"This kind of false democracy of affirming in principle and denying in actuality is a scandal in the history of democracy," said the letter, which was dated Monday and widely distributed by e-mail. Wang Yongcheng, a retired professor at Shanghai's Jiaotong University who signed the letter, said it had been inspired by the recent arrest of a journalist who wrote about corruption in the resettlement of farmers for a dam project. "We want to spur action toward governing the country according to law," Wang said in a telephone interview.

Even after adjusting for body mass index (BMI) and smoking, the researchers found that women who sit more than 6 hours a day were 37 percent more likely to die than those who sit less than 3 hours; for men, long-sitters were 17 percent more likely to die.

People who exercise regularly had a lower risk, but still significant, risk of dying. Those who sat a lot and moved less than three and a half hours per day are the most likely to die early: researchers found a 94 percent increased risk for women and 48 percent increase for men, they announced recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

For its part, Microsoft considers the flaw a security vulnerability, and has promised a patch. As of Tuesday, however, it had not set a timeline for a fix. Microsoft has acknowledged that attackers can use a malicious shortcut file, identified by the ".lnk" extension, to automatically execute their malware by getting users to view the contents of a folder containing a malformed shortcut. The risk is even greater if hackers use infected USB flash drives to spread their attack code, since the latter automatically executes on most Windows PCs as soon as drive is plugged into the machine.

Glenn doesn't believe the general public realizes what's happening on the space front. "Going to Russia and being, in effect, under control of Russia for our space program just doesn't sit right with me and I don't think it sits well with the American people, or won't, either," said Glenn, a former U.S. senator who rode the shuttle into orbit in 1998 at age 77. He turns 89 next month. Glenn said little if any money will be saved by canceling the shuttle program, considering all the millions of dollars going to Russia for rocket rides. At least two shuttle flights a year could keep the station going and the work force employed, until something new comes along, he said. The former astronaut wonders what will happen if there's an accident and Soyuz rockets are grounded. He supposes the space station — a $100 billion investment — would have to be abandoned. He also worries scientific research at the station will take a hit if experiments have to be launched from Russia and have no way of getting back to Earth in bulk.

A couple of days after a group of men stole his cell phone, an 18-year-old University of Illinois student noticed something curious on his Facebook page — a brand new photo of someone he didn't know, apparently taken with the phone.

Champaign police detective Don Shepard said Wednesday the man in the photo is 21-year-old Korey Woodard of Chicago. Woodard has been preliminarily charged with robbery. Shepard said the suspect isn't in custody, and a warrant has been issued for Woodard's arrest.

The detective said the robbery victim had his phone set to automatically load photos to his Facebook page when connected to a computer.

Shepard said the photo of the smiling Woodard showed up about two days after the Feb. 28 robbery.

Fresh on the heels of a scandal over a nearly $2,000 charge to the RNC at a bondage-themed nightclub comes word that a fundraising mailer the organization sent out included a phone number leading those who called to a phone-sex line offering "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl who will do anything you want for just $2.99 per minute."

Our nearest major galactic neighbor is a cosmic cannibal. And it's heading this way eventually. Astronomers have long suspected Andromeda of being a space predator, consuming dwarf galaxies that wander too close. Now, cosmic detectives are doing a massive search of the neighborhood and have found proof of Andromeda's sordid past: They've spotted leftovers in Andromeda's wake.

Astronomers have known for decades that galaxies consume each other, sometimes violently, sometimes just creating new mega-galaxies. But this study is different because "of the scale of the cannibalism and we've found evidence directly in front of our eyes," said co-author Mike Irwin, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England.

The car's engine burns liquid petroleum gas to heat water in 12 suitcase-sized boilers, creating steam heated to 400C. The steam then drives a two-stage turbine that spins at 13,000 revolutions per minute to power its wheels.

The FIA requires two 1.6-km-long runs to be performed in opposite directions — to cancel out any effect from wind — within 60 minutes.

Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are joining a coalition that hopes to rally opposition to Google's digital book ambitions and ultimately persuade a federal judge to block or revise the Internet search leader's plans.

The group, to be called the Open Book Alliance, is being put together by the Internet Archive, a longtime critic of Google's crusade to make digital copies of as many printed books as possible. A growing number of critics already have filed objections to Google's book settlement, but none have the clout that the Open Book Alliance figures to wield with three of the world's best-known technology companies on board.

Increasing scientific evidence shows that brains count for a lot in mate choice. And now — for the first time — researchers have directly linked a male's cognitive performance to his luck with the ladies.

"Males that are better problem-solvers are mating with more females," says Jason Keagy, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who studies not the mating rituals of the political elite in nearby Washington DC, but those of a bird native to the forests of eastern Australia.