As the drone is an aircraft engaged in commerce then this applies:
18 USC 32 - Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities
a) Whoever willfully—
(1) sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce;
(8) attempts or conspires to do anything prohibited under paragraphs (1) through (7) of this subsection;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32

Now you could argue that the as the drone is local that it is not performing interstate commerce and so it would not be liable under this federal law, but if the drone is foreign registered then it is covered under a later clause.

IF GM had collapsed then the remains would have been picked over by the other main car manufacturers and you'd have ended up with the brands being owned by VW, Fiat, TATA, etc. Not good for the America.

Although Fiat already has strong links with Chrysler (they basically own it)

Its was off duty cops and a research institution doing specific work for a government department.
The contractors were going a specific job for the government, they're not government employees.

The Americans have already faked a Mars landing :-)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

GCHQ is based in a donut and work around tea.
NSA is based in a shiny box and work around coffee.

GCHQ has invented some good stuff (like PKI - but they didn't tell anyone about it until the papers were declassified) http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm

All US Embassy ban all civilians from bringing in consumer electronic devices.
From: http://london.usembassy.gov/ukembmap.html
"PLEASE DO NOT bring Electronic devices such as mobile phones, Blackberries, iPods, iPads, notebook computers, PDAs, headsets, remote-entry automobile key "fobs" or anything with a power plug or battery, as they are not allowed within the Embassy grounds."

You'd be surprised at how different the English languages can be :-)

Cellphone, mobile phone.
Pants, trousers, underwear.
Fannypack, bumbag.
Tinny, can, bevvy, brew.
Police, cops, bobbies, fuzz, peelers.

They listen at GCHQ - the black helicopters will come from RHQ Credenhill with you vanishing to Colchester.

Fossil fuels seem to be doing a pretty good job of working towards killing millions and rendering millions of square miles uninhabitable. Where do you think all this man-made climate change has come from? Fossil fuels.

Snowden is no longer leaking docs, and hasn't since the original handover.
Its the journalists (Glen Greenwald & Laura Poitras) he handed the docs to who have been trickling out the docs.

They have stated that they have multiple copies in multiple locations and the intercept at Heathrow Airport of Glen Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, where the British confiscated USB drives containing copies of classifed materials did not hinder their access to the material.

(Who gives their partner a bunch of classified docs and then asks them to fly via one of the USA's closest allies and not expect them to get stopped?)

If an asteroid is deflected to avoid a collision with earth then its orbit is now changed. Where previously it might have transited the asteroid belt without colliding with another object, there is now the risk that on its new orbit it might hit something else.

While the risk of collison is very minor, it is still there, and we might be trading an impact now for one or more in the future.

Either way - we need to improve our detection of these objects, we've got some of the way there over the last 30 years, but there are still a lot of objects out there, and we only need to miss one to get wiped out.

Scott Manley's asteroid discovery video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUSP23cmAE

The main issue we've got is the lack of warning we have. Even a year is too late if you want to divert large lumps of rock.
Once you're going to divert something then you have to work out where its going to end up - no point diverting it from the earth this year, to have it end up crashing into something else which ends up sending 100 rocks at us.

They're also pushing the length of time humans can remain in micro-gravity which is needed for a trip out of near-earth orbit to other bodies. So yeah, the ISS doesn't produce anything immediately evident, but they do improve our general understanding of space travel and improve international co-operation on further goals in space exploration.

I know Slashdot is usually behind the curve on news, but the linked articles date back to August....
(I know - shocking someone read both linked articles :-) )

The vegan child is against the vaccine due to its production using animal product (eggs).
But admitted they knew nothing about the drugs used to treat the diseases if they contracted them without the vaccine.
So avoiding the vaccine produced with eggs might result in a greater exposure to animal sourced products.