Cocaine Submarine Seized

• Photograph from Reuters

  Ecuadorian police pose atop what U.S. officials called a "game changing"submarine built by drug smugglers on July 2 near the town of San Lorenzo (map), just south of the Colombian border.
  
  
  Unlike previous known "cocaine subs," which could dip only just below the surface, the illegal craft appears capable of diving as deep as 65 feet (20 meters).
  Seized before its maiden voyage, the 98-foot-long (30-meter-long) fiberglass sub was big enough to hold six to ten tons of cocaine and six crew members. The remote swamp camp where it was built was outfitted for up to 50 workers, though only 1 was present at the time of the raid.
  With a ballast system never before seen in a cocaine sub, the handmade sub suggests smugglers are rapidly improving on the more common, semisubmersible designs, which are already difficult to detect.
  "It's obviously an eye-opener," said Michael Braun, a former chief of operations with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which assisted in the seizure operation.
  "There's been a lot of speculation," said Braun, now with Spectre Group International, a private security company. "But now there's direct evidence that the bad guys have the ability to build these things and put them into service."
  (Related: Get cocaine-submarine pictures and facts from the National Geographic Channel.)
  

  Published July 13, 2010

Close Encounter With Lutetia

Image courtesy ESA

Asteroid 21 Lutetia is exposed, craters and all, in a picture captured Saturday by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta's close encounter with Lutetia revealed a battered world—a possible remnant from the birth of our solar system, astronomers say.
To snap the above image, Rosetta swooped about 1,965 miles (3,162 kilometers) above Lutetia's surface. The image is the highest-resolution photo taken of the space rock, located more than 270 million miles (440 million kilometers) away from Earth, between Mars and Jupiter. (Watch a video of Rosetta's flyby.)
The sharp edge visible above, at bottom, may be evidence that 81-mile-wide (130-kilometer-wide) Lutetia broke off from a "mother asteroid," said NASA space scientist Claudia Alexander, who led the United States' involvement in the Rosetta mission.

Jungle Cat Mimics Monkey to Lure Prey—A First

The margay cat mimics monkeys while hunting, researchers say (file photo).

Photograph by J.H. Pete Carmichael, Riser/Getty Images

Regulation of Notch1 Signaling by Nrf2: Implications for Tissue Regeneration -- Wakabayashi et al. 3 (130): ra52 -- Science Signaling

Carlos Santana proposes onstage

 

Legendary guitarist Carlos Santana has proposed onstage to his drummer girlfriend, Cindy Blackman.

AAP

LEGENDARY guitarist Carlos Santana is engaged after proposing onstage to his girlfriend, drummer Cindy Blackman.
The proposal came during a tour stop Friday in Tinley Park, Illinois, outside Chicago. His representatives say he popped the question four songs into the concert after a Blackman drum solo.
She said yes, and they sealed it with a kiss, which was met with cheers from the crowd.
The multiplatinum-selling Grammy winner ended a 34-year marriage to Deborah Santana in 2007.

Michael Jackson's grave vandalised

 

Michael Jackson.

AAP

MICHAEL Jackson's final resting place has been vandalised.

A group of fans of the late singer - who died of acute Propofol intoxication last June - managed to obtain access to the Great Mausoleum at Los Angeles' Forest Lawn Memorial Park, with the cemetery now pledging to review security following the incident.

Gibson aims at Hispanics in new rant

 

Mel Gibson is being investigated in a possible domestic violence case involving his ex-girlfriend.OSCAR-WINNING Braveheart director Mel Gibson uses racial language to disparage an Hispanic cleaning lady, in a fresh recording posted online on Tuesday.
The recording, allegedly made in a screaming phone argument with his Russian-born ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, follows the release of earlier rants in which Gibson refers to black people as "n*****s," calls Grigorieva a "whore" and a "bitch in heat," and apparently acknowledges beating her.
In one tape, Lethal Weapon star Gibson even reportedly threatens to kill Grigorieva.

UN to review Aussie gender equality

 

Australia has taken significant steps towards a more gender equal society.AUSTRALIA has thrown some large stones at the glass ceiling since the United Nations last reviewed our gender equality agenda.
So there will be plenty to talk about next week when Australia's four-year progress is reviewed by the UN's division for the advancement of women in New York.

Vitamin D level 'link to Parkinson's'

© iStockphoto.com/Dmitriy Shironosov

GREATER levels of vitamin D have been linked to a lower risk of Parkinson's disease in a study in Finland where low sunlight leads to a chronic lack of the nutrient, researchers said Monday.
Scientists from the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland, first hypothesised that Parkinson's "may be caused by a continuously inadequate vitamin D status leading to a chronic loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain."

Obesity gene linked to Alzheimer's