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A portion of the glacier atop Mount Rainier in Washington State has melted,sending tons of water down the Nisqually River and causing the river levelto rise. The melt is believed to have occurred at the Kautz Glacier or thenearby Van Trump Glacier. There was no evidence of earthquake activity.

So far there have been no injuries. Park rangers and geologists plan ahelicopter flight over the 14,411-foot volcano to try to determine whatcaused the rush of water, which brought trees and rocks down with it.

“It looks like this was a smaller scale event. Most of the activity stayedwithin the park boundaries and the banks held all the debris and the water,”says Jodie Woodcock of Emergency Management.
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America’s spy satellites are not in the orbits the Pentagon says they’re in,according to a Harvard space analyst. If satellite orbits cannot be trusted,there will be major problems for future space-based anti-missile lasers andanti-satellite weapons, if space-based weaponry is approved by Congress.

The 1975 UN Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Spacerequires nations to maintain a registry of the objects they launch. ButJonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center forAstrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has found discrepancies in the UNdata. “Suspicious mistakes date back as early as the 1970s,” he says. “TheU.S. is not in compliance. The 1989 launch of military satellite 1989-72Awas never registered with the UN.”
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Drugs used to treat malaria and schizophrenia may be able to defeat theinfectious proteins that cause the human equivalent of mad cow disease.University of California at San Francisco researchers found the drugs wereeffective in treating mouse cells infected with proteins known as prions,which cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

“It’s a big leap from findings in cell culture to those in humans, and we donot know if we will see a favorable response in humans. But the results wesaw, in a cell model we consider valid, make this lead worth pursuingimmediately,” says Dr. Carsten Korth.
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Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines is getting ready to explode, dumping tonsof water on villages below. The latest eruption of Mt. Etna in Sicilyproduced dramatic nighttime images of hot rolling lava and explosivefireworks. But these volcanoes are small compared to what scientists sayAmerica will experience one day. Sooner or later, they warn, a “supervolcano” will strike right here in the U.S.A.

The eruption of pent-up energy will cover half the United States in ash, insome places up to 3 feet deep. Earth will be plunged into a perpetual winterthat lasts years. Some plant and animal species will disappear forever. Evenhumans could be pushed to the edge of extinction – it’s happened before.
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