Eideard

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A French battleship sunk in 1917 by a German submarine has been discovered in remarkable condition on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. The Danton, with many of its gun turrets still intact, is sitting upright in over 1,000m of water.

It was found by the Fugro geosciences company during a survey for a gas pipeline between Algeria and Italy.

The Danton, which sank with 296 sailors still onboard, lies 35km southwest of the island of Sardinia. Naval historians record that the Danton’s Captain Delage stood on the bridge with his officers and made no attempt to leave the ship as it went down.

The final resting place is a few kilometres from where people have traditionally thought the ship met its end.

“The French Admiralty did argue with us for a while that it should have been several nautical miles away, but we reminded them that modern GPS methods are more accurate than the sextants they used in those days,” said Project Manager Rob Hawkins.

The pipeline is being built by the Galsi consortium and will be the deepest underwater conduit for gas ever constructed when it becomes operational in 2012.

Fascinating stuff. Can you imagine being onboard the submersible plotting a pipeline when you suddenly come upon the wreck of a battleship – from almost a century ago?

Daylife/AP Photo by Karim Kadim

Iraqi officials have formally reopened Abu Ghraib prison, which became synonymous with abuse under the U.S. occupation, and in addition to a fresh coat of paint, gave it a new name.

The prison on the western outskirts of Baghdad earned global notoriety after U.S. jailkeepers filmed themselves tormenting and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners less than a year after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein…

Renamed Baghdad Central Prison, it already has around 400 inmates, said prison director general Alsharif al-Murtadha Abdul al-Mutalib…

The Iraqi authorities running the new prison appeared intent on constructing an entirely different image now.

The newly minted Baghdad prison has modern medical and dental facilities, a computer chatroom and a courtyard for visiting families that contains a children’s playground and a water fountain.

Inmates will be able to sew their own clothes in a small sewing factory. The prison also has a mosque and a hair salon that would not look out of place in a city street outside.

As the new prison slowly fills, there remains questions about what will be done with prisoners still held by the American military. 14,000 of them.

The ongoing investigation into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal has resulted in a criminal charge against a former aide to Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.

Ann Copland, who worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant dealing with Native American tribes, is accused of receiving thousands of dollars worth of tickets and meals in exchange for helping an Abramoff client, the Mississippi tribe of Choctaw Indians.

Copland is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud…

Abramoff acknowledged illegally showering gifts on officials who provided favors for his clients. Most prominent of those convicted in the case was former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio. Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and several key congressional aides were also convicted in the case.

Abramoff was sentenced to four years in federal prison.

The criminal charge says Copland “performed various official actions, including but not limited to attempting to persuade other legislative and executive branch officials to take or abstain from taking official action.”

And it ain’t over, folks. There’s a lobbying firm called PMA that’s been polishing Republicans and Democrats, right and left, for their Pentagon sweeties.

One of the benefits from the Democrat congressional victories in 2007 is mandatory open recording of pork – including lobbyists involved. That’s just starting to bear fruit. Couple more scandals coming up.

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The government is warning that taking the psoriasis drug Raptiva could result in serious brain infection and even death.

The Food and Drug Administration cited three confirmed cases, and a possible fourth, of people diagnosed with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) after being treated with Raptiva.

“Three of those patients have died,” the FDA said in a public health advisory. “All four patients were treated with the drug for more than three years…”

Raptiva’s product labeling was revised in October to highlight a boxed warning about the risks of life-threatening infections, including PML.

“At that time, the FDA directed Genentech, the manufacturer, to develop a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) to include a medication guide to educate patients about the drug’s risks,” the FDA’s advisory says.

Scary stuff.

I had an Uncle who suffered from Psoriasis off and on. Didn’t kill him, though. Drinking did that.

Workers excavating an underground garage on the site of an old May Co. parking structure in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park got more than just a couple hundred new parking spaces. They found the largest known cache of fossils from the last ice age, an assemblage that has flabbergasted paleontologists.

Researchers from the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits have barely begun extracting the fossils from the sandy, tarry matrix of soil, but they expect the find to double the size of the museum’s collection from the period, already the largest in the world.

Among their finds…is the nearly intact skeleton of a Columbian mammoth — named Zed by researchers — a prize discovery because only bits and pieces of mammoths had previously been found in the tar pits.

But researchers are perhaps even more excited about finding smaller fossils of tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers and even mats of oak leaves. In the early 1900s, the first excavators at La Brea threw out similar items in their haste to find prized animal bones, and crucial information about the period was lost.

“This gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago” in the Los Angeles Basin, said John Harris, chief curator at the Page. The find will make the museum “the major library of life in the Pleistocene ice age,” he said.

RTFA. The details of the find are interesting enough. New methods devised for rapid excavation and storage are fascinating.

The network of criss-cross lines is 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa near the Canary Islands on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

The perfect rectangle – which is around the size of Wales – was noticed on the search giant’s underwater exploration tool by an aeronautical engineer who claims it looks like an “aerial map” of a city.

The underwater image can be found at the co-ordinates 31 15’15.53N 24 15’30.53W.

Last night Atlantis experts said that the unexplained grid is located at one of the possible sites of the legendary island, which was described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

Bernie Bamford, 38, of Chester who spotted the “city”, compared it to the plan of Milton Keynes, the Buckinghamshire town built on a grid design. “It must be man made,” he said.

Uh, here’s Google’s response to the discovery.

I stay away from reality television, and talent shows usually give me hives, but I just might have to tune in for this. Our favorite Chief Scientist strolling across the floor showing up the likes of David Allan Grier and Steve-o might be too much to miss. The series premiere airs March 9th.

As a kid prodigy, I admit to winning a couple of talent shows. Fortunately, I think I’ve outlived anyone else who might remember that.

Rolls-Royce has released pictures of its latest concept, the 200EX, on which the next production model, known as RR4, will be based.

The 200EX will be on display at the Geneva motor show next month, and the RR4 goes on sale next year.

The company’s chief designer, Ian Cameron, said: “The 200EX has a dynamic edge to its styling and is noticeably less formal than previous models. Its size, style and expression broaden the appeal of the car, making it more appropriate for a wider range of circumstances…

Price will be much lower than any other Rolls-Royce models. Folks guess this will hit the road in your neighborhood for just a tad over $252,000.

Your neighborhood maybe – not mine.

A congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council finds serious deficiencies in the nation’s forensic science system and calls for major reforms and new research. Rigorous and mandatory certification programs for forensic scientists are currently lacking, the report says, as are strong standards and protocols for analyzing and reporting on evidence. And there is a dearth of peer-reviewed, published studies establishing the scientific bases and reliability of many forensic methods. Moreover, many forensic science labs are underfunded, understaffed, and have no effective oversight.

Forensic evidence is often offered in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation to support conclusions about individualization — in other words, to “match” a piece of evidence to a particular person, weapon, or other source. But with the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, the report says, no forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source. Non-DNA forensic disciplines have important roles, but many need substantial research to validate basic premises and techniques, assess limitations, and discern the sources and magnitude of error, said the committee that wrote the report. Even methods that are too imprecise to identify a specific individual can provide valuable information and help narrow the range of possible suspects or sources…

The committee carefully considered whether such a governing body could be established within an existing agency, and determined that it could not. There is little doubt that some existing federal entities are too wedded to the current forensic science community, which is deficient in too many respects. And existing agencies have failed to pursue a strong research agenda to confirm the evidentiary reliability of methodologies used in a number of forensic science disciplines.

I guess you could call this some kind of indictment. Accepting it as correct, then, many cases decided at trial on forensics really are a crap shoot between the prosecutors and the defense.

Just one more area of society where we need a bit more science and a reduction in politics.

“Seven – the hard way!”
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A senior Democratic lawmaker will push legislation this year to repeal a U.S. ban on Internet gambling that has hurt trade ties with the European Union. “The bill introduction should happen in the next month,” a spokesman for House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

On Thursday, Reuters reported the EU could file a complaint about U.S. enforcement of the gambling ban at the World Trade Organization.

“Mr. Frank will bring back legislation to repeal the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act),” the spokesman said, referring to a Republican-crafted bill passed in 2006 when the party controlled Congress and the White House…

The law cost Europe’s online gambling companies billions in lost market value as they were forced to retreat from one of their most lucrative markets. It barred businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic fund transfers and checks…

The European Commission, acting on industry petition, began a formal investigation in March into whether Washington was singling out EU companies for enforcement actions while allowing U.S. online firms to operate freely.

Preferential treatment certainly was part of it. What’s Congressional cronyism for – if you don’t use it.

Otherwise, we’re back to facing the good old bible-thumping crowd who find damned near everything they don’t approve of – or profit from directly – as immoral and fattening.