Deism Down Under

AP - Scientists moved Saturday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

LiveScience.com - We all know dogs like to smell just about everything, including other animals' poo. Now scientists have figured out how to put the canines' odd pastimes to work to help sniff out the dung of endangered rhinos in Vietnam.

AP - An astronaut is gearing up for the first spacewalk of his career while awaiting the imminent birth of his daughter.

SPACE.com - Astronaut Randy Bresnik may be expecting his wife Rebecca to give birth, but that hasn't shaken his focus for a planned spacewalk outside the International Space Station today to install new video antennas and other equipment.

AP - Heavy rains was forecast to continue over the Gulf States on Saturday while the Pacific Northwest was expected to see scattered precipitation.

AP - A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

AP - Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday.

SPACE.com - NASA has joined astronaut Randy Bresnik, who is in orbit now, in the waiting game for the birth his daughter, just one day before the spaceflyer is poised to make his first spacewalk.

Investor's Business Daily - Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December.

AP - Raging floods engulfed northern England's picturesque Lake District on Friday following the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes.

AP - The University of Nebraska's governing board on Friday voted not to place tighter restrictions on embryonic stem cell research than those outlined under federal guidelines, which were expanded after President Barack Obama took office.

AP - The owners of a Lexington ethanol plant and their insurer are suing a subsidiary of a Houston-based natural gas provider they say is responsible for an explosion and fire that shut down the plant for weeks.

Reuters - Residents of a small rural Pennsylvania town sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corp on Friday, claiming the company's natural-gas drilling has contaminated their water wells with toxic chemicals, caused sickness and reduced their property values.

AFP - Thawing permafrost caused by global warming is costing Russian energy firms billions of dollars annually in damage control and shrinking Russia's territory, Greenpeace warned in a new study Friday.

'Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially; and its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill.''

The above statement was not made by Nick Xenophon under the privilege of the Senate this week, but by a Victorian barrister, Kevin Anderson, QC, who had led a two-year government inquiry into the Church of Scientology in the 1960s. Then, as now, former Scientologists alleged that ''mind control'', physical and emotional abuse, and financial deception were standard practices, not exceptions, and integral to the church's ''brainwashing'' of its parishioners.

AFP - Australia said it was "deeply disappointed" after a fleet of Japanese whaling ships set out to kill hundreds of the giant ocean mammals on their annual hunt.

HealthDay - THURSDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) -- People's genetic makeup has been shown to affect how they respond to asthma medications, but a new study finds that many people respond well to a particular combination treatment regardless of their genes.

Reuters - New fossils unearthed in what is now the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world

It has taken more than 30 years, but the government of Guyana has erected a memorial plaque at the site of the Jonestown cult massacre, a dark episode the South American country had long sought to downplay.

A simple, white stone plaque was unveiled with little fanfare Wednesday at the jungle clearing where more than 900 members of the cult led by the American preacher Jim Jones died in a night of mass murder and suicide on Nov. 18, 1978.

Dangerous dismissal of psychiatry and mental health problems must be part of a Senate inquiry into the Church of Scientology, a Melbourne cult-counsellor said yesterday

Cult Counselling Australia director Raphael Aron said Scientologists put vulnerable people at risk by taking them off psychiatric drugs and treatment, instead treating them with vitamins and E-meter readings.

Among other things, the rulings said the children faced danger of beatings and forced fasts ordered by 75-year-old evangelist Tony Alamo convicted earlier this year of transporting underage girls across state lines for sex and sentenced this month to 175 years in prison.

In one of the appeals court rulings today, Judge Robert J. Gladwin wrote that the evidence “presented a clear picture of the danger to children in the ministry compound at Fouke.”

Many independent Muslim schools in England are under threat of closure, according to the Association of Muslim Schools (AMS).

The organisation, which represents almost 100 independent Islamic institutions, said many could not afford to stay open.

In nearly a dozen recent terrorism cases in the United States, Britain and Canada, investigators discovered the suspects had something in common: a devotion to the message of Anwar al-Awlaki, an eloquent Muslim cleric who has turned the Web into a tool for extremist indoctrination.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., on Nov. 5, is only the latest suspect accused of perpetrating or plotting violence to be linked to the cleric.

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd raised concerns about the Church of Scientology yesterday, as police began investigating complaints from seven former Scientologists.

As highlighted by senator Nick Xenophon, the former cult members allege abuses including coerced abortions, assault, imprisonment, the covering up of sexual abuse, the embezzlement of church funds and blackmail. [video]

A New Jersey man will serve a 366-day federal prison term for conducting a cyber attack on Church of Scientology Web sites in January 2008, Associated Press reports.

At a hearing Wednesday in Newark 19-year-old Dmitriy Guzner of Verona also was sentenced to two years' probation after his release from prison.

The Australian Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has used a speech in Parliament to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the Church of Scientology.

Senator Xenophon says he's received letters from former followers of the religion detailing claims of crimes and abuses. [video]

Israel has charged Jack [Yaakov] Teitel, a Jewish-American extremist, with shooting to death two Palestinians and trying to kill others, including a Messianic Jewish family, who received a booby-trapped package in March 2008 that left their son critically injured.