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Just Warming Up

Thanks for your thoughts about this site--and please keep them coming. I'd missed the Rachael Ray investigation...or whatever it is. As I said at the outset, we knew there would be bugs--we just didn't know what they'd be. John Allen...

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April 30, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (18)

Welcome Back

We're giving our web site a makeover, and we hope you like it. Aside from the new look, you'll find more video, more pictures, and--this is key--more ways for you to take part. Click around. You'll see that a lot...

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April 28, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (18)

An Astronaut in Trouble?

Suni Williams has been in space for 19 weeks and five days, and NASA sent out a perplexing press release that had us going for a little while: HOUSTON - After several months working aboard the International Space Station, NASA...

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April 26, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

Water World

When Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler, the two American scientists who found the first planets orbiting other stars, began to report their discoveries in the 1990s, the headline was mostly discouraging to people who hoped for signs of life out...

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April 25, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (4)

'We Are Humbled by this Darkness'

Rough week. Moving memorials to those lost at Virginia Tech. A bit more evidence that Seung-Hui Cho had worried his professors well before Monday's shootings. Cho's older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, has now given a statement to the AP: "Our family...

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April 20, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

'An Imminent Danger to Himself'

Seung Cho did not fall between the cracks. Two women and a professor reported worrisome behavior in 2005; the Commonwealth of Virginia issued a "temporary detention order," which we've obtained, to have his mental state evaluated. Then he was let...

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April 18, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (14)

The Writing of Seung-Hui Cho

As we continue to work on the Virginia Tech story, we're running across details about Seung-Hui Cho's past. Ian MacFarlane, a young staff member at AOL, says he was with him in a creative-writing course last year. In an AOL...

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April 17, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (11)

'A Tragedy of Monumental Proportions'

Sometimes, when there is a story as big and horrible as the one at Virginia Tech, it takes a little while for it to sink in just how big and horrible it is. I got a call around midday: "We're...

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April 16, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

Bill Gates in Space?

Not quite. Rumors fly, but there's no confirmation that Bill Gates will. Today is Cosmonauts' Day in Russia, forty-six years since Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to fly in space. (HERE's what we published on the 40th annniversary.)...

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April 12, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

An Island Lifted 10 Feet Out Of the Sea?

Amid the devastation from the tsunami in the Solomon Islands last week, there is this item from Agence France-Presse: the remote island of Ranongga was reportedly forced upward by about three meters, or ten feet. Some of the AFP story:...

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April 9, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3)