News Briefs

Moon base...or bust

NASA has announced that it plans to establish a base on the moon in order to facilitate manned trips to Mars in the future. The base will be placed on the north or south pole due to higher levels of sunlight exposure. The extra sunlight will allow for the increased ability to power the base via solar power. The decision to create the base was determined to be better than to conduct individual missions to the moon. The scientists behind the project feel that the astronauts should be able to use the moon’s natural resources to maintain the base. A NASA administrator believes that there will be a continual human presence on the moon’s surface by 2024.



A Christmas Story

On December 3, a 12-year-old South Carolina boy was arrested and charged with petty larceny. His crime was opening a Christmas present early. His mother, Brandy Ervin, called the police and reported that her son had opened a present containing a “Play station Game Boy” without her permission. In an interview, Ervin described her son as disruptive and she hoped that the arrest would teach him a lesson since he was doing poorly in school.



Got brain cancer?

Chances are good that the cancer wasn’t caused by a cell phone. A large study conducted in Denmark shows that there is no link between brain cancer and cell phone usage. There were almost half a million participants in the study whom averaged about 8.5 years of cell phone use. Some participants had even been using cell phones as long as two decades. The results showed that there was no increase in brain cancer of any type.