Let's delve a little bit deeper into the black helicopter-infested world of the Viper Militia -- the 90's era group whose members ended up in federal prison and whose most prominent friend and defender, Ernest Hancock, staged the show of arms-bearing at an Obama event Monday.

A portrait of a feckless group of paranoid, right-wing, minimum wage-earning weapons enthusiasts -- 10 men and two women -- emerges from press accounts at the time.

More than a quarter of those fish contained concentrations of mercury exceeding levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of people who eat average amounts of fish, the U.S. Geological Survey report said.

More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

Life expectancy in the United States rose to an all-time high, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today. But that's only half the story.

The country is behind about 30 others on this measure.

Ahead of the film's international release this week, German reviewers were rapturous over the fictitious squad of Nazi killers who stop the Holocaust and take brutal revenge, with some calling the picture "historic" and "important." 

Ahead of the film's international release this week, German reviewers were rapturous over the fictitious squad of Nazi killers who stop the Holocaust and take brutal revenge, with some calling the picture "historic" and "important."

Only a handful expressed qualms over Tarantino's trademark gore-splattering, most relishing the cinematic massacre of the Nazi brass including Adolf Hitler by a band of Jewish-American soldiers, led by Brad Pitt, as deeply satisfying.

"'Inglourious Basterds' is brazen, a declaration of war, a pleasure," the normally staid Frankfurter Allgemeine daily said.

A huge physics experiment built to detect gravitational waves has yet to find any.

Rather than be disappointed by the null findings, physicists say the results were expected, and in fact help them narrow down possibilities for what the universe was like just after it was born.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, will return to Libya on compassionate grounds, despite pressure from the U.S. government to keep him in prison.

Much of the debate so far this year has centered on creating an alternative to the U.S. dollar, championed by China and Russia as a way to wean the world off its dependence on the U.S. as well as buffer individual nations against the missteps of those in developed world. Most recognize creating a new currency will take years and the chances of an existing currency, like the yuan, usurping the dollar anytime soon are remote.

Inspired by the success of protests against health care reform, the critics began their fight against the carbon scheme with a rally in Houston, Texas.

Several Right-wing groups opposed to what they see as Mr Obama's tendency towards "big government" are involved in both campaigns, and hope to defeat or emasculate the two central pillars of the president's domestic agenda.

The Iowa Republican expressed his concerns because of a paper in which Mark Lloyd, the diversity director, alleged a “structural imbalance” in political talk radio and suggested increasing government involvement to regulate it. Lloyd co-authored the paper for the liberal Center for American Progress.

Grassley sent a letter Friday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski voicing strong disagreement with the idea that government needs to regulate talk radio and arguing that a return to the Fairness Doctrine would end the diversity of views on the airwaves.