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...

Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Libyan leader Moamer Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam. In a press briefing yesterday leading up to the meeting, reporters pressed State Dept. spokesperson Sean McCormack on whether Rice would urge Libya to release Libyan activist Fathi al-Jahmi, a political prisoner who is gravely ill. McCormack offered a defensive [...]

The nuclear waste buried beneath Yucca Mountain will be there for millennia, untouchable and lethal. Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats would put that time and radioactivity to use by turning the dump into a generator of new universes. His plan is...

As the CEOs of Detroit’s Big Three automakers pleaded for a $25 billion bailout from Congress this week, conservatives have been looking for an easy culprit to blame for the auto industry’s seeming collapse. First it was the unions. Now conservatives have turned their attention to the modest fuel economy (CAFE) standards — fleetwide average [...]

Since the GOP’s dismal electoral performance on Nov. 4, many conservatives have been engaged in a massive game of cover-up, arguing that despite the results, America is still a “center-right” country. (But it’s not). During a recent interview with Time magazine, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was the latest to take up the baton, [...]

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: [...]

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka ?Joe the Plumber,? has signed a deal to write a new book entitled ?Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.? To capitalize on his recent fame, Wurzelbacher is planning to release it on Dec. 1 ? less than two weeks from now. The New York Times reports that the book [...]

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 [...]

It might not make sense to pull woolly mammoths from the Ice Age into an age of global warming, but resurrecting that lost species became a bit less far-fetched. Using hair from 20,000-year-old specimens preserved in Siberian tundra, an international...

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 [...]