-- Reminded me of "The Road", if you've read the book, or seen the movie. Also very Matrix/Gotham-esque.

"Earlier this month, the U.S. military began a withdrawal from the Pech Valley in eastern Afghanistan, a narrow canyon where U.S. forces have been battling insurgents for the past 8 years. American officials say the reason for the withdrawal is to be able to refocus its efforts on providing security to the Afghan capital, Kabul. More than 100 American soldiers have died in the Pech Valley since 2003. Across Afghanistan, 34 NATO personnel were killed this month, bringing the total to 60 deaths so far this year. Civilian casualties have been much higher than usual recently, as both insurgent attacks and NATO raids have reportedly killed scores of Afghan citizens across the country. As NATO forces prepare for warmer weather and anticipate more fighting, President Hamid Karzai now claims to be in talks with the United States about the possible establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in his country. Collected here are images of Afghanistan and the continued conflict there during the month of February."

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"President Barack Obama reversed course Monday and ordered a resumption of military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making his once ironclad promise to close the isolated prison look even more distant.

Guantanamo has been a major political and national security headache for the president since he took office promising to close the prison within a year, a deadline that came and went without him ever setting a new one.

Obama made the change with clear reluctance, bowing to the reality that Congress' vehement opposition to trying detainees on U.S. soil leaves them nowhere else to go. The president emphasized his preference for trials in federal civilian courts, and his administration blamed congressional meddling for closing off that avenue.

"I strongly believe that the American system of justice is a key part of our arsenal in the war against al-Qaida and its affiliates, and we will continue to draw on all aspects of our justice system – including (federal) courts – to ensure that our security and our values are strengthened," Obama said in a statement.

"Going forward, all branches of government have a responsibility to come together to forge a strong and durable approach to defend our nation and the values that define who we are as a nation."

The first Guantanamo trial likely to proceed under Obama's new order would involve Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2006.

Defense officials have said that of around 170 detainees at Guantanamo, about 80 are expected to face trial by military commission.

On Monday, the White House reiterated that the administration remains committed to eventually closing Guantanamo – which is on a U.S. Navy base – and that Monday's actions were in pursuit of that goal..."

-- Change we can't believe in.

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-- The clip is quite a bit WTF reaction inducing, but awesomeness.. haha...

“It's official: the Subway sandwich chain has surpassed McDonald's Corp. as the world's largest restaurant chain, in terms of units.

At the end of last year, Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide, compared to McDonald's 32,737. The burger giant disclosed its year-end store count in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late last month.

The race for global dominance is an important one for an industry that's mostly saturated in the U.S. High unemployment and economic uncertainty have battered the restaurant industry in the U.S., and chains are increasingly looking overseas for growth, particularly in Asia.

Starbucks Corp. recently said it plans to triple its number of outlets in China, for example. Dunkin' Brands Inc., parent of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins, plans to open thousands of new outlets in China in coming years as well as its first stores in Vietnam in the next 18 months. Subway just opened its 1,000th location in Asia, including its first in Vietnam.

Subway, which opened its first international restaurant in 1984, in Bahrain, expects its number of international restaurants to exceed its domestic ones by 2020, says Don Fertman, Subway's Chief Development Officer. The chain currently has just over 24,000 restaurants in the U.S., where it generated $10.5 billion of its $15.2 billion in revenue last year.

The closely held company, owned by Doctor's Associates Inc., does not disclose its profits.

McDonald's is still the leader when it comes to sales. The burger chain reported $24 billion in revenue last year. "We remain focused on listening to and serving our customers, and are committed to being better, not just bigger," a McDonald's spokeswoman says…”

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-- “Just released video from a New York police helicopter reveals the horror of the terror attack on the World Trade Center as it happens. The 17-minute footage shows incredibly close footage of black smoke billowing from the towers in the biggest terror attack ever on US soil. "Holy shit," says one cop as the crew watches later as the first tower crumble to dust from a helicopter landing pad. The video was obtained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the Freedom of Information Act and was sent with several photos anonymously to the Cryptome website.”

-- "An African spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata) with two heads and five legs is displayed in Zilina, Slovakia. The seven-week-old two-headed tortoise has been given two names: Magda (left head) and Lenka (right head)."

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"Fossilized alien microbes have been discovered in a sample extracted from a meteorite, according to research carried out by a NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center astrobiologist. What's more, he has challenged any scientist to investigate his work.

Published in the online Journal of Cosmology, Richard Hoover's paper claims to have made the discovery after finding "large complex filaments" inside "freshly fractured internal surfaces" of carbonaceous chondrite meteorite samples (including new fragment samples from the famous French Orgueil meteorite).

Some of the "alien" fossils appear to resemble bacteria found on Earth (such as types of cyanobacteria, a microorganism that helped make early-Earth hospitable to life by producing oxygen), whereas others don't look so familiar.

"The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth," Hoover told Fox News in an "exclusive" interview.

"There are some that are just very strange and don't look like anything that I've been able to identify, and I've shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped."

This discovery could have huge implications for the genesis of life on Earth. If there are microbes that originated inside a meteorite that was found on Earth, did life originate from space? If so, did life on Earth get "seeded" by a meteorite? Perhaps Earth-Brand™ Life is actually an evolved form of Cosmic-Brand™ Life?..."

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"Whether Antarctica's ice will survive a warmer world is one of the great puzzles of climate science. Now it seems vast expanses of ice may have hung on for the past 200,000 years, surviving the last interglacial.

The west Antarctic ice sheet's base is below sea level, which should make it unstable. If it were to collapse the torrent of fresh water could raise global sea level by 5 metres. Whether or not this will happen as temperatures climb is a hotly debated topic.

A new study by David Sugden at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues suggests the ice sheet may be more stable than we thought. They studied the Heritage range of mountains near the central dome of the west Antarctic ice sheet. Specifically, the researchers looked at blue-ice moraines, where winds erode the ice in topological depressions, exposing the rocks beneath.

They analysed the moraine for beryllium isotopes produced by cosmic radiation, which accumulate in the rock when it is exposed. Sugden's team found evidence that the moraines had been forming for at least 200,000 years, suggesting that ice has covered the area for at least that long (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.01.027), and therefore survived the last interglacial 125,000 years ago.

Don't expect this to be the final word on the matter. A recent study by Robert Kopp at Princeton University (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08686) suggests sea levels were 8 to 9 metres higher than now during the last interglacial, in part due to the west Antarctic ice sheet melting. If Sugden's team is correct, that amount of sea level rise would be unlikely.

Working out who is right is a "frustrating and intriguing scientific riddle that we'd love to unravel", says Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Even if the central parts of the ice sheet can survive a warming climate, melting is likely at the extremities, says Sugden. Tim Naish of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, agrees. With melting at the edges and in Greenland, "we're looking at a rise of one metre plus or minus 0.5 metres" by 2100, he says - double the maximum predicted in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

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