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We were treated to the latest Leonid meteor storm last month, and now it?s time for the annual Geminid meteor shower, which peaks this year on December 13th and 14th. You can see it best beginning just after sunset today, Thursday, Dec. 13th.

?When the Sun goes down on Thursday,? says Bill Cooke of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, ?You won?t see many meteors then, but the ones you do will likely be beautiful Earthgrazers.? Earthgrazers are long, vivid meteroids that fly over the horizon nearly parallel to the atmosphere. ?Around midnight go back outside,? he suggests. ?From midnight until dawn on Friday, Dec.14th, you could spot as many as 100 shooting stars per hour.? Cooke?s suggestions will work for observers in any time zone of the United States or Europe.read more

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John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban fighter captured by Marines in Afghanistan has told American officials in intelligence debriefings that al Qaeda?s next attack on the U.S. will occur at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends Sunday, and will involve biological weapons. This will be ?Phase II? of the war against the U.S. and a third phase will cause the destruction of the entire country, according to the Islamic convert.

This information was among other intelligence reports that led the Bush administration to issue a public warning last week about a possible terrorist attack. However, officials have questioned the credibility of Lindh?s claim because of his relatively low-level position in al-Qaeda.
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Four teenagers, aged 15 and 16, who created a computer virus in early December which infected computers via the internet worldwide, have been arrested in Israel. The high school students have confessed to creating and spreading the Goner Windows virus. An Israeli law passed in Israel in 1995 mandates sentences of up to five years for the creation and distribution of virus programs.
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A new study finds that racism is a product of human evolution, although it is not programmed into the brain. This means that prejudice towards people of other races can be changed.

The research suggests that the tendency to notice someone?s skin color emerged for one reason: to detect shifting coalitions and alliances. Visual cues let people know which side a stranger was on and would have been important in hunter-gatherer societies.

Earlier studies suggested that human brains notice three main characteristics of a person on the first meeting: sex, age and race. But this new research shows that skin color is less important than scientists and psychologists originally thought.
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