CHARLESTON, S.C. - The nation's governors are closing ranks in opposition to a proposal in Congress that would let the president take control of the National Guard in emergencies without consent of governors.

The idea, spurred by the destruction and chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina's landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi, is part of a House- passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act. It has not yet been agreed to by the Senate.

The measure would remove the currently required consent of governors for the federalization of the Guard, which is shared between the individual states and the federal government.

Two-and-a-half years from now, in early 2009, the Census Bureau plans to send an army of 100,000 temporary workers down every street and dusty, dirt road in America. They will be armed with handheld GPS devices.

Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau's geography division, says they'll capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of every house, apartment and improvised shelter they find.

"We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units," he says. "We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there."

But census workers will add each dwelling, legal or not, to the Census Bureau's Master Address File.

NASA has named a Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist the principal investigator of a proposal, accepted Tuesday, to design a space mission to determine the properties of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion rate of the universe to speed up.

Called the Advanced Dark Energy Physics Telescope, the mission promises to determine the precise location of 100-million galaxies. It would be the most comprehensive survey of the universe ever undertaken, according to team leader Charles L. Bennett, of the JHU Department of Physics and Astronomy.

ADEPT also promises to discover about 1,000 new supernovae.

ADEPT is "based on experimental breakthroughs that have occurred in just the last three years," Bennett said.

When all else seems to be failing, some weary home sellers look for heavenly intervention.

As the housing market slows down, statues of St. Joseph are becoming hot items.

In the last six months, for example, 273 people have purchased statues from three stores run by the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. That's up from 92 sold during the same months last year.

Locally, interest in the 4- to 8-inch figures is on the upswing, if not to those levels. CLC Bookcenter in Northfield reports fielding a handful of inquiries about the statues, which they do not sell.

"I've seen it used, and I've seen homes sell," says Mark Carrier, president of the Atlantic City and County Board of Realtors. "Whether it's attributable to that, I have no idea."

JOHN HEILPRIN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - It has been 2,000 years and possibly much longer since the Earth has run such a fever. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University who chaired the academy's panel.