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President-elect Barack Obama said this weekend that he does not expect to close Guantanamo Bay in his first 100 days in office."I think it's going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do,"Obama said in an exclusive "This Week" interview with George Stephanopoulos,his first since arriving in Washington."It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize,"the president-elect explained."Part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained,many of whom may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication.And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true.And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law,habeas corpus,basic principles of Anglo-American legal system,by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."

Israel 'using white phosphorus'

Human Rights Watch has called on Israel to stop using white phosphorus which it says has been used in military operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip.The US-based group said that its researchers observed the use of the chemical,which can burn away human flesh to the bone,over Gaza City and Jabalya on Friday and Saturday."We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them,"Marc Garlasco,a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch,told Al Jazeera."Clearly it is [white phosphorus],we can tell by the explosions and the tendrils that go down [and] the fires that were burning,"he said."Today there were massive attacks in Jabalya when we were there.We saw that there were numerous fires once the white phosphorus had gone in."

New NASA Balloon Successfully Flight-Tested Over Antarctica

NASA and the National Science Foundation have successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super pressure balloon prototype that may enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research.The super-pressure balloon ultimately will carry large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or more.This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest single-cell,super-pressure,fully-sealed balloon ever flown.When development ends,NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000 feet,which is three to four times higher than passenger planes fly."This flight test is a very important step forward in building a new capability for scientific ballooning based on sound engineering and operational development,"said W.Vernon Jones,senior scientist for suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington."The team has further work to do to enable the super pressure balloon to lift a one-ton instrument to a float altitude of 110,000 feet,but the team has demonstrated they are on the right path."Ultra-long duration missions using the super pressure balloon cost considerably less than a satellite and the scientific instruments flown can be retrieved and launched again,making them ideal very-high altitude research platforms

Pentagon budget to remain sketchy for months

The first task for Robert Hale,if he is confirmed as the Pentagon's new finance chief,will be to write a 2010 defense budget.His predecessor,acting defense comptroller Douglas Brook,didn't,on instructions from the White House.Instead of the usual annual spending plan that's big enough to fill several books,on Feb. 2 the U.S. Defense Department is expected to send Congress a budget outline that likely won't fill more than a handful of pages.It will include a "top line," or outgoing President George W. Bush's proposed 2010 defense spending total - about $587 billion.And it may include totals for such categories as procurement,research and development,personnel.Then,according to congressional staffers,the Defense Department,under marching orders from incoming President Barack Obama,will spend two months or so drafting the real 2010 defense budget.It won't arrive on Capitol Hill until April,a House staffer said.Last fall,a senior Pentagon official said the Bush administration was preparing a 2010 budget outline that would increase defense spending by $60 billion.Bradley Berkson,the Pentagon's director of program analysis and evaluation,said the increase is needed to pay for more troops being added to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.A $60 billion increase would boost the "base" defense budget to about $587 billion for 2010.Additional funding - probably more than $100 billion - would be needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Possible Replacement for NASA Chief

Despite a last-ditch campaign by some supporters to keep NASA Administrator Mike Griffin on the job,the transition team of President-elect Barack Obama is now vetting a handful of replacement candidates, among them scientist Charles Kennel,who previously ran the agency's Earth science division,according to sources familiar with the situation.A decision is expected next week,possibly sooner,and sources with ties to Obama's NASA transition team said Griffin is not expected to be retained.Griffin,for his part,said he submitted his letter of resignation in December,along with all political appointees of the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush.In a Jan. 8 e-mail,Griffin said he had not yet been asked to stay.

Milky Way — the galaxy — not snack-sized anymore

Take that,Andromeda! For decades,astronomers thought when it came to the major galaxies in Earth's cosmic neighborhood,our Milky Way was a weak sister to the larger Andromeda.Not anymore.The Milky Way is considerably larger,bulkier and spinning faster than astronomers once thought,Andromeda's equal.Scientists mapped the Milky Way in a more detailed,three-dimensional way and found that it's 15 percent larger in breadth.More important,it's denser,with 50 percent more mass, which is like weight.The new findings were presented Monday at the American Astronomical Society's convention in Long Beach,Calif.That difference means a lot,said study author Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,Mass.The slight 5-foot-5,140-pound astrophysicist said it's the cosmic equivalent of him suddenly bulking up to the size of a 6-foot-3, 210-pound NFL linebacker."Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant,and that we were the little sister of Andromeda," Reid said."But now it's more like we're fraternal twins."That's not necessarily good news.A bigger Milky Way means that it could be crashing violently into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sooner than predicted — though still billions of years from now

Orbiter,Finishing a Mission,Offers a Peek at Mars’ Wrinkles

Last month,NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter wrapped up its two-year primary science phase,and Mars geologists are wallowing in a bounty of data.“Technically and scientifically,it has certainly met our expectations,” said Alfred S. McEwen, a planetary geologist at the University of Arizona and principal investigator for the orbiter’s high-resolution camera.Images taken by the camera,able to see features down to about a yard in size,have revealed details like rippled textures in what had looked like bland dusty regions,and researchers can now count tiny craters,enabling them to better estimate the age of terrains.A sensitive spectrometer discovered rocks made of carbonate minerals,which may have formed when young Mars possessed a more benign environment:wet and maybe warm

Major clashes between IDF and Hamas reported in north Gaza

Major clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunmen were reportedly taking place late Monday evening in the northern Gaza Strip.The clashes marked the first time the IDF extended its ground operation into the densely populated Gaza urban centers.Live footage from Al-Jazeera showed numerous explosions and fires in the area where the soldiers were said to be operating.Heavy firepower could be heard,and reports told of dozens of artillery shells,as well as air support which had been concentrated in the area.Just over an hour earlier,the IAF bombed at least 40 smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza's southern border with Egypt.There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strikes

Getting into space by broomstick

The prospects for the space elevator have been shaken up with a simple prototype using a broomstick.Age-Raymond Riise of the European Space Agency demonstrated the device at a space elevator conference in December.The project could see a 100,000km long tether anchored to the Earth as a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions.While the approach could solve one of the idea's great technical hurdles,many issues remain,according to conference attendees.First mooted by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895,the space elevator idea has captured imaginations as what would be the greatest space mission ever conceived.The idea rests on making use of the outward centrifugal force supplied by the Earth's rotation.Imagine fixing a short length of string to a football and spinning it - the string flies outward and remains taut.If the centrifugal force provided by the Earth is balanced with its gravitational force - making use of a space elevator cable or tether whose centre of mass is at geostationary orbit - the tether would be held taut permanently,providing a means to propel people and cargo into space

Suicide bomber kills 23 in Iraq

An explosives-strapped man slipped into a luncheon gathering at a tribal leader's home and blew himself up yesterday,killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens.The attack in Youssifiyah,in the area once known as the Triangle of Death because of its extreme violence,came a day after the United States relinquished the lead on security to Iraqi forces.The bloodshed highlighted the challenge that Iraqi police and soldiers face in trying to bringing order to a country gripped by religious,ethnic and political enmity.Police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give information to news media placed the casualty tool at 30 dead and 110 wounded.But Iraqi Army Col.Aman Mansour Ibrahim,who was on the scene,said 24 were killed and 38 wounded.The U.S. military said Iraqis were reporting 23 dead and 32 wounded

Did Dark Matter Power Early Stars?

The first stars to light the early universe may have been powered by dark matter,according to a new study.Researchers from the University of Michagan,Ann Arbor call these very first stars "Dark Stars,"and propose that dark matter heating provided the energy for these stars instead of fusion.The researchers propose that with a high concentration of dark matter in the early Universe,the theoretical particles called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles(WIMPs),collected inside the first stars and annihilated themselves to produce a heat source to power the stars."We studied the behavior of WIMPs in the first stars,"said Katherine Freese and her team in their paper,"and found that they can radically alter the stellar evolution.The annihilation products of the dark matter inside the star can be trapped and deposit enough energy to heat the star and prevent it from further collapse."The philosophy behind this research is that 95% of the mass in galaxies and clusters of galaxies is in the form of an unknown type matter,dark matter.The researchers say,"The first stars to form in the universe are a natural place to look for significant amounts of dark matter annihilation,because they form at the right place and the right time.They form at high redshifts,when the universe was still substantially denser than it is today,and at the high density centers of dark matter haloes."

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