Launched in 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft mission to rendezvous comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has just succeeded in landing its Philae module on the surface of the comet. After a last-minute glitch that temporarily had the lander failing to respond to signals from the European Space Agency's controllers, Philae came online. With the mission a success so far, researchers hope to find the building blocks of life, testing the theory that comets spread life-bearing molecules throughout the cosmos.

It should come as no surprise to readers of SOTT.net that, so far, ice is nowhere to be found on the comet. Despite its 'surprisingly' dry surface, however, it is producing a large amount of water. Like so many 'comets' before, this one is like all the others: a big hunk of rock. So, on the one hand, a great day for scientific advancement; on the other, yet another example of people who should know better being 'totally surprised' at facts that should have been totally obvious. Comets are not dirty snowballs!

Unfortunately for humanity, scientific and technological progress have absolutely no correlation with moral progress. We can't help but find it ironic that as humanity makes this 'great step' towards understanding the secrets of space and life in the cosmos, our world is on the brink of societal, economic and moral collapse. Just today, we can find the following stories and headlines in the news.

According to new FBI statistics released this week, violent crime rates in the US fell over 4% in the past year alone, bringing the amount of violent crimes lower than it has been in nearly 40 years. The statistics showed that there were an estimated 1.16 million violent crimes in the year of 2013, which is the lowest number since 1978, when 1.09 million were recorded.

Broken down, the report revealed that manslaughter dropped by 4.4% to 14,196, the lowest rate since 1968, while instances of rape were down 6.3%. Despite the tough economic times, robbery is also down by 2.8% and property crimes were down by 4.1%.

The violent crime rate has been steadily declining since 1994, but the prison population has continued to increase over the decades. There are currently over two and a half million people imprisoned in the US, which is by far the largest prison population in the world.

However, a study recently published by Pew Charitable Trusts showed that for the first time in decades, the US prison population is actually on a decline. Their research found that the drop in crime that was seen in 2013 actually coincided with a decline in the prison population. According to their data, the amount of people in the US prison system peaked in 2008, and has since dropped 6%.

It would take a special type of person to look forward to a trial that will determine whether you will live or die. Yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that convicted murderer Jodi Arias may be that rare breed. A lethal combination of sociopath and narcissist with a dollop of daredevil that may have her actually excited about once again basking in the spotlight as she tries to convince a skeptical jury and public that she is not who she seems to be.


Arias, who seemed like a seasoned pro during numerous TV interviews, has been relaying tweets from prison on everything from domestic violence to artwork she sells online to health tips.

So why is Arizona repeating this spectacle? Arias was convicted on May 8th, 2013 of brutally murdering Travis Alexander in 2008, but the jury hung by a vote of 8 to 4 (8 for death) on the question of whether she should be executed.

That means she is guaranteed at least life in prison, the only question would be whether she would ever be eligible for parole. So why not just offer her life without parole and end this sordid legal drama?


(It's always possible that happened and she rejected it, but it seems highly unlikely based on the pleas of the defense team and determination of prosecutors to pursue death).

Many who support this new trial talk like failing to execute her would be akin to letting her walk. Beyond the absurdity of that on its face, it's important to note that Arizona is one of only two states that would even permit this type of death penalty retrial.

Full disclosure: I have never thought this was a death penalty case. Not because I believe her far-fetched claims of abuse but because as horrible as it was, this is a somewhat typical domestic murder -- hardly representative of the worst of the worst for which I believe the death penalty should be reserved. She was a jealous, troubled and spurned lover.

Madrid has said it will sue Artur Mas, the Catalonian president for "disobedience and dishonesty" after Sunday's independence vote, which saw 80 percent backing a split from Spain. Mas defied a court injunction barring him to hold a succession vote.

Court sources have said the details of the case against Mas are being finalized and will probably be filed on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Although the independence vote was informal and non-binding, it saw 2 million out of a possible 5.4 million people take part, in which 80 percent voted for independence.

Mas hailed the vote as "a great success" but it immediately drew harsh criticism from the Spanish government.

Justice Minister Rafael Catala dismissed it as "a sterile and useless sham" and "a day of political propaganda."

RTD with Miguel Francis Santiago, the author of "Crimea for Dummies", go to Donetsk where a bloody conflict is in full swing. With contradictory information coming from the region, witnessing the situation first-hand is the only way to find out what's really happening there.RTD crew and Miguel Francis Santiago set off to Donetsk, where shots are still being fired and shells exploding, with a camera as their only weapon. They want to see what the situation there is like with their own eyes. They go to the Donbass Opera House that also serves as a bomb shelter for locals and visit the city's devastated airport. On their way, they talk to anti-government fighters to learn why they took up arms, as well as common citizens who are trying to go on with their lives and preserve a sense of normality in these dire circumstances.

The city of Los Angeles has a unique way to beat the state's historic drought, and the concept revolves around recycling.

The city is giving away free rain barrels to 1,000 residents. The goal is to collect rain water to be used on lawns and gardens. The offer is limited to residents of Los Angeles.

The 55-gallon barrels are re-purposed syrup containers from Coca-Cola Co., which is partnering with the city for this campaign.

There are three opportunities to pick up a free barrel:

• Saturday, Nov. 15, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. -- Los Angeles Valley College, Valley Glen
• Saturday, Nov. 22, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. -- Los Angeles Harbor College, Wilmington
• Saturday, Dec. 6, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. -- Los Angeles City College, East Hollywood

To learn more about this program, visit www.bpw.lacity.org.

A public safety group in Brazil has said that the country's police force killed more than 11,000 people in five years up to 2013 - the equivalent of six deaths a day.

The UN-recognised Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, an NGO based in Sao Paulo, said that the US figures from 2009 represented a similar number to those killed in the US - which has a much greater population - for the past 30 years.

The statistics come a week after a militia reportedly linked to the police went on a bloody rampage, gunning down 10 civilians in the northern city of Belém.

That massacre followed the killing of a police hour earlier on Tuesday, thought to be linked to the so-called "militia".

The issue of police "executing" suspects was a major and regular occurrence, according to Bruno Paes Manso of the University of Sao Paulo's Centre for the Study on Violence. He called it "a practice rarely investigated".

It is worrying news for a country that is just over a year away from hosting the 2016 Olympics.

Rio de Janeiro state, where the Olympic host city is located, was singled out as having the highest per-capita rate of police killings in the whole country, after 416 people died in police violence last year.

The report said it reflected empirical evidence "that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence".

When the lights change at the Shibuya crossing in Japan's capital, one of the world's busiest pedestrian thoroughfares, hundreds of people with their eyes glued to smartphones pick their way over the road.

Despite being engrossed in the latest instalment of Candy Crush or busy chatting with their friends on messaging app Line, most manage to weave around cyclists, skateboarders and fellow Tokyoites.

But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinball.

"Hey, watch it!" barks a middle-aged salaryman as a hipster typing on his smartphone slams into him during one recent Friday evening crush hour.

"Incidents involving people walking or on bicycles account for 41 percent of phone-related accidents," Tetsuya Yamamoto, a senior official at Tokyo Fire Department's disaster prevention and safety section, told AFP.

"If people continue walking around looking at their phones, I think we could see more accidents happening."

It goes beyond being an innocuous inconvenience where both people apologise before continuing on their merry way.

Tokyo Fire Department, which runs the ambulance service in the megalopolis, says that in the four years to 2013, 122 people had to be rushed to hospital after accidents caused by pedestrians using cellphones.

As well as the vaguely comedic incidents of businessmen smacking into lamp-posts or tripping over dogs, this total also included a middle-aged man who died after straying onto a railway crossing while looking at his phone.

Pedophiles in the UK are increasingly caught through fake social media accounts, as the hunt for vulnerable children moves away from the streets and on to the internet, an investigation has shown.

The report by the Guardian found that a number of services were creating fake social media accounts in order to lure suspected pedophiles, while building a case against them to use in British courts.

The report cites the prosecution of 50-year-old Peter Mitchell in August 2013, a school groundskeeper who sent sexually provocative messages and explicit photographs of himself to what he believed were two underage girls.

However, the accounts had been invented by Brendan Collis and his family, under the name Online Predator Investigation Team (OPIT).