Without intervention, officials say, the satellite would have fallen to Earth on its own in early March.

CNN: Navy missile hits dying spy satellite, says Pentagon

But the A's have been back to the playoffs just once since 2003, while Tampa Bay has fallen to earth after a one-year joyride.

FORBES: Sports Business

The Center for Security Policy commends the United States Navy for Wednesday's successful shoot-down of a failing spy satellite that could have posed a threat to human health and American national security had it fallen to earth.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Satellite intercept shows missile defense need

The company has since fallen back to earth, and last year its share price was trading below the 1, 000-yen level for the first time in over two decades.

BBC: Sony sells Manhattan headquarters skyscraper for $1.1bn

Tons of earth had fallen into Puget Sound.

CNN: Massive landslide threatens Washington state homes

Satellite and weather balloon data tell us that the Earth's average temperature has fallen slightly during the last 20 years.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

The remarkable fact is that, even though the earth's population has more than trebled in a century, the best measure of the scarcity of resources price has fallen virtually throughout that time for just about everything extracted from or grown in the earth, yet has risen, in the form of wages, for the one thing that has become far more abundant: people.

ECONOMIST: A Survey of the 20th Century