Iran Launches Research Rocket Into SpaceIran announced Wednesday it has successfully launched a 10-foot-long research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space -- a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.
The launch of the Kavoshgar-3, which means Explorer-3 in Farsi, was announced by Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as part of Iran's ambitious space program. It comes a year after Iran sent its first domestically made telecommunications satellite into orbit.
The program has worried Western powers who fear the same technology used to launch satellites and research capsules could also deliver warheads. Iranian state television broadcast images Wednesday of officials putting a mouse, two turtles and about a dozen creatures that looked like worms inside a capsule in the rocket before it blast off.
Vahidi gave no details on the research and the report did not disclose when or where the launch took place. The rocket is the third in a series bearing the same name. Iran reported launching Kavoshgar-1, or Explorer-1, in Feb. 2008. The first section of the rocket detached after 90 seconds and returned to earth with the help of a parachute. A second segment entered space for about five minutes, while the final section was sent toward orbit to collect data.
Later in 2008, a rocket entitled Kavoshgar-2, or Explorer-2, made it to the lower reaches of space and returned to earth 40 minutes later on a parachute. No details about that launch were reported.
Ahmadinejad praised the latest launch and said greater events would come in the future.
Massive US Study Shows Drop In Child Abuse
A new federal study documents an unprecedented and dramatic decrease in incidents of serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Experts hailed the findings as proof that crackdowns and public awareness campaigns had made headway.
An estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse in 2005-06, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993, the study found.
"It's the first time since we started collecting data about these things that we've seen substantial declines over a long period, and that's tremendously encouraging," said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse.
"It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it's a problem that is amenable to solutions," he said.
The findings were contained in the fourth installment of the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, a congressionally mandated study that has been conducted periodically by the Department of Health and Human Services. The previous version was issued in 1996, based on 1993 data.
The new study is based on information from more than 10,700 "sentinels" -- such as child welfare workers, police officers, teachers, health care professionals and day care workers -- in 122 counties across the country. The detailed data collected from them was then used to make national estimates.
The number of sexually abused children decreased from 217,700 in 1993 to 135,300 in 2005-2006 -- a 38 percent drop, the study shows. The number of children who experienced physical abuse fell by 15 percent and the number of emotionally abused children dropped by 27 percent. The 455-page study shied away from trying to explain the trends, but other experts offered their theories.
Finkelhor, whose own previous research detected a drop in abuse rates, said the study reveals "real, substantial declines" that cannot be dismissed on any technical grounds, such as changing definitions of abuse.
He suggested that the decline was a product of several coinciding trends, including a "troop surge" in the 1990s when more people were deployed in child protection services and the criminal justice system intensified its anti-abuse efforts with more arrests and prison sentences.
Finkelhor also suggested that the greatly expanded use of medications may have enabled many potential child abusers to treat the conditions that otherwise might have led them to molest or mistreat a child.
One curious aspect of the study was the manner of its release. Although HHS had launched the study in 2004 and invested several million dollars, it was posted a few days ago on the Internet with no fanfare -- neither a press release nor a news conference. Finkelhor, noting that experts in the field had been impatiently awaiting the study, described this low-profile approach as "shocking."
The findings might be disconcerting to some in the child-welfare field who base their funding pitches on the specter of ever-rising abuse rates, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
The study found some dramatic differences in child abuse rates based on socio-economic factors. Poor children were three times more likely than other kids to experience abuse, and rates of abuse in African-American families were significantly higher than for whites and Hispanics.
Family structure also was a factor -- for example, children whose single parent had a live-in partner faced an abuse rate 10 times that of a child living with two parents.
The study does not cover the recent period in which the United States plunged into a recession, prompting some reports of increased domestic violence and abuse in hard-off families.
Pricey Space Rock Stirs Ownership Debate
An out-of-this world rock has become the center of a down-to-earth dispute over who its rightful owner should be.
The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a Virginia medical office just after dusk on Jan. 18, the same time that people reported seeing a fireball in the sky. It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier.
"I'm the most likely person to be sitting in that place where it hit," Dr. Marc Gallini said. "It just wasn't my time, I guess."
He and fellow practitioner Dr. Frank Ciampi say their first thought was to give the rare find to the Smithsonian Institution, which offered $5,000 for it. Within days, it was sent to the National Museum of Natural History for safekeeping.
The doctors are worried, though, that their longtime landlords plan to stake their own claim to the space rock; the collectors market for meteorites can be lucrative. Gallini, who has run his family practice in Lorton, Va., since 1978, said he notified his property owner, Erol Mutlu, of plans to hand the meteorite over to the Smithsonian, which holds the world's largest museum collection of meteorites. Gallini says he got Mutlu's permission. Later in the week, though, Mutlu sent the doctors an e-mail warning that his brother and fellow landlord Deniz Mutlu was going to the Smithsonian to retrieve the rock, Gallini said.
Deniz Mutlu later appeared to back away from the claim, saying the family was making no such demands and the meteorite is safe for now at the Smithsonian. He added, however, that he didn't know how long it would remain there. The doctors hired their own lawyer and demanded the Smithsonian not release the meteorite until the ownership question was resolved. The lawyer plans to ask a court to rule.
"We really want this to end up in the right place," Gallini said. The doctors plan to donate the money from the Smithsonian to Haiti earthquake relief, he said.
The Smithsonian won't comment on ownership and said in a statement that it will "retain possession of the 'Lorton Meteorite' until a legal owner has been established." The Smithsonian collection includes about 15,000 meteorites, including 738 gathered shortly after they fell from the sky. The Lorton meteorite came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, curators said.
It has a blackened outer surface from burning through the atmosphere, said Tim McCoy, a mineral sciences curator at the Smithsonian. Inside are flecks of metal and thousands of tiny rocks containing "the primitive stuff left over from the birth of the solar system," he said. That material allows scientists to look back about 4.6 billion years, McCoy said. The last meteorite known to strike a building was in New Orleans in 2003, said Linda Welzenbach, the museum's meteorite collections manager. There were other finds that year in the Chicago area.
Space rocks can fetch thousands of dollars from collectors. Meteorite hunters descended on Washington's Virginia suburbs to look for other remnants of the Lorton meteorite.
One was Steve Arnold, co-star of the new Science Channel TV show, "Meteorite Men." Arnold estimates the Lorton meteorite could bring $25,000 to $50,000 on the open market, unless more pieces turn up. But he said Tuesday that none turned up from his search around the doctors' office.
Meteorites have been the subject of legal disputes before. In the early 1900s, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled a 15-ton meteorite belonged to the landowner on whose property it likely landed, not the person who found it. Other U.S. courts have ruled similarly - that a meteorite becomes part of the land where it arrives through 'natural cause' and hence the property of the landowner.
NZ Student Sells Virginity For $32,000
A New Zealand teenager who says she auctioned her virginity online for $32,000 to raise tuition money did not break any laws but it might be risky for her to follow through on the deal, police warned Wednesday.
The anonymous 19-year-old student offered her virginity to the highest bidder on the Web site www.ineed.co.nz under the name "Unigirl," saying she would use the money to pay for her tuition. She said in a post that more than 30,000 people had viewed her ad and more than 1,200 had made bids before she accepted an offer of more than New Zealand dollars 45,000 ($32,000).
Unlike similar New Zealand Web sites, bidding and correspondence between buyers and sellers on the ineed site is private so it is not known what bids Unigirl's offer received.
Web site owner Ross McKenzie said the site's policy was that as long as an ad was legal and did not offend the general standards of society, "it was OK." He confirmed Unigirl was a member on the site.
Prostitution is legal in New Zealand under laws considered more liberal than many countries. Prostitution among consenting adults is allowed in brothels and on the streets, and offering sexual services in print ads and online is also legal.
National police spokesman Jon Neilson said no law appeared to have been breached.
But "we would suggest it's not a safe practice," Neilson told The Associated Press. "There are definitely issues of personal safety" in using chat rooms, social dating networks and other Internet sites that can be used to arrange meetings between strangers.
Unigirl, in her initial post, described herself as attractive, fit and healthy. She did not post a photograph of herself, and bidders did not appear to have a way of confirming any of the details of her posts.
Unigirl said she was desperate for money to pay university fees.
"I am offering my virginity by tender to the highest bidder as long as all personal safety aspects are observed," her ad said. "This is my decision made with full awareness of the circumstances and possible consequences."
The internet has increasingly been used for offering and arranging sex services, and security concerns have quickly followed.
In the United States, 23-year-old former medical student Philip Markoff has pleaded not guilty to killing a masseuse he met on the Craigslist classified advertising site, and raping a stripper and robbing another woman he met in the same way.
Virginity has also been offered for sale online. British newspapers reported last week that a 16-year-old girl in Ireland had offered to sell her virginity on an online classified advertising site but recanted after a reporter posing as a bidder identified himself as from the media. A 22-year-old student in San Diego says she has received bids of up to $3.7 million for her virginity, which is being offered for sale through a brothel in Nevada, CNN reported.
Last year, a Philadelphia woman was charged with promoting prostitution after posting an ad online offering sex for tickets to a World Series baseball game.
Catherine Healy of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective, a group that represents sex workers on health and rights issues, said the New Zealand teenager had entered into sex work by offering herself online.
"The amount of money is absolutely huge -- and that puts her under enormous pressure to perform all sorts of acts," she said.
But Healy said it was also possible that the successful bidder wanted to "save" the teenager and would not ask her to have sex. She said the teenager would still have the right to refuse to have sex with the bidder if she changed her mind, and that the bidder could claim his money back.
Links: http://www.ineed.co.nz
Victim Chases, Rams Armed Robbers
Glynn County, Georgia - Police arrested two men after a robbery victim chased them down and rammed their car. Police said two men approached and demanded money and jewelry from a 32-year-old man and 19-year-old woman as they arrived last Tuesday night at a home in Glynn County.
As the robbers left in a 1994 Toyota Tercel, the victim got in his car and chased the them and then rammed their car. Police said the two men ran, leaving two handguns and a ski mask in their car. Officers arrested Richard Jerrod Simpson, 27, of Brunswick, in the area and charged him with armed robbery and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
About 7 a.m. the next morning, Clyde Jerome Baker, 26, of Brunswick, reported the wrecked Tercel stolen. About 2 p.m. that day, investigators arrested Baker and charged him with armed robbery.
Baker was also charged with an armed robbery on Jan. 25 where three victims reported two black men approached them on the front porch of a home. Police said the victims retreated into the house and the robbers forced their way in, demanded money and threatened to shoot the victims.
The robbers took a wallet, cell phone and two digital cameras. The cameras were recovered by police.
Iranian News Agency; US Dept of Health & Human Services; University of New Hampshire; National Coalition for Child Protection Reform; The AP.
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