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...

Rupert Murdoch’announced today that Fox News’s top executive, Roger Ailes, has signed a five year contract extension with News Corp. “Roger has done a remarkable job building FOX News into a force in journalism and built a great asset for News Corporation,” said Murdoch in a statement. Ailes said that he looks “forward to carrying [...]

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 [...]

Yesterday, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich was declared the winner in Alaska’s tight U.S. Senate race, defeating Ted Stevens’s hopes of coming back for a seventh term. As the AP notes, “Tuesday’s tally of just over 24,000 absentee and other ballots gave Begich 146,286, or 47.56 percent, to 143,912, or 46.76 percent, for Stevens.” A big [...]

A new experiment may have found the first direct evidence of dark matter particles, a discovery that could begin to unravel one of the biggest mysteries in physics. Theorists believe that dark matter, made up of of weakly-interacting massive particles,...

Ever since Iraq’s cabinet “overwhelmingly approved” a proposed security agreement that mandates the full withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, the White House has been engaged in a rhetorical dance — in large part due to President Bush’s long-held opposition to “artificial timetables.” On Monday, White House press secretary [...]

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 [...]

Everybody knows a forgetful stoner, but research suggests that low doses of marijuana could be good for memory, and even help prevent Alzheimer's disease. When given a compound similar to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, rat brains displayed reduced...