http://www.palestineherald.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:47:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_324104730.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_324104730.html TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. (AP) — Two days before shipping off to war, Marine Pfc. Jesse Sheets sat inside a trailer in the Mojave Desert, his gaze fixed on a computer that flashed a rhythmic pulse of contrasting images.Smiling kids embracing a soldier. A dog sniffing blood oozing from a corpse. Movie star Cameron Diaz posing sideways in a midriff top. Troops cowering for safety during an ambush.A doctor tracked his stress levels and counted the number of times he blinked. Electrode wires dangled from his left eye and right pinky finger.Sheets is part of a military experiment to try to predict who’s most at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. Understanding underlying triggers might help reduce the burden of those who return psychologically wounded — if they can get early help. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:42:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_321194303.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_321194303.html SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Richard Martin keeps a rearview mirror on his desk to prevent co-workers from startling him in his cubicle. The walls are papered with sticky notes to help him remember things, and he wears noise-canceling headphones to keep his easily distracted mind focused.Martin, an Army veteran who was nearly blown up on three occasions in Iraq, once feared that post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury would keep him from holding down a civilian job, despite years of corporate experience and an MBA.“Here I am with this background and I’m having problems with my memory,” said Martin, a 48-year-old engineer and former National Guard major who now works for Northrop Grumman, helping to devise ways to thwart remote-detonated bombs. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:42:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_321124253.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_321124253.html COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Texas A and M University’s reverence for tradition lured Tim Kerlee Jr. to the storied campus.Kerlee, from Germantown, Tenn., had visited 21 schools but knew A and M was for him the moment he stepped on campus, said his mother, Janice Kerlee.“He wrote me an e-mail one time. He was talking about Silver Taps (a monthly tradition where lifelong Aggies who died the previous month are honored) and how moved he was by the fact that all these students were out there and didn’t even know that person but because he was an Aggie, they were paying tribute to him,” she said. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:18:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_320151859.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_320151859.html ARANSAS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Texas (AP) — As the first of the area’s beloved, endangered whooping cranes make their annual descent into the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, it’s likely there will be fewer of the tourist draws to whoop and holler over. Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:16:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_320151642.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_320151642.html CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The first orthopedic surgeon in space is flying aboard shuttle Atlantis, along with two former college football players, one of them an NFL pick, and the grandson of Amelia Earhart’s personal photographer. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:37:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_317173737.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_317173737.html LOS ANGELES (AP) — It turns out there’s lots of water on the moon — at least near the lunar south pole.The discovery announced Friday comes from an analysis of data from a spacecraft NASA intentionally crashed into the moon last month.“Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit, we found a significant amount,” said Anthony Colaprete, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center.The lunar impact kicked up at least 25 gallons of water and that’s only what scientists can see, Colaprete said.Having an abundance of water on the moon would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts by providing drinking water and an ingredient for rocket fuel. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:25:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_316132524.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_316132524.html ADDISON, Texas (AP) — It still fits. Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:24:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_316132427.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_316132427.html AUSTWELL, Texas (AP) — Specialists at the Aransas (uh-RAN’-zuhs) National Wildlife Refuge in Texas expect at least 247 endangered whooping cranes to spend the winter. Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:08:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_308120819.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_308120819.html NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Actor Tom Hanks says viewers are in for a realistic “wartime experience” when the new film he produced, “Beyond All Boundaries,” opens at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans on Friday. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:12:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_306141236.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_306141236.html DALLAS (AP) — After Jack Ruby made a huge splash by killing Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, Joyce Gordon became a ripple. Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:45:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_305014614.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_305014614.html AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — If every life is a story, then every burial plot, every tombstone silently holds the secrets.Danny Camacho’s job is to make the dead speak.How did they meet their fate? How did their deaths affect their families? What does death reveal about forgotten times and places in early Austin? These are the questions Camacho ponders in the bowels of the Austin History Center as he researches the stories that fill “Murder, Mayhem and Misadventure,” a walking tour and Halloween fundraiser for Save Austin’s Cemeteries that spotlights 19th- and early 20th-century murders and untimely deaths.The third annual tour is Saturday at Oakwood Cemetery, a 40-acre resting ground at 1601 Navasota St. in East Austin. Established in 1839, when it was known simply as City Cemetery, it is the oldest of Austin’s five city-owned burial grounds. Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:32:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_302013233.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_302013233.html SAN MIGUEL, Ariz. (AP) — A pickup truck in Mexico pulls up to the 5-foot vehicle barriers that make up part of the multibillion-dollar border fence. A retractable ramp is extended from the truck, forming a bridge up and over the barriers.Then, a second pickup — this one loaded with a ton of marijuana — rolls over the bridge and into the U.S.With gadgetry such as custom-built ramps as well as ultralight planes, false doors and good old-fashioned duct tape, smugglers have demonstrated unbounded creativity when it comes to sneaking drugs across the Mexican border. And the U.S. government acknowledges there is only so much it can do to stop the flow. Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:02:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_300140232.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_300140232.html DALLAS (AP) — Down the long aisle at Concord Church, set off this Sunday by a soft, white border draped from pew to pew, the bride walked with stately deliberation, the crowd’s applause ringing out as she glided toward her groom. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:29:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_299102931.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_299102931.html NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The company that has exclusive rights to salvage the Titanic is planning a possible expedition to the world’s most famous shipwreck in 2010. Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:26:00 +0000 http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_299102633.html http://www.palestineherald.com/features/local_story_299102633.html BAYTOWN, Texas (AP) — Larisa and Marisa Coy know what it’s like to be a student in Baytown schools. Now they’re learning what it’s like in the front of the classroom.