Collections of must-reads

Already tense relations between Egypt and Hamas have soured after Cairo for the first time openly accused the Islamists of torpedoing Palestinian reconciliation talks.

Finally there is more discussion about Jewish refugees from Arab countries after Guardian posted in article about what Obama can do for the Middle East. Professor Geoffrey Alderman started it at Dec 04 08, 3:05pm. Read it all and contribute.

Sad news in the physics world: CERN has issued its final report on the failure of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and has said that the device cannot be restarted before June 2009.

Not sad news in the field of astronomy, however:
Astronomers have used light echoes from a supernova explosion as a time machine to look again at a historic stellar event first witnessed on Earth more than 400 years ago. The brilliant 'new star' appeared in the sky in 1572 and was so bright it could be seen during the day. It was observed and charted by astronomer Tycho Brahe who discovered it was far away from the moon. [sure it was far away from the moon, hehe]