Day in and day out, staff at Dover Air Force Base continue the sad job of transporting fallen soldiers from Afghanistan and other conflict zones around the world.

Explore a slideshow on the conflict in Afghanistan

The frustration must be great among farmers in the Fukushima zone who are having to dump their harvests due to radiation concerns -- especially in the case of milk farmers, whose cows will keep producing regardless of the nearby nuclear disaster.

Read the latest on the nuclear situation in Japan

While no-joke April Fools' snowstorm swirled toward the Northeast Thursday, warm temps in Anchorage are putting a dent in Snowzilla, a 25-foot tall snowman in Anchorage. In January we posted a picture of Snowzilla in his just-made glory. You can see it here.

According to this story, these dolphins were shipped from Taiji, Japan, which is about 400 miles southwest of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It's also the site of a film about the dolphin industry called "The Cove," which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2009.

Here's a link to more coverage of the disaster in Japan.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory stares at the sun 24/7, but twice a year, Earth gets slightly in the way for up to 72 minutes a day. That creates an "eclipse" that blocks part of the sun's disk. The spring eclipse season is now under way, as you can see in this picture captured on Tuesday. Your typical partial solar eclipse involves the moon's sharply defined disk passing in front of the sun, but during the Solar Dynamics Observatory's eclipses, Earth's atmosphere creates a fuzzy line between the sun and the darkness. Some of the sun's brighter features manage to shine through the murk.

Check out NASA's Eclipse website for upcoming opportunities to see eclipses from Earth, including a partial solar eclipse on June 1 and total lunar eclipses on June 15 and Dec. 10.

More out-of-the-ordinary eclipses:

• European probe tracks solar eclipse from outer space
• Eclipse seen by moon probe as Earth blocks the sun
• Sun gets double-crossed by moon and space station
• Watch a partial eclipse and a sunset on Mars

That's a lot of spiders. I wonder if it harms the trees.

The Department for International Development is helping survivors in Pakistan. More information on the floods and how the UK is helping can be found at http://www.dfid.gov.uk/floodsinpakistan2010.

Jellyfish in an aquarium are wonderful to look at, but not to swim with. Ouch!

Full story. More photos from Pakistan.

Do you have a bike-for-hire program in your city?

What a scenic moment. This photo reminded me of one of my favorite novels growing up, A Separate Peace.

See more cherry blossoms in our 'Spring in bloom' slideshow.

This picture of the galaxies NGC 6872 and IC 4970 is certainly pretty. The two spirals spin around each other in a gravitational dance that even astronomers compare to a tango. But the Australian high-school students who created the image said they were going for "more than just a pretty picture." That may be one of the reasons why the team from the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club won this year's competition to produce scientifically useful and aesthetically pleasing images using the Gemini Observatory. The data for this image came from the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope in Chile.

In the essay accompanying their entry, the students said the picture serves "to illustrate the situation faced by the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy in millions of years." That's right, folks ... our galaxy is on course to mix it up with the galaxy next door someday. But don't put on your dancing shoes just yet. The process will probably take billions rather than millions of years. Check out this report to learn more about our future cosmic tango, and click on over to the Gemini website for more about the Australian Gemini student competition.

Bask in the healthy glow of the star cluster and nebula known as NGC 371. This reddish region is a cloud of glowing hydrogen that is giving rise to hot young stars. NGC 371's host galaxy is the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that's a mere 200,000 light-years from Earth. There are lots of open star clusters in our celestial neighborhood, but NGC 371 is worthy of note because of the unexpectedly large number of variable stars that it contains.

This picture is based on data collected by the FORS1 instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. Argentina's Manu Mejias turned the archived data into the picture you see above, which won sixth place in the ESO's Hidden Treasures competition in January.

Just this week, the ESO and Europe's Hubble team served up even more goodies for fans of space imagery: Apple iPad users can download two new apps that show off the top 100 images from the ESO, and another 100 stunners from the Hubble Space Telescope. No iPad? No problem! You can see both top-100 lists on the ESO website and the European Space Agency's Hubble site. And while you're clicking around, have a look at our own Space Gallery.

Related to gangs in Guatemala, here's a story about drug trafficking there and another today about the United States working with Guatemalan agents in the arrest of a drug trafficker.

AP reports
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Republican-led House in the state of Ohio has voted to severely limit the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public workers, sending a bill that's sparked weeks of pro-labor protests back to the state Senate.

The full House approved the measure Wednesday on a 53-44 vote.

A vote in the Republican-controlled Senate could come later Wednesday. That chamber narrowly passed a previous version of it.

The measure allows unions to negotiate wages but not health care, sick time or pension benefits. It also does away with automatic pay increases in favor of merit raises. Workers also would be banned from striking.

The Ohio legislation will affect safety workers, teachers, nurses and a host of other government personnel.

A similar law passed by Republican lawmakers in the state of Wisconsin has prompted large protest rallies.

Click here to read more.

AP reports
DENVER — A Colorado woman is demanding that the U.S. government do more to find the body of her husband, six months after he was presumably gunned down on a lake along Texas' border with Mexico.

Tiffany Hartley, who lives east of Greeley in Weld County, said nothing has been done since Mexican officials called off a search for David Hartley on Oct. 14. She held a rally with family and supporters at the Colorado Capitol on Wednesday asking state officials to pressure the Obama administration to do more to find her husband and to secure the border.

Tiffany Hartley told authorities she and her husband were using personal watercraft on Falcon Lake when they were approached Sept. 30 by Mexican pirates who shot and killed her husband. The couple were returning to Texas after photographing a historic church on the Mexican side of the lake, Hartley said.

"We don't want to leave him in the hands of the enemy," she told The Associated Press, referring to suspected pirates or drug smugglers known to roam the lake about 45 miles northwest of McAllen, Texas. "If we get his body back, we can at last honor him the way he would want to be honored, at least by his family."

No death certificate has been issued, and Mexican officials have told Hartley the case remains open.

Click here for the full story.

NBCChicago.com reports
Demolition began Wednesday morning of Cabrini Green's last standing high-rise.

It marks the final stage of a years-long initiative to raze the housing project and signals the last chapter in the development's storied, troubled history.

The few remaining residents moved out of the now-vacated building in December. At one time, Cabrini Green was made up of 10 sections, built over a 20-year stretch that started in 1942, and was home to 15,000 people.

The development became known for gang violence, deteriorating conditions and an unspeakable crime surrounding Girl X, a 9-year-old found strangled, raped and poisoned in a stairwell.

Crime in the complex was so bad that Cabrini became know nationally as the worst housing project in the country.

Read the full story here.

Click here to see more pictures form the conflict in Libya.

See more celebrity sightings in our slideshow.