SpaceMars Express mission extended
ESA’s Mars Express mission has been extended by one Martian year, or about 23 months, from the beginning of December 2005. The decision taken by ESA’s Science Programme Committee, allows the spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet to continue building on the legacy of its own scientific success.
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ESA
Finding the will to compromise in Germany
With general elections on Sept. 18 producing no clear winner, political parties are scrambling to hold talks to form a future government. Among the possible constellations, the so-called "grand coalition" between the two main parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU), is seen as a serious option. The others include an alliance between the CDU, their preferred coalition partners, the free-market liberal FDP and the Greens, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's junior coalition partner in the government for the past seven years. The third likely combination includes the SPD, the FDP and the Greens.
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Deutsche Welle-
Cartoon by Schneider for Tageblatt (Luxembourg)
Bill number 10 million entered
The top Euro bill tracking site has announced that it is now tracking a total of over 10 000 000 Euro bills, registered on the site by users from various countries, mainly from the Euro zone. The 10 millionth note was a Belgian 20 EUR note
which was found in Belgium, Liège.
The idea behind the website is very simple: see how the bills travel around the world and give users a chance to find out where their bills have been and where they go. A more scientific aspect of the site is the diffusion section where monthly charts show how the proportion of foreign bills increases with time in each country.
Join the EuroBillTracker
PerspectivesTony Blair and the EU-China trade dispute
- Cartoon by Steve Bell for The Guardian (London)
FeatureGermany votes 2005
Gerhard Schroeder is fighting for a third term as Germany's chancellor after calling snap elections for September 18. He faces Angela Merkel, who would become the country's first woman chancellor if her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) defeats Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD).
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TimeCNN has a special website covering the
German Elections
ESA probes formation of galaxy clusters
The European X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has for the first time allowed scientists to study in detail the formation history of galaxy clusters, not only with single arbitrarily selected objects, but with a complete representative sample of clusters.
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