Yesterday morning, March 5 at dawn, National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16' X 16' house 18' tall with 300 8' colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high, reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet, and flew for approximately one hour.

DONT MAKE US PAY

In December, the government issued a new regulation that will create price controls on what merchants pay to accept debit cards.  As a result, community banks and credit unions may be forced to raise fees, decrease rewards, and put more restrictions on debit card users.

Washington bureaucrats shouldn't be setting prices in a free market - especially when consumers are the ones who will have to deal with the consequences.

WASHINGTON -- In a case involving a Texas death row inmate, the Supreme Court on Monday opened up a new avenue for prisoners to seek access to DNA evidence when they believe it could help establish their innocence.

The court's narrow, 6-3 ruling means that Hank Skinner, who was about an hour away from execution when the Supreme Court intervened last year, will be not executed in the near future while his legal case continues.

The court ruled that prisoners may file federal civil rights lawsuits to get DNA material. But at the same time, the court's decision suggests that all a prisoner can claim is that a state failed to follow its own rules for access to DNA evidence. The court's decision today does not recognize a broad constitutional right to seek DNA material.

What it means, as a practical matter, is that when prisoners claim they've been improperly allow access to DNA testing, they have a method for trying to get it that buys them more time.

I think you're right, when a film goes into number four you're like, `Isn't this just like flogging a dead horse now?' But what they've done is they've brought in a director who's never done live action before but who's had a 100 percent hit rate for his previous movies: Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and The Iron Giant are all just five star films. Brad has just brought that sensibility to this film. And the fact that's it's Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, it's not Mission Impossible 4.

Sen. John Ensign is expected to announce at an afternoon news conference in Las Vegas that he will retire rather than face a brutal 2012 re-election campaign, according to knowledgeable sources.

In a major development on spending cuts, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado are introducing a proposal for a new congressional committee focused only on eliminating duplicative and wasteful government spending.

With an ever expanding market for local and organic produce, young people are more interested in farming than ever before.  One of the major issues is - they don't know what they're doing, or how to do it.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports Libyan leader wants rebels to drop demands to try him in international court, guarantee his security as well as that of his family and funds in exchange for his departure from country

At last year's South by Southwest, one of the most talked about films was A Serbian Film. Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic, it's about a former Serbian porn star who is seduced back into the business but gets in way over his head. From there, the film goes to some of the deepest, darkest places imaginable: pedophilia, necrophilia and worse. It's sadistic, incredibly offensive and, looked at in a certain light, highly provocative.

However, the October 2010 screening of the film at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain took the controversy over the top. Subsequent to the screening, a Barcelona prosecutor filed a complaint against festival director Angel Sala accusing him of exhibiting child pornography, and the details of the suit are now emerging.

I've seen A Serbian Film and the images will never be erased from my mind. And while I feel like the film's subtext, about the Serbian government and their control over their people, is completely and totally lost because of the diagetic action, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be seen. Do I think the film is a failure? Yes. But if I was a festival director, of course I'd try to show the movie. It's an instant, controversial conversation starter. Also, it's not like the film was shown in the middle of the afternoon to a room full of children. It played late night in adults-only sessions. Precautions were taken.

Wisconsin gov: Democratic senator's border meeting idea 'ridiculous'

slow loris with umbrella.

Under Obama's order, Defense Secretary Robert Gates will rescind his January 2009 ban against bringing new cases against the terror suspects at the detention facility.

The first trial likely to proceed under Obama's new order would involve Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2006.

Closure of the facility has become untenable because of questions about where terror suspects would be held. Lawmakers object to their transfer to U.S. federal courts, and Gates recently told lawmakers that it has become very difficult to release detainees to other countries because Congress has made that process more complicated.

NPR's then-senior vice president for fundraising Ron Schiller is seen and heard on a videotape released this morning telling two men who were posing as members of a fictitious Muslim Action Education Center that:

-- "The Tea Party is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian -- I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

-- "Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

Two articles about his visit in the globe today, one about the school he is visiting, the other about the apartment he used to live in during his harvard years.

Some interesting exerpts:

"Since 2002, the school has drawn from the populations that traditionally struggle in the classroom, students from tough neighborhoods and low-income backgrounds. Many have special needs and one-third come from homes where English is not the first language.

But performance measures at TechBoston have soared. The 83 percent graduation rate is 20 percentage points higher than the citywide average."

It goes on to mention that this happened because the Gates's threw a ton of money at it, and Melinda will be visiting as well.  Still, a nice success story. From the other article: