to this erupting volcano is the Bush administration that carries a resume of pre-emptive military strikes on sovereign nations, is weighing five candidates and plans to announce O'Keefe's departure and pick a new NASA administrator by Thursday, according to a source familiar with the selection process.

Leading the president's list is Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who retired in September after three years as the director of the United States' effort to develop a system to shield the country and its troops from a missile attack. The other four men under consideration are former Congressman Robert Walker and former shuttle astronauts Ron Sega, Charles Bolden and Robert Crippen.

Just a coincidence? Perhaps not. Stay tuned for further details as they reveal themselves.

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Deep Tremors Linked to San Andreas Quakes

Previously unrecognized tremors along a critical part of California's infamous San Andreas Fault could give an early warning of when the American state’s next major earthquake - or “Big One” - may occur.

The tremors originate at depths of 30 to 40 kilometers and appear to be linked to small earthquakes or micro-quakes measuring less than 2.1 on the Richter scale that occur along the fault about eight weeks later, near the small town of Cholame. The correlation is not good enough to predict individual quakes, cautions researcher Robert Nadeau at the University of California at Berkeley. But increases in the frequency of the deep tremors could indicate "periods when the probability for earthquakes gets higher", he says.

Full Article

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Volcano Showing Signs of Activity in Congo

GOMA, DRCongo - A volcano which devastated Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo three years ago is showing new signs of activity, adding to local anxiety over political turmoil in the region, a local scientist said on Sunday. Celestin Kasereka, who heads the volcano observatory in Goma, said there was intense activity inside the crater of Mount Nyiragongo. The summit of the mountain is currently glowing red at night. Full Article

Also, Soputan volcano erupted at 5 am Sunday 12th December. The eruption sent high level ash NW to an altitude of 35,000 ft. A lower level ash cloud drifted NE. The nearby town of Tomohon, 10 kilometers northeast of Soputan, was covered in a thin layer of ash.

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NASA Prepares Spacecraft to Blow a Hole in Surface of a Comet

NASA scientists will try to get a glimpse into the early solar system by blowing a hole the size of a football stadium in a comet with the Deep Impact spacecraft scheduled to take off next month. The spacecraft is scheduled to travel 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the 4-mile-wide comet Tempel 1 and launch a 39-inch-by-39-inch, 820-pound (372-kilogram) copper projectile onto its surface on July 4, creating a crater that could be as much as 100 meters wide.

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