"For the past couple of months, Libyan rebels have been advancing and retreating along a dangerous coastal highway in their battle with forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. NATO airstrikes have reportedly helped the rebels, despite several reported "friendly-fire" incidents. Qaddafi retains a strong hold on much of western Libya, where the rebel military effort appears to be shifting more to guerrilla tactics. Last night, Qaddafi accepted a cease-fire proposal brought to him by an African Union delegation, but rebel forces claim that they will not negotiate unless Qaddafi steps down. Several journalists are currently unaccounted for in Libya, some of whom are thought to be detained by the Libyan government, including Clare Morgana Gillis, a U.S. citizen who has reported from Libya for TheAtlantic.com and USA Today. Collected here are scenes from the country over the past several weeks."

-- Some really powerful photography, follow the links for the rest.

SEE HERE

"Despite years of delays and soaring costs, Typhoon fighters – the RAF's latest fast jet – are suffering from a shortage of spares, with planes being cannibalised and pilots grounded, according to a Commons investigation.

The aircraft, originally called the Eurofighter in a joint project with Germany, Italy and Spain, was conceived in the cold war when the Ministry of Defence ordered 232. The RAF will end up having fewer than half that number from a project in which the cost of each plane has increased by 75% to £126m each.

The overall project is costing £20.2bn, £3.5bn more than first expected, says the report by MPs on the Commons cross-party public accounts committee. The RAF has had to spend an extra £2.7bn buying 16 additional aircraft it does not need to honour contractual commitments to other countries producing the planes. In 2019, it will scrap more than 50 Typhoon jets that became operational only three years ago to a cost of more than £4.5bn because it cannot afford to update them.

The RAF is experiencing difficulties now as its priority is to adapt as many planes as possible for a ground attack role. "Problems with the availability of spares mean that Typhoons are not flying the hours required and the department is forced to cannibalise parts," the MPs say in the report.

"As a result, it is not fully training all its pilots, and only eight of the 48 Typhoon pilots were capable of undertaking ground attack missions on Typhoon. In addition, the [MoD] had to ground five pilots temporarily in 2010."

The problem is likely to be exacerbated as Typhoons are used in a wider range of operational roles, today's report says..."

-- Apparently we're not the only ones building over-priced jets.

READ HERE

-- Short video produced by NPR about the 1962 event when the U.S. government exploded an H-bomb 1000x more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb in outer space.

-- Do want.

-- LOL. YES! Apparently this is a real ad for the 40D that Canon published in Digital Photographer magazine back in 2008.

-- "Mars-orbiting probes have spied hundreds of mounds, some up to 500 meters across and dozens of meters tall, inside an ancient crater near the planet's equator. In the 15 April issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, researchers make the case that these enigmatic features (depicted in blue in the main image) are mud volcanoes. For one thing, the near-circular mounds weren't formed by molten-rock volcanoes because there are no deposits of volcanic ash or lava nearby. Instead, the mounds contain boulders and other chunks of material apparently stripped from underlying layers of sediments (depicted in yellow-green), which range from 200 to 500 meters thick. Also, most of the mounds inside the 90-kilometer-wide Firsoff crater (inset) are found on slopes inside the crater rim and were likely created when mud under high pressure—which likely formed during a warmer, wetter phase on the Red Planet—oozed to the surface through a network of cracks there. Other teams have claimed finding mud volcanoes elsewhere on Mars, but the researchers contend that the new finds are the first that definitively link material in the mounds to underlying sediments. "

READ HERE

-- Check this out! It's not limited to just the solar system either.

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"James Mollison traveled around the globe and took some incredibly eye-opening photos of children's bedrooms. He then compiled them into a book, titled Where Children Sleep. Each pair of photographs is accompanied by an extended caption that tells the child's story. The differences between each sleeping space is striking.

Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England. After studying art and design at Oxford Brookes, and later film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design, he moved to Italy to work at Benetton's creative lab, Fabrica.

"The project became a vehicle to think about poverty and wealth, about the relationship of children to their possessions, and the power of children – or lack of it – to make decisions about their lives," says Mollison. "I traveled where I could, and many of the pictures result from chance encounters. I hope these images help other children to think about inequality around the world, and perhaps start to figure out how they may respond.""

-- Kaya, four, lives with her parents in a small apartment in Tokyo, Japan. Her bedroom is lined from floor to ceiling with clothes and dolls. Kaya’s mother makes all her dresses – Kaya has 30 dresses and coats, 30 pairs of shoes, and numerous wigs. When she goes to school, she has to wear a school uniform. Her favorite foods are meat, potatoes, strawberries, and peaches. She wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up.

-- Indira, seven, lives with her parents, brother, and sister near Kathmandu in Nepal. Her house has only one room, with one bed, and one mattress. At bedtime, the children share the mattress on the floor. Indira has worked at the local granite quarry since she was three. The family is very poor so everyone has to work. There are 150 other children working at the quarry. Indira works six hours a day and then helps her mother with household chores. She also attends school, a 30-minute walk away. Her favorite food is noodles. She would like to be a dancer when she grows up.

-- Jamie, nine, lives with his parents and younger twin brother and sister in a penthouse on 5th Avenue, New York. Jamie goes to a prestigious school and is a good student. In his spare time, he takes judo and goes swimming. He loves to study finance. When he grows up, he wants to become a lawyer like his father.

-- Follow the link to see more of this amazing project!

SEE HERE