A few months ago NASA's Kepler mission made headlines when word leaked the plucky little spacecraft had found signs of hundreds of new planets circling distant stars. By contrast there are only about 500 exoplanets known now, after more than a decade of careful observation by some of the world's most sensitive land based instruments. But information on the most exciting class of potential planet, those more similar to the earth and less like the gas giants that orbit farther out in our own solar system, was frustratingly sparse. But one of the astronomers involved with Kepler may have just spilled the beans:

At 8:15 into his 18-minute talk, Sasselov showed a bar graph of planet size. Of the approximate 265 Kepler planets represented on the graph, about 140 were labeled "like Earth," that is, having a radius smaller than twice Earth's radius. "You can see here small planets dominate the picture," said Sasselov. Until now, astronomers' exoplanet finds had been more like gas giant Jupiter than rocky little Earth. Even Kepler investigators had refrained from discussing any Earth-size finds.

The tired idea that born-on-the-Web news sites will replace traditional media is wrong-headed, and it's past time that academic research and news reports reflect that. Jay Rosen, the New York University professor and media critic, calls them "replaceniks," and it's an apt term. Rosen is talking about people who insist on evaluating new, born-on-the-web news outlets as potential replacements for established news organizations, such as your local newspaper. As if.

As if the new online publishers are trying to replace the local traditional outlets. As if newspaper-centric standards of dailiness and comprehensiveness matter the way they did pre-Web. As if citizens can only turn to one or the other type of outlet amidst a vast and diverse emerging new ecosystem and only one type of news site will prevail.

Two British police forces have begun trials of a sophisticated computer software package which aims to boost their efficiency by predicting where and when future crimes will take place.

The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates patterns of past and present incidents, then combines the information with a range of data including crime reports, intelligence briefings, offender behaviour profiles and even weather forecasts. This is used to identify potential hot spots and flashpoints, so police forces can allocate resources to areas where particular crimes are most likely to occur.

Usually I avoid topics like women in technology because (1) it is a can of worms, and (2) I can really only speak for myself. For the most part, I'd rather be seen as a person in technology than a woman, but this weekend the twitterverse erupted with opinions about Google sponsoring female students to attend JSConf. As a woman who is often the only-woman-in-the-room, I want people to know it isn't always easy. I was a bit shocked by the blatant failure to empathize.

The media reportage on the effects of the decommissioning of speed cameras on road traffic accidents in Swindon has already caused Full Fact some concern today. However the factual problems in this debate do not begin and end in the Wiltshire town. With Oxfordshire announcing last week that it would follow Swindon's lead in switching off their under-fire cameras and the Government cutting maintenance funding for those still in use, the Taxpayers' Alliance released a report questioning their impact on road safety. This suggested that the decline in accidents on Britain's roads actually slowed after the introduction of speed cameras in 1992.

I received a call today from Chris, an outreach worker at Denver's homeless youth services Urban Peak .  He said he had to pick up some kids left stranded by a "sales crew". I never heard of such a thing so it didn't "register" or make sense.

When I arrived at their downtown facility I met Jeremy and Alicia. They were left stranded by an organization that exploits homeless youth for labor. These organizations promise great income and fun travel. To a kid in poverty being able to travel and make money is often too sexy to resist. Of course, this is just a labor trafficking scheme. The kids make very little money, are often abused, and when they want out they are left stranded back homeless, often worse than when they started.

The head of child protection for the Catholic church in England and Wales has said the Vatican should remove the statute of limitations on prosecution of of priests for child abuse offences.

William Kilgallon, the chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission (NCSC), argued that the time limit was unhelpful and failed to reflect the long-lasting effects of abuse.

He described the Vatican's recent decision to double the time period from 10 years to to 20 as "better than it was", but said he would have preferred its abolition.

The Vatican's leading art historian has dismissed claims made in its newspaper that a painting found in a Jesuit church in Rome is a Caravaggio.

An article on the front page of the paper, headlined "a new Caravaggio", highlighted similarities between the work and that of the Italian master.

Now Vatican Museums head Antonio Paolucci has responded in a piece headlined "new Caravaggio? Not really".

He said it was of "modest" quality, painted with "inadequate" technique.

When he hit European television screens in 1977, pogoing across music stages with a glint in his eye and a flower in his buttonhole, Plastic Bertrand gave no reason for anyone to doubt him when he yelled into the audience "Ça plane pour moi" (All's cool with me). Thirty-three years later, however, the erstwhile hero of Brussels' music scene could be forgiven for ruing his youthful chutzpah.

If evidence given to a Belgian court this week is to be believed, the man recognised as the voice behind Euro-punk's anthem had built his acclaim on shaky ground: he did not actually sing the song.

Videos Rouse Russian Anger Toward Police - NYTimes.com

One day last fall, a police officer here put on his uniform and sat on a drab tan couch before a video camera. In a halting monotone, he recorded two video appeals to Vladimir V. Putin, 13 minutes in all.

He was a nobody cop from a nowhere city, but his words would startle this country.

"How can a police officer accept bribes?" the officer asked. "Do you understand where our society is heading?  You talk about reducing corruption," he said. "You say that it should not be just a crime, that it should be immoral. But it is not like that. I told my boss that the police are corrupt. And he told me that it cannot be done away with.  I am not afraid of quitting. I will tell you my name. I am Dymovsky, Aleksei Aleksandrovich."

<...>

Mr. Dymovsky said the only real answer is for Russians to create a grass-roots anticorruption movement. Since his release from jail, he has been traveling around the country, trying to rally support for new policies.

But he is still apparently considered a danger.

Recently, he went to Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, to attend a protest. He said he was accosted by four plainclothes police officers, who told him that if he ever wanted to see his family again, he should leave and never return.

The US Congress has approved a bill aimed at protecting US writers from libel tourists using English courts to pursue defamation claims. The SPEECH (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage) Act now goes to President Obama to be signed into law.

Last week I had an encounter with open justice. I was attending the Information Tribunal hearing of a friend who is trying to peel back layers of secrecy surrounding allegations that the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust had a history of silencing whistleblowing staff by offering them public money to sign confidentiality or `gagging' contracts.

I've been to the Tribunal before when I was fighting for the release of MPs' expenses and that's when I discovered the only record of proceedings of this so-called "open" people's court (the Tribunals are meant to be a less formal, more accessible form of justice) were my scribbled notes. When it came time to write a script for a dramatised version of the hearing my notes and those of other reporters were all we had to go on. I'd asked at the time if I could tape record the hearing and was told "no".

Ron Ramsey, Tennessee's Lieutenant Governor and a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial primary, is claiming Islam, the world's second largest religion, may not be a religion after all.

Ramsey, lagging in polls in the Republican gubernatorial primary race, claims he's not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to Islam, since, he says, Islam may be a cult, and not a religion.

For an elected official to suggest that Muslims are not entitled to First Amendment protection is so outrageous as to be near criminal. 

Justice Minister Keiko Chiba - who opposes the death penalty - witnessed the executions and announced the formation of a group to review the death penalty.

Opinion polls show broad support for capital punishment in Japan.

...

Ms Chiba said that as justice minister she believed it was her duty to witness the executions in person.