Amateur astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto 75 years ago this week. The last planet found in our solar system remains the only one never visited by an Earth probe--but NASA's New Horizons mission hopes that distinction won't last much longer.

"We're planning on a launch in January of 2006," said program executive Kurt Lindstrom from NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters. "This year we are assembling [the spacecraft] and beginning testing."

If the mission launches on time, the craft would reach Pluto in the summer of 2015. Jupiter is in position to give the passing spacecraft a "gravity boost," speeding its travel time. A one-year launch delay would actually mean a three-year push in arrival time, as Jupiter will have orbited away from this position.

Specialist Resta had been living in South Carolina, where his wife was attending school, and joined the state's National Guard unit for the college tuition benefits, which he hoped would get him through nursing school. He was working as a dialysis technician, taking college courses and training one weekend a month when the world changed on 9/11. He lost an aunt and uncle at the World Trade Center and was called to active duty a month later.

"I did what I had to do. I signed a contract to defend the Constitution and the people of this country. But, of course," he says in a voice tinged with anger, "that's not what we're doing over there."

Governments from around the world yesterday narrowly succeeded in keeping the international bid to combat catastrophic global warming alive, in the face of determined attempts by the re-elected Bush administration to kill it off.

Top negotiators described the effort - at a special UN conference in Buenos Aires - as like hanging on to a cliff face by their "fingernails", as the United States and oil-producing countries threw rock after rock to try to dislodge them.

Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident two decades ago.  

Last week her eyes glistened with tears as she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea (news - web sites) researchers went public for the first time with the results of their stem-cell therapy.  

They said it was the world's first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

Halliburton's KBR subsidiary "did not effectively manage government property" and auditors could not locate hundreds of CPA items worth millions of dollars in Iraq and Kuwait this summer and fall, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen reported to Congress in two reports.

The source of intelligence used this week by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to suggest Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program may not be reliable, knowledgeable sources told CNN Friday.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared information with reporters Wednesday about Iran's nuclear program that was classified and based on an unvetted, single source who provided information that two U.S. officials said yesterday was highly significant if true but has not yet been verified.  

Some U.S. analysts figure that as many as 4,000 surface-to-air missiles once under the control of Saddam Hussein's government remain unaccounted for. That would raise the number of such missiles outside government hands worldwide to about 6,000.

So Bill got slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit, and his performance today on the Factor and earlier on Regis' show indicate he's resigned himself to well, resigning.  It seems O'Reilly knows he's toast, and it's just a matter of time.

But none of this should be surprising to Factor viewers, he's telegraphed his sordid sexual desires for years on his show, all you had to do was watch.

To commemorate the beginning of the end of Mr. O'Reilly's career, here's my 5 minute video, The O'Sexxxy Factor.  Quicktime (8MB)  It's great.  You'll love it, but it's definitely not safe for work.