Norman Ramsey

Two American molecular biologists who revolutionized scientists' view of the nature of the first life on Earth won the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Thursday, while two Americans and a German physicist who developed new techniques for highly accurate timekeeping shared the physics Nobel.

Two American molecular biologists who revolutionized scientists' view of the nature of the first life on Earth won the Nobel Prize for chemistry on Thursday, while two Americans and a German physicist who developed new techniques for highly accurate timekeeping shared the physics Nobel.

A federal jury Friday found state Sen. Michael B. Mitchell and his brother, former state Sen. Clarence M. Mitchell III, guilty of endeavoring to obstruct a congressional investigation of the Wedtech Corp. The jury also found Michael Mitchell guilty of two counts of wire fraud and his brother guilty of one wire fraud charge.

A former Conrail engineer who smoked marijuana shortly before a train accident that killed 16 people was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for lying to federal investigators after the wreck. U.S. District Judge Norman Ramsey ordered the three-year term to be served consecutive to the five years that Ricky Gates already is serving on state manslaughter charges. Gates, 33, told the National Transportation Safety Board after the Jan.

An advisory panel to the Energy Department on Wednesday recommended that no new government effort be made to verify the University of Utah "cold fusion" experiments that startled the international scientific community last March. The panel, assembled at the request of Energy Secretary James D. Watkins last April, said in a draft report that it found no "convincing evidence" that the phenomena attributed to cold fusion would produce useful sources of energy.

The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll. That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was "probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second sequence.

A federal judge refused to dismiss tax charges brought against a former CIA agent, saying that Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh has the jurisdiction to try the case, officials said Friday. As a result, the trial of Thomas G. Clines on the four-count indictment will begin as scheduled on Sept. 4 in Baltimore, said Mary Belcher, spokeswoman for Walsh's office. Clines assisted the Nicaraguan Contra arms resupply network run by Richard V. Secord and Albert A.

The Dalai Lama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday and said that despite Chinese rebuffs, he remains committed to nonviolence in seeking an end to China's 40-year occupation of his Himalayan homeland, Tibet. "I accept the prize with profound gratitude on behalf of the oppressed everywhere and for all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace," he said at a ceremony attended by King Olav V and government officials.

On Nov. 1, 1952, U.S. scientists detonated the first hydrogen bomb over Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific, introducing a powerful new weapon of war and, in the process, atomizing the rocky island. Air Force planes flying through the debris clouds collected small amounts of airborne particles on filter paper and rushed them back to laboratories in Berkeley and Illinois for analysis. In Illinois, a team that included physicist John R. Huizenga analyzed the minute quantities of material on the filters and discovered elements 99 and 100 on the periodic table, named einsteinium and fermium, respectively, after physicists Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, who had recently died.

Willis e. lamb jr., whose elegant demonstration of a small energy difference between two excited states of the hydrogen atom laid the foundation for the application of quantum theory to electromagnetism, producing the modern field of quantum electrodynamics, has died. He was 94. Lamb, who was awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, died May 15 of a gallstone disorder at University Medical Center in Tucson. "He was a real giant in the field," said James C. Wyant, dean of the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, where Lamb spent the last years of his career.