Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions

WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects never lose their good-as-new lustre, their very nature means there is still uncertainty about whether we actually own them in the first place, making it tricky to set up a second-hand market. Now an Amazon patent for a system to support reselling digital purchases could change that.

Amazon's move comes after last year's European Union ruling that software vendors cannot stop customers from reselling their products. But without technical support, the ruling has had no impact. In Amazon's system, customers will keep their digital purchases – such as e-books or music – in a personal data store in the cloud that only they can access, allowing them to stream or download the content.

This part is like any cloud-based digital locker except that the customer can resell previous purchases by passing the access rights to another person. Once the transaction is complete, the seller will lose access to the content. Any system for reselling an e-book, for example, would have to ensure that it is not duplicated in the transaction. That means deleting any copies the seller may have lying around on hard drives, e-book readers, and other cloud services, since that would violate copyright.

Amazon may be the biggest company to consider a second-hand market, but it is not the first. ReDigi, based in Boston, has been running a resale market for digital goods since 2011. After downloading an app, users can buy a song on ReDigi for as little as 49 cents that would costs 99 cents new on iTunes.

When users want to sell an item, they upload it to ReDigi's servers via a mechanism that ensures no copy is made during the transfer. Software checks that the seller does not retain a copy. Once transferred, the item can be bought and downloaded by another customer. ReDigi is set to launch in Europe in a few months.

Digital items on ReDigi are cheaper because they are one-offs. If your hard drive crashes and you lose your iTunes collection you can download it again. But you can only download an item from ReDigi once – there is no other copy. That is the trade-off that makes a second-hand digital market work: the risk justifies the price. The idea has ruffled a few feathers – last year EMI sued ReDigi for infringement of copyright. A judge denied the claim, but the case continues.

Used digital goods can also come with added charm. ReDigi tracks the history of the items traded so when you buy something, you can see who has owned it and when. ReDigi's second-hand marketplace has grown into a social network. According to ReDigi founder John Ossenmacher, customers like seeing who has previously listened to a song. "It's got soul like an old guitar," he says. "We've introduced this whole feeling of connectedness."

It could be good for business too if the original vendors, such as iTunes, were to support resale and take a cut of the resell price. Nevertheless, Amazon's move bucks the industry trend. Microsoft's new Xbox, for example, is expected not to work with second-hand games.

But the market could change rapidly now that Amazon's weight is behind this, says Ossenmacher. "The industry is waking up."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Old MP3, one careful owner"

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Michelle Obama's dance moves go viral on YouTube

WASHINGTON - A video clip of First Lady Michelle Obama grooving with a dressed-in-drag Jimmy Fallon on his late-night comedy talk show on Saturday has gone viral on YouTube.

In the video, the pair, each clad in conservative slacks and cardigans, and Fallon with a long brown-haired wig, perform a routine dubbed "Evolution of Mom Dancing," to promote Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" youth fitness and nutrition campaign.

The dance moves -- with names like "The 'Go Shopping, Get Groceries,'" and "The 'Out of Sync Electric Slide'" according to titles splashed on the bottom of the screen -- progress from a simple side-to-side step and ends with Fallon stalking off set as Michelle Obama rocks a smooth "Dougie."

The clip, which has already been viewed nearly a half million times since being posted Saturday and "liked" more than 10,000 times, has prompted effusive comments about the first lady and her first family.

"For the first time... we have a first lady with soul," wrote zestydude87.

And Rina Lubit wrote, "it may be just me but i really love the presidential family. they just really seem like sincerely good and chill people."

In an interview later on the show, Michelle Obama rates her husband's dance skills a "B," saying "he's got, like, three good moves."

Michelle Obama also touts her "Let's Move!" campaign, saying it has seen progress since she launched it three years ago, but there is still work to do.

"Over the past three years, we've seen a culture shift. Now people understand that this is an issue," she said.

"We've got better lunches in the schools, we've got companies putting grocery stores in under-served communities. We've got our athletes, our Olympians, working to get our kids more active. It's really heartening to see."

Obesity is a major health problem in the United States, where one in three adults and almost one in five children is overweight.

Among other initiatives for "Let's Move," the first lady, an attorney by training, has planted the White House's first garden since World War II and written a book with healthy recipes.

- AFP/ir

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Water tank body still mystery

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Cause of death deferred, pending further examination


• Tests show hotel water is free of harmful bacteria, health department says


• Canadian university says woman not registered in classes this year


• Water "had a very funny, sweety, disgusting taste," one guest says

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Two days after the grisly discovery, the case of the Los Angeles hotel water tank corpse is a mystery with many unanswered questions.

The decomposing body of Elisa Lam floated inside a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel while guests brushed their teeth, bathed and drank with water from it for as long as 19 days.

A maintenance worker, checking on complaints about the hotel's water, found the 21-year-old Canadian tourist inside one of four water cisterns Tuesday morning, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.

How and where did Elisa Lam die?

Los Angeles robbery-homicide detectives are treating this as a suspicious death for obvious reasons, Lopez said. Falling into a covered water tank behind a locked door on top of a roof would be an unusual accident.

An autopsy was completed, but the cause of death is deferred pending further examination, assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said Thursday. That may take six to eight weeks.

It will be several weeks before investigators have the toxicology lab report which would show whether Lam had any drugs in her system.

Any marks, injuries or wounds may suggest Lam died elsewhere and was dumped into the tank by her killer.

Water in Lam's lungs could be a sign that she drowned, but it might not tell why she was inside the small tank.

One clue comes from security camera video of Lam inside a hotel elevator the last day she was seen.

She is seen walking into the elevator, pushing the buttons for four floors and then peering out of the opened elevator door as if she is hiding or looking for someone. Clad in a red hoodie, Lam at one point walks out of the elevator before returning to it, pushing the buttons again. She then stands outside the open elevator doorway, motioning with her hands, before apparently walking away.

Lam checked into the Cecil Hotel five days earlier, January 26, on her way to Santa Cruz, California, according to police in her hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Why did it it take so long to find Lam?

Lam's parents reported the University of British Columbia student missing in early February. Her daily calls home stopped on January 31, police told reporters on February 6 at a Los Angeles news conference.

Because it was an international case -- and her parents and sister flew to California to find answers -- the case may have gotten more attention than most of the several thousand missing person reports made in Los Angeles each year.

A search of the hotel then found no sign of Lam, including a trip to the roof with a police search dog, Lopez said.

Strange things began happening with the hotel's water supply later in the month, according to Sabina and Michael Baugh, a British couple who spent eight days there until checking out Wednesday. The water pressure dropped to a trickle at times.

"The shower was awful," Sabina Baugh said. "When you turned the tap on, the water was coming black first for two seconds and then it was going back to normal."

The tap water "tasted horrible," Baugh said. "It had a very funny, sweety, disgusting taste. It's a very strange taste. I can barely describe it."

But for a week, they never complained. "We never thought anything of it," she said. "We thought it was just the way it was here."

Knowing now what they didn't know then about the water is sickening, Michael Baugh said. "It makes you feel literally physically sick, but more than that you feel it psychologically. You think about it and it's not good."

Eventually, the hotel maintenance department investigated the water problem, sending a worker to look into the tank, police said. He saw Lam's lifeless body at the bottom.

A hard-working family

Randy Schmidt, a spokesman for the University of British Columbia, said Lam was registered in a class in August, but was not registered in any classes this year, according to records.

"Unfortunately, we do not have much more to say, other than to extend our deepest sympathies to the family," said Schmidt.

According to Los Angeles police, Lam tended to use public transportation.

Teika Steins, manager of a hostel in Toronto, Canada, said Lam stayed a week there in early December. Steins called the young woman friendly and outgoing.

Flowers and signs were left Thursday outside the temporarily-closed Lam family restaurant in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Tanya Grohmann, who works nearby, said she was saddened by the loss and the fact the family did not know what happened to the young woman.

"They are a hard-working family. They immigrated here," she told CNN affiliate CTV. "They've been in the neighborhood for nine years working. ... They're honest people."

Why did hotel stay open after discovery?

New guests continued to check into the Cecil in the hours after firefighters removed Lam's body from the water tank. But each guest was asked to sign a waiver releasing the hotel from liability if they become ill. "You do so at your own risk and peril," the hotel's release said. Guests who already paid for their rooms would not get refunds if they move out, it said.

CNN's repeated calls to the hotel for comment were unreturned Wednesday and Thursday.

The Los Angeles Public Health Department immediately tested the water supply, but told the manager they could stay open as long as they provided bottle water and warned guests not to drink the tap water.

The results of the testing showed no harmful bacteria in the tank or the pipes, according to Angelo Bellomo, director of environmental health for the department. Chlorine in the city's water may be the reason it is safe, he said.

All of the tanks and pipes in the building still must be drained, flushed and sanitized, Bellomo said. The water will be retested after that process, which should take several days, he said.

Several guests interviewed by CNN on Wednesday indicated the hotel management did not tell them about the body in the water supply they had been drinking and bathing in.

Qui Nguyen learned about it from a CNN reporter Wednesday morning. He decided not to sign the waiver and instead find a new hotel.

Many of its guests are tourists from other countries drawn by the hotel's billing as a "European-style" hotel that is the perfect accommodation for "spend-thrifty travelers."

But if they take Kim Cooper's tour bus ride through the neighborhood, they would hear about the Cecil being the former temporary home to at least two convicted murderers, including "Night Stalker" serial killer Richard Ramirez. Ramirez paid $14 a day to stay on the 14th floor during his 1980s killing spree, Cooper said.

The Cecil Hotel is "in the heart of the action, allowing our guest to embrace the city and the surrounding areas that make Los Angeles famous," according to the description you'll hear when you call there and are placed on hold.

In fact, the hotel is just a few blocks away from the infamous Skid Row district in downtown Los Angeles, but 16 miles from the beaches of Santa Monica, eight miles from Hollywood's Walk of Fame and 12 miles from glamorous streets of Beverly Hills that are prominently featured on the Cecil's website.

If you want a reservation at the Cecil you will have to wait until next month. The website said the hotel is "sold out" until March 1. After then, you can book a room for $65.

Hotel with corpse in water tank has notorious past

CNN's Kyung Lah, Chandler Friedman and Chuck Conder contributed to this report.

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Severe budget cuts to hit economy at delicate time

(CBS News) As the automatic budget cuts known in Washington as the sequester draws closer, consider this: the federal government does $500 billion worth of business with private contractors, including as many as 120,000 small businesses.

That's everyone from the makers of nearly a million pairs of combat boots each year to the roughly 700 companies in 44 states that make parts for the Boeing C-17 military transport plane.

Jill Schlesinger, editor at large of CBS MoneyWatch, told "CBS Evening News" Saturday anchor Jim Axelrod that the blunt cuts come during a delicate time of the nation's economic recovery.

"Let's say that we're running a town, and we just had to make these across-the-board spending cuts," Schlesinger said. "What if we had to cut 20 firemen at the exact same we're going to cut 20 librarians? I mean, I love the library, but they are not equal, and what this sequestration does is it equalizes the pain across every single agency without a forethought, without saying, 'Wait a minute, what's important to safety? What's important to actually bringing money in the door?'"

The cuts would drag on the nation's economic growth, Schlesinger said.

"The economy is still fragile," she said. "Yes, we have been in recovery for a couple of years, and that's good, but this is not a robustic recovery. We're not growing at 3 or 3-and-a-half percent. We're only growing by 2 percent."

Still, the cuts aren't likely to have as negative of an effect on Wall Street because investors saw them coming, Schlesinger said.

"They've built it into their models," she said. "They've said, 'OK, we're going to give up a half a percent of growth, but we still believe that we will be able to grow enough so companies can make money.'"

A lot of the investors Schlesinger spoke to said that if things take a turn for the worse they suspect that Congress will come together and do something retroactively to potentially delay the cuts.

"No one," she said, "wants to be in office presiding over an economy that goes into a double-dip."

Watch Schlesinger's full conversation with Axelrod in the player above

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Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures 15 Fans

A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway injured a number of spectators today, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.

Fifteen spectators were taken to the hospital, according to ESPN, with one on the way to surgery with head trauma.

The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.

The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."

Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.

When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.

His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.

"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."

Driver Michael Annett was taken to the hospital after he slammed head-on into a barrier during the chaos. NASCAR officials told ESPN the driver was awake and alert.

Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.

"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. 'But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.

A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).

But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.

The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.

To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.

Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.

It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.

William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Street theatre catches fancy of India's youth

NEW DELHI: Theatre, which is a big part of Indian tradition, has evolved over the years.

An ancient form of theatre which was once practised to drive home political agendas is today being extensively used to create awareness of social issues in the country.

The growing prominence of street theatre has also caught the fancy of the young.

She moves about with her arms stretched, hair strewn and in ragged clothes.

Delivering her dialogue in a shrill tone, she trails around throwing questions at the surprised audience.

This is not a scene from a Bollywood movie but a snippet of a street play on the status of women in India.

With no stage, arch lights, make-up and minimum props, the medium of street theatre - also known as the people's theatre - has gained wide-spread acceptance and popularity in modern India.

As realistic as it gets, street theatre has become a popular medium to spread awareness about pressing social and political issues in the country.

Dramatist and film-maker, Siddhant Malhotra, said: "I think it is the best possible way to spread awareness, because there is a group of 100 people watching your play.

"You can interact with them, you can engage them right on and they will get your point. By performing a 30-minute play, if you're engaging 100 people at a time, you're changing 100 people at a time which even an advertisement cannot do."

As the name suggests, street plays can be performed anywhere on busy roads, market places or outside offices.

This enables it to reach out to the majority of people for whom theatre is not accessible, like in rural and backward areas.

The shows are not ticketed or pre-scheduled, as the main aim is not to make money but to reach out to as many people as possible.

Often packed with dramatic dialogues, catchy songs and hyperbole, street plays have a telling effect on the masses.

Young dramatists, who often use this medium to generate awareness, feel that a casual approach and lack of a formal atmosphere help them in connecting with the viewers.

Ayushi Kumar, a student and dramatist, said: "Street theatre is one of the art form where actually we are so close to the audiences that we are almost with them. So we can talk, we can connect and to bring that feeling in which they can reflect on themselves. I believe street is the strongest form of theatre for that."

Another student and dramatist, Shiva Sreenivasan, said: "You have a lot of fun when you watch it and when you are having fun you are also getting a message in your head. That is the most important thing. You're just not there and watching it like a niche audience that watches a street play. It's not like that.

"The thing is that we address proper moral issues for the society and for the people of the country. So, it is very easy for us to connect with them, explain our point and get our point through."

Street theatre practitioners hope that the tradition can help to bring about long-term change to Indian society, which despite its progress is reeling under the darkness of social evils like rape, dowry and child marriage.

- CNA/ir

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Sorority girl drops 107 pounds

Brittni Garcia began her weight loss journey in 2009 at 235 pounds.

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

iReporter's weight loss journey

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Brittni Garcia didn't think her weight was a problem until she couldn't fit into her "fat shorts"


• At 235 pounds, Garcia always felt like she stood out from her sorority sisters in college


• Garcia shed 107 pounds, and now promotes weight training and a healthy diet


• Do you have a weight loss success story? Share it with CNN iReport

(CNN) -- Brittni Garcia's family didn't go out for walks; they went out for dinner. And when they were at home, they enjoyed watching movies, playing board games and eating big Mexican-style home-cooked meals.

This lazy lifestyle led Garcia to weigh more than 200 pounds by the eighth grade.

"My mom always said, 'You are a big girl. You are just big-boned,'" said the 25-year-old information specialist. "So I just accepted it."

Through high school and college, her weight continued to rise. But even at 235 pounds, Garcia didn't think her weight was a problem -- until she couldn't fit into her "fat shorts" anymore.

That was December 2009.

It was a typical night for Garcia. She was studying for finals in her sorority house at Eastern Illinois University and wanted to change into some comfortable clothing. She found her red pajama XXL shorts that she normally wore to bed.

As she struggled to pull them up, she realized they were too tight and uncomfortable -- her "big, comfy shorts" no longer fit.

"Tons of emotions ran through my head," she said. "I was afraid that was the way my life was going to be."

That's when Garcia's mentality changed. Being overweight was no longer normal for her.

Heart disease runs in her family, and she realized it was time to address her weight now before it turned into a bigger health problem.

"I wanted to lose weight to challenge myself and show myself I can change, and not change for the world," Garcia wrote in her iReport. "This time, it was for me."

Getting in shape wasn't going to be easy. Going to the gym had been one of her biggest fears for a long time. She was self-conscious about how she looked and sounded when she ran.

"It was hard for me to breathe," Garcia said. "It was embarrassing."

Team loses 400 pounds for Winter Games

Embarrassment about her weight extended to other areas of her life. Although she was president of her sorority, Garcia always felt like she stood out.

"All the sorority girls had cookie-cutter form, and I looked different," she said. "It was really hard for me to connect."

Garcia's involvement in Greek life perpetuated her unhealthy habits; she often went to bars and restaurants to mingle with her college friends. It was difficult to break the cycle, but she found supportive friends who also hit the gym.

"What I tell people is that you find new friends at the gym," she said. "If you don't have the support, it's really hard to do it on your own."

Garcia found one of her biggest supporters through her sorority. She met Nicholas Monreal at a Greek function, and they began dating when she was at her heaviest. But the days of social functions, bar visits and restaurant outings are long gone for the couple.

"He was there when I realized I wanted to change," she said. "To this day, our dates are to the gym. We see excitement in going on walks and runs."

The couple has been together for four years; he proposed in December. Monreal has noticed a significant difference in Garcia over the past few years -- not just physically.

"She's more energetic ... and she's more willing to try new things," he said "She's just working very hard, and she's a better person for it."

On the right track

Since the beginning of 2010, Garcia has lost 107 pounds.

There were setbacks, the biggest of which came this past August when she was in a car accident. She completed three months of physical therapy and wasn't able to go to the gym and do her daily routines for a month and a half.

She was angry at first -- mad at the person who hit her car and stalled her progress at the gym.

But she got over her initial anger, and Garcia went on a walk. This time, she wasn't alone. Her fiance, her parents, her sisters and her aunt encouraged her to stay active. As a result, Garcia went on walks with them and did yoga at a gym.

Girl loses 65 pounds in fight against childhood obesity

After getting back on track with her daily workouts, Garcia realized she also had to better manage her eating habits.

"For the longest, I would go to the gym and go home to eat whatever I wanted," she said. "That's not how it works. I had to learn to eat differently and to learn to like new foods."

She started doing research on proper nutrition. She read books and online articles, shopped at health foods stores and learned to prepare meals that helped her maintain a healthy diet.

Now for two hours every Sunday, Garcia grills chicken, cooks vegetables and packs fresh fruit in preparation for the upcoming week.

"(I) make eating as simple as possible," she said. "If there are a lot of ingredients, I don't want it."

The next step

Down to 128 pounds, Garcia has been left with a lot of loose skin -- particularly around her stomach. She is doing CrossFit exercises and weight training to tighten up the area.

She's also checking off some other goals.

One of the most rewarding moments in Garcia's weight loss journey was completing her first 5K run in 27 minutes.

When she first started training, running three miles took her 48 minutes. Today, she can complete it in less than 25.

"I hadn't been able to walk a lap, let alone run it," she said. "And now when I finish a workout, I really get emotional and I can't believe that I could do it."

She isn't stopping there. Garcia wants to complete a half marathon as well as the Warrior Dash in June. As a result, she might take a pool break in between.

"I really want to fit in my bikini comfortably this summer," she said.

Today, Garcia doesn't shop at plus size clothing stores anymore. She was able to drop from a size 22 to a size 6.

And what happened to her XXL "fat shorts?" She ditched them for a pair of small exercise shorts.

To those just starting their weight-loss journey, she offers this advice:

"Once you start, don't give up. The hardest thing to do is to continue. If you have a bad day, don't make it a bad week."

Father, son lose 260 pounds after weight loss surgery

Do you have a weight loss story to share? Upload it to iReport.

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Wash. state governor: 6 underground nuclear tanks leaking

Updated 8:11 PM ET

YAKIMA, Wash. Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while — perhaps years — to reach groundwater.

But the leaking tanks raise new concerns about delays for emptying them and strike another blow to federal efforts to clean up south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation, where successes often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges.

Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and said federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, right, is joined by Maia Bellon, director of the Department of Ecology, at a news conference to discuss a tank leak at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, in Olympia, Wash.

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AP Photo/Rachel La Corte

State officials just last week announced that one of Hanford's 177 underground tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.

Inslee traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to discuss the problem with federal officials. He said Friday that he learned in meetings that six tanks are leaking waste.

"We received very disturbing news today," the governor said. "I think that we are going to have a course of new action and that will be vigorously pursued in the next several weeks."

The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.

Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.

Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid already leaked there.

The tanks also are long past their intended 20-year life span — raising concerns that even more tanks could be leaking — though they were believed to have been stabilized in 2005.

Inslee said the falling waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time.

"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."

There are legal, moral and ethical considerations to cleaning up the Hanford site at the national level, Inslee said, adding that he will continue to insist that the Energy Department completely clean up the site.

He also stressed the state would impose a "zero-tolerance" policy on radioactive waste leaking into the soil.

Cleanup is expected to last decades and cost billions of dollars.

The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week includes annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.

Much of that money goes toward construction of a plant to convert the underground waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated at more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn't expected to being operating until at least 2019.

Given those delays, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, Inslee said.

"We are not convinced of this," he said. "There will be a robust exchange of information in the coming weeks to get to the bottom of this."

Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said earlier this week that he shares their concerns about the integrity of the tanks but he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.

Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group, said Friday it's disappointing that the Energy Department is not further along on the waste treatment plant and that there aren't new tanks to transfer waste into.

"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," he said. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."

Wyden noted the nation's most contaminated nuclear site — and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy — will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.

Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

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Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.

The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.

"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.

""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."

During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.

Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.

"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.

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