The Official Google Blog:
SearchWiki: make search your own  —  Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results?  Maybe you're an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top.  Or perhaps it's not there at all and you'd like to add it.

Giant glaciers buried under the surface of Mars at much lower latitudes than any previously known ice are a potential source of drinking water for future astronauts. The discovery, made using ground-penetrating radar on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, offers new...

Today, Ted Stevens — Alaska’s defeated Republican senator and a convicted felon — was granted time on the Senate floor to deliver his farewell speech. Stevens said that he still can’t believe that he’s “privileged to speak on the floor of the United States Senate.” He also added that he “doesn’t have a rear-view mirror. [...]

The Politico:
Senate GOP in big funk  —  A day after losing Ted Stevens' seat, along with their best hope for getting Joe Lieberman to cross over, Senate GOP leaders preached party unity as the key to surviving the Obama years.  —  If that doesn't work, there's always psychotherapy.

AP - Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books.

CNN’s Rick Sanchez highlighted yesterday that during last weekend’s G20 Economic Summit, leaders from around the world refused to acknowledge or shake hands with President Bush as they walked on stage for a photo-op. As Sanchez explained, everyone was “greeting each other and shaking hands, but Bush walks with his head down like the dejected [...]

AP - Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, an early Barack Obama supporter from the southwestern part of the country, is the likely choice for the job of secretary of homeland security, a top Obama adviser said Thursday.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has been chosen to be secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security.

For the first time, astronomers have taken a visual image of a multiple-planet solar system beyond our own. Using the Gemini North telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, researchers observed in infrared light three planets...

If you wanted close-up photos of the moon in the late 1800s, you were pretty much out of luck. Unless, of course, you built incredibly detailed plaster models of lunar craters and then snapped carefully lit pictures of them. And...

The Associated Press reports today that, as part of its long-fought campaign to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Bush administration is pushing a last-minute regulatory change that would significantly weaken the ESA: The rules would eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, [by allowing] the federal agency in charge [...]

In a press conference this afternoon, Democratic congressional leaders announced that they were not able to reach a deal on a rescue package for the struggling auto industry, reportedly rejecting “compromise legislation worked out by key senators from auto states.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that they would give the automobile industry a [...]

Our guest blogger is Andy Grotto, a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. According to data in a new IAEA report, Iran appears to have acquired enough enriched uranium for a single crude nuclear bomb on the Bush administratrion’s watch. Here’s the back-of-the-envelope math for all you geeks out there: [...]

Late last month during the heated negotiations over the U.S.-Iraq security agreement, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took issue with the pact’s terminology. “We don’t call it a security pact but an agreement to withdraw the troops and organize their activities during the period of their presence in Iraq,” Maliki said. Now that an agreement has [...]

New claims for unemployment jumped unexpectedly to a 16-year high last week, the Labor Department reported, with 542,000 new claims for jobless benefits being filed. “Claims above 400,000 are generally considered a sign of recession, and claims have been above that level for 17 weeks,” the AP reports, adding that last year, “claims stood at [...]

Politico reports that President-elect Obama has chosen Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano is a border governor who “brings law-and-order experience from her stint as the Grand Canyon State’s first female attorney general.” A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former [...]

This evening, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to the Senate floor and paid tribute to Republican senators who lost their re-election bids. While McConnell had plenty of nice words for Norm Coleman, Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu, he never mentioned Ted Stevens, who lost his bid in a tight race after being convicted on [...]

In a sign that he may adopt a comprehensive approach to solving the health care crisis, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Ezra Klein points out, “you don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not [...]

The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee voted 25-22 earlier today to recommend House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) take over as chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee from Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). A final decision “will most likely be made by the full Democratic Caucus Thursday,” according to CongressDaily. As the [...]