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Okoii 3 Step Beauty Set Giveaway!

One lucky winner will win 3 full size products of the   Okoii Natural Skin Care line. 1. Luxury Rice Bran Face Soap. 2. Authentic Green Tea Purifying Toner. 3. Green Tea Beauty Moisturizer. Doesn’t that sound divine! I personally  have tried this products you can see my review here: Okoii Natural Skin Care  "Okoii’s skin care products are all handmade, and produced one by one with care for your skin in mind, upon receiving an order from you.” Okoii uses high quality raw ingredients locally that blend into traditional ingredients from Asia, and Japan. Okoii’s products refrain from using artificial colors, fragrances, synthetic ingredients and preservatives, and animal fats.




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Giveaway ends August 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm EST. Giveaway is open for US residents, no PO Boxes. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to notification and claim prize, send shipping information. If not a new winner will be chosen. The sponsor is responsible for providing the prize.





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Iraq says to buy 36 F-16 fighters from U.S

Five U.S. Air Force F-16 "Fighting Falcon" jets fly in echelon formation over the U.S. en route to an exercise in this undated file photograph. REUTERS/USAF/Staff Sgt. Greg L. Davis/Handout/Files
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday his government would buy 36 F-16 fighters from the United States, doubling the number it had initially planned to purchase to strengthen its weak air defenses.
The announcement of the deal came as Iraq and the U.S. government discuss whether to keep some U.S. troops or military trainers in the OPEC country after the planned withdrawal of the last American soldiers at the end of the year.
"A delegation from the Iraqi Air Force along with advisers will travel to revive the contract to include a larger number than the contract had agreed before... We will make it 36 instead of 18," Maliki told reporters.
"We have to provide Iraq with airplanes to safeguard its sovereignty," he said.
Iraq's air force is one of the weakest branches of its armed forces, which are still battling insurgents and militias more than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.
The country still relies on U.S. forces for air support for its troops. The United States formally ended combat missions in Iraq last year and American soldiers are now mainly advising and assisting the Iraqi military.
Iraq this year delayed the initial purchase of the F-16s from Lockheed Martin after putting $900 million of allocated funds into its national food program to ease pressure from Iraqis protesting against poor basic services.
Maliki's government is discussing whether to ask for civilian contractors rather than keep U.S. troops on the ground after the withdrawal deadline, according to Iraqi sources. Keeping American soldiers on Iraqi soil is a sensitive issue for the fragile power-sharing coalition.
Violence in Iraq has eased since the bloody days of sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, but Sunni Islamist insurgents and Shi'ite militias still carry out almost daily attacks and assassinations.
Some of Iraq's neighbors and Kurds in the semi-autonomous north have in the past raised concerns about Baghdad purchasing sophisticated weapons systems such as F-16 jets.
Under Saddam, Iraq's air force was one of the largest in the region with hundreds of mainly Soviet-designed jets. Its military was disbanded after the former dictator was ousted following the invasion in 2003.

South Yemen clashes kill 14; 15 die in friendly fire

Supporters of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh gather at the Unknown Soldier Monument during a rally to show their support, in Sanaa July 29, 2011. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Two Yemeni army colonels, five soldiers and seven Islamist militants died overnight in fighting in southern Yemen, while artillery and air raids killed 15 pro-government tribesmen by mistake, local and tribal officials said on Saturday.
The clashes flared outside Zinjibar, center of the province of Abyan where militants have seized several areas, a local official told Reuters. The region abuts an international shipping lane where 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
A colonel and five soldiers were killed in an ambush and seven militants died in clashes that followed. Another colonel was killed in a separate shootout, the local official said.
A tribal official said the army and air force targeted the tribesmen after mistaking them for militants as they approached Zinjibar in another location late on Friday, killing 15 of them.
The militants' increasing threat to army control in south Yemen is kindling fear in the West and neighboring Saudi Arabia that al Qaeda'Yemen wing is taking advantage of political turmoil and six months of anti-government protests.
The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released an audio recording by its military commander on an Islamist website on Friday in which he vowed to attack the Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.
Opposition leaders have accused President Ali Abdullah Saleh of deliberately allowing Zinjibar and the other areas to fall to al Qaeda-linked militants for the time being in an effort to show how chaotic Yemen would be without him.
On Friday, tens of thousands gathered for protests both for and against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's three-decade rule.

Libyan rebel commander killed by allied militia

People carry the coffin of Libya's rebel military commander Abdel Fattah Younes during his burial in Benghazi July 29, 2011. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori
Libyan rebels say the gunmen who shot dead their military chief were fighters allied in their struggle to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, raising questions over divisions and lawlessness within rebel ranks.
The assassination of Abdel Fattah Younes, apparently by his own side, has hurt the opposition just as it was winning broader international recognition and launching an offensive against Gaddafi's forces in the west of the country.
After 24 hours of confusion, rebel minister Ali Tarhouni said Younes had been killed by fighters who went to fetch him from the front and that his bullet-riddled and partially burned body was found at ranch near the rebel capital of Benghazi.
Tarhouni said a militia leader had been arrested and had confessed that his subordinates had carried out the killing.
"It was not him. His lieutenants did it," Tarhouni told reporters late on Friday, adding that the killers were at large.
Younes had been part of Gaddafi's inner circle since the 1969 coup that brought the Libyan colonel to power and was interior minister before defecting to the rebels in February.
Many rebels had been uncomfortable working under a man who had been so close to Gaddafi for 41 years, and rebel sources said on Thursday Younes had been recalled over suspicions that he or his family were secretly in contact with Gaddafi.
Rebels were divided over who had killed Younes, some suspecting his execution was ordered by rebel leaders for treason, many believing he was killed by Gaddafi supporters who had infiltrated rebel ranks and still others suggesting a rebel splinter group had acted alone.
Whatever the truth, the killing deepens concerns among the rebels' Western backers, keen to see them prevail in a five-month-old civil war but frustrated by their lack of unity and nervous about the influence of Islamists.
The United States, which like some 30 other nations has formally recognized the opposition, called for solidarity.
"What's important is that they work both diligently and transparently to ensure the unity of the Libyan opposition," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in Washington.
REBELS TARGET GADDAFI STRONGHOLD
Rebels who rose up against Gaddafi in February have seized swathes of the country but remain poorly equipped and are still far from ousting him, despite support from NATO airstrikes.
Anti-Gaddafi forces said on Saturday they had encircled the Libyan leader's last stronghold in the Western Mountain region and hoped to seize it soon.
Rebel tanks fired at Tiji, where an estimated 500 government troops are stationed, and said the blasts could be heard from the nearby town of Hawamid, which was captured on Thursday.
"We have Tiji surrounded and we hope to take it by the end of the day," rebel commander Nasir al Hamdi, a former colonel in Gaddafi's police force, told Reuters as gunfire crackled in the distance and he surveyed a battleground scattered with tankshell casings and government anti-aircraft bullets.
NATO airstrikes continued in western Libya overnight. NATO said it had bombed three satellite dishes in Tripoli to stop "terror broadcasting", but Libyan state TV remained on the air.
In the east, confusion reigned over who had killed Younes.
Rebel fighters said members of the February 17 Martyrs' Brigade, a rebel group that fights on the front and helps enforce security in the rebel-held east, had collected Younes from the frontline near the oil town of Brega on Thursday.
Younes knew and trusted the men who came to fetch him and went without a struggle when they explained they had a judge's order to take him to Benghazi for questioning, the rebels said.
The February 17 Martyrs Brigade is made up largely of civilian volunteers led by military commanders and is widely used by the Transitional National Council for some policing duties.
However, Tarhouni, the rebel minister, said it was not this group but another militia, the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade, who had killed Younes.
Locals said the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade was mainly comprised of former prisoners of Gaddafi's notorious Abu Salim prison in the capital Tripoli, who had always distrusted Younes.
Named after one of the companions of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, the group is likely to have Islamist leanings.
One rebel commander, who asked not to be named, said Islamists whom Younes had targeted as interior minister may have killed him in retaliation.
"Some of those Islamists are now fighting with the rebels and they have always refused to fight under Younes's command and have always viewed him with suspicion," he said.
"I don't think the investigation will lead anywhere. They don't dare to touch the Islamists."
The government in Tripoli, which has always warned of Islamist influence in the east, said al Qaeda was to blame.
Further complicating an already murky situation, some Libyans said they feared that Younes' death would trigger a bloody tribal feud. At the funeral on Friday, his Obeidi tribe pledged allegiance to the rebel cause.
But in an apparent effort to calm nerves among Younes' relatives, a rebel source said that he could be replaced by Suleiman Mahmoud al-Obeidi, a member of the same tribe.
Another leading candidate to take over as military chief was Khalifa Heftar, who lost an early contest with Younes over leadership of the rebels' military campaign, the source said.
The longer the war drags on, the further eastern Libya appears to slip into lawlessness, raising questions about what kind of Libya could emerge if and when Gaddafi goes.
Tarhouni told reporters on Friday night that an armed gang had attacked a prison, helping about 300 former Gaddafi soldiers and loyalists to escape.

Montagne Jeunesse Masque/ Home Spa!

As part of my review I received an assortment of Montagne Jeunesse face mask, to try out. I love the idea of having a home mini facial just to unwind & relax at the comfort of my home. The mask come in a variety to suit your skin type or need. I specially love the deep cleansing masque, it really takes your skin to a whole new level for such an affordable price. It’s  so relaxing to come home & just create your own home spa, doesn’t that sound inviting.  I’m sure you have all heard of Montagne Jeunesse facial mask, I can walk into any drugstore and find a variety of mask to try every week, and never get bored. "Did you know Montagne Jeunesse Masque are full of the most delicious and natural ingredients under the sun? A complete range of top toe beauty treats, good for your skin, your wallet and the earth.” For more information & to stay connected follow Montagne Jeunesse on Twitter 


Assortment of Montagne Jeunesse Masque.
Aren’t they so pretty! 
Strawberry Souffle - Moisturizing & Purifying Masque!
Fruit Smoothie Masque - Deeply Cleansed, Fresh & Sparkling!


White Chocolate - Ultra Deep Cleansing Masque!
Apricot Scrub Masque - Deep Exfoliating & Ultra Cleansing! 

Crystal Masque - Smoothes, Softens & Conditions Skin!
Clean-Up Mud - Blemish Prone Skin! 


Fruit Smoothie Masque - Pore Cleansing, crushed Rasberry & Mango!
Chocolate Masque - Deep Pore Cleansing, with cocoa & shea butter! 

So last night I decided to try the Clean-Up Mud mask, for blemish prone skin. It is literally like mud, it dries quick on your skin, I left it on for 15 minutes, then rinsed off with warm cool water. I tend to breakout more in the summer and this mask was just what I needed, my skin felt clean, refresh. There’s enough in the package for 2 facials, I like to keep mine after its been open in the fridge. The best 15 minutes I’ve spent, so relaxing to come home & enjoy a mini facial, don’t you think! I can’t wait to try the rest of the mask, the chocolate mask looks good enough to eat! 


Clean-Up Mud
Cleanse, Apply, Relax- 10-15 mins



Some of the ingredients are: Seal Salt, Evening Primrose,
Aloe Leaf Juice. Its sort of like a mud paste, its a thick mud.

The Clean-Up Mud mask dries into a hard, tough mud pie.
10-15 minutes.

A big thank you to Montagne Jeunesse for providing the products for the review. I received this products for the purpose of my review. This are my complete true & honest words. Read the Disclosure Statement.










Motorola product delays, tablet price to hurt third quarter

A Motorola Xoom tablet is displayed during the first day of the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6, 2011. REUTERS/Steve Marcus
Motorola Mobility warned that its third-quarter profit would miss expectations due to a long delay of a keysmartphone launch and a tablet computer price cut, sending its shares down 4 percent.
Chief Executive Sanjay Jha said Motorola's Bionic, a high-speed device for Verizon Wireless, would be delayed until September, which was later than analysts had expected for the device whose launch had already been delayed to the summer from its original target for a second quarter launch.
The delay, which also involves a Motorola tablet computer, will put Motorola under ever more pressure to compete with Apple Inc, which is expected to launch a new iPhone this fall at Verizon Wireless.
"It would have been nice if Motorola had a clear window prior to the release of the new iPhone," said CL King analyst Lawrence Harris. Motorola had announced the product on January 5 at the consumer electronics show.
"It's highly unusual to have a product delayed this long. They really had to go back to the drawing board in this," said Harris, who noted that many people on Wall Street had hoped for an August launch of the phone.
A high-speed version of Motorola's Xoom tablet, also announced in January, will also be delayed until September, Motorola said. It had also originally slated that product launch for the second quarter.
Gross profit margins will also be worse than expected this quarter, because Motorola was forced to cut the price of its first version of Xoom to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc's iPad and Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Tab.
DELAYS AND PRICE CUT
Motorola cut the price of Xoom to $499 from $799 at Verizon Wireless on July 25 to compete with iPad and tablets like Galaxy as consumers weren't willing to pay a premium for the Motorola device, which like Galaxy is based on Android software from Google Inc. It launched Xoom at Verizon on February 24.
The company gave a third-quarter earnings target ranging from break-even to 10 cents per share, excluding unusual items, compared with analyst expectations for 24 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
"It's all lining up to be a weak quarter that's going to ripple though to the end of the year," said Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder.
Motorola's full year forecast for 2011 of 48 cents to 60 cents per share missed Wall Street expectations for 71 cents per share.
Jha said he had misjudged pricing in the highly competitive tablet market but vowed that Motorola's profit would be back on track in the fourth quarter, when he promised to introduce more competitive products.
"We now recognize where the price points are," Jha told Reuters. "For the fourth quarter we'll launch very good, new tablets and we'll have a good quarter."
By year end, Jha promised that Motorola would have five devices based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) -- the high-speed technology both Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc are using.
This will include at least one more LTE handset besides the Bionic and two more tablets besides the LTE version of Xoom, Jha said.
For the second quarter, it reported a loss of $56 million, or 19 cents per share, compared with a profit of $80 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding unusual items Motorola earned 9 cents per share in the quarter, ahead of analyst expectations for 6 cents a share
according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue rose to $3.3 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $3.12 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Motorola said on Thursday it shipped 4.4 million smartphones in the quarter, in line with expectations from six analysts contacted by Reuters. It has also sold 440,000 tablet computers, ahead of analyst expectations for about 366,000.
The company tweaked its full year sales estimate for Android tablets and smartphones to a range of 21 million to 23 million from 20 million to 23 million.
Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc.
Motorola shares fell to $22.01 in after-hours trading, down 3.9 percent for their $22.91 close on the New York Stock Exchange.

NASA's Juno to circle Jupiter for 'planetary recipe'

An artist's rendition released by NASA shows the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter. Juno is set to launch aboard an Atlas V rocket on August 5, 2011
The US space agency NASA plans to launch a solar-powered spacecraft called Juno next week that will journey to Jupiter in search of how the huge, stormy giant was formed.
The $1.1 billion unmanned orbiter is scheduled for launch on August 5 -- the start of a five-year odyssey toward the solar system's biggest planet in the hopes that it will be able to circleJupiter for a year.
With its fiery red eye and a mass greater than all the objects in the universe combined, Jupiter is intriguing to astronomers because it is believed to be the first planet that took shape around the Sun.
"After the sun formed, it got the majority of the leftovers," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator and scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
"And that is why it is very interesting to us -- if we want to go back in time and understand where we came from and how the planets were made, Jupiter holds this secret," he said.
"So we want to know that ingredient list. What we are really after is discovering the recipe for making planets."
Juno aims to get closer to Jupiter than any other NASA spacecraft and will be the first to undertake a polar orbit of the planet, said Bolton.
In 1989, NASA launched Galileo, an orbiter and probe that entered the planet's orbit in 1995 and plunged into Jupiter in 2003, ending its life.
Other NASA spacecraft -- including Voyager 1 and 2, Ulysses and New Horizons -- have done flybys of the fifth planet from the Sun.
"We are getting closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft has gone in orbiting Jupiter. We are only 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) above the cloud tops," Bolton told reporters this week.
"And we are actually dipping down beneath the radiation belts which is a very important thing for us because those radiation belts are the the most hazardous region in the solar system other than going right to the Sun itself."
Its trip to Jupiter will not be a direct shot, according to Jan Chodas, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"We launch from Earth in August, we swing out past the orbit of Mars, we do a couple of deep space maneuvers to fire the engine," Chodas told reporters.
Juno then heads back toward Earth, "and we do a flyby of Earth of about 500 kilometers in October 2013, and then we slingshot ourselves out towards Jupiter arriving in July 2016," she said.
When it gets there Juno will make use of a series of instruments, some of which were provided by European space agency partners Italy, Belgium and France, to learn about the workings of the planet and what is inside.
Two key experiments are to gauge how much water is in Jupiter and whether the planet "has a core of heavy elements at the center, or whether it is just gas all the way down," said Bolton.
Scientists also hope to learn more about Jupiter's magnetic fields and its big red knot, a storm that has been raging for more than 300 years.
"One of the fundamental questions is how deep are the roots to that red spot? How does it maintain itself for so long?" Bolton wondered.
Back in 2003, when plans for Juno were being crafted, NASA briefly considered using some sort of nuclear fuel to power the spacecraft, but engineers decided it would be quicker and less risky to go with solar, he said.
Jim Green, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington, said Juno is part of a series of new planetary science missions, to be followed by Grail which is headed to the Moon in September and the Mars Science Laboratory set to take off in November.
"These missions are designed to tackle some of the toughest questions in planetary science, all about our origin and the evolution of the solar system," said Green.

World's largest radio telescope gears up in Chile

Two of the anntenas used in the ALMA project, at the Operations Support Facility in San Pedro de Atacama desert in 2009. The world's largest network of radio telescopes is ready to begin the first phase of operations in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, an observatory announced Thursday
The world's largest network of radio telescopes is ready to begin the first phase of operations in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, anobservatory announced Thursday.
The ALMA complex, under construction for over a decade, received on Wednesday the 16th of 66 total antennas, enough to "begin its first science observations, and is therefore an important milestone for the project," said the European Southern Observatory, which operates Chile's Paranal observatory.
Antenna 16, measuring 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter and weighing nearly 100 tons, is the first European contribution to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array project as part of a collaboration with United States and Japan.
It was delivered at the Chajnantor plateau, 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level, where it joined antennas from the other international ALMA partners. The European AEM Consortium, under contract from ESO, manufactured the antenna.
"ALMA's Early Science observations are planned to begin later this year. Although ALMA will still be under construction, the 16-antenna array that will be available already outmatches all other telescopes of this kind," ESO said in a statement.
Astronomers from around the world have submitted nearly a thousand proposals for the first scientific observations -- about nine times the number of observations expected to be performed during the early phase, it said.
The first antenna was installed in September 2009. Construction of the radio telescopes is expected to end in 2013 with 66 state-of-the-art antennas in place working together as one powerful telescope to study the origin of planets, stars, galaxies and the universe.
When it reaches full operational capacity, ALMA will have a resolution 10 times greater than theHubble Space Telescope.
The program has an estimated budget of $600 million.

'Trojan' asteroid shares Earth's orbit

This handout image illustrates the orbit of 2010 TK7, the first known Earth Trojan asteroid, discovered by NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of NASA's WISE mission. The 200-300m-wide rock sits in front of our planet at a gravitational "sweet spot", and poses no danger
Earth is not alone in its orbit around the Sun - a small 'Trojan' asteroid sits in front of our planet and leads it, according to British science revue Nature, which published the discovery Thursday.
This diminutive asteroid has a diameter of just 300 metres but is called a Trojan because of its particular position in a stable spot either in front of a planet or behind it. Because the asteroid and planet are constantly on the same orbit, they can never collide.
JupiterMars and Neptune also have Trojan asteroidsaccompanying them, as do two of Saturn's moons.
NASA scientists discovered the asteroid, which lies 80 million kilometres (50 million miles) from Earth, using its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
Astronomers have long thought that Earth did have some Trojans but their discovery has proved elusive because of the difficulty of seeing them in daylight.
"WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth's surface", said Martin Connors, a professor at Canada's Athabasca University and the lead author on the Nature paper on the discovery.
Our Trojan -- which is officially called 2010 TK7 -- has an unusual orbit that takes it further away from the sun that most Trojans go, moving above and below the line of the orbit, which is what attracted scientists' attention.
Connors and his team scanned the sky from January 2010 to February 2011 using additional data about near-Earth objects (NEOs) and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii to try and pinpoint a Trojan.
But this asteroid is keeping its distance: its orbit is "stable for at least 1,000 years", says Connors, and it won't be coming nearer than 24 million kilometres (15 million miles) from Earth over the next 100 years, says NASA.

Libyan rebels say military chief killed


Head of the rebel forces Abdel Fattah Younes gestures during a news conference in Benghazi in this April 5, 2011 file photo. Younes was shot dead by assailants on July 28, 2011 according to Libyan rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Younes was killed by assailants after he had been summoned before a judicial committee that was looking into the military operations. REUTERS/Esam al-Fetori/FilesLibya's rebels say their military chief was shot dead in an incident that remains shrouded in mystery and may point to deep divisions within the movement trying to oust Muammar Gaddafi.
The killing, announced late on Thursday, came as the rebels launched an offensive in the west and won further international recognition, which they hope to translate into access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The rebels said Abdel Fattah Younes, who was for years at the heart of the Gaddafi government before defecting to become the military leader in the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) in February, was shot dead by assailants after being summoned back from the battlefield.
After a day of rumors, rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Younes and two bodyguards had been killed before he could make a requested appearance before a rebel judicial committee investigating military issues.
It was not clear where the attack took place. Adding to the confusion, Jalil said the bodies were yet to be found.
Younes was not trusted by all of the rebel leadership due to his previous role in cracking down on dissidents.
But his death is likely to be a severe blow to a movement that has won the backing of some 30 nations but is laboring to make progress on the battlefield.
"A lot of the members of the TNC were Gaddafi loyalists for a very long time. They were in his inner circle and joined the TNC at a later stage," said Geoff Porter from North Africa Risk Consulting.
"(The killing) is indicative of schisms that have been appearing within the TNC over the last few months ... We might be seeing the most egregious examples of the divisions between the former regime members and the original rebels," he added.
The rebels claimed to have seized several towns in the Western Mountains on Thursday but are yet to make a serious breakthrough. With prospects fading of a swift negotiated settlement, both sides seem prepared for the five-month civil war to grind on into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August.
A rebel official said no deal was worth talking about unless it meant Gaddafi and his powerful sons left Libya, while the veteran leader vowed to fight on "until victory, until martyrdom."
Soon after Jalil's announcement, gunmen entered the grounds of the hotel where he was speaking and fired shots in the air, a Reuters reporter said. No one was hurt.
At least four explosions rocked the center of Tripoli on Thursday evening as airplanes were heard overhead. The city has come under frequent NATO bombing since Western nations intervened on the side of the rebels in March under a United Nations mandate to prevent Gaddafi's forces from killing civilians.
The killing of Younes, who was involved in the 1969 coup that brought Gaddafi to power and then became his interior minister, came after the rebels attacked Ghezaia, a town near the Tunisian border held by Gaddafi throughout the war.
By late afternoon, the rebels said they had taken control of the town, from which Gaddafi forces had controlled an area of the plains below the mountains.
"Gaddafi's forces left the areas when the attack started," said rebel fighter Ali Shalback. "They fled toward the Tunisian border and other areas."
Reuters could not go to Ghezaia to confirm the report, as rebels said the area around the town could be mined. But looking through binoculars from a rebel-held ridge near Nalut, reporters could see no sign of Gaddafi's forces in Ghezaia.
Juma Ibrahim, a rebel commander in western mountains, told Reuters by phone from the town of Zintan that Takut and Um al Far had also been taken in the day's offensive.
Rebels have taken swathes of Libya since rising up to end Gaddafi's 41-year rule in the oil-producing north African state.
They hold northeast Libya including their stronghold Benghazi; the western city of Misrata; and much of the Western Mountains, their closest territory to the capital.
Yet they remain poorly armed and often disorganized.
"We can beat Gaddafi now, we have captured more weapons from the Libyan army, mostly rockets and AK-47s," said Mohammed Ahmed, 20, a market trader turned fighter.
STALEMATE
The fighting has led to a stalemate in a conflict that Gaddafi has weathered for five months, despite rebel gains, mainly in the east, and hundreds of NATO air raids on his forces and military infrastructure.
A recent flurry of diplomatic activity has yielded little, with the rebels insisting Gaddafi step down as a first step and his government saying his role is non-negotiable.
Western suggestions that Gaddafi might be able to stay in Libya after ceding power appeared to fall on deaf ears.
U.N. envoy Abdel Elah al-Khatib visited both sides this week with plans for a ceasefire and a power-sharing government that excludes Gaddafi, but won no visible result.
The rebels said any deal that did not envisage Gaddafi and his sons leaving the country was "not worth talking about" while the Libyan leader appeared defiant on Wednesday, urging rebels to lay down their arms or suffer an ugly death.
At a briefing to the U.N. Security Council in New York, Lynn Pascoe, who heads the body's political department, said both sides had been posturing since discussions began, and added:
"Both sides are willing to talk, but they are still emphasizing maximum demands at this point, and patience is clearly required before detailed discussions can begin."
MONEY
The rebels received a further boost on Thursday when Portugal followed Britain in recognizing them.
London has also unblocked 91 million pounds ($149 million) in frozen assets, joining the United States and about 30 other nations who have now recognized the opposition, potentially freeing up billions of dollars in frozen funds.
Austria said it wanted to unfreeze up to 1.2 billion euros ($1.7 billion) of Libyan money and transfer it to the rebels, but needed legal papers to show that a financial body set up by the NTC amounted to a valid central bank "identical to the one in Tripoli" to which the money had belonged.
The cash-strapped rebels, who control Libya's oil-rich east, have been selling fuel to raise urgently-needed funds, but are unable to pump new supplies because of war disruption.
A tanker carrying crude oil has sailed from Benghazi for Italy, as the rebels sell the last of their stockpile, industry sources and ship tracking data said on Thursday.

NASA probe poised for launch to Jupiter


The planet Jupiter is seen in this image released by NASA, November 24, 2010, which is a composite of three color images taken on November 18, 2010 by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The composite image shows a belt that had previously vanished in Jupiter's atmosphere which is now reappearing. Scientists see thermal emission arising from the tops of Jupiter's clouds, with the hottest emissions coming from the deepest atmosphere and signifying regions with minimal overlying cloud cover. The region inside the white box is the South Equatorial Belt with an unusually bright spot, or outbreak. REUTERS/NASA/JPL/UH/NIRI/Gemini/Handout
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A NASA satellite was hoisted aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Wednesday in preparation for launch next week on an unprecedented mission to the heart of Jupiter.
The robotic probe called Juno is scheduled to spend one year cycling inside Jupiter's deadly radiation belts, far closer than any previous orbiting spacecraft, to learn how much water the giant planet holds, what triggers its vast magnetic fields and whether a solid core lies beneath its dense, hot atmosphere.
"Jupiter holds a lot of key secrets about how we formed," said lead scientist Scott Bolton, with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
Scientists believe Jupiter was the first planet to form after the birth of the sun, though exactly how that happened is unknown. One key piece of missing data is how much water is inside the giant planet, which circles the sun five times farther away than Earth.
Jupiter, like the sun, is comprised primarily of hydrogen and helium, with a sprinkling of other elements, like oxygen. Scientists believe the oxygen is bound with hydrogen to form water, which can be measured by microwave sounders, one of eight science instruments on Juno.
Jupiter's water content is directly tied to where -- and how -- the planet formed. Some evidence points to a planet that grew in the colder nether-regions of the solar system and then migrated inward. Other computer models show Jupiter formed at about its present location by accumulating ancient icy snowballs.
LARGER THAN SISTER PLANETS
However it grew, Jupiter ended up with a mass more than twice all its sister planets combined, giving it the gravitational muscle to hang on to nearly all of its original building materials.
"That's why it's very interesting to us if we want to go back in time and understand where we came from and how the planets were made" -- which Juno can help NASA do, Bolton said.
Juno's journey to Jupiter will take five years. Upon arrival in July 2016, Juno will thread itself into a narrow region between the planet and the inner edge of its radiation belt. The solar-powered probe will then spend a year orbiting over Jupiter's poles, coming as close as 3,100 miles above its cloud tops.
Only an atmospheric probe released by Galileo, NASA's last Jupiter spacecraft, has come closer, though that spacecraft was able to relay data for only 58 seconds before succumbing to the planet's crushing pressure and intense heat.
Juno's electronic heart is protected in a vault of titanium, but it too will fall to the harsh Jovian radiation environment after about a year. Juno's last move will be to dive into the planet's atmosphere to avoid any chance of contaminating Jupiter's potentially life-bearing moons.
Juno's launch is scheduled for August 5. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics of Denver, Colorado. The mission, the second in NASA's lower-cost, quick-turnaround New Frontiers planetary expeditions, will cost $1.1 billion.

International Space Station to be 'sunk' after 2020


A NASA image of the International Space Station (ISS) and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles. Russia and its partners plan to plunge the ISS into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, the space agency said
Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, its space agency said on Wednesday.
"After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish," said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov.
"Right now we've agreed with our partners that the station will be used until approximately 2020," he said in comments released on Wednesday.
Space junk is becoming an increasingly serious headache.
A piece of space debris narrowly missed the space station last month in a rare incident that forced the six-member crew to scramble to their rescue craft.
The ISS, which orbits 350 kilometres (220 miles) above Earth, is a sophisticated platform for scientific experiments bringing together space agencies from Russia, the United States, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Launched in 1998, the ISS was initially expected to remain in space for 15 years until an agreement was reached to keep it operating through 2020.
By going into a watery grave, the ISS will repeat the fate of its predecessor space station Mir, which Russia sank in the Pacific Ocean in 2001 after 15 years of service.
Moscow this month proclaimed the beginning of "the era of the Soyuz" after the US shuttle's last flight left the Russian system as the sole means for delivering astronauts to the ISS.
Russia is currently developing a new space ship to replace the Soyuz capsule which is single-use, except for the section in which spacemen return to Earth, said Davydov.
Tests of the ship will begin after 2015 and it will have "elements of multi-use whose level will be much higher than they are today," he said, adding that Russia will compete with the United States in building the new-generation ship.
"We'll race each other."
Davydov said it remains unclear what will come after the ISS and whether mankind will see the need for a replacement orbiting close to Earth.
"Lots of our tasks are still linked to circumterrestrial space," he said, while adding that a new space station could be used as a base for building complexes that will explore deeper into space.
"I cannot rule out that it will be used to put together, create the complexes that in the future will fly to the Moon and Mars," he said, stressing that "a serious exploration" could not be done without manned flights.

Famed fossil isn't a bird after all, analysis says


One of the world's most famous fossil creatures, widely considered the earliest known bird, is getting a rude present on the 150th birthday of its discovery: A new analysis suggests it isn't a bird at all.
Chinese scientists are proposing a change to the evolutionary family tree that boots Archaeopteryx off the "bird" branch and onto a closely related branch of birdlike dinosaurs.
FILE - This undated photo provided by Luis Chiappe shows the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica, housed at Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde. The Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica, widely considered the earliest known bird, is getting a rude present on the 150th birthday of its discovery: A new analysis says Archaeopteryx isn’t a bird at all. (AP Photo/Luis Chiappe)Archaeopteryx (ahr-kee-AHP'-teh-rihx) was a crow-sized creature that lived about 150 million years ago. It had wings and feathers, but also quite un-birdlike traits like teeth and a bony tail. Discovered in 1861 in Germany, two years after Charles Darwinpublished "On the Origin of Species," it quickly became an icon for evolution and has remained popular since.
The Chinese scientists acknowledge they have only weak evidence to support their proposal, which hinges on including a newly recognized dinosaur.
Other experts say the change could easily be reversed by further discoveries. And while it might shake scientific understanding within the bird lineage, they said, it doesn't make much difference for some other evolutionary questions.
Archaeopteryx dwells in a section of the family tree that's been reshuffled repeatedly over the past 15 or 20 years and still remains murky. It contains the small, two-legged dinosaurs that took the first steps toward flight. Fossil discoveries have blurred the distinction between dinosaurlike birds and birdlike dinosaurs, with traits such as feathers and wishbones no longer seen as reliable guides.
"Birds have been so embedded within this group of small dinosaurs ... it's very difficult to tell who is who," said Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University, who studies early bird evolution but didn't participate in the new study.
The proposed reclassification of Archaeopteryx wouldn't change the idea that birds arose from this part of the tree, he said, but it could make scientists reevaluate what they think about evolution within the bird lineage itself.
"Much of what we've known about the early evolution of birds has in a sense been filtered through Archaeopteryx," Witmer said. "Archaeopteryx has been the touchstone... (Now) the centerpiece for many of those hypotheses may or may not be part of that lineage."
The new analysis is presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and colleagues. They compared 384 specific anatomical traits of 89 species to figure out how the animals were related. The result was a tree that grouped Archaeopteryx with deinonychosaurs, two-legged meat-eaters that are evolutionary cousins to birds.
But that result appeared only when the analysis included a previously unknown dinosaur that's similar to Archaeopteryx, which the researchers dubbed Xiaotingia zhengi. It was about the size of a chicken when it lived some 160 million years ago in the Liaoning province of China, home to manyfeathered dinosaurs and early birds.
Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin, who did not participate in the study, said the reclassification appeared to be justified by the current data. But she emphasized the study dealt with a poorly understood section of the evolutionary tree, and that more fossil discoveries could very well shift Archaeopteryx back to the "bird" branch.
Anyway, moving it "a couple of branches" isn't a huge change, and whether it's considered a bird or not is mostly a semantic issue that doesn't greatly affect larger questions about the origin of flight, she said.
Luis Chiappe, an expert in early bird evolution at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County who wasn't part of the new study, said he doesn't think the evidence is very solid.
"I feel this needs to be reassessed by other people, and I'm sure it will be," he said.