The Baltimore Sun said Wednesday nearly 100 protesters assembled outside a Baltimore banquet hall Tuesday night to oppose Vick serving as the Eagles’ representative for the annual award.

A single player on each of the 32 NFL teams is presented with the award every year for serving as a role model or for embracing principles such as courage or sportsmanship.

Darlene Sanders Harris, the organizer of Tuesday’s protest, was among those questioning the selection of Vick, who served a prison sentence for illegal dog-fighting, for the honor.

“I don’t think he exudes courage or any of the qualities they are looking for in an Ed Block recipient,” she said.

“I find it appalling to give this to someone that has gotten enjoyment from hurting dogs,” protester Barbara Goldstein offered.

The Sun said Vick, a backup quarterback for the Eagles, had no specific comments regarding the protest.

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The achievement by researchers from the University of Michigan, led by Professor Steve Ragsdale and researcher Elizabeth Pierce, and scientists from the University of Oxford, led by Professor Fraser Armstrong, opens the doors for scientists to consider what organism exists, or can be created, to accomplish the same task.

“This is a first step in showing it’s possible, and imagine microbes doing something similar,” Ragsdale said. “I don’t know of any organism that uses light energy to activate carbon dioxide and reduce it to carbon monoxide, but I can imagine either finding an organism that can do it, or genetically engineering one to channel light energy to coax it to do that.”

The research was reported in a recent, online early edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Pinnacles National Park Superintendent Eric Brunneman said the Ventana Wildlife Society released the female condor at Pinnacles, in Paicines, approximately 18 months ago, and the male was set free in nearby Big Sur, along the state’s central coast, KTVU-TV, Oakland, reported.

The condors were tracked with visible numbers, radio telemetry, and global positioning technology.

An egg was confirmed in the nest last week, park officials said.

Although the park was quickly closed near the nest for the remainder of the nesting period, people may still see the site by hiking about two miles from parking areas.

A condor egg requires an average of 57 days to hatch, and the nestling would be flightless for approximately half a year after that.

California condors have been re-established at Pinnacles through a cooperative effort between community volunteers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, Ventana Wildlife Society and the Institute for Wildlife Studies.

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Judge David Lawson overruled a prosecutor’s recommendation in ruling Tuesday that the dogs, mostly pit bulls, did not need to be euthanized.

Anyone interested in adopting the dogs or fostering them, however, must be told of the dogs’ histories and of a state law that imposes criminal liability on owners of dogs who later kill or maim, Lawson said.

Lawson ordered another 10 dogs seized last year from the fight ring to be euthanized, including Pacino and Violet, dogs described by investigators as “champion” fighters, the Detroit News reported Wednesday.

Pacino and Violet have been in the care of the Humane Society of Kent County, which have deemed them fit for adoption or foster care. In his ruling, Lawson said he would give the Human Society time to file a motion arguing in favor of sparing Pacino and Violet’s lives.

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The region, until recently largely ignored by the energy industry, is “the last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t been fully explored,” says Richard Schmitt, chief executive officer of Dubai’s Black Marlin Energy, which is prospecting in East Africa.

The discovery at Lake Albert, in the center of Africa between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is estimated to contain the equivalent of several billion barrels of oil. It is likely to be the biggest onshore field found south of the Sahara Desert in two decades.

Tullow Oil, the British exploration company backed by a $1.4 billion loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland, says its Ngassa field in Uganda may be the biggest find in the Lake Albert Basin to date with up to 600 million barrels.

Tullow has discovered reserves equivalent to around 2 billion barrels of oil in Uganda in the last four years. Most of the initial finds in East Africa were made by independent wildcatters like Tullow and another British firm, Heritage Oil, run by former mercenary Tony Buckingham.

Now the majors are moving in. Heritage recently sold its 50 percent share in two Lake Albert Basin fields to Eni of Italy for $1.5 billion.

Eni said the two blocks have the potential to produce 1 billion barrels and is fighting it out with Tullow for control of the reserves on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert.

The Italian company is busy expanding in sub-Saharan Africa and has interests in Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Mozambique and the Republic of Congo.

The Ugandan government is negotiating with several majors with the financial clout to handle the enormous investment required to develop these emerging fields.

Front-runners reportedly include China’s state-run CNOOC, Total of France and Exxon Mobil of the United States.

Andarko Petroleum Corp. of Texas says it has hit a giant natural gas field off the coast of Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony that became independent in 1975. Norway’s Statoil is drilling in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin.

Since the 2006 find at Lake Albert, one of the Great Lakes of Africa strung out along the Great Rift Valley, there have been at least 15 confirmed major strikes in the region.

The Indian Ocean island of Madagascar contains “enormous reserves,” according to Tiziana Luzzi-Arbouille of IHS Global Insight consultancy of London.

“What happened in Uganda made it easier for smaller companies to raise funding,” said Tewodros Ashenafi, head of Southwest Energy, an Ethiopian company exploring in the Ogaden Basin in the east of the country.

This is a vast 135,000-square-mile territory in landlocked Ethiopia that is believed to contain sizable reserves of oil. It is estimated to hold 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as well.

Malaysia’s Petronas, which recently acquired major blocks in Iraq, signed an exploration agreement with Addis Ababa in August 2007.

The main problem for the oil industry is that the Ogaden, like many parts of Africa, is a conflict zone, as it has been pretty much since the Cold War in the 1970s. This is one reason why exploration has been so tardy.

Separatist rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front have warned oil companies to keep away and in April 2007 attacked a Chinese exploration group, killing 74 people.

Petronas is also exploring in the Gambella Basin of western Ethiopia.

Somalia has been torn by wars between feuding militias and clans since dictator Siad Barre was toppled in 1991 but it is also considered to hold considerable oil reserves.

A 1993 study by Petroconsultants of Geneva concluded that Somalia has two of the most potentially interesting hydrocarbon-yielding basins in the entire region — one in the central Mudugh region, the other in the Gulf of Aden.

That was one of 10 such basins across Somalia, southeast Ethiopia and northeast Kenya.

More recent analyses indicate that Somalia could have reserves of up to 10 billion barrels.

But exploration remains an extremely hazardous undertaking. And it’s likely to become more so as the country becomes a major focus for U.S. counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaida and its affiliates who are dug in there.

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Researchers led by Cornell University Assistant Professor Juan Hinestroza say the technology might some day allow your T-shirt to cool you on a hot day, analyze your perspiration or monitor your heart rate. Your pillow will be able to monitor your brain waves and a dress might be able to charge an iPod or MP4 player.

The scientists say that’s not science fiction — it’s cotton in 2010.

Using nanotechnology developed at Cornell in collaboration with universities at Bologna and Cagliari, Italy, Hinestroza and his colleagues developed a technique to permanently coat cotton fibers with electrically conductive nanoparticles.

“We can definitively have sections of a traditional cotton fabric becoming conductive, hence a great myriad of applications can be achieved,” Hinestroza said. “Previous technologies have achieved conductivity, but the resulting fiber becomes rigid and heavy. Our new techniques make our yarns friendly to further processing, such as weaving, sewing and knitting.”

A solar-powered dress using the newly developed technology will be featured Saturday during the annual Cornell Design League Fashion Show at the Ithaca, N.Y., university.

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“Nowhere is reform more needed than when it comes to our healthcare system,” Obama said at a high school in suburban St. Louis.

“The healthcare system has billions of dollars that should go to patient care and they’re lost each and every year to fraud, to abuse, to massive subsidies that line the pockets of the insurance industry.”

He pointed to improper Medicare and Medicaid payments, which he said cost taxpayers $100 billion a year — more than the budgets of the Education Department and the Small Business Administration combined. “If we created a Department of Improper Payments,” the president said, “it would be one of the largest agencies in our government.”

The improper payments go to the wrong person, are sent for the wrong reason or are sent in the wrong amount, Obama said. Sometimes nobody’s checking to see where the money’s going; other times, it’s lost to “scam artists and fly-by-night operations,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Obama signed an order allowing government agencies to turn to private auditors to uncover fraudulent claims and payment errors. And he announced support for a bipartisan bill that would expand use of the audits.

He said the administration is combating wasteful and no-bid contracts through a new online database that also vets contractors.

Obama reiterated his call for quick congressional action on healthcare.

“What we’re proposing is a common-sense approach to protecting you from insurance company abuses and saving you money,” he said. “That’s the proposal, and it is paid for. And I believe that Congress owes the American people a final up-or-down vote on healthcare reform. The time for talk is over; it’s time to vote.”

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The sale of whale meat is banned in the United States under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and Sei whales are on the endangered species list, U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said in a news release.

Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint Wednesday charging Typhoon Restaurant Inc. — the parent company of The Hump restaurant at Santa Monica Airport — and Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 45, a chef at the restaurant, with the illegal sale of a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose.

“Federal law has a variety of provisions, including criminal statutes, intended to protect this planet’s threatened natural resources,” Birotte said. “People should be aware that we will use these criminal statutes where appropriate to protect endangered species, including to ensure that they do not end up part of a meal.”

Prosecutors said The Hump sold whale sushi to customers on three occasions since October — with scientists using DNA testing to determine the meat was Sei whale and receipts given to the restaurant’s customers indicating they had purchased “whale.”

The investigation began after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received information from members of the public about the alleged violations, prosecutors said.

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The storms that produced the destructive tornadoes late Wednesday were expected to lose some their punch as they moved east of the Mississippi Thursday, AccuWeather.com said. However, forecasters warned some locally damaging storms could hit areas from southern Illinois to Florida.

In central Arkansas, one tornado damaged 22 homes in Saline County, CNN reported.

“It was the awfulest roaring I ever heard in my life,” a woman told KTHV, Little Rock. “My house felt like it was fixing to crumble over me.”

Another tornado touched down in White County, north of Saline, the National Weather Service said, damaging nine homes and injuring one person.

A third tornado hit Cleburne County, damaging or destroying several homes and injuring three people, two critically, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Emergency Management said.

Two areas of the country were at risk for strong storm action Thursday, AccuWeather.com said. Residents in Florida and southeastern Georgia could get socked by drenching and damaging storms, while communities from southern Illinois and Indiana to Alabama and Mississippi could see thunderstorms.

In Florida, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa are among the cities that could experience storms capable of producing torrential downpours, strong winds, lightning, hail and isolated tornadoes or waterspouts, forecasters said.

The heaviest rain and the greatest flooding threat were forecast for parts of South Carolina, southern Georgia and northern Florida, AccuWeather.com said.

Areas in the Midwest to Mississippi could see storms capable of producing locally strong winds, dangerous lightning, hail, and funnel clouds, forecasters said. Cities in the path include Evansville, Ind.; Bowling Green, Ky.; Nashville; Birmingham, Ala., and Tupelo, Miss.

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NASA said the work on its historic 230-foot-wide antenna, which has received data and sent commands to deep space missions for more than 40 years, will involve replacing part of the hydrostatic bearing assembly that enables the antenna to rotate horizontally.

Officials said the engineering plans call for lifting about 9 million pounds of instruments approximately 0.2 inches so workers can replace the steel runner, walls and supporting grout.

The operation, which will cost about $1.25 million, has a design life of 20 years and is expected to be completed by November.

“This antenna has been a workhorse for … over 40 years,” said Alaudin Bhanji, Deep Space Network project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “It has provided a critical lifeline to dozens of missions, while enabling scientific results that have enriched the hearts and minds of generations. We want it to continue doing so.”

NASA said it built the Mars antenna when spacecraft began venturing beyond Earth’s orbit, requiring more powerful communications tools. The Mars antenna was the first of the giant antennas designed to receive weak signals and transmit very strong ones far into space.

More information about the Deep Space Network is available at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/index.html.

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