Trio of Red Planet Robots Set for June Sendoff (Space.com)

火星

ESAのマーズ・エクスプレスの打ち上げ迫る。来週月曜日の2日午後1時45分（米東部時間）、カザフスタンのバイコヌール基地にてソユーズロケットにFregat上段を搭載したもので打ち上げられる。火星までは6ヶ月の旅。以下の記事はSpaceflight Nowより。

Death in the Congo (Telegraph)

アフリカ

コンゴ、ブニアからの報告。

From her hiding place in the woods outside the Congolese town of Bunia, Ruta Bonabingi watched as militiamen roasted and then ate the severed arms of her dying daughters.

...The militiamen calmly cooked the flesh over an open fire before throwing their victims, some of whom were still alive, into the flames. "They were both moving, although very weakly," Ruta said. It is accounts like this that have galvanised the horrified world into action.

国連安保理が今日の会議で対策を決定。フランスの平和維持軍は来週中にもブニア入りできる。日本のメディアは相変わらず無視。

Save Our Spooks (NY Times)

イラク

（アフリカ東部から帰ってきた？）今日のクリストフのコラムは、依然見つからないイラクの大量破壊兵器とこの件での米政府（or CIA）のメディア操作について。

The outrage among the intelligence professionals is so widespread that they have formed a group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that wrote to President Bush this month to protest what it called "a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions."

"While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes," the letter said, "never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war."

Waggy Dog Stories (NY Times)

イラク

クルーグマンのコラムも上と同調。彼のほうは政府の戦争意義のすり替えのほうをもっと注目している。

The failure to find W.M.D.'s has been described as an "intelligence failure," but this ignores the fact that intense pressure was placed on intelligence agencies to tell the Bush and Blair administrations what they wanted to hear. Even before the war began we learned of such pratfalls as the presentation of a plagiarized, decade-old report about Iraqi capabilities as hot new intelligence, and the use of crudely forged documents as evidence of a nuclear program.

Rebuilding Iraqi science (The Scientist)

イラク

イラクの科学再興を助けるORHA所属・イラク教育科学省への諮問官へのインタビュー。

Q: What can individual foreign scientists do to help rebuild Iraqi science?

A: There's a lot the individual can do. The most important thing is to set up exchange programs. Reintegrate Iraqi scientists into the world. Invite them to meetings. Pay for their way to meetings. Offer to host them on sabbaticals. Offer to host Iraqi PhD students and postdocs. Be aggressive on scholarships and fellowships for Iraqis. Send any surplus lab or computer equipment. Professional associations can play an enormously important role also. They can organize large shipments of equipment. Palletize them and arrange for transportation through USAID. Eventually we'll need research funding, but that's farther down the road. Right now we're in an austere environment: no libraries, no journals, no equipment and sometimes no lighting.

アインシュタインをもっと知るサイト登場 (Yomiuri America)

物理

この話題、少し前に聞いたときは「ふーん」という感じで特に惹かれなかったのだけど、この記事のなかで面白かったのは以下の部分。

文献データベースで「Japan」を検索すると、79点の関連文献が表示され、日本から個人がアインシュタインにあてた書簡なども見られる。（中略）
　その中で、1930年当時、大日本雄弁会講談社の社名だった現講談社の「少年倶楽部」あてに書かれた草稿は、デジタル画像で閲覧が可能だ。「日本の小学生の子供たちへ」と題されたドイツ語の草稿は、1914年に創刊され一世を風靡（ふうび）した少年誌「少年倶楽部」から依頼され、書かれたものと思われる。

実際見てみると、なるほどドイツ語の手紙だった。こういうのはなるほど、面白いなと思うので早く英訳してくれると嬉しいなぁ。