Russia starts meteor clean-up

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Divers find no trace of meteorite in a frozen lake near Chelyabinsk, state media report


• NEW: Witness says flash shone "like 10 suns," felt shock wave pass through his body


• More than 4,000 buildings, mostly apartment blocks, were damaged, reports say


• The meteor released a 500-kiloton blast, NASA officials say

Chelyabinsk, Russia (CNN) -- A day after a spectacular meteor blast shook Russia's Urals region, the clean-up operation got under way Saturday in the hard-hit Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Although some buildings were unscathed when the sonic waves from the Friday morning explosion reverberated through the region, others lost some or most windows.

More than 1,000 people were injured, including more than 200 children, according to news reports. Many of them were hit by flying glass.

Most of those hurt were in the Chelyabinsk region; the majority of injuries are not thought to be serious.

Altogether more than 4,000 buildings, mostly apartment blocks, were damaged and 200,000 square kilometers (77,220 square miles) of glass were broken, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited the Chelyabinsk regional emergencies ministry as saying Saturday.

Local officials have estimated the damage at more than 1 billion rubles (more than $33 million), RIA Novosti said.

With temperatures dipping well below freezing at night, the need to fix windows left gaping by the blast is urgent.

The city of Chelyabinsk was functioning normally Saturday as the repair work began.

Many believe it was a lucky escape as fragments of the meteor came raining down.

West of the city, authorities sealed off a section of a frozen lake where it's believed a sizable meteorite crashed through the ice.

But a team of divers has found no trace of any meteorite in the lake, an emergencies ministry spokeswoman told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

Opinion: Don't count 'doomsday asteroid' out yet

The meteor was a once-in-a-century event, NASA officials said, describing it as a "tiny asteroid."

The space agency revised its estimate of the meteor's size upward late Friday from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass from 7,000 tons to 10,000 tons.

The space agency also increased the estimated amount of energy released in the meteor's explosion from about 300 to nearly 500 kilotons. By comparison, the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released an estimated 15 kilotons of energy.

The whole event, from the meteor's atmospheric entry to its disintegration in the air above central Russia, took 32.5 seconds, NASA said.

About 20,000 emergency response workers were mobilized Friday, RIA Novosti reported.

Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov arrived in Chelyabinsk on Friday evening to take stock of the situation, Itar-Tass reported.

Hospitals, kindergartens and schools were among the buildings affected by the blast, said Vladimir Stepanov of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry.

Saving Earth from asteroids

The national space agency, Roscosmos, said scientists believe one meteoroid entered the atmosphere, where it burned and disintegrated into fragments.

Amateur video footage showed a bright white streak moving rapidly across the sky before exploding with an even brighter flash and a deafening bang.

The explosion occurred about 9:20 a.m. local time, as many people were out and about.

Russians captured vivid images, many using dash cameras inside their vehicles.

Dash cameras are popular in Russia for several reasons, including possible disputes over traffic accidents and the corrupt reputations of police in many areas. Drivers install the cameras for their own protection and to document incidents they could be caught in.

Denis Kuznetsov, a 23-year-old historian from Chelyabinsk, told CNN via e-mail that he had heard and felt the shockwave despite being far from the center of the city.

At first there was a blinding flash lasting several seconds, which made him want to shut his eyes. The light shone "like 10 suns," he said. "This is no exaggeration."

Then he experienced what felt like "a push," as a sound wave passed through his body. "For some seconds I simply stood," amid the sound of breaking glass, he said.

After calming his parents, Kuznetsov tried to call friends, but all cellphone coverage was down. The internet still worked, however, and he managed to reach a friend in the city center who told of emergency responders heading into the streets.

At first, confusion was widespread, Kuznetsov said, with many people believing the boom had to do with a satellite or plane. But within an hour or so, news broadcasts declared it was a meteorite.

"There was no panic. All behaved quietly," he said.

Schools and many offices closed. Kuznetsov monitored the news, as the reported number of victims "grew hour by hour," he said. "Thank God no one died."

CNN iReporter Max Chuykov saw the meteor trail from the city of Yekaterinburg. He shared on Instagram that it was close to the ground.

Ekaterina Shlygina posted to CNN iReport and wrote on Instagram: "Upon Chelyabinsk a huge fireball has exploded. It wasn't an aircraft."

When the Quadrantid meteor shower hit its peak

Five regions of Russia, one of them Chelyabinsk, are thought to have been affected, Itar-Tass said. RIA Novosti cited emergencies ministry officials as saying three regions and Kazakhstan

NASA said on its website that the meteor was the largest reported since 1908, when the famous Tunguska event took place in remote Siberia.

In that incident, an asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded, leveling about 80 million trees over an area of 820 square miles -- about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island -- but leaving no crater.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"When you have a fireball of this size, we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface, and in this case there were probably some large ones."

NASA estimates 4,700 'potentially hazardous' asteroids

In what astronomers said was an unrelated coincidence, a larger asteroid, called 2012 DA14, passed relatively close to Earth around 2:24 p.m. ET Friday.

Stargazers in Australia, Asia and Eastern Europe could see the asteroid with the aid of a telescope or binoculars, but it never got closer than 17,100 miles to the planet's surface.

The Russian meteor was about one-third the size of the asteroid. The two bodies were on very different trajectories, scientists said.

CNN's Phil Black reported from Chelyabinsk and Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported in London.

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Chicago calls for tougher gun laws, but has no room for more prisoners

(CBS News) CHICAGO - Last December, minutes after he allegedly shot at a neighbor, Julian Gayles was caught by Chicago police. Gayles, 22, already had a record of gun crimes and parole violations, but had spent little time behind bars. Since 2009, he has been sentenced to seven years in jail, but has served just two.

WATCH: Obama mourns "a Newtown every four months," below

Gayles was on parole when CBS News witnessed his arrest by police commander Leo Schmitz and is now in custody again, awaiting trial.

Chicago police superintendent Gary McCarthy wants such offenders to face a mandatory minimum sentence.

"This has to stop," McCarthy said. "Gun offenders have to do significant jail time."

Chicago already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for making them even tougher, with minimum mandatory sentences for gun violations.

Cook Country Sheriff Tom Dart

/

CBS News

But Cook Country Sheriff Tom Dart says he doesn't have the cells to hold more inmates.

"I mean, we are at capacity right now," Dart said. "The state prison system is beyond capacity. You talk to them right now, they haven't had a population like this in decades. And there's no place to put 'em."

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Dart runs the largest county jail in the country. Nearly 10,000 inmates -- including 300 prisoners -- living in a former cafeteria and some sleeping on the prison hospital's floor.

"This is not something that you would design, " said Dart. "Frankly at this time this should be a building that we should have empty right now at this time of the year. There should be no one in it. But because of our population explosion, this is full."

Experts say the prison population would swell by thousands if mandatory minimum sentences came to pass for gun violations.

"We can't have this irrational type of notion that there's magic jail cells all over the place that are all sitting there empty, " said Dart. "It's as if all of a sudden we just raise penalties and these people get shipped off to the moon or something. It's like, 'No, we know where we need to put 'em,' and we need money to fund that."

But Illinois doesn't have the money and has actually been closing prisons to save money so it can reduce the $9 billion it owes in unpaid bills.

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Budget Cut Warnings Harsher Than Reality?

Get ready for two weeks of intensifying warnings about how crucial, popular government services are about to wither — including many threats that could eventually come true.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans made no progress last week in heading off $85 billion in budget-wide cuts that automatically start taking effect March 1. Lacking a bipartisan deal to avoid them and hoping to heap blame and pressure on GOP lawmakers, the administration is offering vivid details about the cuts' consequences: trimmed defense contracts, less secure U.S. embassies, furloughed air traffic controllers.

Past administrations have seldom hesitated to spotlight how budget standoffs would wilt programs the public values.

When a budget fight between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to two government shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, some threats came true, like padlocked national parks.

Others did not.

Clinton warned that Medicare recipients might lose medical treatment, feeding programs for the low-income elderly could end and treatment at veterans hospitals could be curtailed. All continued, thanks to contractors working for IOUs, local governments and charities stepping in and the budget impasse ending before serious damage occurred.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

This time, at stake is not a federal shutdown but a so-called sequester. Between March 1 and Sept. 30 — the remainder of the government's budget year — it would mean reductions of 13 percent for defense programs and 9 percent for other programs, according to the White House budget office.

The cuts, plus nearly $1 trillion more over the coming decade, were concocted two years ago. Administration and congressional bargainers purposely made them so painful that everyone would be forced to reach a grand deficit-cutting compromise to avoid them.

Hasn't happened.

A look at the sequester and the chilling impact the administration says it would have, based on letters and testimony to Congress:

—A key reminder: Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits, Medicaid and a host of other benefit programs are exempted. The cuts take effect over a seven-month period; they don't all crash ashore on March 1. And if a bipartisan deal to ease them is ever reached, lawmakers could restore some or all of the money retroactively.

—On the other hand: Left in effect, these cuts are real even though their program-by-program impact is unclear. The law limits the administration's flexibility to protect favored initiatives, but the White House has told agencies to avoid cuts presenting "risks to life, safety or health" and to minimize harm to crucial services.

—Defense: Troops at war would be protected, but there'd be fewer Air Force flying hours, less training for some Army units and cuts in naval forces. A $3 billion cut in the military's Tricare health care system could diminish elective care for military families and retirees. And, in a warning to the private defense industry, the Pentagon said it would be "restructuring contracts to reduce their scope and cost."

—Health: The National Institutes of Health would lose $1.6 billion, trimming cancer research and drying up funds for hundreds of other research projects. Health departments would give 424,000 fewer tests for the AIDS virus. More than 373,000 people may not receive mental health services.

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Brecht's Galileo is a play for our times

Tiffany O'Callaghan, Opinion editor

Ian McDiarmid as Galileo (left) and James Tucker as the Bursar (Image: Ellie Kurtz)

It has been more than 400 years since Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope toward the night sky and observed the movement of the moons around Jupiter, providing proof that all things do not revolve around the Earth - and drawing the ire of the Catholic church.

And it has been nearly 80 years since playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote the first version of A Life of Galileo while living in Denmark after fleeing Germany when Hitler took power.

Yet the latest retelling of this famous tale by the Royal Shakespeare Company underscores the emphatically contemporary nature of the struggle between static world views and dynamic knowledge.

This is reinforced by using the familiar, modern clothing of tweedy dishevelment among Galileo and his colleagues and pupils, and sets featuring the lab-staple whiteboard and a large blue backdrop that resembles a wall of solar panels.

But of course this is not simply an old story with modern accoutrements and gimmicky staging. Portrayed by Ian McDiarmid, Galileo’s compulsive curiosity, his sheer joy when his pupil grasps a new concept for the first time, and his bewildered frustration when adversaries refuse to observe the evidence literally in front of them feel both timely and timeless. “All I ask is for them to believe their eyes!” exclaims poor Galileo.

In a moment when 46 per cent of US citizens believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and four US states are weighing up bills that would challenge the teaching of evolution, the tension remains strong between theologies that carve out a creation story for humans and the evidence that we are the serendipitous result of millions of years of evolution.

There are strong reminders of these tensions in the play, for example, when a cleric bullies Galileo to keep his heliocentric ideas to himself, crystallising the church’s terror at the implications of his ideas: “Is no one watching us?" asks the cleric. "Has no one imagined a part for us to play other than this one?”

Galileo is cowed into compromise. His new ideas may be used to help seafarers better navigate by the stars, but not to upend the understanding of the order of things. They may answer practical questions, but not existential ones. “We may research, but we may not draw conclusions.”

He accepts the new conditions in word only. His experiments continue, and when given the slimmest opening his feverish curiosity breaks out into the light of day. When he learns that his friend and science enthusiast Cardinal Barberini may ascend to the papacy, he lauds the arrival of an era of reason. Too soon, of course.

In the second act, we meet the new pope in his undergarments. As he debates the use of torture and threats to force Galileo to renounce the Copernican ideas laid out in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Barberini dons layer upon layer of vestments. Crimson robes, a glittering great cape, and finally the mitre: when he is cloaked in the power of his office, Barberini assents to the threat of torture.

The scene parallels the opening scene of the play, in which Galileo, also in only his undergarments, is bathing and getting ready for the day. The contrast is evident: in the flesh, they are both ageing men. But their power to spread ideas is proportional to the grandeur of their garments. When Galileo is threatened and ultimately abjures his earlier assertions, he returns beaten and bare-legged in a crumpled white gown.

The legacy of Galileo’s recantation is left open. Brecht rewrote aspects of the play following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when he was living in the US. “Overnight the biography of the founder of the new system of physics read differently,” he wrote in an introduction to the new version. “The infernal effect of the great bomb placed the conflict between Galileo and the authorities of his day in a new sharper light.”

Brecht never saw the stage production of his later version in New York, as he left the country after being questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

By the end of the play, Galileo is wary of science shaped by interests more nefarious than the quest for truth. He sees a danger in scientists being reduced to little more than “inventing pygmies” for sale to the highest bidder, their ideas open to be used for cruel ends. Galileo’s public recantation and private pursuit of truth and Brecht’s ambivalence about the responsibility of scientists to shape the use of their research for the benefit of humankind are not necessarily two sides of the same coin, it seems.

But it isn’t clear that in publicly defying the church Galileo would have reshaped the way that scientific knowledge is applied. And in real life, as in the play, in sneaking his final, influential publication Discourse and Mathematical Demonstrations About Two New Sciences out under the noses of the church which held him under house arrest for the final years of his life, Galileo seems vindicated in his decision to live to think another day.

As New Yorker critic Adam Gopnik recently put it, “the best reason we have to believe in the moons of Jupiter is that no one has to be prepared to die for them in order for them to be real”.

It may be an excruciatingly slow process, but the truth has a way of emerging into the light eventually. It was just two decades ago - and 350 years after Galileo’s death - that the Catholic church finally admitted that it had been wrong to condemn him.

A Life of Galileo is on at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, until 30 March.

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TCM slowly gaining popularity in Middle East

EAST JERUSALEM: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is slowly gaining popularity in North Africa and the Middle East.

But advocates still face an uphill task of convincing governments to accept it as an alternative form of medical treatment.

Dr Adi Fromm's hospital ward is well known throughout Israel.

Patients disheartened with Western painkillers come here looking for relief.

An example is a man who suffered from pain in his legs for years.

Nothing helped until Dr Adi introduced him to Chinese "magic needles" or acupuncture.

Dr Fromm, who is the head of the TCM Association Israel, said: "The first challenge is to make the Western medicine profession understand that TCM is a valid tool in what I call the 'health basket' that we can give to people...we are still fighting for our legitimacy (among practitioners of) Western medicine."

TCM dates back more than 5,000 years, but it is now slowly being embraced as a holistic alternative to Western medicine in many countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

In Israel, it was only formally recognised in the early 1990s.

Despite its popularity, it is still not widely used by the mainstream healthcare system.

In places like Tunisia in North Africa, there is even less awareness.

Practitioners here face an uphill battle in seeking acceptance of TCM.

Twenty years ago, the first Chinese doctors visited these shores. Since then, the number of acupuncturists has been steadily growing.

Dr Mohammed Juaied, a TCM doctor in Tunis, said: "A lot of people are asking for this type of medicine and we are hoping that more doctors here will be trained in this type of treatment."

Suspicion and lack of knowledge mean it is hardly practised at all.

Dr Abbas Elias Yousef Zaro, an alternative medicine practitioner, is trying to change all this.

From his modest clinics in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, he brings hope to dozens of Palestinian patients frustrated with modern medicine.

He said: "When I finished my studies and came back to Palestine, I opened a clinic in Ramallah. For the first five years, people did not accept it very much but things have changed since then. Still, the government has no plans to bring alternative medicine to the hospitals."

This echoes Dr Layla Abu Ahmmad Esmaeel's experience across the border.

Although her clinic sees a steady stream of well-to-do Egyptians, she is lobbying her government for greater recognition of this ancient science.

Dr Layla, from the Acupuncture Clinic at the National Research Centre, said: "We are working hard with the Egyptian government to approve this kind of medicine because the Minister of Health (has) not (approved) TCM. A lot of doctors are practising this kind of medicine without...enough knowledge."

Elsewhere in the world, TCM has been more readily accepted.

There are laws in countries as far afield as Australia and South Africa that regulate and protect it.

This is an encouraging sign for its advocates in the Middle East.

TCM has come a long way in overcoming the misunderstandings and criticisms of the Western world. In recent years, its popularity, especially in the Middle East, has grown, allowing it to be used more frequently in treating the pains and stresses of the region.

- CNA/ms

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iPhone security flaw found

By Doug Gross, CNN updated 3:21 PM EST, Thu February 14, 2013 | Filed under: Mobile

In a YouTube video, a user shows how a nearby phone can be used to bypass an iPhone password to access limited functions.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• YouTube video appears to show a way to bypass an iPhone password lock


• The hack lets someone access your phone, contacts list and listen to messages


• NEW: Apple says it's aware of the problem and a fix is coming

(CNN) -- The passwords on iPhones can be hacked, giving someone the ability to make calls, listen to your recent messages and tinker with your contact list, according to a new video posted to YouTube.

The apparent security flaw is shown on an iPhone 5 and can be exploited on phones running Apple's iOS 6.1, the most recent version of its mobile operating system, and some earlier versions.

The technique was posted by a Spanish-speaking user with the account name "videosdebarraquito," who has posted other videos that show what appear to be ways to tweak settings on the iPhone. CNN is not linking to the video, which was published January 31 but recently discovered by tech bloggers.

It involves using another phone placed nearby to make a call to the phone, canceling it, then answering with the targeted phone and fiddling with the power button.

According to the user who posted the video, it can't be used to access other parts of the phone. And he urged anyone who used it to play nice.

Use the bypass "to joke with your friends. To do a magic show. To win a harmless bet among friends in a PUB. Perhaps, to retrieve a phone number in case you don't remember the password, or just to be warned that exists," the user wrote.

"Use it as you want, at your own risk, but... please... use responsibly, do not use this trick to do evil !!!"

The company said Thursday that it's at work on the problem.

"Apple takes user security very seriously," said spokeswoman Trudy Muller. "We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update."

The folks at tech blog The Verge tried out the technique, and said they were also able to access photos on the phone by attempting to add a photo to a contact. They were able to access an iPhone 5 that was running iOS 6.1 in the UK, they said.

Similar bugs have been pointed out in previous versions of Apple's mobile operating system. Usually, the company issues a quick update to fix the problem.

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Passengers leave cruise ship telling tales of woe

Last Updated 7:36 a.m. ET

MOBILE, Ala. The passengers of the Carnival cruise ship Triumph began the process of getting back to normal early Friday, checking into hotels for a shower, hot meal and good night's sleep or boarding buses bound for other cities after five numbing days at sea on a powerless ship disabled by an engine-room fire.

The cruise ship carrying some 4,200 people finally docked late Thursday in Mobile, as passengers raucously cheered the end to an ocean odyssey they say was marked by overflowing toilets, food shortages and foul odors.

"Sweet Home Alabama!" read one of the homemade signs passengers affixed alongside the 14-story ship as many celebrated at deck rails lining several levels of the stricken ship.

The ship's horn loudly blasted several times as four tugboats pulled the crippled ship to shore at about 9:15 p.m. CST. Some passengers gave a thumbs-up sign, and flashes from cameras and cell phones lit the night.

Nearly four hours later, the last passenger had disembarked.

Some, like 56-year-old Deborah Knight of Houston, had no interest in boarding one of about 100 buses assembled to carry passengers to hotels in New Orleans or Texas. Her husband, Seth, drove in from Houston and they checked into a downtown Mobile hotel.

"I want a hot shower and a daggum Whataburger," said Knight, who was wearing a bathrobe over her clothes as her bags were unloaded from her husband's pickup truck. She said she was afraid to eat the food on board and had gotten sick while on the ship.

To add insult to injury, at least one of the chartered buses became stranded on the way to New Orleans, correspondent Anna Werner told "CBS This Morning." Passenger Jacob Combs called CBS News en route to say his bus was sitting by the side of the road, as he waited for yet one more rescue.

As buses arrived in the pre-dawn darkness at the Hilton in New Orleans, paramedics were on the scene with wheelchairs to roll in passengers who were elderly or too fatigued to walk.

Many were tired and didn't want to talk. There were long lines to check into rooms. Some got emotional as they described the deplorable conditions of the ship.

"It was horrible, just horrible" said Maria Hernandez, 28, of Angleton, Texas, tears welling in her eyes as she talked about waking up to smoke in her lower-level room Sunday, and the days of heat and stench to follow. She was on a "girls trip" with friends.

She said the group hauled mattresses to upper-level decks to escape the heat. As she pulled her luggage into the hotel, a flashlight around her neck, she managed a smile and even a giggle when asked to show her red "poo-poo bag" -- distributed by the cruise line for collecting human waste.

This was only part of her journey to get home. Hernandez, like hundreds of others, would get to enjoy a brief reprieve at the hotel before flying home later in the day.

"I just can't wait to be home," she said.

Play Video

Crippled cruise ship finally docks in Alabama

It wasn't long after the ship pulled into the Port of Mobile that passengers began streaming down the gang plank, some in wheelchairs and others pulling carry-on luggage. One man gave the thumbs-up.

An ambulance pulled up to a gate and pulled away, lights flashing.

Carnival had said it would take up to five hours for all the 3,000 passengers to be off. It took closer to four.

"All guests have now disembarked the Carnival Triumph," Carnival tweeted.

Carnival has canceled a dozen more planned voyages aboard the Triumph and acknowledged the crippled ship had been plagued by other mechanical problems in the weeks before the engine-room blaze. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation.

17 Photos

Aboard the Carnival Triumph cruise ship

Passengers were supposed to get a full refund and discounts on future cruises, and Carnival announced Wednesday they would each get an additional $500 in compensation.

In texts and flitting cell phone calls, the ship's passengers described miserable conditions while at sea, many anxious to walk on solid ground.

Passenger Jacob Combs told CBS News via phone: "The really bad part is there was no running water and toilets for almost the first 30 hours. Once they finally did get running water, the toilets only worked in certain places. I would say it's the worst smell imaginable."

Emailed photos reveal squalid conditions. Many passengers used red plastic bags as toilets. Hundreds slept in hallways or topside to escape the foul and stagnate air below deck.

Carnival CEO Jerry Cahill insists passengers were never at risk. But 22-year old Leslie Mayberry disagreed.

"It was leaning to one side, it was literally like walking up hill whenever the boat was leaning," she said. "I mean, it was very scary," Mayberry said. "A lot of people thought it was going to tip over and sink. And then you look out on the deck and you see the ocean and there is no one, you are just by yourself and you are so alone, even though you are around 3,000 other people on this boat."

For 24-year-old Brittany Ferguson of Texas, not knowing how long passengers had to endure their time aboard was the worst part.

"I'm feeling awesome just to see land and buildings," said Ferguson, who was in a white robe given to her aboard to weather the cold nights. "The scariest part was just not knowing when we'd get back."

As the ship pulled up, some aboard shouted, "Hello, Mobile!" Some danced in celebration on one of the balconies. "Happy V-Day" read one of the homemade signs made for the Valentine's Day arrival and another, more starkly: "The ship's afloat, so is the sewage."

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Falling Meteor Causes Blast, Injures Hundreds

A massive meteor shower slammed into Earth near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, located about 1,000 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.

Dashboard cameras captured a blinding flash of light streaking across the sky. Moments later, the fragments smashed into the ground. The impact, and the sonic boom of the meteor entering the atmosphere, shattered windows around the city and knocked over a wall at a zinc factory.

Witnesses said they thought a war had broken out.

"I saw a body moving in the skies. In a moment there came a flash - we first thought it was fireworks but a moment later we saw a trace as if from the rocket followed by an explosion in a couple of minutes. The window broke ... tea, bread, water - everything fell on the floor," one restaurant waiter in Chelyabinsk said.

Officials told the Russian news agency Interfax that more than 500 people were injured, most by broken glass. Of the 12 people hospitalized, at least three of them were in serious condition.

One scientist told Russian television the meteor was a big one, weighing perhaps tens of tons, but stressed that it was not related to the asteroid that is expected to buzz close to Earth later today.

Regional officials said the one large fragment fell in a lake, but debris had been reported in three parts of Russia and in Kazakhstan.

Schools in the region closed for the day after most of the windows were blown out, citing freezing temperatures, which were below zero degrees Fahrenheit during the day.

Debris from the meteor was found in three sites around the country, but emergency services say ground zero was Chebarkul Lake, just west of Chelyabinsk.

The meteor knocked out cell phone networks, but electricity and water supplies were not affected. Rosatom said all its nuclear power facilities were functioning normally.

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Runaway stars to fill in the blanks in Milky Way map

GUIDES to the galaxy might call it Zona Galactica Incognita – the half of our home galaxy we know little about. Indeed, the Milky Way is one of the least charted spiral galaxies in the nearby universe. Now it seems that stars kicked out of their birth clusters can help fill in the void and create the first proper map of the entire galaxy.

Young star clusters and clouds of hydrogen that formed in our galaxy help trace the shapes of the Milky Way's arms, so astronomers are reasonably certain that it has a spiral structure (see right). Observations of stellar motion show that there is a supermassive black hole at its core.

But figuring out how fast the arms rotate or even counting how many there are is tricky, in part because we are embedded in one of its arms and unable to get an outsider's view. In addition, everything behind the galactic centre is shrouded by a dense wall of stars and dust, blanking out a whole area of the Milky Way map.

"It's quite difficult to see the actual structure," says Manuel Silva of the University of Lisbon in Portugal. "I'm a little upset, really, that we don't know our own galaxy that well."

A space telescope called Gaia, scheduled for launch later this year, will map the positions and distances of about one billion stars on our side of the Milky Way, plotting the three-dimensional structure in unprecedented detail. But even Gaia won't be able to pierce the material that blocks our view of the far side.

Instead of trying to look across, Silva and his colleagues suggest looking up, where hundreds of runaway stars fly high above the disc of the galaxy. These stars are born in clusters inside the Milky Way but get ejected during gravitational jostling with other stars. Precise measurements of their velocities, ages and distances would allow astronomers to trace the stellar fugitives back to their homes, even on the far side.

"The idea is that the runaway stars act as signal flares, showing the position of the spiral arm, the same way someone lost in the middle of a dense forest could fire one to the sky to show his or her location to an outsider," says Silva.

His team traced the origins of about 40 runaway stars, observed by the Hipparcos satellite, ranging from roughly 1000 to 100,000 light years above the galactic plane (arxiv.org/abs/1302.0761v1). Although none of these stars came from the far side, the technique seems to work because the results agreed with previous studies that mapped star clusters in the visible section of the galaxy.

"The idea is a new one, and is an interesting one," says Jacques Lepine of the University of São Paulo in Brazil, who was not involved in the new study. Comparing Gaia's view of stars with the runaways will be helpful, he adds. "It is good to have different methods, to compare results. If the results are similar, we get more confident."

Jacques Vallée of the Canadian National Research Council in Victoria, British Columbia, agrees that the proof of concept is impressive. But that doesn't stop him fantasising about easier ways: "Wish I had a friend on a planet around a runaway star in the halo, sending me back a photo."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Runaway stars flesh out Milky Way map"

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Football: Barcelona's Villa taken back into hospital

MADRID: Barcelona striker David Villa has returned to hospital due to kidney stone pain just two days after being released for the same problem, the club confirmed on Thursday.

Villa has been taken into Barcelona hospital on the advice of the club's medical services due to the "persistent pain caused by the nephritic colic he has suffered and to control his progression", said a statement on fcbarcelona.com.

"The player is definitely out for the match against Granada."

Villa was first taken into hospital on Monday after having played 90 minutes in a league match for only the second time this season in Sunday's 6-1 win over Getafe.

He was then released on Tuesday but failed to train as expected yesterday.

- AFP/fl

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