Scientists share images of lost city in Honduras

NBC News: A high-tech team of scientists and filmmakers shared pictures of what appears to have been a centuries-old civilization in Honduras, one year after they used laser-mapping technology to identify traces of structures in the thick jungle.

The square-shaped and rounded structures, seen in computerized elevation maps of a rugged rain forest, may have been the last vestiges of pyramids, palaces and houses in a fabled settlement known as “la Ciudad Blanca,” or the White City.

Photo: Readings from a laser-mapping system were combined to produce a 3-D map of the Honduran rain forest, and then the vegetation was virtually lifted up from the scene to reveal the ruins of a circular structure. (UTL Scientific)

USAF sidelines 17 ICBM launch officers; cites ‘rot’ within system

AP: The US Air Force stripped an unprecedented 17 officers of their authority to control — and, if necessary, launch — nuclear missiles after a string of unpublicized failings, including a remarkably dim review of their unit’s launch skills. The group’s deputy commander said it is suffering “rot” within its ranks.

The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., which earned the equivalent of a “D” grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations.

Photo: This file photo provided by the National Park Service shows the inside of the deactivated Delta Nine Launch Facility near Wall, S.D., that is now open to the public. (AP)

Bride, 4 others die in limo fire on a California bridge

AP: When one of the nine women in his limousine complained about smoke, Orville Brown pulled to the side of a San Francisco Bay bridge to check. As he got out, the back of the vehicle became engulfed in flames.

A newlywed bride and eight of her friends were still inside, but passersby quickly pulled three from the burning Lincoln Town Car late Saturday night. And one woman managed to reach safety by squeezing through the partition from the passenger section to the driver’s compartment, Brown told authorities.

But five others, including the bride whose marriage they were celebrating on a girls’ night out, became trapped.

Tweeting Turkish pianist given suspended sentence for blasphemy

Reuters: A world-renowned concert pianist was given a suspended jail sentence in Turkey for insulting religious values on Twitter, a case which has become a cause celebre for Turks alarmed about creeping Islamic conservatism.

Fazil Say, also a leading composer, went on trial in October for blasphemy - a crime that can carry an 18-month sentence - for a series of tweets including one citing a thousand-year-old poem.

Photo: Turkish classical pianist Fazil Say performs during a concert in Ankara October 14, 2010. (Reuters/Stringer)

Demonstrator confronts Putin and Merkel in Hanover

Telegraph: A bare-breasted protester with an obscene anti-Putin slogan daubed on her back has confronted the Russian president and German chancellor Angela Merkel at a trade fair in Hanover.

US sends nuclear-capable stealth bombers over South Korea

NBC News: Two American B-2 Spirit stealth bombers practiced an attack on the Korean Peninsula Thursday as part of a military exercise that has sparked angry threats from North Korea.

The U.S. military said the planes involved in the firing drill left Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a “long-duration, round-trip training mission.”

Two-headed shark discovered

Barcroft Media/Telegraph: Scientists have discovered what they believe to be the first-ever two-headed bull shark.

North Korea puts rocket units on ‘highest alert’

NBC News: North Korea stepped up its aggressive rhetoric on Tuesday, ordering its rocket and long-range artillery units to be combat ready and on the “highest alert” and issuing new threats against U.S. bases on Hawaii, Guam and mainland America.

Pyongyang warned that U.S. facilities would be “reduced to ashes and flames the moment the first attack is unleashed,” according to a military order issued by the pariah state’s military “supreme command.”

Photo: Kim Jong Un inspects landing and anti-landing drills at an undisclosed location on North Korea’s east coast. (KCNA via KNS / AFP - Getty Images)

Celebrated Nigerian author Chinua Achebe dies

Today.com: Nigerian novelist and poet Chinua Achebe, whose 1958 novel “Things Fall Apart” addressed colonialism on African society, has died.

Achebe’s breakthrough novel focused on the clash between Western and traditional values. It told the story of colonialism for the first time from an African perspective, and has sold more than 10 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages.

Nelson Mandela has credited Achebe for bringing “Africa to the rest of the world” and called him “the writer in whose company the prison walls came down.”

Photo: Author Chinua Achebe outside his home at Ogidi, eastern Nigeria, in 1999. (AFP/Getty Images file)

US Marine kills 2 colleagues at Quantico base

NBC News: A Marine opened fire on two of his comrades Thursday night at a base in Quantico, Va., before turning the gun on himself, leaving all three dead, military officials said.

A relationship dispute was believed to be behind the shooting, which occurred in the staff barracks area of the Officer Candidates School at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Northern Virginia, a Marine official said.

Photo: The entrance to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Northern Virginia is shown early Friday after three Marines, including the suspected assailant, died in a shooting. (Matthew Barakat / AP)

‘Baby picture’ of the universe unveiled

NBC News: The European-led team behind the Planck cosmology probe on Thursday released the mission’s first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background — a “baby picture” of the universe that could eventually reveal how it inflated in the first moments of its existence, and whether it possesses the extra dimensions that are predicted by some theorists.

“To a cosmologist, this map is a gold mine of information,” University of Cambridge astrophysicist George Efstathiou, a member of the Planck science team, said during a Paris news conference. He joked that not that long ago, cosmologists might have “given up their children” to have such a map in their hands.

Photo: The Planck cosmology probe has produced the most detailed all-sky map to date showing the cosmic background radiation, also known as the afterglow of the big bang. (ESA)

More than 900 people injured by falling meteor in Russia

More than 900 people have sought medical attention after a huge meteorite streaking through the skies of Russia’s Chelyabinsk region triggered a powerful shock wave.

Calling the injury toll “unprecedented,” British expert Robert Massey said this is the biggest known human toll caused by an object from space, Agence France-Presse reports.

Read more and see additional photos and videos on BreakingNews.com.

Photo: Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP

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Mubarak sentenced to life in prison

The Associated Press reports that Egypt’s ex-President Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to life in prison after a court convicted him on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during last year’s uprising that forced him from power.

AP Photo/Amr Nabil