Science News

The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

Obama next week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday.

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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has broken from philanthropic work fighting poverty and disease to take on another threat to the worlds poor — climate change.

“The climate getting worse means many years that crops wont grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and certainly unrest.

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Japanese whalers who complained of injuries from rancid butter thrown at them by an anti-whaling group were actually suffering from their own pepper spray attack, the protesters said Saturday.

The Japanese said Friday three crew members had eye and face injuries from butyric acid, produced from bottles of stinking rancid butter that the activists sometimes aim at the ships.

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The International Space Station just got roomier. Astronauts opened the orbiting laboratorys brand-new room late Friday and quickly got to work moving things in.

“Houston, Node 3 is open,” Endeavour pilot Terry Virts radioed to Mission Control. “It looks really nice in there and were getting back to work.

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A three-legged pitbull mix that played in a game of doggie baseball has won “Best in Show” at a talent competition held by one of New York City’s largest animal shelters.

The nearly 2-year-old dog lost one of his legs and had a pin inserted in another after being struck by a car.

Nine dogs competed in Friday’s contest at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

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A Nebraska woman filed a federal lawsuit against Japanese auto giant Toyota, blaming the company for the death of her husband when the Prius she was driving suddenly accelerated.

Donoghue said her husband John was killed instantly in the crash while she suffered head trauma, a fractured shoulder, a broken jaw and a collapsed lung.

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A cracked tile and protruding ring on shuttle Endeavour are too small to pose any danger during next week’s trip home from the International Space Station, NASA managers said Friday.

The good news came as the 11 astronauts prepared to enter the space station’s newest room, Tranquility.

In fact, the space shuttle’s entire heat shield is solid for re-entry based on five days of intensive photo and data reviews, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.

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The space shuttle Endeavours heat shield is in fine shape despite three minor defects, which pose no risk to the orbiter or its six-astronaut crew, a top NASA official said Friday.

Images of Endeavour before it arrived at the International Space Station this week revealed a small ceramic insert jutting up from just below a cockpit window.

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NASAs hobbled Mars rover Spirit has made its last short drives of the season and is now parked for the Martian winter, which mission managers hope it will survive.

The change for Spirit came after more than six years spent roaming the Martian surface. Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 a few weeks ahead of its twin Opportunity, which is working fine and roving to a giant crater on the other side of Mars.

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The U.N. chief tapped the prime ministers of Britain and Ethiopia on Friday to lead the hunt for hundreds of billions of dollars that nations pledged to contribute this decade for dealing with climate change.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday named British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as co-chairs of a new high-level U.

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