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(CNN) — Imagine a star so luminous that it would burn the Earth up if it were anywhere near, a star that outshines the sun as much as the sun outshines the moon. A monster even in the abyss of space.

The star is not some scientist’s celestial dream. Astronomers used a Very Large Telescope — the instrument’s official name — to detect the most massive star discovered to date. In scientific lingo, it’s a “hypergiant.”

Led by Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics at England’s University of Sheffield, the team of astronomers studied two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a.

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DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. — Fireworks displays have been canceled. White-sand beaches that should be crowded with sunbathers are instead dotted with cleanup workers, booms and sand-sifting equipment. Normally packed hotels are trying to fill rooms ahead of what is a crucial weekend for beach businesses.

Across the oil-stained Gulf Coast, it’s going to be a glum Fourth of July.

Full Story at NYTimes.c

Boeing will buy the rights to build a midsize helicopter from AgustaWestland, a European company, according to Philip J. Dunford, vice president and general manager of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems. AgustaWestland had previously teamed with Lockheed Martin for the project, which the Pentagon canceled in June 2009, citing cost overruns.

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LONDON – The European air navigation agency says air traffic disruptions because the volcanic ash cloud will last at least another day.

Eurocontrol said in a statement that it expected only about 11,000 flights in European airspace Friday, compared with about 28,000 normally. On Thursday, there were 20,334 flights, it said.

The cloud’s impact, it said, “will continue for at least the next 24 hours.”

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The Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality alone to determine which U.S.-bound international air travelers should be subject to additional screening and will instead select passengers based on possible matches to intelligence information, including physical descriptions or a particular travel pattern, senior officials said Thursday.

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WALL TOWNSHIP, N.J. – A small plane trying to land broke apart and tore through a snowy field next to a runway Monday afternoon, killing all five people aboard, including a teenager and a child, and scattering debris over 200 feet.

The crash was reported at 3:45 p.m. at Monmouth Executive Airport, about 35 miles east of Trenton, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters. The weather was overcast, but no precipitation was falling.

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Washington (CNN) — When the father of suspected terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab visited the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in November, he told officials he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen, a senior administration official said Monday.

Revealing new details, the official also denied the father told officials his son might be on a suicide mission:

“There was no suggestion he was about to carry out a terrorist act,” the official said.

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Barcelona – A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

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“We saw nothing,” he said.

Samuels is vice president of the Fremont Peak Observatory near Monterey, California, which had invited members of the public to watch Friday’s NASA mission through its telescopes.

The lunar strike happened shortly after 4:30 a.m. on the West Coast (7:30 a.m. ET).

NASA had encouraged everyone around the country to host “impact parties,” saying the plume of dust generated by the lunar impact would be visible through “mid-sized backyard” telescopes 10 inches or larger. It said the chances of seeing the plume were greater for people living in areas that were still dark.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A federal grand jury in the U.S. Virgin Islands has indicted two ticket agent contractors who worked for Delta Airlines and an airport employee on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S.

The ticket agents, identified as Diana Telemaque, 33, and Felicia Browne, 22, were arrested Thursday along with luggage handler Daniel Confidente.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a statement that the two agents allegedly sold tickets to illegal immigrants. All three are accused of helping an unspecified number of migrants bypass customs officials from May 2008 to July 2009.

Full Story at msnbc.com

The years-long U.S. commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking a significant toll on the children of service members, who are 2½ times more likely to develop psychological problems than American children in general, new research indicates.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, found that deployment of a parent was correlated to high stress levels in the parent who remains at home, which it said was linked to greater psychological impact on children.

The findings open a new window on the collateral damage wartime deployment can exact back at home.

Full Story at msnbc.com

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.

A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.

The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK’s Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.
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“I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about,” said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.