GRAIL Mission Goes Out With a Bang

Jane J. Lee

On Friday, December 14, NASA sent their latest moon mission into a death spiral. Rocket burns nudged GRAIL probes Ebb and Flow into a new orbit designed to crash them into the side of a mountain near the moon's north pole today at around 2:28 p.m. Pacific standard time. NASA named the crash site after late astronaut Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

Although the mountain is located on the nearside of the moon, there won't be any pictures because the area will be shadowed, according to a statement from NASA' Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Originally sent to map the moon's gravity field, Ebb and Flow join a long list of man-made objects that have succumbed to a deadly lunar attraction. Decades of exploration have left a trail of debris intentionally crashed, accidentally hurtled, or deliberately left on the moon's surface. Some notable examples include:

Ranger 4 - Part of NASA's first attempt to snap close-up pictures of the moon, the Ranger program did not start off well. Rangers 1 through 6 all failed, although Ranger 4, launched April 23, 1962, did make it as far as the moon. Sadly, onboard computer failures kept number 4 from sending back any pictures before it crashed. (See a map of all artifacts on the moon.)

Fallen astronaut statue - This 3.5-inch-tall aluminum figure commemorates the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died prior to the Apollo 15 mission. That crew left it behind in 1971, and NASA wasn't aware of what the astronauts had done until a post-flight press conference.

Lunar yard sale - Objects jettisoned by Apollo crews over the years include a television camera, earplugs, two "urine collection assemblies," and tools that include tongs and a hammer. Astronauts left them because they needed to shed weight in order to make it back to Earth on their remaining fuel supply, said archivist Colin Fries of the NASA History Program Office.

Luna 10 - A Soviet satellite that crashed after successfully orbiting the moon, Luna 10 was the first man-made object to orbit a celestial body other than Earth. Its Russian controllers had programmed it to broadcast the Communist anthem "Internationale" live to the Communist Party Congress on April 4, 1966. Worried that the live broadcast could fail, they decided to broadcast a recording of the satellite's test run the night before—a fact they revealed 30 years later.

Radio Astronomy Explorer B - The U.S. launched this enormous instrument, also known as Explorer 49, into a lunar orbit in 1973. At 600 feet (183 meters) across, it's the largest man-made object to enter orbit around the moon. Researchers sent it into its lunar orbit so it could take measurements of the planets, the sun, and the galaxy free from terrestrial radio interference. NASA lost contact with the satellite in 1977, and it's presumed to have crashed into the moon.

(Learn about lunar exploration.)

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Threat Closes Newtown Elementary School

Local officials closed a Newtown, Conn., elementary school following a threat on what would have been the first day of classes since a shooting rampage at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Classes at Head O'Meadow Elementary School were scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. ET, but as parents and students arrived at the school they encountered police who turned them away.

Principal Barbara Gasparine sent an email to parents telling them that school would be closed rather than locked down due to the threats, the nature of which was not specified.

CLICK HERE FOR A TRIBUTE TO THE SHOOTING VICTIMS

"As was predicted by the police that there would be some threats, the police were prepared and have us in lockdown, which is our normal procedure. Due to the situation, students will not come to school today. Please make arrangements to keep them home," Gasparine wrote parents in an email obtained by ABC News.

Newtown police would not specify the type of threat, calling the school closure a "precautionary measure" in the wake of last week's shooting that left 20 children and six adults of Sandy Hook dead.

Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting: Victims Laid to Rest Watch Video

Gun Control Debate Resurfaces After Sandy Hook Shooting Watch Video

Sandy Hook Shooting: What Was Wrong with Adam Lanza? Watch Video

Reporters at the school to cover the arrival of Newtown students on the first day since the massacre were pushed back by police a quarter of mile away from the school.

Sandy Hook Elementary and Head O'Meadow are 4.5 miles away from each other, and in the same district.

Sandy Hook is classified an active crime scene and will remain closed "indefinitely," according to authorities.

Officials are moving furniture and supplies from Sandy Hook classrooms to a former middle school in nearby Monroe, Conn. A start date for those students has yet to be determined.

It was a somber day for many parents who sent their students back to school. Green and white ribbons adorned the grilles of Newtown school buses this morning.

There was a heavy police presence atthe schools-- 15 police departments had been called in to help with security and there were several units at each school, an officer said.

At Hawley Elementary, families walked their children to school. One tearful mother told ABC that the time is right to go back to school for her fourth grader. Another father told us that this is "a day of great sadness" but that "it will be good to get back into a routine." He addressed concerns of a premature return, saying that "There's no rulebook for this...is there ever a right day?"

At Newtown Middle School, lines of parents waited to drop off their kids. One teacher hugged a student as he exited the car. Children in school buses waved at reporters as they drove by.

And at Reed Intermediate, a memorial has been set up in the center island. Encircling the flag pole are three wreaths, bouquets of flowers, a host of green and white balloons, and what appears to be notes.

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Post poll: Americans see school massacre as sign of broad societal problems

More than half of Americans see the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday as a sign of broader problems in society, not merely the isolated act of a troubled individual, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The finding reverses a recent trend in which the public saw mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. as aberrations that did not reflect underlying problems in American culture. It comes amid new calls for an assault weapons ban from anti-gun advocates — and from lawmakers, including some who have been devout defenders of the right to bear arms.

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Obama meets top Republican on fiscal cliff talks

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama held fresh talks with top Republican lawmaker John Boehner at the White House on Monday, in their latest effort to reach a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

"The president and Speaker Boehner are meeting at the White House to continue their discussions about the fiscal cliff and balanced deficit reduction," the White House said in a statement.

The meeting lasted about 45 minutes, said a statement from Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, adding that there would be no news release about the face-to-face encounter.

It was the latest in a serious of meetings between the two men as they seek to forge a compromise aimed at preventing tax hikes and federal spending cuts from kicking in beginning January 1.

Congressional economists say tumbling over the fiscal cliff could send the US economy back into recession.

Republicans at least publicly have refused to go along with Obama's call to raise taxes on all US households earning more than $250,000 per year as part of his plan to raise $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues over the next decade.

Boehner has offered $800 billion in new revenue through the closing of loopholes and the elimination of tax deductions, but not by raising tax rates on the rich. Obama has dropped his revenues request to $1.4 trillion.

In a concession on Friday, Boehner sweetened his offer, reportedly agreeing to back tax hikes on those making more than $1 million per year provided spending cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare are part of the deal.

If no agreement is reached by year end, taxes rise on all Americans on January 1, followed by some $110 billion in spending cuts in 2013, split evenly between military and civilian programs.

- AFP/fa

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Exit polls: Narendra Modi to sweep Gujarat, Congress ahead in Himachal

NEW DELHI: Exit and opinion polls on television channels at the end of voting in Gujarat on Sunday projected BJP to perform a hat-trick in the state while Congress is predicted to have an edge in BJP-ruled Himachal Pradesh.

Exit poll carried out by C-Voter for Times Now predicted 119 to 129 seats for BJP while Congress is projected to win between 49 and 59 seats out of the total 182 seats.

News 24 showed that BJP is likely to get 140 against 117 seats it had won in 2007 assembly polls as the party is expected to get 46 per cent of the total vote share. The poll carried out by Chanakya for the channel projected Congress to get 40 seats, 19 short of 59 it won in 2007 polls.

Headlines Today projected BJP to get between 118 and 128 seats while Congress is likely to win in 50 to 56 seats with 37 per cent vote share.

The ABP News predicted BJP to win in 116 seats and Congress in 60 constituencies.

C-Voter predicted a vote share of 46 per cent for BJP against 37 per cent for Congress while Chanakya said BJP is likely to get 50 per cent vote share against 35 per cent of Congress.

In Himachal Pradesh, C-Voter predicted 30 to 38 seats for Congress while BJP is likely to get 27 to 35 seats in the 68-member assembly.

Chanakya predicted Congress to win in 40 seats while they said BJP is likely to win in 23 seats. Others may win in five seats.

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The Bloody Truth About Serbia's Vampire

Garlic sales are up. Wooden crosses are a hot commodity. That can only mean one thing: Vampire on the loose!

But this isn't part of a movie script or book. It's a real-life event in the Serbian town of Zarozje (map), where last month the local council issued a public health warning that the resident vampire, Sava Savanovic, may be on the prowl. (See "Pictures: Toothless 'Vampire' Skeleton Unearthed in Bulgaria.")

The vampire scare was sparked by reports that an old mill where the vampire allegedly lived has collapsed. According to ABC News, the town's mayor Miodrag Vujetic said: "People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire andthe thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else [to live] and possibly other victims is terrifying..."

Then again, how frightened should you be of a vampire who, as the story goes, can turn into a butterfly? To find out, we spoke with Mark Collins Jenkins, the author of Vampire Forensics, and forensic archeologist and anthropologist Matteo Borrini.

Is this vampire alert an effort to draw tourists or a modern-day manifestation of ancient superstitions?

MCJ: I have no idea, but I would suspect the former. I would approach the story very warily. Vampire belief might be deeply rooted in the Balkans, but I doubt you'll find any "ancient superstition" even there that hasn't been thoroughly tainted by modern vampire lore. Fangs and blood-drinking are generally not present in the oldstories. Victims were usually beaten up or suffocated.

Is it crazy that the town council issued a public health warning?

MCJ: Historically speaking, it's not that crazy. In past centuries, outbreaks ofvampire hysteria, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, often coincided with outbreaks of tuberculosis and deadly plagues. Peasants had no other way of explaining why everyone was dropping dead but by blaming it on witches and vampires or other supernatural creatures. In 19th-century New England, tuberculosis wasted entire families, one after another. Superstitious people believed that the first to die was somehow feeding on his surviving family members. (See "'Vampire of Venice' Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch?")

Why did people begin believing in vampires?

MB: Especially between the 16th and 18th centuries, little was known about what happens to the body after death. During plagues and epidemics, mass graves were continually reopened to bury new dead. People sometimes exhumed the bodies of the diseased to look for possible causes. Reports about vampires describe exhumations weeks or months after death, during the body's decay.

MCJ: Bodies weren't embalmed back then. They rot, to be quite frank, in grossly different ways. If a bunch of people in the village started dying in mysterious ways, they'd dig up the first one to die, see that his corpse didn't look quite right, assume that was blood flowing down those cheeks (it's called purge fluid in modern forensics, a natural byproduct of decomposition, but it's not blood), and generally burn the body. End of vampire.

Savanovic supposedly survived in spirit as a butterfly. Are there other twists on the classic vampire story?

MB: Sometimes it was thought that the body turned into a wolf or dog because near the grave of the vampire, there were footsteps of these animals. Actually, the earth had been disturbed by stray and hungry dogs attracted by the smell of the decomposing body.

Why is garlic anathema to vampires?

MCJ: People used to believe that strong-smelling stuff like garlic was apotropaic, meaning able to ward off evil spirits. But the specific garlic-vampire connectionwas popularized by 19th and 20th century novels and movies. A kind of [Romany] vampire, for example, is instead deterred by burning turmeric. Garlic won't bother them.

How do modern interpretations of vampires differ from older ones?

MB: Ancient reports speak about vampires as bloated corpses of ordinary people with blood around the mouth. In the movies, the dead are charming, seductive, often aristocratic, or with superhuman powers.

MCJ: The modern fascination with vampires is fueled by books and movies. Sincethe early 19th century, that has turned on illicit romance. Forbidden love. It was somehow thrilling to cross the line and love a vampire, or to be seduced by one. Hardly any of that is in the folklore, though. (See "Vampire Expert Digs His Fangs Into 'True Blood,' 'Twilight.'")

Has there ever been any proof that a vampire existed?

MB: No. All the old reports about vampires talk about real events and real exhumation of bodies of suspected vampires. But they are misinterpretations ofthe transformative phenomena of corpses: Every exhumed vampire was actually a normal, decomposing body.

Why does this belief in vampires hang on?

MCJ: Fear of the dead. The same reason that people, deep down, are still afraid of ghosts. A vampire is a dead body brought back to life, so to speak, perhaps by the devil or an evil spirit.

MB: I think it's connected to two deep aspects of human thought: death and blood. Death is our inevitable destiny. Blood is our life fluid. The vampire connects these two aspects in a paradoxical way—it is a corpse who escapes death by drinking blood.

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Newtown Couple Vow to Live for Dead Daughter

The parents of Jessica Rekos, a 6-year-old girl who died during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., said they are committed to keeping their daughter's memory alive despite their pain.

"We will talk about her every day, we will live for her," Krista Rekos told ABC News. "We will make sure her brother knows what an amazing person she was."

Richard and Krista Rekos say that talking about Jessica, who loved horseback riding and whom they called the CEO of their family, brings tiny moments of comfort.

CLICK HERE for full coverage of the massacre at the elementary school.

"Jessica loved writing, and she would often leave us little notes all over the house," Rekos said. "They would just say, 'I love you so much.'

"She was a ball of fire, she ruled the roost," Krista Rekos said.

When the call came Friday morning that Sandy Hook Elementary was on lockdown, Krista Rekos rushed in disbelief through the town where she and her husband were raised, a place they had always felt safe.

"I was running, and I kept thinking, 'I'm coming for you honey, I'm coming,'" she said, choking up.

CLICK HERE to read about the "hero teacher," the principal and 20 children who lost their lives.

First Sandy Hook Shooting Victims to Be Buried Watch Video

Adam Lanza: Who Was Elementary School Shooter? Watch Video

Richard Rekos said they initially had little information on what had happened.

"We had no idea at that point," he said. "We thought, OK, the reports are that one or two people may have been injured and taken to hospitals. There was still hope, that the children were hiding, there was still so much hope at that point."

The couple said that they walked around the firehouse, thinking that maybe Jessica had been taken there.

"I knew exactly what she was wearing, and I was hoping to see her little ponytail run around the corner, and her jacket and her black glittery Uggs that she had on that morning," Krista Rekos said.

Finally, around 1:15 p.m., everyone was asked to sit down, and a police officer said 20 children had been killed.

"We couldn't get a straight answer," Richard Rekos said. "There's so much panic and confusion when that announcement was made, the life was just sucked out of the room. And you know, I just point-blank found a state trooper and said, 'Are you telling me that standing here as a parent that my daughter is gone?' And he said, 'Yes.'"

The Rekoses were asked to stay at the firehouse to identify their daughter's body but, overcome with grief, they left in disbelief. The couple went home, and got into their daughter's bed, staying there until about 1 a.m., they said.

At that point there was a knock on the door and a police officer said that Jessica was dead.

"It just confirmed the nightmare, it's not real," Krista Rekos said. "It's still not real that my little girl who's so full of life and wants a horse so badly, and who was going to get cowboy boots for Christmas, isn't coming home."

The couple said the pain is just settling in. But equally strong is their commitment to keeping their daughter's memory alive.

The parents said that their 6-year old family powerhouse, with an enormous heart, will forever be their angel who left behind love notes that are still being found.

"This morning I found a little journal, and it was exactly what I needed, because it says, 'I love you so much momma, love Jessica,'" her mother said.

"It was like she was telling me she was watching us and she knows how hard this must be for us, and she wants us to know she loved us, and she knows how much she was loved."

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Motor Racing: Grosjean thrills Bangkok with Race of Champions win

BANGKOK: French Formula One star Romain Grosjean claimed the Race of Champions in Bangkok late on Sunday, besting some of the biggest names in motorsport including Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher.

Grosjean beat Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen in the best-of-three final to the competition, which brought together heavyweights from all racing disciplines in the same type of car including IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay and rally driver Sebastien Ogier.

Grosjean, who endured a controversy-marked season in his Formula One Lotus car, ended the year in style with the inspired win at the custom-built tarmac track in Bangkok's 50,000-capacity Rajamangala Stadium.

Grand prix legend Schumacher was knocked out by Grosjean in the semi-final of the headline event while three-time Formula One champion Vettel stumbled at the quarters for the second year running.

But it was not all bad news for the German superstar, as he claimed the ROC Nations Cup on Saturday for the sixth time in a row with compatriot Schumacher.

The 25th edition of the event comes as Thailand makes moves to host its first Formula One race in 2014.

- AFP/fa

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Nearly 7,000 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants held in Delhi in past 5 years

NEW DELHI: Nearly 7,000 Bangladeshi immigrants have been apprehended by Delhi Police for staying illegally in the national capital in last five years.

A total of 6,942 Bangladeshi were either arrested or handed over to Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) for their deportation in last five years, according to the information provided by Delhi Police in reply to a RTI query filed by activist H R Bansal.

In North Delhi district, 1,369 immigrants were apprehended of which 1,360 were sent to FRRO while nine were arrested for their involvement in crime.

A large number of illegal immigrants, 3,419, were apprehended and handed over to FRRO from South district while 344 in Central district, 660 in South West district, Outer district 47, South East 200 and 903 from West district.

No Bangladeshi were residing illegally in New Delhi district while other districts had no record, the RTI reply said.

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Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.

A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

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