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According to a new study, leaves, flowers and flowers from Merlot grapevines harbor bacterial taxa present in the surrounding soil.

The findings could help to analyze how microbes affect a wine's properties and pave the way for biotechnological advances for producing hardier crops.

The study was carried out on Merlot vines growing in five different vineyards in the North Fork of Long Island.

A team of researchers including Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois examined samples of soil, roots, leaves, flowers and grape throughout the growing season. They indentified all the bacterial species were and sequenced their genes.

The Air Force is ready to launch a new GPS system from its base in Los Angeles. Boeing made the ninth GPS IIF satellite that was set to go up aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV launch vehicle.

According to experts, it is first of three GPS IIF space vehicles that are planned to be launched in 2015. It is going to join eight of what will eventually be 12 such satellites that are presently in orbit.

The new satellites include a third civil signal for commercial aviation and safety applications, enhanced navigational accuracy through advanced atomic clocks.

On Tuesday night, a bright flash lit up the sky over Canadian province Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Maritimes at about 9 pm. Some people thought it was lightning, while some thought it was a shooting star. But according to astronomer David Lane, director of the observatory at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, it was likely a bright meteor called a fireball. According to reports, the light was bright enough to draw many people’s attention.

Lane further said, “We don't know how fast it was going. We don't know what it was made of, so a lot of it's just a wild guess as to how big it was or what orbit it was around the sun”. Paul Aitken, who was heading east on Route 3 just past Cherry Valley, said that he saw the flash at around 9 pm.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris asked the Sacramento County Superior Court to allow her to block planned ballot measure authorizing the killing of gays and lesbians.

She filed a request with the court seeking to be relieved of her duty regarding ‘Sodomite Suppression Act’ before it advances to the signature-gathering stage. According to Harris, readying it for circulation would waste state resources, generate unnecessary divisions and mislead the public.

She said, “In this case, we are talking about a proposal that literally is calling for violence. It’s calling for vigilantism. I, frankly, do not want to be in the position of giving any legitimacy to those words”.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally, declared earlier this month at the annual Gridiron Dinner that they have stricken the word ‘inevitable’ from Hillary's vocabulary.

There is no doubt about the notion that Hillary Clinton's presidency seems to be inevitable. This year, however, the idea seems to be hard to shake than it did at this point in the 2008 election cycle.

For several months, Clinton made her potential opponents eclipsed for the Democratic nomination in polls taken nationally and in key states.

Polls from early 2007 showed that Clinton had a solid lead over her rivals but one that only occasionally surpassed 20%.

Once Clinton officially enters the race, she will benefit from a campaign infrastructure that has been in the making for years.

There are chances that Joe Biden, sooner than expected, will come under pressure at the time of deciding whether to challenge Hillary Clinton for the White House.

This is because the liberal anxiety has encouraged multiplying grassroots supporters to wonder if the vice-president might be knocked from his perch of studied neutrality and into a presidential bid.

A third-party political action committee has urged Biden to challenge Clinton from the left in the flaming controversy over her email arrangements.

According to Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month, Clinton’s popularity among Democrats fell 15 points, following revelations that she had used a private email account for official work as secretary of state.