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Iran is not Iraq. Israel unilateral strike on Iran? US would be $3.7 trillion richer without just-ended Iraq and Afghan war



Iran is not Iraq in terms of size as a nation -
Iran - population: 75 million (17th); area: 1,648,195 km2 (18th)
Iraq - population: 30 million (36th); area: 438,317 km2 (50th)Iran is not Iraq considering their geographic neighbors –
Iran borders with Russia and Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
Iraq borders with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.
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January 2, 2012 Huffington Post: The United States will have spent a total of $3.7 trillion on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, costing 225,000 lives and creating 7.8 million refugees, by the time the conflicts end, according to a report released on Wednesday by Brown University. read more »
Amazing view of Earth: 3D video tour of oceans & marine mammal protected areas (Google Earth in collab. w/ French Gov. and NOAA)
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This Google Earth Tour, narrated by Dan Laffoley, Marine Vice Chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s World Commission on Protected Areas, follows the migrations of whales above and below the surface and visits some of the key marine protected areas and sanctuaries for whales around the world. Join the blue whale in the US national marine sanctuaries off California and journey to the proposed Costa Rica Dome Marine Protected Area in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, one of the key areas being proposed as part of the "Homes for Whales" project of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Follow the humpbacks on migration, from their breeding grounds to the feeding areas in the North Atlantic around the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, and visit one of the most recent protected areas, the Agoa Sanctuary in the French Caribbean. This animated Google Earth Tour was first presented as part of a keynote lecture by Dan Laffoley (IUCN) at the opening of the 2nd International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA) on 7 November 2011 in the Atrium, Fort-de-France, Martinique. It was prepared with the help of Jenifer Austin Foulkes (Google), Charlotte Vick (Sylvia Earle Alliance/Mission Blue) and Erich Hoyt (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society/IUCN).
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Save Ocean, save Earth. UK: no whale meat; Germany: honor Ric O'Barry for dolphins; EU: label oil/ tar sands as carbon-intensive



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Do not bring whale meat home from Iceland, British tourists told - Whale meat on sale at Keflavik airport prompts the Foreign Office to issue a warning to Britons at risk of breaching international law
Up to 70,000 Britons who visit Iceland each year have been given a stiff warning by the Foreign Office not to bring home any whale meat, saying to do so is in breach of international law protecting endangered species.
Penalties of imprisonment or fines up to £5,000 could be meted out by the courts, says the Foreign Office, because importation into Britain and other EU countries is illegal under the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (Cites). read more »
2011-11-11 remembers end of WWI at 11th hour on 11th day of 11th month of 1918, left 9 million soldiers dead, 21 million wounded



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By the end of autumn 1918, the alliance of the Central Powers was unraveling in its war effort against the better supplied and coordinated Allied powers. Facing exhausted resources on the battlefield, turmoil on the home front and the surrender of its weaker allies, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice with the Allies in the early days of November 1918. On November 7, the German chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, sent delegates to Compiegne, France, to negotiate the agreement; it was signed at 5:10 a.m. on the morning of November 11. read more »
World population to reach 7billion in few days (increased 1billion in 12yrs), world resources under more strain than ever before





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Room for one more? World population to reach 7 BILLION in next few days
Children most likely to be born in Asia-Pacific region
Fears over pressure on food supply and medical care
The world's population looks set to smash through the seven billion barrier in the next few days, according to the United Nations.
It comes just 12 years since the total reached six billion - with official estimates saying the figure will top eight billion in 2025 and 10 billion before the end of the century. read more »
Youngest Planet: newborn gas giant may be up to six times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting a sunlike star 450 light-years away

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Youngest Planet Picture: Gas Giant Seen in Throes of Creation... Baby world likely "deep red" to human eyes due to heat of formation.
A new picture of a Jupiter-like world swaddled in gas and dust is a direct image of what may be the youngest planet yet seen, astronomers report.
The newborn gas giant, dubbed LkCa 15b, orbits a sunlike star 450 light-years away in the northern constellation Taurus. The planet orbits inside a disk of material around the star that's no more than two million years old. By contrast, astronomers estimate our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.
The big baby planet may be up to six times the mass of Jupiter, according to theory-based calculations, and it appears to orbit 11 times farther from its parent star than Earth does from our sun.
The new picture was made in near-infrared light, but "the planet would probably appear a deep red to our eye, since it's still glowing from the heat of being formed," said Adam Kraus, lead study author and an astronomer at the University of Hawaii.
Separating Light From Light
Kraus and colleagues zeroed in on the young star based on previous observations that showed a conspicuous gap in the star's surrounding debris disk.
Such gaps are thought to be telltale signs that massive, newly formed planets are circling inside the disks—a protoplanet's gravity would clear away a wide swath of gas and dust as it accumulates matter. read more »
























