Project X13

This pic is a combo of the infrared pics from both NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope & the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) which combines data from telescopes in Arizona & Chile.

Brief article w/ reg size pic:
http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/breakingorbit/2010/04/omg...

Superpic!
http://spitzer.caltech.edu/uploaded_files/images/0005/4754/sig10-004_Lrg...

US Settles Historic Native American Lawsuit

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Historic-Native-American-Law...

US government says it has settled a long-running lawsuit against the Department of the Interior for mismanagement of trust fund accounts held by hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.

"We are compelled to settle now by the sobering realization that our class grows smaller each year, each month, and every day as our elders die and are forever prevented from receiving their just compensation."

The U.S. government says it has settled a long-running lawsuit against the Department of the Interior for mismanagement of trust fund accounts held by hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. The settlement ends a 13-year legal battle to resolve a dispute that dates back to the late-1800s.

The legal settlement will cost the U.S. government $3.4 billion.

NUKUS, Uzbekistan -- The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet's most shocking disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday, as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea's evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.

Ban toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships.

"On the pier, I wasn't seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships," Ban told reporters after arriving in Nukus, the nearest sizable city and capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region.

"It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said.

The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban's top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries' leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.

"I urge all the leaders ... to sit down together and try to find the solutions," he said, promising United Nations support.

However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used.

In a presentation to Ban before his flyover, Uzbek officials complained that dam projects in Tajikistan will severely reduce the amount of water flowing into Uzbekistan. Impoverished Tajikistan sees the hydroelectric projects as potential key revenue earners.

Competition for water could become increasingly heated as global warming and rising populations further reduce the amount of water available per capita.

Water problems also could brew further dissatisfaction among civilians already troubled by poverty and repressive governments; some observers fear that could feed growing Islamist sentiment in the region.

Ban also is taking on the region's frequently poor human rights conditions.

Read More at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/04/aral-sea-almost-dried-up_n_5246...

* 01 April 2010 by Kate Ravilious

Elaborate symbols and ornate depictions of animals carved in stone by an ancient Scottish people have given up their secret – to mathematics. Statistical analysis reveals that the shapes are a forgotten written language. The method could help interpret many other enigmatic scripts – and even analyse animal communication.

Conventional statistical methods for analysing scripts calculate the entropy or "orderedness" of the symbols: Shakespeare's prose would have a higher entropy than Egyptian hieroglyphs or Morse code, for example. However, such analysis only works for datasets large enough to capture most of the vocabulary in a language.

BEIRUT – The lawyer of a Lebanese TV psychic who was convicted in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft said Thursday her client could be beheaded this week and urged Lebanese and Saudi leaders to help spare his life.

Attorney May al-Khansa said she learned from a judicial source that Ali Sibat is to be beheaded on Friday. She added that she does not have any official confirmation of this. Saudi judicial officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

A Lebanese official said Beirut has received no word from its embassy in Riyadh about Sibat's possible execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The Saudi justice system, which is based on Islamic law, does not clearly define the charge of witchcraft.

Indian tribes can help US ease effects of climate change - report

http://www.rechargenews.com/regions/north_america/article209947.ece

Tribal lands can play a significant role in helping the US meet renewable energy goals, while providing green jobs, income and natural resource protection for economically depressed communities, according to a report by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF).

Tribes own and manage more than 95 million acres of land nationwide – almost 5% of the total US land area. That territory contains about 10% of the country’s energy resources, according to the US Energy Department.

DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, for example, estimates that Indian lands have potential for 17,600 billion kilowatt-hours a year of solar energy, equivalent to 4.5 times the total national energy generation in 2004.

The actions of the Christian militia group raided in Michigan are part of a growing trend of militant activity across the U.S. because of the weak economy and an African-American president, experts and a civil rights group said today.

Hutaree, a militia based in Lenawee County, allegedly planned an uprising against the U.S. government by plotting to murder police.

"I don't think this is the last we're going to see of these groups," said Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at Syracuse University who studies religious violence and extremism. "The number of such groups has increased fairly dramatically in the last couple of years."

The number of extremist anti-government groups and militias grew from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009, said Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil groups that monitors extremism.

"That is a lot of change in a short period of time," Beirich said.

"Goddess" Glacier Melting in War-Torn Kashmir
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100324-himalaya-glacier-...

kashmir;himalaya;glacier;melt

The Kolahoi glacier, in Kashmir, is receding at a rate of nearly 10 feet (3 meters) a year.

Photograph by Robert Picker, Photolibrary

Rebecca Byerly in Kashmir

for National Geographic News

Published March 24, 2010

This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more clean water news, photos, and information, visit National Geographic's Freshwater website.

The Kolahoi glacier in the western Himalaya is known as Gwash Brani—"goddess of light"—to the millions of people in India and Pakistan who depend on its yearly run-off for survival.

"Kolahoi is our everything," said Ashraf Mohammed Ganai, 24, a lean Kashmiri man who makes his living guiding scientific expeditions to Kolahoi. "Without her, we are lost."

Russian protesters say factory to pollute world's oldest lake

http://news.yahoo.com/s//afp/20100328/sc_afp/russiaprotestenvironmentind...

Sun Mar 28, 3:48 pm ET

MOSCOW – Hundreds of people protested on Sunday in Moscow against the reopening of a factory environmentalists say will lead to waste being dumped into the world's oldest lake, a Greenpeace activist said.

"The fate of (factory) workers must be decided while taking into account the fate of (Lake) Baikal -- and not that of the oligarchs," Russian writer Valentin Rasputin said in a message read out during the protest.

Greenpeace activist Evgeny Usov put the number of protesters at nearly 1,000.

The cellulose factory, on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia, was closed in October 2008, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin authorised its reopening earlier this year.