A mile-long oil sheen has spread from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Coklough said the sheen was spotted near the platform owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc.
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Whoa, dude, check this out

Undergraduate students in America managed to get control of the manoeuvring thrusters of an orbiting 2000-lb NASA satellite at the weekend, sending it plummeting into the Earth's atmosphere to rain burning fragments across the chilly seas north of Norway and Russia.
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Government says it hopes junk will be sunk by rules on new numbers, but critics fear more monitoring of citizens

China began requiring identification from anyone buying a new mobile phone number today in what it says is a bid to stamp out junk messages.

But critics say the move gives the government a new tool for monitoring its citizens.
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Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce an important article, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.”

It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
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Ha-Joon Chang, the new kid on the economics block, is out to bust open a few myths

A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.
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It was the TV show billed as a social experiment. But as Big Brother draws to a close, John Walsh argues that it has made Britain more like Orwell's dystopia than we could have imagined

Soon it will all be over. Next Tuesday, the nation will decide whether John James, the handsome but peevish Australian, or Sam Pepper, the goofy prankster, or jolly Josie, the farm girl turned MC, or indeed somebody quite unforeseen is the housemate who should win the prize money of £50,000 plus a brief sojourn in the national limelight.
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The government of Hungary has taken on a lot of powerful interests in the last couple of months, and so far appears to be winning – despite provoking outrage from “everybody who’s anybody.”

“The IMF should hold the line,” shouted the Financial Times in an editorial the day after Hungary sent the IMF packing in July. “With so many countries in vulnerable positions, it cannot be seen to be a soft touch. Showing a few yellow and red cards is a good way to send a signal to other governments that might be tempted to flirt with indiscipline.”
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The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”

As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation.
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Common bacteria have "noses" that respond to smells, scientists said.
A study shows how certain bugs detect the presence of rivals by picking up whiffs of chemicals in the air.

The discovery means lowly bugs are now known to possess four of our familiar five senses.
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With BP's well capped and CEO Tony Hayward exiled to Russia, perhaps you thought that surely there will be no additional revelations about BP to enrage you. But now comes this: prison labor.

In its national PR blitz to buff up its image, the oil giant has loudly been boasting that it has hired devastated, out-of-work local people to handle the clean-up.
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Six Yemeni fishing boats captured in Egyptian territorial waters in June might have gone unnoticed if not for their unusual cargo -- several kilometers of long lines and over 20 tons of dead sharks.

"The capture of these boats provided more evidence that a commercial shark fishery is operating in the Red Sea," says Amr Ali, managing director of the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA), a local environmental NGO.
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You are the juror: would you trust DNA evidence? Most people regard it as near infallible- it produces the right result or no result, exonerating the innocent and securing convictions where other evidence fails.

But DNA is not as objective as you might think.
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Reusing computers is 20 times more energy efficient than recycling

Computer Aid has called for vendors and the government to promote the reuse of old IT equipment.

In the report entitled “Why reuse is better than recycling”, Computer Aid, which supports the recycling of electronic waste, argued that reusing working computers is up to 20 times more energy efficient than recycling them.
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Abuses passenger, grabs beers and slides into net celebrity

The internet has wasted no time in celebrating the dramatic resignation of air steward Steven Slater.

Slater, 39, took exception to a jetBlue passenger who "refused to apologize after accidentally striking him with luggage" as Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh taxied to a halt at New York's JFK airport yesterday.
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Gene giving high levels of resistance to drugs found in increasingly prevalent intestinal bacteria

International travel and medical tourism have led to the rapid, global spread of drug-resistant bacteria that may presage the end of antibiotics and leave doctors struggling to treat infected patients, scientists warn today.
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