DebateGate

By Ker Than
Updated: 9:46 p.m. ET Oct 24, 2006

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A chemical test used by the Mars Viking landers more than 30 years ago was not sensitive enough to detect signs of alien life even if they existed, a new study suggests.

Researchers analyzed soil from several harsh, Marslike environments on Earth using the same gas spectrometry test employed by the Viking landers. But even in soil taken from areas teaming with microbial life, the tests failed to register any signs of organic material. Thus, "the Martian surface could have several orders of magnitude more organics than the stated Viking detection limit," the researchers write.

The finding, detailed in the current issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could have implications for future missions aiming to dig up signs of extinct or existing life on the Red Planet.

The new study could also explain the detection of low levels of carbon dioxide in some Martian soil by the Viking landers, a puzzling finding that some scientists have used to argue for life on Mars.

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 and 2 landers touched down on the Martian surface and proceeded to perform three separate experiments to detect signs of life. One of those experiments, called the thermal volatilization-gas-chromatography-MS, or TV-GC-MS for short, was designed to look for microorganisms living in Martian topsoil.

The test involved scooping up Martian soil, heating it up to 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit), and then analyzing the vaporized dirt for signs of organic molecules. But despite having sensitivities to organic molecules of a few parts per billion, no organic compounds were ever detected by either lander.

"The failure to detect organics by these techniques was used as the most compelling evidence against the existence of microbial activity on Mars," said study team member Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.

Prompted by NASA's upcoming Phoenix and Mars Science Laboratory — future missions with goals of finding signs of past or present Martian life — the researchers replicated the Viking landing experiments on soil taken from Marslike environments here on Earth, including Antarctic dry valleys and arid deserts in Chile and Peru. As a control, they also examined soil from the Rio Tinto, a river in Spain abundant in life and known to have high levels of organic molecules.

In all the samples, the researchers found low levels of organic compounds such as graphite that were not detected by the TV-GC-MS instrument. One possibility for the false negative, the researchers said, is that iron in the soil oxidized organic molecules into carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of detectable material available for detection.

The finding could explain the low levels of carbon dioxide detected by Vikings' Labeled Release  experiment, or LR. The results were initially attributed to the presence of microbial life in Martian soil, but when later experiments failed to match up with results from other tests, most scientists concluded the LR results were caused by unknown chemical processes.

"Our study clearly demonstrates that future Mars missions should include other methodologies in addition to this one to detect extinct or extant life on Mars," Navarro-Gonzalez told Space.com.

He added that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled to launch in 2009, will not have the same limitations as the Viking landers because it will analyze the Martian soil in a slightly different way. "The problem is how to get the organics from soil to the spectrometer," Navarro-Gonzalez said. "Viking used the heating process. The MSL will extract organic compounds using solvents first and then volatize them chemically" before analysis.

"With MSL, we expect to be sensitive to a substantially broader range of organic molecules than Viking," said Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the principal investigator for the mission's sample and analysis instrument.

For one thing, the MSL's Sample Analysis at Mars experiment will be able to heat samples much higher than 500 degrees Celsius. "That was the temperature limit for the Viking GC-MS experiment, and this may be an issue for organic molecule extraction from some samples," Mahaffy said.

The Mars Science Laboratory will also cover a lot more ground than the Viking landers, and scientists can now pinpoint promising sites for exploration using satellites, a luxury not available during the Viking era, he added.
© 2006 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

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Article

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: October 19, 2006

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In a campaign to choke off smugglers’ finances, the Arizona attorney general in recent years has periodically seized money wired in large amounts from people outside Arizona, and even some money sent from other states to Mexico.

The authorities have amassed $17 million in four years from suspect transfers, singling out those exceeding $500 and believed to be sent as payments to smugglers who have just transported people or drugs into Arizona, the busiest illegal crossing area on the border.

But the effort has come under legal attack, first from Western Union, which handles most of the transactions, and now through a federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Phoenix by three legal immigrants and an immigrant advocacy group representing the immigrants. They say their transactions are legal and have been caught up in the campaign of the attorney general, Terry Goddard.

“They just decided it was a lot easier to sweep everybody on in and make people prove their innocence,” Matthew J. Piers, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said at a news conference in Chicago, where the advocacy group is based. “In this country, we do it the other way around.”

Smugglers take immigrants into Arizona, call a “sponsor” — usually a relative or friend of the person smuggled — who then wires payment for the trip across the border. Mr. Goddard said that over the last year suspect transactions into Arizona dropped sharply but increased by about the same amount in Sonora, an indication that smugglers had shifted to picking up the money there.

He said Arizona could seize those transactions because they originated with a phone call by the smuggler in Arizona.

Mr. Piers and the advocacy group, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the three people filing suit were legal immigrants who had wired money for legitimate purposes but who for plausible reasons could not satisfy demands for information on the transfers.

One plaintiff, Javier Torres of Burbank, Ill., said he had resold a car he had just bought and transferred ownership documents before law enforcement officers demanded them as proof that his wire transfer was legitimate.

The two other defendants — a woman from North Carolina and a woman from California — had wired money to relatives in Arizona and Mexico, and said they could not meet officers’ demands to speak with the recipients of the transfers because the relatives did not have telephones and the women had lost track of them.

Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois group, said it was investigating other cases, including some referred by Western Union.

The company, calling Mr. Goddard’s tactics an unconstitutional overreach of his authority, won a court order in September halting the latest round of seizures. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 30.

Western Union, the biggest wire-transfer company, sued to block warrants Mr. Goddard obtained involving transfers to the Mexican state of Sonora, which borders Arizona. Investigators say Sonora has emerged in the past year as the primary destination of the transfers.

Mr. Goddard said in an interview that he had not yet seen the complaint that was filed yesterday, but he defended his tactics as legal and productive, saying they had disrupted smuggler networks.

“All actions we have taken have been approved by courts from the get-go,” said Mr. Goddard, a Democrat currently seeking re-election.

The authorities have refunded seizures in 10 percent to 15 percent of the cases after recipients spoke with law enforcement officers. Mr. Goddard said that he offered last week to check into any misguided seizures the Illinois group found but that it had not provided such information.

Libby Sander contributed reporting from Chicago.

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Article

Oct 17, 8:33 AM (ET)

By JOHN SOLOMON

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has been using campaign donations instead of his personal money to pay Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton where he lives in an upscale condominium. Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use.

Questioned about the campaign expenditures by The Associated Press, Reid's office said Monday his lawyers had approved them but he nonetheless was personally reimbursing his campaign for the $3,300 he had directed to the staff holiday fund at his residence.

Reid also announced he was amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a Las Vegas land deal, highlighted in an AP story last week, that allowed him to collect $1.1 million in 2004 for property he hadn't personally owned in three years.

In that matter, the senator hadn't disclosed to Congress that he first sold land to a friend's limited liability company back in 2001 and took an ownership stake in the company. He collected the seven-figure payout when the company sold the land again in 2004 to others.

Reid portrayed the 2004 sale as a personal sale of land, not mentioning the company's ownership or its role in the sale.

Reid said his amended ethics reports would list the 2001 sale and the company, called Patrick Lane LLC. He said the amended reports also would divulge two other smaller land deals he had failed to report to Congress.

"I directed my staff to file amended financial disclosure forms noting that in 2001, I transferred title to the land to a Limited Liability Corporation," Reid said in a statement issued by his office.

He said he believed the 2001 sale did not alter his ownership of the land but that he agreed to file the amended reports because "I believe in ensuring all facts come to light."

Reid labeled the AP story as the "latest attempt" by Republicans to affect the election. AP reported last week that it learned of the land deal from a former Reid adviser who had concerns about the way the deal was reported to Congress.

On the Ritz-Carlton holiday donations, Reid gave $600 in 2002, then $1,200 in 2004 and $1,500 in 2005 from his re-election campaign to an entity listed as the REC Employee Holiday Fund. His campaign listed the expenses as campaign "salary" for two of the years and as a "contribution" one year.

Reid's office said the listing as salary was a "clerical error" and that the use of campaign money for the residential fund was approved by his lawyers. "I am reimbursing the campaign from my own pocket to prevent this issue from being used in the current campaign season to deflect attention from Republican failures," he said.

Residents and workers at the Ritz said the fund's full name is the Residents Executive Committee Holiday Fund and that it collects money each year from the condominium residents to help provide Christmas gifts, bonuses and a party for the support staff.

Federal election law permits campaigns to provide "gifts of nominal value" but prohibits candidates from using political donations for personal expenses, such as mortgage, rent or utilities for "any part of any personal residence."

The law specifically defines prohibited personal use expenses as any "obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's campaign or duties as a federal officeholder."

Land deeds show Reid and his wife, Landra, purchased a condominium for their Washington residence at the hotel for $750,000 in March 2001. The holiday fund has existed for years at the condo, workers said.

Reid said Monday he believed the expenses were permissible but he nonetheless was reimbursing the campaign.

"These donations were made to thank the men and women who work in the building for the extra work they do as a result of my political activities, and for helping the security officers assigned to me because of my Senate position," Reid said.

Larry Noble, the Federal Election Commission's former chief enforcement lawyer, said Reid's explanation is aimed at a "gray area" in the law by suggesting the donations were tied to his official Senate and political work.

"What makes this harder for the senator is that this is his personal residence and this looks like an event that everybody else at the residence is taking out of their personal money as they're living there," Noble said.

Back in 2000, Congress rebuked powerful House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., for among other things creating the appearance, through poor record-keeping, that campaign committee expenditures were for personal rather than bona fide campaign uses.

On the land dealings, Reid announced Monday he had failed to disclose two other transactions on his prior ethics reports and would account for those on his amended reports along with the 2001 sale.

The first, he said, involved the sale in 2004 of about one-third acre of land in 2004 he owned in his hometown of Searchlight, Nev. And he said he had not reported his ownership since 1985 of a quarter acre of land his brother gave him in 1985.

Reid said the failure to disclose those transactions previously was due to "clerical errors" and they amounted to "two minor matters that were inadvertently left off my original disclosure forms."

He had asked the Senate Ethics Committee last Wednesday for an opinion on the 2001 land sale but decided to amend his forms prior to the committee acting.

Reid's announcement came after numerous newspapers nationwide published editorials criticizing both his initial failure to disclose the full details of his Las Vegas land deal and his response to AP's story.

The $1.1 million land deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. Brown has never been charged with wrongdoing, except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.

Ethics experts told AP that Reid's inaccurate accounting of the deal to Congress appeared to violate Senate ethics rules and raised other issues concerning taxes and potential gifts.

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Article

Oct 17, 8:52 AM (ET)

By LARRY MARGASAK

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Allegations of improper conduct toward teenage pages that are not connected to the case of ex-Rep. Mark Foley are under discussion by House overseers of the program, according to a Democratic lawmaker involved in the talks.

Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan, the only Democrat on the House Page Board, would not say Monday whether the allegations involved Republicans or Democrats, lawmakers or staff members. He said nothing has been proven.

In his unexpected remarks, Kildee - who is unhappy Republicans did not tell him about Foley's improper approaches to male pages - said the page board discussed the new allegations in a conference call Monday.

"It was about other allegations and I'd like to leave it at that," he said. "Let me just say, not about Mr. Foley. It's only been allegations."

If any Republicans are involved, new allegations could further damage the majority party in Congress less than a month before the election. Polls already show the GOP has been damaged by the scandal involving Foley, R-Fla., who sent former male pages too-friendly e-mails and sexually explicit instant messages.

While Kildee did not divulge details, it is known that federal prosecutors in Arizona have opened a preliminary investigation into an unspecified allegation related to a camping trip that Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., took with two former pages and others in 1996. Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in the House, has denied any wrongdoing.

Kildee spoke to reporters after testifying behind closed doors on the investigation of Foley, who resigned Sept. 29 after he was confronted with his sexually explicit instant messages.

Kildee would not say whether he told the ethics committee about the new allegations. The panel is only known to be investigating Foley's conduct and whether lawmakers and staff aides did enough to stop him.

The Page Board consists of three lawmakers, the House clerk and the sergeant at arms. The board does not run the program day-to-day, but watches over it. Teenagers from around the country, sponsored by lawmakers, attend a congressional school and perform messenger jobs. They are often seen scurrying around the House chamber and throughout the Capitol complex, carrying copies of bills and boxes of flags they pick up for constituents.

The chairman of the board is Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who acknowledged freezing out Kildee and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., when he learned of Foley's conduct in the fall of 2005. Capito also has expressed concern that she was not informed, and her Democratic opponent has accused her of failing teenagers in Congress' care.

Shimkus testified before the ethics committee last week, and told reporters he was following the wishes of the parents of a Louisiana page when he decided not to inform Capito and Kildee.

It was Foley's overly friendly e-mails to this former page that led the office of his sponsor, Rep. Rodney Alexander, to notify Speaker Dennis Hastert's staff of Foley's conduct. The parents wanted the e-mails stopped and the matter pursued no further, according to Shimkus and Alexander, R-La.

Hastert has said his staff first learned of the friendly - but not sexually explicit - e-mails in the fall of 2005 but he personally didn't find out until late September of this year. Former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham has disputed the timetable, saying he notified Hastert's chief of staff about Foley in 2002 or 2003.

Hastert has said if any of his staff members are part of a cover-up, they would be fired.

Kildee said the Page Board met to discuss Foley on Sept. 29, when the scandal became public and the Florida Republican resigned.

Since then, the board had two conference calls, Monday's call and one a week ago, Kildee said.

Kildee said if he had known of the allegations against Foley earlier, he would have called him before the board. He said minutes of the meeting would serve as a record.

"The Page Board is the responsible body and a bipartisan body with a law enforcement officer on it," he said, referring to Sergeant at Arms Wilson Livingood.

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Article

Oct 16, 8:17 PM (ET)

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BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (AP) - The search for a leaky water pipe led to the recent discovery of a hidden room at the former West Virginian Hotel in Bluefield. Maintenance worker Dan Kirby was knocking down a wall looking for pipes two weeks ago when he found an entire room.

The below-street level room is about 10 feet wide, 18-20 feet long and about 7 feet in height. Wooden cabinets lined one wall and a vintage toilet filled with concrete was found behind a partition. A door that led up to street level had long since been sealed shut, its access covered up by a sidewalk.

With high hopes of uncovering some treasures, Vicki Miller and Faye Reeves sifted through the cabinets and the clutter that was scattered about.

They are managers at the retirement home that now calls the circa 1923 hotel home.

Miller and Reeves found an odd assortment of items - optical instruments dating to 1931, newspaper clippings from 1958, vintage Philip Morris cigarette packs, cork-sealed lids for soft drink bottles and fruit crates.

"It was kind of neat finding it," Miller said of the mystery room. "We had a good time searching through the room to find all of this."

At the time it was built, the 12-story hotel was one of the tallest buildings in the world. It eventually was converted into apartments and reopened in June of 1978 to serve elderly and disabled individuals.

Miller said the original architectural renderings developed by noted architect Alex B. Mahood have long since been lost or destroyed.

"We hope somebody here in Bluefield may be able to shed some light on it," she said.

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Article

Ga. Police: Woman a 6-Time 'McBride'

Oct 12, 9:49 PM (ET)

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LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) - Authorities say Shawnta McBride is more than living up to her name. McBride, 31, has married five men without divorcing her first husband, according to warrants issued by Gwinnett County Police detectives on five counts of bigamy and false swearing.

Police are searching for McBride, whose last known address was in Decatur.

According to Probate Court records, McBride wed Robert K. Konaido in September 2004. The arrest warrants say she has since married five other men at the Gwinnett County courthouse.

The motive was unclear, but the case is similar to those of two men arrested in the suburban Atlanta county in September. Police suspect they each married half a dozen or more women to help them gain American citizenship.

Four of McBride's grooms were born in Ghana, one was from Morocco and one was a London native, said Lorraine Stafford, the Probate Court administrator.

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Article

Oct 12, 7:17 AM (ET)

By THOMAS WAGNER

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LONDON (AP) - A previously unknown type of mouse has been discovered on the island of Cyprus, apparently the first new terrestrial mammal species discovered in Europe in decades.

The "living fossil" mouse has a bigger head, ears, eyes and teeth than other European mice and is found only on Cyprus, Thomas Cucchi, a research fellow at Durham University in northeast England, said Thursday. Genetic tests confirmed that the new mouse was a new species and it was named Mus cypriacus, or the Cypriot mouse, he said.

His findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa, an international journal for animal taxonomists.

The biodiversity of Europe has been combed through so extensively since Victorian times that new mammal species are rarely found there, and few scientists had expected new creatures as large as mice to be discovered on the continent.

"New mammal species are mainly discovered in hot spots of biodiversity like Southeast Asia, and it was generally believed that every species of mammal in Europe had been identified," Cucchi said. "This is why the discovery of a new species of mouse on Cyprus was so unexpected and exciting."

Cucchi said a bat discovered in Hungary and Greece in 2001 was the last new living mammal found in Europe. No new terrestrial mammal has been found in Europe for decades, he said.

Cucchi compared the new mouse's teeth with those from mouse fossils collected by paleontologists. The comparison showed the new mouse had colonized and adapted to the Cypriot environment several thousand years before the arrival of man, the university said in a statement.

The discovery indicated that the mouse survived man's arrival on the island and now lived alongside common European house mice, whose ancestors had arrived with man during the Neolithic period, the university said.

"All other endemic mammals of Mediterranean islands died out following the arrival of man, with the exception of two species of shrew. The new mouse of Cyprus is the only endemic rodent still alive, and as such can be considered as a living fossil," Cucchi, a Frenchman, said in a telephone interview.

Shrews are small mammals that resemble mice but have a long, pointed snout and eat insects.

Cucchi, an archaeologist and expert on the origin and human dispersal of house mice, found the new species of mouse while working in Cyprus in 2004. He was examining the archaeological remains of mice teeth from the Neolithic period and comparing them with those of four known modern-day European mice species, to determine if the house mouse was the unwelcome byproduct of human colonization of the island 10,000 years ago, the university said.

"The discovery of this new species and the riddle behind its survival offers a new area of study for scientists studying the evolutionary process of mammals and the ecological consequences of human activities on island biodiversity," Cucchi said.

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Article

Oct 11, 11:24 PM (ET)

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ALBERT LEA, Minn. (AP) - The vanity plates of Freeborn County Administrator Ron Gabrielsen are going to get a makeover. Gabrielsen said he received a letter Friday from Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services notifying him that he must change the plates on his 1991 Mazda Miata.

The plates read: FOAD1. Among some members of the military and computer users, FOAD stands for "(expletive deleted) off and die."

In September, the state asked Gabrielsen to explain the acronym. He said he told them it stands for "freedom offers America democracy."

People who have their vanity plates revoked are able to apply for another set of plates at no cost. The state gives plate-holders 10 business days from when the recall letter is received to submit a new order. If the state does not receive a response within 30 days, it issues a standard plate.

Gabrielsen said he'll request new vanity plates. He hasn't decided what they'll say. "I will put on my thinking cap and fill out the form," he said.

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Article