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Story filed by: George Sinzer, FFNOP

Original story location: Fox News

Original Story Date: May 18, 2012

A new NASA survey has pinned down the number of asteroids that could pose a collision threat to Earth in what scientists say is the best estimate yet of the potentially dangerous space rocks.

The survey found there are likely 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, plus or minus 1,500 space rocks, that are larger than 330 feet (100 meters) wide and in orbits that occasionally bring them close enough to Earth to pose a concern, researchers said. To date, only about 30 percent of those objects have actually been found, they added.

Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs in NASA-speak, are space rocks in orbits that come within 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) of Earth and are large enough to cause damage on regional or global scale if they were ever to hit our planet.

The new study was based on observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), an infrared space telescope. While the telescope data returned an estimate of the potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid population that is similar to previous projections, it also revealed some surprising new results.

According to the survey, about twice as many asteroids are in so-called “lower-inclination orbits” — which are more closely aligned with Earth’s path around the sun than other objects — than previously thought researchers said. [Video: WISE Telescope's Asteroid Census]

“A possible explanation is that many of the PHAs may have originated from a collision between two asteroids in the main belt lying between Mars and Jupiter,” NASA officials explained in a statement. “A larger body with a low-inclination orbit may have broken up in the main belt, causing some of the fragments to drift into orbits closer to Earth and eventually become PHAs.”

Those low-inclination space rocks also appear to be smaller and brighter than other near-Earth asteroids and are more likely to encounter Earth, researchers said.

“Our team was surprised to find the overabundance of low-inclination PHAs,” Amy Mainzer, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. Mainzer is principal investigator of WISE’s asteroid-hunting mission, which is called NEOWISE.

“Because they will tend to make more close approaches to Earth, these targets can provide the best opportunities for the next generation of human and robotic exploration.”

Scientists made the new near-Earth asteroid estimate based on observations of 107 asteroids by WISE, which launched in 2009 and mapped the entire sky twice before ending its primary mission in 2011. Before shutting down, the observatory made a concerted search for near-Earth asteroids as part of an extended mission dubbed NEOWISE.

The $320 million WISE telescope snapped images of about 600 near-Earth asteroids, with about 135 of them being completely new discoveries. The telescope also observed millions of other objects, including distant galaxies and star nurseries.

“NASA’s NEOWISE project, which wasn’t originally planned as part of WISE, has turned out to be a huge bonus,” Mainzer said. “Everything we can learn about these objects helps us understand their origins and fate.”

During its asteroid hunt, the WISE telescope searched for space rocks within about120 million miles (195 million km) of the sun. For comparison, the Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun.

The data from NEOWISE, when combined with other asteroid data observations, helped NASA announce in 2010 that about 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids that come close to our planet had been identified.

The new survey’s results will be detailed in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Story filed by: George Sinzer, FFNOP

Original story location: New York Daily News

Original Story Date: May 17, 2012

Updated At Original Location On: May 18, 2012

THE POP MUSIC WORLD was stunned Thursday by the death of Donna Summer, the original “Disco Queen” who ruled the late 1970s and proved over the next three decades that she and her music were stars, not fads.

She was 63 and died after a secret battle with cancer, her publicist said. She was reportedly diagnosed with lung cancer 10 months ago but had made no public acknowledgment.

“It was a big surprise,”said John (Jellybean) Benitez, the famed deejay, producer and remixer who had worked with Summer and is now executive producer of Sirius XM’s Studio 54 Radio.

“I don’t know anyone who had heard about it. But that was her — she was a very private person.”

“I’m still in shock,” said Joe Causi of WCBS-FM, who will devote his whole show Saturday night to Summer.

“If you were driving around the streets of Brooklyn in the late 1970s and your 8-track wasn’t playing Donna Summer, it was probably broken.”

Summer won five Grammys and is a member of the Dance Music Hall of Fame. She died in Naples, Fla., near where the family owned a condo.

With her dance hits and powerful voice, Donna Summer came to define the music of a generation. (Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)

Summer burst onto the pop scene in 1975 with the seductive “Love to Love You Baby,” and followed with a string of hits that included “I Feel Love,” “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” “On the Radio,” “MacArthur Park,” and “Last Dance.”

In 1979, she joined with Barbra Streisand for the power anthem, “No More Tears (Enough is Enough).”

Because her music became instantly popular in dance clubs, she was labeled a disco artist, which she and many fans considered unfairly restrictive.

“This woman was the queen of disco and so much more,” Elton John told E! News. “That she has never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a total disgrace.“

Donna Summer performing on ‘The Today Show’ in Rockefeller Plaza.( Debra L/Debra L. Rothenberg/Freelance)

“She was the face of the disco movement,” says Jeff Foxx, afternoon host on WBLS. “But she bridged dance music and R&B. It may have been called disco, but there was some funky stuff going on. And she brought Barbra into the game.”

“You’ll still never find a better song than ‘Last Dance’ to end any concert,” he added.

“The chord progression, her singing — wow.”

Summer’s recording career tailed off in the 1980s, although she continued to perform.

Joel Salkowitz, who programmed the original dance radio station Hot-103, recalled a show at Roseland Ballroom where “she absolutely killed.

They may have put a lot of production behind her music on records, but she could sing.”

“The ‘controversy’ of disco is now ancient, irrelevant history,” said long-time city radio host Famous Amos. “What remains of Donna Summer is the memory of one of America’s, and world’s, greatest recording artists.”

Summer, who became a born-again Christian in the late 1970s, was widely known as a polite, unassuming person off-stage.

Still, the disco label was not the only controversy of her career.

Her first came with “Love To Love You Baby,” whose cooing and moaning was considered too risqué by some radio stations. “

She was sexy,” says Foxx. “O remember hearing ‘Love to Love You Baby’ on the radio and thinking, are they really playing that?”

The 17-minute dance remix of “Love To Love You, Baby” became a club icon. Summer lost some of her dance-world glitter when she was quoted in 1981 as saying that AIDS was God’s way of punishing gays for immoral behavior.

She insisted later she had never said that and she believed sexual preference was a private choice.

John noted that she had done extensive work with his AIDS foundation.

Born LaDonna Adrian Gaines in Boston, Summer grew up with gospel, soul, pop and rock music.

At the tender age of 10, she became the soloist in her church choir.

“There was no question I would be a singer, I just always knew. I had credit in my neighborhood, people would lend me money and tell me to pay it back when I got famous,” Summer told The Associated Press in 1989.

She also had opera training, and she lived in Germany for several years while starring in a production of “Hair.”

She broke through as a solo artist almost by accident. She had been writing “Love to Love You Baby” for another artist when producer Giorgio Moroder suggested she cut a demo.

She later said she decided to sing it “the way Marilyn Monroe would have.”

Moroder got her sultry rendition released in Europe in 1975 and then in the U.S., where it became a No. 2 hit.

Her peak years were capped by the 1980 album “Bad Girls,” with its theme of prostitutes and a harder rock sound. “Hot Stuff” won her the first-ever Grammy for best female rock vocal performance.

She only had two top-10 hits in the 1980s, “She Works Hard For the Money” and “
This Time I Know It’s For Real.”

After 1991 she waited 17 years to cut her final full CD, “Crayons.”

During those years she devoted time to her family and painting, and she said she experienced serious depression after Sept. 11, when she was living in Manhattan.

Causi said her death should remind everyone of her talent.

“Artists like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and other pop superstars should pause for a moment and recollect on the originator of dance music,” said Causi. “Donna Summer.”

She is survived by her husband, Bruce Sudano, and three daughters, Mimi, Brooklyn and Amanda.

They were reportedly the only ones — besides the star’s doctors — who knew of her brave battle.

“Early this morning, we lost Donna Summer Sudano, a woman of many gifts, the greatest being her faith,” the family said in thanking fans for their prayers.

“While we grieve her passing, we are at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continued legacy.”

Her death comes just three months after the drug overdose of another legendary voice — Whitney Houston; and nearly three years after the King of Pop’s shocking demise.

“Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, now Donna Summer,”  said Rob Miller, program director of WKTU.  “We’re losing our legends — and so young.”

George Sinzer, FFNOP

Story filed by: George Sinzer, FFNOP

Original story location: Fox News

Original Story Date: May 18, 2012

A Tennessee man’s problems paying child support aren’t so surprising: He has 30 children with 11 different women.

Desmond Hatchett, 33, of Knoxville, is pleading with the state to help him pay for child support, citing the fact that he earns minimum wage. Hatchett made national news in 2009, when his tally stood at 21 children.

“I had four kids in the same year,” he said. “Twice.”

The mothers of his children are supposed to get anywhere from $25 a month to $309 a month for help raising the children. The state takes half of Hatchett’s paycheck to divide among the mothers of his children, but now Hatchett has petitioned the state to help him meet his obligations.

The children range in age from toddlers to 14 years old.

In the article, Pickert explores who Sears is and why controversy surrounds his theories — the biggies are baby-wearing, extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping — but it’s TIME‘s photographs of real mothers breastfeeding their toddlers that has everyone talking. (Scroll down for reactions on Twitter.)

The cover shows Jamie Lynne Grumet, a slim blonde 26-year-old California mom, breastfeeding her 3-year-old son. TIME photographer Martin Schoeller also shot three other families on the same day.

On left: Jessica Cary and her 3-year-old daughter. Right: Dionna Ford with her 4-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter. For more from the TIME cover shoot, visit TIME LightBox.

“When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids,” Schoeller said in an interview on TIME.com. “I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

One notable mom who follows Dr. Sears’s advice does not make an appearance in Pickert’s piece. Actress Mayim Bialik, who recently published her memoir “Beyond The Sling”, is a vocal advocate for attachment parenting and recently came under firefor writing about breastfeeding her own 3-year-old. While Bialik ignited big discussions about how much is too much when it comes to motherhood, TIME‘s story is elevating the conversation to a national debate.

The usual questions that come up when mothers are called out for breastfeeding in public (which happens often) include: Is breastfeeding indecent? Or natural? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all mothers breastfeed for a full year — or longer if the mother so chooses, so how can we shame women who are just following the advice of the country’s foremost medical establishment?

There is no doubt that the TIME cover strikes the public as shocking. But, as Pickert points out, the women featured are at one extreme end of this always-controversial discussion. On the other end, she says, are mothers who “endorse the idea of maternal closeness (who doesn’t?) but think Sears is out of his mind.” And the writer goes on:

“A third category includes mothers caught in the middle. These parents try to achieve Sears’ ideal of nursing, baby wearing and co-sleeping but fall short for some reason and find themselves immobilized by their seeming parental inadequacy. They suffer from what two New York City parenting consultants call “posttraumatic Sears disorder.”

Her point, in writing the in-depth profile of Sears, seems to be that there are many parents out there left wondering what’s right, what’s wrong — and most important — what makes sense for their families.

CORRECTION: This article originally stated that the author of “The Baby Book” was Dr. Jim Sears. The book is by Dr. William “Bill” Sears. The article also misstated the age of Dionna Ford’s youngest child.

George Sinzer, FFNOP

Story file by: George Sinzer, FFNOP

Story found on: Fox News

Original date of story: May 12, 2012

A Georgia state law is blocking an autistic student from getting his diploma, and his family blames a lack of communication and compassion, MyFoxAtlanta reports.

“I won’t be able to graduate. I can walk, but I can’t graduate,” Sinclaire Coffers, a senior from Fulton County, Ga., told MyFoxAtlanta.

Coffer has good grades, but the problem is that he has not been able to pass the math exam required for every Georgia student to graduate high school.

“Once he starts it, and he learns it, he can do it. But when you walk away, he forgets the steps,” said his mother, Linda Coffer.

Coffer is autistic. The state allows for students with disabilities to apply for a waiver that allows the state board of education to vote on whether or not to throw out the exams, and allow a student to graduate. In Coffer’s case, the board denied a waiver for reasons his family has not yet been told.

The state department of education seems to agree to some extent. They’ve changed the law that says all seniors must pass these tests in order to graduate. But those changes don’t take effect until next school year after it’s too late for Coffer.

“It hurts my heart because he is such a good person. And for him, not to graduate and not to be able to pursue his dreams, it’s really just an injustice,” Capri Coffer said.

Coffers dreams of one day directing for the big screen.

“I want to go to a film school and learn how to make movies,” Coffer said.

The end of high school is the exciting first step in reaching that dream. Except, just a week before the North Springs Charter graduation, Coffer received the devastating news in the mail.

Coffer is hardly alone. The state says last year, 16 percent of students failed the math exam.

George Sinzer, FFNOP

Story filed by: George Sinzer, FFNOP

Story location: The Huffington Post

Date posted at original location: May 7, 2012

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — For the second time in a year, a motorist has been ticketed in South Carolina for displaying a replica of testicles on a vehicle.

A Spartanburg County sheriff’s deputy stopped a truck Sunday evening after noticing the “anatomically correct” display on the rear bumper. The incident report says the driver removed the display after being stopped but he was arrested for driving without a license. He was also given a warning ticket for having an obscene display.

Last July, a Berkeley County woman was ticketed for having a similar display on the back of her truck.

That case is to go to trial in municipal court in the town of Bonneau. That trial has been delayed three times and no new trial date has been set.