Jijo Jacob

Former Pennsylvania county judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years in prison after being convicted of accepting a million dollars in bribe from a builder of juvenile detention centers.

The annual Perseid meteor shower is round the corner, but conditions are sub-optimal this year: sky gazers will not be able to watch meteors falling through night sky in abundance as the celestial display is predicted to be hampered by the full moon.

An advisory panel to the Department of Energy stopped short of putting forth stricter regulations for the use of hydraulic fracturing to drill for natural gas, but recommended stricter oversight of the practice, known as ?fracking.?

Amazon scored against Apple by launching its Kindle Cloud Reader, which is a Web-based app that helps it steer clear of restrictions Apple has placed in regard to its Appstore subscription rules.

The evolution of multicellular life billions of years ago was an act of serendipity, a new study by scientists at Harvard University has found. Scientists who studied how yeast cells better manipulate their food environment when they are in clumps, and not single, showed that cells that bound together with neighboring ones had better food intake capacity.

China's first aircraft carrier -- which attracted worldwide attention among fears that the second-largest economic powerhouse in the world is rapidly bolstering its military powers -- set sail on Wednesday for its sea trial.

The dark angels of anti-security, hacker collective Anonymous, have set eyes on Facebook for its alleged large-scale security violations and sell-off of private individuals' data to government agencies.

An Antarctic ice shelf that had remained unshuffled for 46 years was broken by the Japanese tsunami in March, scientists have discovered. The Sulzberger Ice Shelf in the Antarctic registered the impact of the Japanese tsunami in 18 hours, when a huge iceberg began disintegrating and floating off to the Ross Sea.

NASA has unveiled an ambitious blueprint for the development of ultra futuristic space exploration systems that will probably shame science fiction. The space agency said a new funding program, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), will help companies and individuals undertake studies on creative concepts that have a bearing on space exploration.

A 10-year-old girl, who goes by the handle of CyFi, found that the gaming prowess of many a smartphone can be undermined by some serious security holes.

When NASA's ambitious long-term research bears fruit, a few ground-breaking technologies could emerge, taking space exploration to altogether different league. The space agency has announced a funding program, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), to develop innovative, creative technologies for space exploration in future.

New research has confirmed the old theory that a layer of antimatter particles encircles Earth. The discovery that a band of antiprotons lie in the magnetosphere, which is beyond the Van Allen belt, proves earlier prediction that Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter. According to researchers, the new discovery could help science leapfrog several hurdles in its advanced space exploration projects in future.

Some of the most explosive teenage talent in the world is engrossed in the dark art of illegal hacking and waging cyber wars on governments and corporations. And then there are those young children who master the art of legal hacking in schools run by former hacking wizards.

Trying to settle scores with the law enforcement for arresting their hacker comrades, the AntiSec brand of hackers have prised open scores of US law enforcement agency websites and posted online massive chunks data regarding police personnel.

Hours after the Arab League condemned the Syrian regime's violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, Saudi Arabia said it was recalling its ambassador to Damascus and denounced the Syrian ?death machine? in harsh language.

The AntiSec hackers have released a massive amount of confidential information they got after breaking into Web sites of more than 70 US police agencies, claiming that the compromised data will "embarrass, discredit and incriminate police officers across the US,".

A gunman shot dead 7 people including an 11-year-old child in broad day light in the aftermath of what is initially judged as a family dispute in the Copley Township near Akron, Ohio.

As Sun moves into the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, powerful solar flares erupted, triggering massive magnetic storms that could disrupt communication systems in Earth. The solar eruption will also cause spectacular auroras, which will be visible in northern America. Here are some details about auroras:

The U.S. government has put on alert users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment as solar eruptions that happened over the past couple of days are set to trigger intense magnetic storms.

The 5-year-long dart through space that NASA's Juno Spacecraft started on Friday has grand targets. It aims at unlocking the mysteries behind the formation of planets. In the words of a top NASA scientist, the goal is to "discover the recipe for planets."

Hackers associated with the AntiSec and LulzSec groups launched a massive hack into the Web sites of as many as 77 law enforcement agencies in the United States, displaying the nerve and resolve to compromise sensitive government data.

Comparisons have been made between the U.S.' war in Vietnam and the ongoing Afghanistan military action. The Afghan operations have gone on for a decade now, and there is no end in sight. Every time NATO believed it had crippled the head of insurgency, the Taliban has been able to bounce back and deal a heavy blow.

Rating agency standard & Poor's has staunchly defended the decision to downgrade the creditworthiness of the U.S. government and warned that further action was possible. "The debacle over the debt ceiling continued until almost the midnight hour," S&P's Sovereign Ratings Committee Chairman John Chambers said.

Solar-powered unmanned Juno spacecraft was blasted off into space in an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on Friday, as NASA continued its quest to unravel the secrets of Planet Jupiter, the gas giant 1.7 billion miles away from Earth. The ambitious $1.1 billion mission, which is in continuation of NASA's earlier missions to Jupiter, will culminate in July 2016. The following is a low-down of all previous missions to Jupiter, the details about the Juno space probe, how it works and a lot mor...

Here's more fodder for the iPhone 5 rumor mill: Word of an "ultra-thin" iPhone 5 was spread by a French Twitter user who posted online the picture of what he claims is Apple's upcoming smartphone.

British actor Rowan Atkinson, who got international fame as ?Mr. Bean?, was injured in a car crash on Thursday.

Investigators trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance and death of Celina Cass, the 11-year-old New Hampshire girl, searched her home again looking for clues that could show how she died.

The United States came down heavily on Syria saying that President Bashar al-Assad's regime has lost legitimacy and that the rulers were accountable for the deaths of more than 2,000 pro-democracy protesters.

Scientists have discovered a new phenomenon on the surface of Mars which can potentially prove that seasonal water, and therefore life, could exist in the Red Planet. This new finding can help scientists big time in their search for life on Mars.