Reported concerns among some U.S. officials that Iran may have essentially freed a group of al Qaeda militants held for almost a decade under house arrest in the Islamic Republic are adding Friday morning to the escalating war-rhetoric pouring out of Washington and Israel.

Google+ Is Growing Much Faster Than Facebook Did In The Early Days

Let’s make sure that the press thinks that this is a great story that deserves weeks of in depth coverage. The more coverage the better.

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O’Keefe and his group Project Veritas most recently made news in January by producing a video during the New Hampshire primary showing how easy it is for someone to commit voter fraud.

“Absolutely,” O’Keefe said, when asked if observers can expect more videos soon from his organization.

He had tough words for the liberal activists who claim he and his operatives broke the law with their New Hampshire video by successfully obtaining ballots in the name of dead voters in the state because there is no voter identification law.

“There is a long tradition of turning people who expose the ineptitude of government into political prisoners,” he said. “But it’s just un-American.”

Spotted salamanders exposed to contaminated roadside ponds are adapting to their toxic environments, according to a Yale paper in Scientific Reports. This study provides the first documented evidence that a vertebrate has adapted to the negative effects of roads apparently by evolving rapidly.

Last week, Human Rights Watch put out a blunt assessment of what the United States has left behind after eight years in Iraq: “Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy, the reality is that it left behind a budding police state.”

Too true. And a striking example of this downhill slide is the recent arrest of Riyadh al-Adhadh, a Sunni doctor known for helping the poor who was recently jailed on terrorism charges.

French unions promised on Monday to protect the 35-hour working week, with one threatening to stage protests if President Nicolas Sarkozy tries to force through reforms that would effectively end the scheme. 

Sarkozy detailed his strategy on Sunday to boost French competitiveness, including plans to let unions and management reach pay deals at the company level, rather than nationally or by industry sector as required now by law. ...

... At stake is the 35-hour scheme, put in place under Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2000 and which the current conservative government has blamed for widening France’s competitiveness gap with Germany.

Lawyers in Naples taped up their mouths and turned their backs on a government speaker at a solemn ceremony to mark the start of Italy’s judicial year.

The lawyers will follow protests by everybody from pharmacists to taxi drivers against Monti’s attempt to liberalize tightly closed professions and trades and stimulate growth in a country threatened by the euro zone debt crisis.

As part of the SCENICC program, DARPA researchers are working on futuristic contact lenses that will offer a dual purpose. These lenses will allow users to focus on objects that are close up and far away simultaneously, while enhancing normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images.

It’s a well-known fact that spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, yet flexible enough to be made into a variety of different shapes. A new study has also shown that the material is also smart.

Studying spider silk further could lead to applications in virtual networks, such as the Internet, to allow a local node to be sacrificed and keeping the whole system from breaking down. The protein structure could also give insight on how carbon nanotubes should be strung together to produce combat gear or space elevators.

The Little Ice Age (LIA), a mysterious period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period and extended from the 16th into the 19th centuries, might have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice.

During the cold spell, advancing glaciers destroyed northern European towns and froze the Thames River in London, as well as the canals in the Netherlands, places that are now completely ice-free. The climate feedback system explains how this cold period could be sustained for such a long period, states Gifford Miller, a geological scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lead study researcher.

I think we have so many people - builders, buyers, banks - are ‘snakebit’ that even with low interest rates, a real turn around could be a long way off.

Four British men fueled by the words of a U.S.-born Muslim cleric pleaded guilty on Wednesday to involvement in an al Qaeda inspired plot to spread terror and cause economic damage by bombing the London Stock Exchange at Christmastime.

But on Wednesday four of the defendants pleaded guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to involvement in the Stock Exchange plan, and the five other British Muslims to lesser charges.

It still leaves them plenty of room to make inside trades.

Washington has a public relations problem, and Obama and Congress have narrowed in on the STOCK Act as their latest PR strategy. If it becomes law this year, no progress will have been made on the real reason Congress’ approval rating is at a record low — the corrosive influence of money in politics — which is exactly the reason why the STOCK Act is being pursued as the solution in the first place. ...

... A key characteristic of systemic corruption is that the system is unwilling to recognize the corruption and, therefore, is not capable of fixing itself. President Obama’s campaign may have calculated that it is politically advantageous for him to be critical of Congress, but the fact is that he has thrived from the revolving door and corporate contributions more than any other politician in U.S. history. Congress is not going to fix itself, and the White House is even further entrenched in the system. Reform has to come from outside of Washington.

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“I expect senators on both sides of the aisle will have a number of amendments to this legislation. But one thing that stands out is the fact that the president is calling on Congress to live up to a standard that he isn’t requiring of his own employees,” McConnell said.

“So I think we can expect at least one amendment that calls on executive branch employees to live up to the same standards that they would set for others. If the goal here is for everybody to play by the same rules, that shouldn’t mean everybody — except those in the executive branch. After all, if anybody has access to privileged information at the moment it’s them,” McConnell said.