LOS ANGELES — After years of poring over images from space and debating where on Mars the next NASA rover should land, it comes down to four choices: Gale crater, located near the Martian equator and possessing a 3-mile-high mound of layered mineral deposits; Mawrth Vallis, an ancient flood channel in the Martian northern highlands that is rich in clay minerals; Eberswalde crater in the southern hemisphere, which contains remnants of a river delta; and Holden crater, the site of water-carved gullies and sediment deposits.
Scientists in the close-knit Mars research community get one last chance to make their case this week when they gather before the “judges” — the team running the $2.5 billion mission that will soon suggest a landing site to NASA, the ultimate decider.
The stakes are high. Location is everything when it comes to studying whether the red planet ever had conditions that could have been favorable for microbial life.
The upside is that all four candidates are relatively free of dangerous boulders and other hazards that would pose a threat to rover Curiosity upon landing. The size of a mini Cooper, Curiosity is scheduled to launch in late November after a two-year delay.
South Fla. imam, 2 sons arrested on federal charges they provided $50,000 to Pakistani Taliban
MIAMI — An elderly Miami imam and two of his sons have been arrested on federal charges they provided some $50,000 to the Pakistani Taliban, while three others in Pakistan have been indicted on charges of handling distribution of the funds, authorities say.
Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, 76, was arrested Saturday at the Miami Mosque, also known as the Flagler Mosque. One of his sons, Izhar Khan, 24, another imam at the Jamaat Al-Mu’mineen Mosque in nearby Margate, Fla., was arrested there. Another son, Irfan Khan, 37, was detained in Los Angeles. The three are U.S. citizens. Their mosques are not suspected of wrongdoing, authorities said.
Also named in the indictment are three others at large in Pakistan — Hafiz Khan’s daughter, grandson and an unrelated man, all three charged with handling the distribution of funds, authorities said. The Pakistani Taliban are designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization.
The indictment lists about $50,000 in transactions. According to the indictment, the funds were used to buy guns, support militants’ families and promote the cause of the Pakistani Taliban. It alleges that Hafiz Khan owns the religious school in northwest Pakistan that shelters members of the Pakistani Taliban and trains children to become militants.
Khan’s 19-year-old grandson, Alam Zeb, who is accused of collecting and distributing money sent from the U.S. to the Pakistani Taliban, denied the charges against him and his family Sunday.
Swiss voters reject bans on assisted suicide
ZURICH — Voters in Zurich have overwhelmingly rejected calls to ban assisted suicide or to outlaw the practice for nonresidents.
Zurich’s cantonal voters by about a 4-to-1 margin Sunday defeated both measures that had been pushed by political and religious conservatives.
Out of more than 278,000 ballots cast, the initiative to ban assisted suicide was opposed by 85 percent of voters and the initiative to outlaw it for foreigners was turned down by 78 percent, according to Zurich authorities.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and has been since 1941, provided the helper isn’t a medical doctor and doesn’t personally benefit from a patient’s death. About 200 people a year commit suicide in Zurich.
“It’s everybody’s own decision. It must be allowed — they do it anyway,” said Felix Gutjahr, a Zurich voter who opposed the ballot initiatives.