The probe has sent back pictures of a flat landscape with few rocks

A Nasa spacecraft has sent back the first historic pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.

The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.

The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.

It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.

A signal confirming the lander had reached the surface was received at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).

Engineers and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when the landing signal came through.

"Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars," a flight controller announced.

The final seven minutes of the probe's 10-month journey to Mars were regarded as the hardest part of the mission.

The probe had to survive a fiery plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere, slowing from a speed of nearly 21,000km/h (13,000 mph).

Soft landing

It released a parachute, used pulsed thrusters to slow to a fast walking speed, and then descended the last few metres to the Martian soil to land on three legs.

The Nasa team monitored each stage of the descent and landing process through radio messages relayed to Earth via the Odyssey satellite in orbit around Mars.

"In my dreams, it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it did tonight," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at JPL.

Nasa found out more about the landing when pictures from the probe reached the Earth.

The first images showed the "Arctic plain" where Phoenix came to rest - a region of Mars that has never been seen up close before.

Other shots confirmed that the probe's solar arrays had unfurled successfully, and that it had landed safely on its legs.

Phoenix carries seven science instruments

The spacecraft will begin its three-month science mission in the next few days.

It will use a robotic arm to dig through the protective Martian topsoil and lift samples of both soil and ice to its deck for scientific analysis.

Dr Tom Pike of Imperial College, London, is part of the British team involved in the project.

"The main goal of the mission is to get below the surface of Mars to where we are almost certain there is water," he told BBC News.

He said orbiters flying around Mars had surveyed the landing site in great detail and found signs that water ice is buried 10cm or less below the surface.

"Water, of course, is of critical importance because it is one of the building blocks - one of the essential habitats we need - for life," he said.

High failure rate

Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. There has been about a 50% failure rate on all Mars missions since Russia launched the first one in 1960.

Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

Phoenix uses hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.

The probe was launched on 4 August 2007 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

A few nights ago I saw Beowulf in 3d at Imax.

For a bit of background, Beowulf is an epic poem written originally in the 10th century or there abouts based on the exploits of Beowulf, a hero. The poem itself is believed to have come from oral tradition beginning in approximately the 7th century. It's pretty vintage basically.

Having not read Beowulf myself for well over a decade (a long time when you're 20) I was a little hazy on the specifics of the story but I can recall enjoying the version I had read/read to me.
The film adaptation is completely computer animated but is based on motion capture of the various actors involved of whom there are plenty. Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar is brilliant, chanelling equal parts Hanibal and Burt Monroe (yeah, it works ok?),  Ray Winstone plays the flawed hero admirably and Angelina Jolie turns Grendel's mother from a horrific monster to a seductive demon.

What really makes the film is the phenomenal animation. Because the action is either motion capture or digital animation there aren't any limits to what can and can't be done. Something that really stood out was the use of incredibly long cuts. Frequently the use of wide landscape shots that violently zoom into caves, halls or boats create stunning atmosphere. Combining this with imax 3d and you can almost feel the frost on your skin. 
The quality of the animation isn't to be sniffed at either. While Finding Nemo and the recent crop of kids animated movies have been reasonable flashy, Beowulf is in a whole different league. Using human models has given it an added degree of realism. Pairing this with the incredibly high quality of the effects and you've created probably the best animated film since Toy Story.

Often when you see a film using a lot of CGI you find it quite jarring when the CGI suddenly pops in. When the whole film is CG, the impossible blends easily with the possible. For instance, in Transformers, the robots always looked kind of blocky and out of place. Beowulf is different in that a dragon or demon can appear from no where but blend seamlessly into the film.

Definitely worth seeing. See it in 3D. It makes the film.

4/5.

What bothers me most about the various record industry regulators staging raids on servers and downloaders is not the infringment of these peoples rights (they've broken the law, so be it) but the fact that this isn't going to solve the problem.
For a start this just agravates those who use downloading as a means of finding new music. I know I usually download an artist and then buy the album if I like it. Certainly there are plenty of people who won't buy the album even if they do like it. Realistically they wouldn't have brought the album even if it were readily accessable in the first place so they're not really worth considering in the argument anyway.

Not only that but you've got to address the reason people download in the first place. Ease. Ease of access. If record companies were to make music accessable and downloadable online, DRM free then you could be sure many music fans would go for it. Certainly there have been moves made toward this by some parties but it's still not enough.

Then you have the issue of quality and price. The major consumers of popular music are teenagers and early 20s. There are also the people with the least money. And yet record companies continue to gouge consumers for music in order to maintain their own huge market. The issue of how much the artist is making from this must be considered too but lets summarise and say "sweet fuck all". So companies are charging plenty for CDs, giving next to nothing to the artist and then getting up in arms when people aren't happy about this?

Then there's the fact that every second album released these days is a piece of crap. Popular music isn't a dying art yet record companies seem to consistently sign artists incapable of producing clever or catchy music without resorting to sex and money. There are a few exceptions, you've got Timbaland, Kanye West, Wolfmother and so on. But for every good popular artist there are a dozen pussycat dolls or Rhiannas shitting out horrific tunes copycatting the good ones. Souljah Boy springs to mind immediately...
And a little boy waits the record companies wonder why people aren't interested...

"Russia is not our enemy," said Mr Bush

US President George W Bush has said there is a "real and urgent" need for a missile defence system in Europe.

Mr Bush said the missile threat was from the Middle East, not Russia, which strongly opposes sites for the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

He warned that Iran could have a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe or the US by 2015.

Earlier, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the shield could be delayed while Russian concerns were tackled.

Iran threat

In a speech at the National Defence University in Washington, Mr Bush said: "The need for missile defence in Europe is real and I believe it's urgent."

The mayor of nearby Slubsk is disappointed that the base may be put to this use [US missile defence], rather than turned into a civilian airport and business centre Mark Mardell BBC Europe editor Euroblog: Poland's fears

He said the planned system was not designed to tackle missiles from Russia as it would be easily overwhelmed by Moscow's arsenal.

"The Cold War is over. Russia is not our enemy," he said.

Mr Bush said the US had invited Russia to "join us against an emerging threat that affects us all... we ought to respond to this threat together".

The president said if "rogue states" had less confidence their missiles would strike, they would be "less likely to engage in acts of aggression in the first place".

Mr Bush also attacked the US Congress for reducing funding to missile shield systems.

Earlier, Mr Gates had said activation of the European shield could be delayed until there was "definitive proof" of a missile threat from states such as Iran.

He said after meeting Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek in Prague: "We would consider tying together activation of the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic with definitive proof of the threat - in other words, Iranian missile testing and so on."

The missile shield system would see a radar site set up in the Czech Republic and a missile interceptor base in Poland.

Russia has vehemently opposed bases on the territories of its former Warsaw Pact allies.

Mr Gates and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received a frosty reception when they tried to sell the plan in Moscow this month.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow saw the shield as a "potential threat" to its security and wanted to "neutralise" it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin widened the debate by also threatening to abandon a key nuclear missile treaty.

He said it would be difficult to remain part of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty unless it was expanded to include more countries than just the US and Russia.

Further thoughts later.

Police also raided the home of the IT worker's father

British and Dutch police have shut down one of the world's biggest sources of illegally-downloaded music.

A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK.

The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough was arrested on Tuesday morning.

The IT worker was led from his home in the town's Grange Road and is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law.

Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found IFPI spokesman

At the same time his employer - a large multi-national company - and his father's home were also raided.

A Cleveland Police spokesman said: "This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only.

"The site allowed the uploading and downloading of pre-release music and media to thousands of members.

"Members paid 'donations' via debit or credit cards, ensuring their continued access to the site."

Users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer, according to an IFPI spokesman.

Unfinished versions

He said: "They were encouraged to distribute recordings in the torrent file format with other OiNK members, and have to keep posting such music to the site to maintain their membership.

"Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made.

"Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain."

The site's servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week.

It follows a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

Pre-release piracy is particularly damaging to sales as it leads to early mixes and unfinished versions of artists' recordings circulating on the internet months ahead of the release.

Read that last part carefully. I'll be back tomorrow with my thoughts on the matter.