Couple Crash White House Dinner: A New Record

It seems like there has been a new record made, though perhaps not one that should become too popular. A couple from northern Virginia apparently managed to crash the White House's state dinner on Tuesday night. Tareq and Michaele Salahi were seen arriving at the White House, and later posted pictures of themselves with guests on Facebook, though an official stated that they were never invited, not on the guest list, and were never seated. Although the White House offered no explanation, it seems this is the first time in history that anyone has managed to crash a dinner at the White House. Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service claimed

Everyone who enters the White House grounds goes through magnetometers and several other levels of screenings. That was the case with the state dinner... No one was under any risk or threat.

Regardless, one must question the responsibility of security personnel present.

Its a Bird! Its a Plane!

A strange sight on any day, but apparently this massive group of 300,000 starling birds, seen over Denmark, is a natural tendency. European starlings are known to roost together, and a massive gathering like this is something like a pre-roost ritual.

Green Fuels: Not So Green Anymore...

With a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on oil, it is no wonder that we are now being forced to think of new, alternative fuel options. In the US alone in 2008, we produced nine billion gallons of corn ethanol. But a pair of new studies published by Science are challenging that infact, the way we produce and use biofuels could potentially have the opposite effect of the one we meant. Steve Hamburg, the chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund commented that

Biofuels can be an important part of the portfolio of climate-change activities...But we have to make sure we incentivize the right way, or we could end up with perverse outcomes.

With the ever-increasing threat of global warming, we need to make changes. Making the wrong changes, however, could potentially be worse than our current situation. I'm sure if we put our heads together, we'll think of something...

What Will We Think of Next?

New studies in the UK are reportedly using human DNA in animal experiments. This obviously brings up major controversial issues about the boundaries of such experiments. Although human and animal DNA have been interchanged for years, like replacing animal genes with human genes or even growing human organs in animals, scientists are now opting to make sure that the public understands the reasoning behind such experiments. Robin Lovell-Badge, who is a stem cell expert at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, says

It sounds yucky, but it may be well worth doing if it's going to lead to a cure for something horrible.

Whether this is true or not is questionable. Yes, finding cure's for any number of the diseases that are roaming the earth would be amazing, but at what point does the cost of success become too high?

Countdown to the final Nazi Convictions

Almost 65 years after the end of WWII, old Nazi suspects are still being caught and put on trial. Heinrich Boere is one of these. His capture and subsequent trial, which opened last month, is a huge victory to those who are still adamantly looking to take action against suspected Nazi criminals before they die. Having confessed to the murders of three Dutch civilians in 1944, Boere faces life in jail if he is convicted. Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in Jerusalem, commented that the trial

sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of murderers, and that old age should not protect the killers of civilians.

Though a final decision has not yet been made, to the families of Boere's victims, judgement cannot come soon enough.