Orion space capsule previewed on National Mall

It looked as if a spaceship had landed on the National Mall on Monday as NASA showed off a mockup of its new Orion crew module. Before the next U.S. astronauts go to the moon — and maybe eventually to Mars — NASA scientists want to make sure they can return safely

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Julia Roberts: Woman at Work

Earlier this year, shortly before the publicity machine for her new film Duplicity moved into gear, Julia Roberts inadvertently starred in a 43-second movie that made the rounds online. Though she’s costumed in mom jeans and comfortable shoes, she’s featured at her most thrilling, marching menacingly toward the camera and quickly exceeding the number of expletives allowed in a PG-13 movie. “I have had it with you,” she tells the paparazzi

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Havana: Living in a time-capsule world

The seductive port of Havana is an unlikely accident of geography and history, a rum-tinged cocktail of Caribbean exotica, colonial Spanish elegance and Cold War-era politics. Through its years of post-revolution isolation it has evolved differently from the rest of the world, so that Havana feels like it belongs to some parallel universe. In a homogenized world of ‘McCities’ subject to the same trans-national fads and fashions, Havana is defiantly unglobalized and proud to play by its own rules

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Scientists discover new species in ocean’s depths

Until last December, no one had ever seen the bottom of the Tasman Fracture, a trench that drops more than four kilometers below the surface of the ocean. A group of Australian and American researchers recently spent a month hundreds of kilometers southwest of the Tasmanian coast, exploring the fracture’s depths. Jess Adkins, a professor at Caltech and one of the project’s lead scientists, remembers sitting in his control room and watching the underwater life on his monitors with a sense of awe

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Volunteers, scientists guard endangered whales

Glenn Wood and several other retirees lean on a wood rail on the second story balcony of the Golden Lion Café — a beachside pub and restaurant in northern Florida. It’s 8 a.m., so no one’s here for French fries or beer-battered fish. As the group gazes out into the ocean sunrise, they’re scanning for North Atlantic right whales

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Cruise ship grounded off Antarctica coast

The owners of a cruise ship that ran aground in Marguerite Bay, Antarctica, are hoping high tide will dislodge the ship Wednesday, a company statement said. Connecticut-based Quark Expeditions said the M/V Ocean Nova became stranded Tuesday in the bay not far from an Argentine research base. Marguerite Bay is about 900 miles south of the tip of South America.

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