 1, where the trio will spend two weeks conducting tests of the station's docking system and its systems for supporting life and carrying out scientific work.

Two Chinese spacecraft, one of them manned, have docked already with Tiangong 1 since it was launched in September 2011. China has been extremely cautious and methodical in its manned missions, while hoping to avoid accidents and loss of life that could tarnish one of the nation's most successful and prestigious scientific and engineering undertakings.

The station is to be replaced in around 2020 with a permanent space station that will weigh about 60 tons, slightly smaller than NASA's Skylab of the 1970s and about one-sixth the size of the 16-nation International Space Station. China was barred from participating in the International Space Station, largely on objections from the United States over political differences and the Chinese program's close military links.

China's ambitious space goals also include plans for sending a rover to the moon, possibly followed by a manned lunar mission. China's manned space program launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space in 2003, becoming the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve that feat. The upcoming mission would be China's fifth manned space flight.

China would also be the third country after the United States and Russia to send independently maintained space stations into orbit.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-sets-5th-manned-space-mission-summer-020523377.html

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Thanks To HTML5 This Website Can Fill Your Whole Hard Drive with Trash

Sometimes a browser needs to leave a little data on your computer, just a little 5-10KB nibblit, a cookie. HTML5 is a hungrier beast than that which came before it though, and sometimes wants a little more. Maybe 5MB or so. But that's where it should end. Thanks to a little HTML5 vulnerability, however, this site can and will fill your entire hard drive with trash. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/c_QJh7W3L2s/thanks-to-html5-this-website-can-fill-your-whole-hard-drive-with-trash

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Owner: Dog may have been poisoned at Westminster

NEW YORK (AP) ? A dog owner says she thinks there's a chance her prized pet was deliberately poisoned while competing at the Westminster Kennel Club show, causing it to die several days later.

"It is in the realm of possibility," Lynette Blue told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Blue co-owns a 3-year-old Samoyed named Cruz, and said he probably swallowed poison at Westminster earlier this month. Four days after competing, the dog died, on Feb. 16, while at a show in Colorado.

Blue has worked since the 1970s with Samoyeds, a sturdy, medium-sized breed. She said that while there was no evidence foul play was involved, certain symptoms were consistent with dogs who ingest rat or mouse poison. That was the reason she said she decided against a necropsy ? an autopsy for animals.

"The timeline adds up. There's no other scenario we can come up with other than poison," she said.

Asked if she thought it was intentional, she said: "I don't think we'll ever know."

The dog's death was first reported by The New York Times.

Cruz's handler, Robert Chaffin, told the Times he thought extreme animal rights activists may have been to blame. Members of some animal groups have criticized shows featuring purebred dogs in the past.

In 2010, two members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood in the middle of the Westminster best-in-show ring at Madison Square Garden and held protest signs.

But PETA co-founder and president Ingrid Newkirk said "it makes no sense whatsoever" that an animal rights activist would harm an animal.

"It's a fantasy, it's a fallacy," she told the AP by phone Thursday night. "How dare you point a finger and cast aspersions when you haven't a clue."

The veterinarian who treated Cruz, Molly Comiskey, told the Times: "Dogs are dogs. It's not anyone's fault. They eat stuff; they get into things; they make bad decisions."

The 137th Westminster drew 2,721 purebred entries. Cruz, one of 33 Samoyeds list in the show, did not win any ribbons in the best of breed judging.

"We have never, to our knowledge, had an incident at our show where a dog has become ill or was harmed as a result of being poisoned," the kennel club said in a statement.

"After conversation with the co-owner of the dog in question, it was established that the dog left Georgia on Monday and flew to New York, he was exhibited at our show on Tuesday, and flew to Denver on Wednesday morning where he subsequently became ill on Saturday. Unfortunately, no autopsy was performed, so there are a lot of unanswered questions," the statement said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-28-Westminster%20Show-Dog%20Death/id-7497ebd7f5bc42fe828ff4a3c2cf37c8

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Jack Lew sworn in as Treasury secretary

Feb 27 (Reuters) - Former world number one Caroline Wozniacki suffered one of her worst career defeats when she bowed out of the Malaysia Open to 186th-ranked Chinese qualifier Qiang Wang on Wednesday. The Dane, top seed at the event in Kuala Lumpur, cruised through the opening set of her first round clash and had a match point in the second before going down 2-6 7-6 6-1. Qualifier Wang, 21, allowed Wozniacki only one point in the second set tiebreak as she levelled the match and rolled through the decider to claim her biggest careeer win. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jack-lew-sworn-treasury-secretary-175617565--sector.html

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Wireless Power Monitor Snitches To Your Smartphone About Your Energy Waste

You're probably blissfully ignorant about how much power your electronics are sucking. But once you start having to pay a monthly electricity bill, that soon changes. So to easily keep tabs on how power hungry your toys are, slap one of these wireless Smart Plugs on your outlet and keep track of how much juice they're wasting right from your smartphone. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/HbtI3MGQceU/wireless-power-monitor-snitches-to-your-smartphone-about-your-energy-waste

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PFT: Kiffin will vouch for Barkley's NFL potential

Getty Images

When Tim Brown and Jerry Rice made their bizarre accusations that their former coach, Bill Callahan, sabotaged the team in Super Bowl XXXVII, they both dragged former Raiders center Barret Robbins into it: Brown and Rice both said they thought Robbins, who abruptly left the team the day before the game, had a mental breakdown that was triggered by Callahan suddenly and unexpectedly changing the game plan.

Robbins, however, says he doesn?t remember that.

In an interview with Sports Radio 610, Robbins said that he had been dealing with mental and physical health issues before the Raiders got to the Super Bowl, and Robbins says he has no memory of anything related to Callahan?s game plan for that game.

?I would be absolutely wrong to tell you that that was the case,? Robbins said. ?If Tim Brown goes on record and says that he changed the game plan on Friday, I don?t remember. Because you?ve got to understand, I was going through a manic episode that had lasted more than two weeks. At that point in time, when we went to the Super Bowl, I was having to shoot my foot up, I was having acupuncture, going through a lot of pain. It was a lot of stress. Pain is a big trigger when it comes to bipolar, that was something I was going through, as well as self-medicating.?

Robbins also said, however, that he doesn?t have any reason to believe Brown was wrong.

?I?m not going to say that I remember the exact meeting that that took place, but I haven?t heard anybody deny it,? Robbins said.

If Robbins hasn?t heard anybody deny it, that simply means he hasn?t been paying attention to the story. Callahan has denied it in the strongest terms, and he?s been backed up by multiple people who were in the Raiders? offensive meetings before the Super Bowl, including former quarterback Rich Gannon, former offensive tackle Lincoln Kennedy and former assistant coach Jim Harbaugh. And Brown himself has backed off his initial claims.

It?s been more than a month since Brown made his initial accusation against Callahan, and the topic is still being raised with players and coaches who were on that Raiders team. Whether he meant to or not, Brown opened a very large can of worms when he suggested that his old coach threw the Super Bowl.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/28/lane-kiffin-will-personally-vouch-for-matt-barkleys-nfl-potential/related/

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House Hearing Fails to Address Major Concerns With Targeted ...

U.S. Marines load an RQ-7B UAV onto a launching ramp.

Lance Cpl. Robert R. Carrasco/Released

February 27, 2013 12:32 PM ET

The House Judiciary Committee held a full member hearing today on when it is acceptable for the government to designate a U.S. citizen for targeted killing ? the first hearing to focus specifically on this hot-button issue. Despite the session's serious shortcomings, it was a small step towards some modicum of Congressional oversight of a program that remains shrouded in secrecy. The hearing included four expert witnesses, all of whom contribute to the right-leaning website Lawfare. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, was invited to attend but declined to show up, much to the frustration of many committee members.

The session was remarkable for the near-constant agreement between three of the four witnesses ? lawyers John Bellinger and Robert Chesney and Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes ? regarding issues such as the constitutionality of killing Yemeni cleric and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike, as well as the reasoning behind the recently leaked DOJ white paper summarizing the secret Office of Legal Counsel opinions that authorize lethal strikes against American citizens. Little was gained by having these three similar viewpoints on the panel, especially at the exclusion of human rights experts or those actually affected by U.S. drone strikes.

The Drone Industry Wants a Makeover

"Where were the victims, where were representatives of civil society in the affected countries?" asks Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel and advocate with Human Rights Watch, in an email. She suggests that Congress could have invited family members of Anwar al-Awlaki to testify, but "instead, the only congressional hearing to date on the preeminent legal and political issue of our time consisted of four American men who are participants in the same legal blogging project." (That blogging project once somewhat notoriously posted a user-submitted photo of a tasteless "drone cake," with an accompanying joke referencing their site's motto.)

Also remarkable was what was missing from the discussion ? namely, any serious questioning of the fundamental logic of the war on terror, or any suggestion that it may ever come to an end from either members of Congress or the witnesses. Instead, the witnesses argued that Congress should update the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force to better fit the new realities of the war on terror, with barely a word that the drone-based U.S. foreign policy which has resulted in 4,700 deaths, by Sen. Lindsay Graham's own admission, might itself be the problem.

"The lawyers at this hearing made the case for this lethal authority during wartime, but the problem is that there's no end in sight to this war," says Naureen Shah, lecturer in law at the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University Law School, in an email. "The war against Al Qaeda is at best a war against groups with a shared ideology, but on that basis, the war and the authority to kill citizens on U.S. soil could last lifetimes."

At Least We're Not Measles: Rationalizing Drone Attacks Hits New Low

The leaked white paper revealed that the Obama administration has claimed it has the power to kill any U.S. citizen who is deemed a senior operational leader of al Qaeda, who poses an "imminent threat" and whose capture is "infeasible" ? though those terms are vaguely defined to the point of near-meaninglessness. John Brennan, Obama's nominee to head the CIA, has refused to say whether this broad authority extends to U.S. soil. Today's hearing brought little clarity to that concern, though Steve Vladeck, the fourth witness, said the infeasibility of capture requirement would likely prohibit a targeted killing within the United States.?

Members of Congress have asked at least 19 times for the Office of Legal Council memos that theoretically contain the precise legal reasoning behind targeted killing, but have been stonewalled by the Obama administration at every turn.

The powers discussed in this morning's committee hearing are some of the most disturbing powers a government can claim over its citizens. As commentator Glenn Greenwald recently wrote, the mere fact that the public doesn't know if this administration believes it has the right to extra-legally kill U.S. citizens in secret within the boundaries of the United States "shows just how extreme the degradation of U.S. political culture is." That the so-called war in which the U.S. is engaged is likely to last decades makes the lethal presidency even more dangerous.

As Shah says in her email, "Can you imagine if, during the Cold War, the government had refused to rule out killing U.S. citizens on U.S. soil?"

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/house-hearing-fails-to-address-major-concerns-with-targeted-killing-program-20130227

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