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Newswise – On the long space trip from Earth to Mars “the crew won’t be able to get by with a bag lunch and Portapotty,” says biologist Arthur Teixeira. If we build a base on the moon, we?ve going to have a trash problem there too. Teixeira thinks the solution in space will be the same as it is here on Earth: recycling and compost.

Teixeira estimates the Mars trip would take six to eight months. The ship would likely remain on the planet for 18 months before Mars and Earth?s orbits would bring them close enough together for the return trip. In all, the six-person crew would be off the Earth’s surface for about three years.
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A new study has found that shoppers who leave the store without buying anything are much more likely to be walking away with stolen merchandise than those who do make a purchase. Slightly more than 8% of the people who enter a store steal something.

Criminologist Richard Hollinger discovered that people who left without paying for any items were six times more likely to be shoplifters who bypassed the check-out line to avoid drawing attention to themselves. He cautions against trying to spot shoplifters based on race, gender, age and ethnicity. He points out that salespeople who ask “May I help you” are trained to do this in order to give shoplifters the message, “We know you?re here, so don’t shoplift.”
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We only recently discovered that there is a tenth planet in our solar system. Now it has been discovered that there is a moon orbiting this planet. Both planet and moon are far away from the sun and other planets, which is why there has long been controversy about whether this is actually a planet or merely an asteroid that got caught in our solar system’s gravitational pull. The existence of the moon gives credence to astronomers who believe we have a tenth planet.

The moon was discovered in September with the use of the Keck II telescope. The tenth planet is not officially a planet yet and has not been named. It’s still known by its designation 2003UB313.
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You read it here first. Now a secret government report says that relief efforts to help Katrina sufferers failed so badly because of military troop shortages due to the Iraq war.

Kim Sengupta reports in the Independent that this confidential US government report details how funds for FEMA were wasted and diverted and how National Guard shortages due to the Iraq war led to catastrophic results. For some reason, even military personnel who were stationed in the Louisiana area during the storm had to “sneak off post,” against the explicit orders of their commanders, in order to help with relief efforts.
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