Newsdesk Archive

China's Yangtze River was once home to an ancient civilisation, just as the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Indus rivers were, according to new archaeological research. A series of 13 walled towns and cities have so far been discovered. Dating from around 3000BC these ancient urban centres - excavated by Chinese and Japanese archaeological teams over the past decade - appear to have had populations of up to 10,000. The largest cities had up to three miles of defensive walls. The discoveries show that exactly the same process of urbanisation and state formation was taking place in China in the same river valley environment and in roughly the same period that similar developments were occurring in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

Rock Hill The fishing wasn't too good, but Bill Cater still managed to reel in one heck of a story. Trolling through Cherry Grove Inlet in Horry County recently, the Fort Mill native and a buddy had little luck gigging for flounder. What they did catch, however, turned out to be much better -- an American Indian canoe dating back about 800 years. "I was flabbergasted when I found it," Cater said. "You just don't know the feeling." Most people mount regular spotlights on the front of a boat to go night gigging for the bottom-dwelling fish. Cater has taken things to the next level by equipping his boat with a generator and four 300-watt lights beaming into the water below.

EL PALMILLO, Mexico · The team of archeologists waited anxiously as Linda Nicholas lowered her digital camera into the dark space behind the ancient stone door. From their diggings, the crew from Chicago's Field Museum knew they had just uncovered a 1,500-year-old tomb from Oaxaca Valley's Zapotec civilization. But their suspense at what they would see inside the untouched vault was tempered by concerns that they would find more than jade and pots. One of their fears was that looters would come to their remote hilltop dig.

The Treasures of Nimrud, jewelry and other precious artifacts recovered in the late 1980s from Assyrian royal tombs near Mosul in northern Iraq, have been compared to the contents of Tutankhamun's tomb. In the aftermath of the looting that took place in Baghdad following the demise of the Saddam Hussein regime, many feared that this collection was lost forever along with countless other priceless objects from Irag's National Museum and elsewhere in the country. Early in June 2003, film-maker Jason Williams and his National Geographic camera crew succeeded in locating and recovering the Treasures of Nimrud and other precious heritage objects in the Central Bank of Iraq, where in 1990 they had been placed for safekeeping. Meanwhile, looting is reportedly continuing at archaeological sites elsewhere in the country. In this interview, recorded via telephone on 31 July 2003, Mr. Williams recounts this remarkable story and offers his perspectives on the heritage crisis in Iraq. (follow link for full audio interview)

Iceland announced on Wednesday its intention to resume whaling this month. It said it would take 38 minkes this year, in August and September, from waters around the island to study the mammals' impact on fish stocks. The country's whaling commissioner told BBC News Online that with 43,000 minkes currently in Icelandic waters, the "scientific catch" would have no impact on the species' status. "It's obvious to anyone that whales are very big animals and they eat a lot - a lot of fish," Stefan Asmundsson said. "Precisely the effect they are having on fish stocks around Iceland, we don't know. We need better data."

Explorer Captain Richard Burton, wrote in August 1867, in Sabara, Brazil: "Here a man can catch a half a dozen sprat like Piabas simply by heaving up a bucketful of water and throwing it upon the river bank." With much pollution and little water in Brazil's Velhas river, the "flourishing fishing industry" envisaged by Richard Burton remains an unfulfilled dream for the communities along its banks. A few fish are still there, but they are tainted by industrial effluent and human sewage, just like the Velhas river that Burton navigated for 600 kilometres to reach the Sao Francisco river. There, river fish face environmental change of a different kind, not from water pollution but the lack of seasonal floods, which local fish require for spawning.

The US space agency (Nasa) has announced plans for yet another mission to land on Mars. It has selected a proposal for a craft called Phoenix to touch down in the high northern latitudes of the Red Planet to study the water-ice thought to lurk just beneath the surface. The lander will dig a trench up to a metre deep in the Martian soil and then deploy a suite of instruments to study the accessible ice, soil and rock. It will also analyse the local atmosphere. Phoenix, which has a budget cap of $325m, will be a joint endeavour between the University of Arizona, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado.

Minister of Youth and Sports Alie Eddin Helal announced at press conference in Cairo yesterday that Egypt has chosen the Eye of Horus as the official logo for the 2010 World Cup file as a symbol of the 'Honest Guard of Egypt'. Helal said that the next ten months will witness intensive meetings between the committee in charge of preparing the bid file and the engineering, financial and legal subcommittees to submit an evaluation of each regarding the bid. The minister added that the file and information have been included in the web site, Egypt-2010.com., which shows marketing plans and the famous Egyptian 'ambassadors' who will be playing an effective role in marketing the bid as ambassadors. Egypt has drawn on the experience of other countries, which have organised the event before, and of companies, which shared in preparing similar files, Helal said.

Tiny geological features thought by some to be the fossil remains of primitive bacteria are probably nothing more than fossilized lumps of lifeless protein, say two US scientists. The structures, dubbed nanobacteria, are typically 50-200 millionths of a millimetre across. They have been found in some sedimentary rocks, and even in the martian meteorite ALH84001, leading to claims of evidence for life on Mars. Debate has raged for eight years over whether or not they are the fossilized remains of single-celled organisms ten times smaller than today's.

The feral pigs of Ossabaw Island, Georgia, mimic the health problems of obese humans so well that they could help researchers study diabetes and heart disease. The pigs are good at turning food into fat. "They're the fattest terrestrial mammal in the world," says ecologist Lehr Brisbin of the University of Georgia in Savannah. At their plumpest, they have more fat than lean tissue, and five times more fat than other breeds. Spanish galleons visiting America left the pigs on Ossabaw Island about 500 years ago. Since then they have evolved to drink seawater, and adapted to a boom-and-bust food supply, gorging on acorns in autumn to survive the winter. Their fat stores last until the new spring's vegetation appears. But their crash diets and active lifestyles keep them in trim.

Key universal features in world music may have their roots in the ever-present sound of the human voice during the course of evolution, suggests a new study. The analysis of thousands of recorded speech samples found peaks in acoustic energy that precisely mirror the distances between important notes in the twelve-tone scale, the system that forms the foundation of almost all music. "The mysteries of music have a biologically principled explanation," says Dale Purves, at Duke University, North Carolina, and lead author of the study. "A reasonable speculation is that we hear these tonal relationships because they are involved in our interpretation of each other's speech." As a slide whistle shows, it is possible to change seamlessly the pitch of a sound from low to high and back again. But for making music, human cultures have sliced the pitch dimension into twelve distinct tones.

A scorching heat wave in Europe and a spate of forest fires has re-ignited the debate over whether global warming can be blamed for an apparent increase in the world's weird weather. Scientists agree that no one yet knows the answer to this question, but they point out that an increase in the number and severity of extreme events is exactly what their models of a warmer world predict. "The weather we've seen over the last few days is entirely consistent with what we're likely to see over the next few decades," says John Turnpenny, at the Tyndall Centre for climate change research in Norwich, UK. "We're likely to see such a heat spell in London every year." Extreme weather conditions are affecting all parts of Europe.

The Sun's shifting magnetic field is set to focus a decade-long storm of galactic dust grains towards the inner Solar System, including Earth. The effect this will have on our planet - if any - is unknown. But some researchers have speculated that sustained periods of cosmic dust bombardment might be related to ice ages and even mass extinctions. During the last decade, the magnetic field of the Sun acted like a shield, deflecting the electrically charged galactic dust away from the Solar System. However, the Sun's regular cycle of activity peaked in 2001. As expected, its magnetic field then flipped over, so that south became north and vice-versa. In this configuration, rather than deflecting the galactic dust, the magnetic field should actually channel the dust inwards.

Scientists say urgent international action is needed to safeguard the Southern Ocean's unique wildlife. The warning came last month when Antarctic researchers gathered in London to discuss threats to the region's ecology. Concern focused on commercial fishing, and its potential impact on albatrosses, penguins, seals, and whales. The Circumpolar Sea, what some call the Southern Ocean, has a long history of human over-exploitation. Fur seals, elephant seals, and the great whales were all hunted to the brink of extinction. Now scientists say increased Antarctic krill and fish catches could trigger a catastrophic collapse in the entire marine ecosystem.

Wide-eyed and fast moving, ichthyosaurs were the giant carnivores of Jurassic and Cretaceous seas. These marine reptiles are thought to have been powerful pursuit predators, evolving to chase small and equally speedy prey. They were so specialized according to some experts, that a temporary plunge in squid-like belemnite numbers in the middle of the Cretaceous period (which started 144 million years ago and ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) was considered one potential cause for the extinction of the ichthyosaur group.

A spectacular fireball blazed across the northern sky yesterday, a piece of the more than 30,000 tonnes of the normally invisible space junk that hits Earth each year. Observers in Auckland and from as far away as Whangarei described a flaming, bright-red fireball with a long white tail shooting across the sky from the northeast just before 6pm. One man in Auckland suburb Orakei, who reported the sight to One Tree Hill Stardome Observatory, said the meteor appeared to remain bright as it disappeared over the horizon. Another man, who was driving towards the Auckland Harbour Bridge, said it was "amazing". "I saw the white light first and then it flared into a green flash. I've never seen a green like it before."

ALTO CATACHA, Peru (AP)--Viewed from atop a rocky hill beside this remote hamlet, the worn earthen mounds and canals of an ancient farming system that once fed an empire stretch out to the horizon. The method faded out of use a millennium ago. But today it has been brought back to life by dozens of Indian communities located on the plains around Lake Titicaca as a way to protect crops against drought, floods and even frost damage. Known as ``waru waru,'' in the local Quechua language, the technique has proven an inexpensive way to improve crop yields and ease the punishing effects of farming at 12,500 feet above sea level on the Andean plains.

According to a Cherokee legend, prophets long ago led the people. And the prophets would dream and ask the people to build monuments to make their visions reality. That is how as many as 10,000, massive American Indian earthworks that once dotted the Eastern and Southern United States and Midwest came to be, said Barbara Crandell, 74, of Thornville, Ohio. "Some were built for the sun and some for the moon," said Crandell, who is of Cherokee descent and heard the story from her mother and grandfather. "And some were for ceremony and for different things they did - to bring good luck to them and to bring the blessings of the gods."

An ancient tomb, believed to date back 2,000 years, was discovered recently in Baidi village, in Hejin city of north China's Shanxi province. Excavated during the renovation of a major state-level road running through the area, the tomb was thought to be built in the imperial Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- 220 A.D.), according to archeologists. Besides a coffin chamber, the tomb had a door and a paved path leading to the chamber, making it unusual from typical Han brick-stone tombs which usually had no annexes to the coffin chamber, the archeologists said.

Reports on the achievements of the UAE archaeological studies and discoveries were released in an international seminar held at the British Museum in London last month. The annual seminar on Arabian Studies was held from July 17 to 19, with a number of delegates from the Arab world, including the UAE, taking part. Almost the entire proceedings of the inaugural session focused on the achievements of the UAE in the field of archaeology. The papers on the UAE included New Archaeological Investigations at Abu Dhabi International Airport; Lithics from the Emirates - New Finds from the Abu Dhabi Airport Site; Archaeological Evidence for Pearling in the Arabian Gulf; Wadi Sur - A Large Fortification in Ras Al Khaimah; Tree-core Sampling in Ras Al Khaimah; The Iron Age in Bithnah - Two Campaigns of Excavation; and The 2002-2003 Research at Muweilah in Sharjah.

Archaeologists have uncovered an 8,000-year-old well, one of the oldest in the world, in the north of Israel. Archaeologists Yossi Garfinkel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem says the well, discovered at the foot of the Golan Heights, is made of basalt and is 4.5 meters deep and 0.5 metres wide. It was found on the site of a well-known Neolithic settlement, near the Kibbutz of Sha'ar Ha Golan, south of the Sea of Galilee and not far from the Jordanian border. Dozens of ancient stylised clay statues, many of women, have been discovered on the site in the past 50 years.

Efforts to conserve threatened marine creatures such as sharks and turtles should concentrate on so-called hotspots of biodiversity, according to a new scientific study. Researchers from Germany and Canada discovered that certain areas of the ocean seem to teem with many different species and that these locations should be developed as marine reserves. The scientists' modelling shows that preventing fishing in these "parks" would be the most efficient way of enhancing the survival prospects of those fish and other marine animals now threatened with extinction.

We are all being urged to be more fungi friendly. Conservation groups in the UK say the country has some of the world's most important populations of fungi and we should do more to encourage their growth. They are calling for better management of pastures and grasslands, and to cherish the plants even when they turn up in lawns, parks and churchyards. Of particular interest are the waxcap fungi - named after their shiny, waxy or sticky caps. Species such as the pink waxcap (Hygrocybe calyptriformis), which is often likened to a ballerina because of its similarity to a dancer's tutu, may be more common in the UK than anywhere else in the world.

The amount of lowland heathland in England should be doubled, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). It says the success of efforts to restore the environment in 1,000 hectares of Dorset should be extended elsewhere across the country. The society says the heathland provides important habitats for a range of rare species, including birds such as the Dartford warbler and the nightjar, and invertebrates like the silver-studded blue butterfly. It says the Dorset Heathland Project has also shown economic spin-offs by becoming a focus for tourism activities.

An archaeological site in Siberia, long thought to be the original jumping-off point for crossing the Bering land bridge into North America, is actually much younger than previously believed, shaking the theory that the first Americans migrated overland during the final cold snap of the last great ice age. Using radiocarbon dating, scientists found that the Ushki site, the remains of a community of hunters clustered around Ushki Lake in northeastern Russia, appears to be only about 13,000 years old, 4,000 years younger than originally thought. The new date places the Ushki settlement in the same time period as the Clovis site, an ancient community found in New Mexico, making it highly unlikely that people could have traversed the thousands of miles from Siberia in such a short period.

Astrology in India is much more than a matter of consulting your horoscope in the daily paper. Hindu families often have their own personal star-gazer to advise them throughout their lives. And the advice they all seem to be giving is that no one should get married for the next few months. The pronouncement is creating havoc with the country's wedding entertainment industry. For life's big decisions many Hindus consult their personal astrologer. And in India there's no bigger decision than getting married.

On 27th August, Mars will be at its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years. On that date, the Red Planet will approach to within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 km) -- 145 times the distance of the Moon. The last time the two planets were so close our ancestors were living in caves and struggling to survive the extreme conditions of the Ice Age. Who knows what will have happened by the time they are as near again -- 284 years into the future? Mars is now in the constellation Aquarius and is readily recognised because it is already the brightest object in the night sky (apart from the Moon). Instantly recognisable by its brilliance and orange-red colour, it will remain easy to spot for several months, low in the sky somewhere between the southeast and the southwest. (Exactly where depends on the date and time.)

BEIJING (AP) - A factory in Beijing that made scissors for more than 350 years is closing, a victim of competition and management missteps, a factory official and state media said Friday. The Wang Mazi Scissors Factory was declared bankrupt by a court in the Chinese capital last week, the Xinhua News Agency said on its website. Founded in 1651, the factory outlasted the imperial Qing dynasty, Japanese occupation and the 1949 communist revolution. But it couldn't survive the free-market reforms unleashed over the past two decades. Outdated equipment, internal management problems and market forces finally forced the factory to declare bankruptcy, the factory's manager, Cui Yuelu, told The Associated Press.

New Zealand squid expert Steve O'Shea says he will mount a new expedition in July next year to film "sex-crazed" giant squid in the wild. Dr O'Shea plans to film about 600m below the sea surface off the West Coast, after squirting squid pheromones, sexual scents, into the ocean. The extracts of male and female giant squid sex organs will be squirted from a remotely-operated submersible, the latest New Scientist magazine reports. He hopes the pheromone will attract squid long enough for a good opportunity to film them.

WASHINGTON -- A record-size hailstone crashed into Nebraska during a storm in June, federal weather experts said Friday. The June 22 storm produced a hailstone 7 inches in diameter and 18.75 inches in circumference at Aurora, Neb., the National Climatic Data Center said. The stone was measured by the National Weather Service forecast office in Hastings, Neb., and verified by a team of weather forecasters. The previous record-holder as the largest hailstone had a diameter of 5.7 inches and a circumference of 17.5 inches, and was found in Coffeyville, Kan., on Sept. 3, 1970.

A deadly alga is the leading suspect in the mass death of humpback whales around 150 miles off Cape Cod, say marine experts. Carcass sightings suggest that at least 12 whales, mostly humpbacks, have died in the Georges Bank area, making it one of the worst known mass fatalities. "It's really quite disturbing," says whale biologist Phillip Clapham of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A red tide of the toxic algae Alexandrium fundyense is the most likely culprit. The algae's poison, saxitoxin, killed 14 whales in the same area in 1987. Saxitoxin can accumulate in mackerel which whales eat.

It is a Saturday morning and 10 intrepid students of JRR Tolkien's works are edging their way along a brambly path in deepest rural Birmingham. "All texts have a context," says Marjorie Willetts, a teacher from Kinver, in Worcestershire. "What you don't get from the guidebooks is the taste and smell of a place. Just sniff that Himalayan balsam," she adds, gesturing towards some pink flowers, the pendulous stems of which are craning over the verdant banks of the River Cole. There are those who would regard the conjunction of "rural" with "Birmingham" as a contradiction in terms, but Willetts is not one of them. For her, there is an element of nostalgia about today's jaunt - part of a three-day summer school on the "life and literature of the 20th century's most popular author", organised by the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Birmingham University. She was a student at the university in the 1960s, when her medieval studies course included Tolkien's essay on Beowulf.

SALAMIS was once one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean, shipping olive oil, wine, honey, wheat, salt, copper and timber throughout the Roman and Byzantine empires from what is now a patch of scrubby greenery and ruined splendour on the eastern coast of the island. With its destruction in the earlier part of the fourth century AD, the Emperor Constantius rebuilt Salamis after exempting its citizens from taxes while the city struggled to get back on its feet. As a result the second incarnation of the city, named Constantia by its grateful citizens, lasted through to the Arab invasions of the island. For the fifth year in a row a group of archaeologists, technicians and labourers have been toiling under the hot Mediterranean sun in order to preserve, conserve and excavate this vast site.

Historic documents giving an insight into an 18th Century clockmaker's struggle to be awarded the prize for measuring longitude have been bought by the National Maritime Museum. Working class joiner John Harrison was ridiculed when he suggested a clock could be used to accurately measure a ship's position at sea. After 40 years of work, his H4 clock, tested in 1761 was accurate to within five seconds. But he had a fight on his hands to persuade the Board of Longitude to give him the £20,000 prize offered in a 1714 Act of Parliament.

Anthropologist Joe Zias spent two years bringing to light a mysterious inscription on Absalom's Tomb that led to a sensational revelation for the Christian world When you stand on the round observation point called the Absalom's Tomb observatory, and look down at the arid Kidron Valley, you can see several ancient tombs carved into the mountain: Absalom's tomb, the Tomb of the Sons of Hezir and Zacharia's Tomb. Absalom's Tomb is the only monument that remains whole, and is the most magnificent of them all: a pitcher-shaped structure, about 20 meters high, hewn from the rock. Anthropologist Joe Zias spent most of his free time over the past two years next to this structure.

On a mesa top southeast of town, Western State College archaeologist Mark Stiger and his students are excavating a jumbled rock ring that might be the remains of one of the oldest human dwellings in North America. Stiger suspects that Folsom hunters built the crude rock-walled shelter 12,000 years ago. He imagines them living atop Tenderfoot Mountain - perhaps for months at a time - while fashioning masterfully crafted stone spear points and dining on bison and elk.

Plans to introduce genetically modified wheat to the Canadian Prairies are meeting fierce resistance from some farming groups. The biotechnology company Monsanto is seeking approval from Canada's government to grow a variety of GM wheat that is resistant to its Roundup weedkiller. But farmers are threatening to take out a legal injunction to prevent the crop from being grown commercially, fearful that it could contaminate organic and conventional varieties, and taint the vitally important Canadian grain export market.

This unassuming six-millimetre-long bug which leaves "cuckoo spit" on garden foliage can spring 70 centimetres into the air. Although the flea can do something similar, the froghopper is 60 times heavier. "That makes froghoppers the true champions," said Professor Malcolm Burrows, head of zoology at Cambridge University, UK. "It's not so much that they jump a little higher than fleas; it's the fact that because they're heavier, their jump performance is more impressive," he told BBC News Online. Professor Burrows reports his investigation of insect jumping in the journal Nature.

A group of soldiers claim to have spotted China's "Loch Ness Monster" in the second sighting of the mysterious animal in less than a month, state media said. The black-headed creature suddenly broke through the surface of Tianchi Lake in north-eastern Jilin province early on Wednesday, astounding about a dozen servicemen visiting at the time, Xinhua news agency reported. The animal, which was equipped with 10 centimetre horns and a scaled back, swam around for about two minutes before disappearing, according to the agency. A report earlier this month said a similar animal was seen five times during a period of about 50 minutes, Xinhua reported.

Leading astronomers clashed in Washington DC last week over when or whether to shut down the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA wants to decommission Hubble in 2010, primarily to divert money to the bigger and better James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in 2011. A growing number of astronomers want it to keep going at least until JWST is launched. Hubble has been orbiting 600 kilometres above Earth's surface since 1990. From beyond our distorting atmosphere, it gives scientists an unrivalled view of galaxies near and far. The Washington DC meeting will influence the deliberations of an expert panel, led by John Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, set to report to NASA in October.

Irish chieftains are no more after the government in Dublin decided to do away with titles that go back to Gaelic times, a government spokesman said Monday. "Given that there is no statutory foundation for the system, it certainly wouldn't seem to be appropriate now for somebody to rely solely on recognition from the Genealogical Office to justify use of a particular designation," said Ireland's chief herald Brendan O'Donoghue.

Maori claims on coastal areas have swollen to cover five million hectares since a Court of Appeal ruling on the foreshore and seabed. Figures supplied to the National Party show huge areas of the North Island coastline are subject to claims. They include 314 kilometres of the Taranaki coast and 23km of coastal Gisborne. There was already a claim lodged for 9km of the Hokio Beach foreshore west of Levin, and Ngati Kahungunu is reportedly claiming the east coast from just north of Mahia south to Wellington, though nothing had been lodged with the Maori Land Court by Friday. Claims had previously been lodged for several hundred kilometres of coastline north of Whakatane, including Tauranga, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Hauraki Gulf.

Despite the Taj being India's most visited monument, few tourists used to stay in Agra. In 1989, India and the US signed an MoU for site planning of cultural heritage sites in Agra. A report prepared after a team from the department of landscape architecture, University of Illinois, visited the place said plainly that Agra was just a day-trip destination from Delhi for most tourists. Thanks to the zeal of the Supreme Court, the Taj trapezium (the area around the Taj Mahal which has many historical monuments) has been largely sanitised, and Agra has become 'stayable'. But the construction mafia was not happy. For the court has also prohibited any construction without due approval.

Peering into a giant molecular cloud in the Milky Way galaxy - known as W49 - astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered a whole new population of very massive newborn stars. This research was presented at the International Astronomical Union's 25th General Assembly held in Sydney, Australia, by ESO-scientist Joao Alves. With the help of infrared images obtained during a period of excellent observing conditions with the ESO 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory (Chile), the astronomers looked deep into this molecular cloud and discovered four massive stellar clusters, with hot and energetic stars as massive as 120 solar masses. The exceedingly strong radiation from the stars in the largest of these clusters is "powering" a 20 light-year diameter region of mostly ionized hydrogen gas (a "giant HII region").

Archaeologists excavating the floor of an ancient dwelling have recovered evidence that people lived along the Las Vegas wash 1,400 years ago, and weren't just passing through. Some ash-laden dirt from what was described as a"pit house"will be sent for laboratory testing to determine whether microscopic pollen from corn plants is present. If so, archaeologists say it would indicate at least some domestic farming by early inhabitants of the Las Vegas area. Rick Ahlstrom, an archaeological investigator, said the earthen floor had been covered with a thatched dome _ perhaps built with poles and branches of mesquite trees that grew along the wash.

Athens - Diggers accidentally discovered a temple to Zeus at the foot of Mount Olympus in an indicating that ancient Greeks switched away from polytheism to the faith of a single God even before Christianity appeared in Greece, archaeologists said on Friday. The sanctuary was found during works to broaden the bed of the Vaphyras river running through the Dion temple complex at the foot of Mount Olympus, northern Greece - the seat of Greek mythology's twelve Gods. The findings include the sanctuary's foundations, 14 marble blocks with marble eagles engraved on them - Zeus's symbol - and a slightly smaller-than-life-size, headless marble statue of Zeus, said archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis who supervises the Dion site. The sanctuary dates to the centuries preceding Christ's birth. Insignia found on it refer to Zeus as "the highest".

THE VIVID painted scene discovered in Nebamun's tmb at Thebes is undergoing a complex conservation process in the British museum in London. Many of the most beautiful and historically significant Egyptian artefacts have long been housed in the British Museum. While the best-known is perhaps the 2000- year old Rosetta stone, there are hundreds of other ancient relics and objects of immeasurable aesthetic and academic value. Among those are 11 painted fragments depicting an extravagant scene of counting cattle and goose. These fragments, considered one of the great masterpieces of early Egyptian art, were originally part of a tomb painting in the vault of Nebamun (1390 BC), a top Pharaonic official during the New Kingdom. It came into the museum's possession in 1821 when the private collection of a British ambassador, Henry Salt (1780-1827) was bought after extensive haggling. Until only two years ago, the painted fragments were on display at the museum's great court.

Bats, spiders and a rare moth are among the creatures expected to benefit from a UK initiative. The government is setting targets to improve the lot of wildlife living on land which it owns, the Government Estate. This covers 1% of the UK's entire land mass, including prisons and derelict industrial sites. The estate owns more than 200 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). A year ago the government published its Framework For Sustainable Development On The Government Estate. It has already agreed targets for travel, water, environmental management systems, and now biodiversity.

Egypt will organize a Pharaohs exhibition in Paris in October 2004 under the aegis of president Hosni Mubarak and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac. Preparations for the exhibition were discussed Friday in Paris between Egyptian Minister of culture Farouq Hosni and Director of the Arab world Institute in Paris Nasser Al Anssari. The Egyptian minister expected the exhibition would be exceptionally important as it would showcase new Pharaonic artifacts. He expressed hope the exhibition would be opened by president Mubarak.

Being a big, macho male does not always impress the fairer sex. Contrary to commonly accepted theory, the females of some species are partial to weedier partners. Animal behaviourists usually expect males to compete with each other for mates, with females preferring the larger, more aggressive or better-endowed winners. But this is not so for certain salmon and quail. Some male coho salmon, known as jacks, stop growing earlier in their lives and remain smaller than their larger cousins, known as hooknoses, says behavioural ecologist Jason Watters of the University of California, Davis. When the salmon migrate from the Pacific Ocean to inland rivers to spawn, hooknoses dominate jacks and compete aggressively with each other to mate with females.

Long-range weather forecasts could be significantly improved by studying the atmosphere above the highest clouds, a study has shown. Meteorologists can confidently predict weather for only five days. But researchers at Reading University have shown that longer-term forecasts can be improved by 20 per cent accuracy by studying the stratosphere. This stretches from seven to 30 miles in altitude. The researchers, working with colleagues from America, studied a climate pattern known as the Arctic Oscillation, which influences storms, rain and snow. By measuring the circulation of air in the lower stratosphere, they were able to predict this phenomenon a month in advance with one-fifth greater accuracy.

NEW YORK, July 31 (UPI) -- Even if the only evidence forensic analysts can pull from a crime scene is a fingerprint smudged beyond recognition, a new technique developed by Canadian scientists soon could harvest enough DNA from the print to produce a genetic identity. The novel system can extract DNA in only 15 minutes, even if a print has been stored for a year. Scientists expect the invention to help crime-fighters solve mysteries, and already are in talks with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In addition, researchers predict the technology could be at least twice as cheap as existing DNA collection methods.

When Sun Shuyun, a Chinese woman who now lives in the UK, visited Xian on the track of a seventh-century Buddhist monk, she met an old man who told her this story: he had been a monk at the time of the Chinese revolution, but after land reform in 1951 China's monasteries had lost their land and therefore an important source of income. Donations were discouraged by the Communist party so that, by 1959, 90% of China's monks and nuns had either abandoned the monasteries or died of starvation. Today we tend to think it was the cultural revolution that did for religion in China, an impression encouraged by the present government: the "excesses" of the cultural revolution can be blamed on Mao and, in particular, on his wife Jiang Qing. The party has since disowned the cultural revolution but it has not disowned most of the policies of the 1950s which were equally disastrous from many points of view. The mass starvation that afflicted China as a result of the "great leap forward" did not get under way until 1960 and the full-scale assault on religious relics and buildings by the Red Guards did not begin until 1964. But by then, according to Sun's witness, the Communist party had already all but destroyed Buddhism as a functioning religion.

Scientists are melting holes in the bottom of the world. In fact, several holes have been melted near the South Pole, and they are now being used as astronomical observatories. Astronomers with the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) lower into each vertical lake a string knotted with basketball-sized light detectors. The water in each hole soon refreezes. The detectors are sensitive to blue light emitted in the surrounding clear ice. Such light is expected from ice collisions with high-energy neutrinos emitted by objects or explosions out in the universe. The above picture was taken looking down into the deep abyss. Instruments were lowered down past 2000 meters. Analyses of data from the AMANDA II detectors have recently been used to create the first map of the high-energy neutrino sky.

Chinese and US scientists have discovered a new particle at the Beijing Electron Position Collider, which is hard to be explained with any known particles, according to scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences Wednesday. A detailed study on the newly-observed particle shows that the possibility of explaining this particle by any known particles canbe definitely excluded, said a news release by the institute. The important feature of this new particle is its narrow width, which is very different from that of a conventional meson -- the composite of quark and anti-quark, according to the release.

A unique Roman tomb was discovered by accident in Bulgaria's capital Sofia. During works to repair the city's water conduit, a tomb was unearthed as part of the Roman necropolis under the St Sofia basilica. The tomb dates back to the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C. according to the head of the archaeological team Mario Ivanov. This is one of the biggest burial places discovered in the region, he pointed out. The tomb draws special attention because of the unique way its vault-arch was built. It is supported by massive stones to make sure it would not collapse under its own weight. The tomb's history of discovery is as interesting as its design. Two years ago, plumbers came across it while digging in the area but kept working in secrecy so they could complete the task without having "annoying" archaeologists at the site. When a pipe recently cracked and digging started again, an architect spotted the ancient ruins and called the specialists.

During the 19th century boom in Egyptian archaeology the tomb of Elkab's 17th-dynasty governor Sobeknakht was discovered. Though its whereabouts were published it was subsequently neglected. Until recently it continued to sit undisturbed upon the cliffs overlooking the Nile south of Luxor, accrued grime and soot obscuring many of its internal inscriptions. Only this year have the tomb's soiled walls been cleaned to reveal an inscription relating a hitherto unknown Kushite raid upon Egypt that has been abuzz with superlatives and speculation among Egyptologists. Earlier this year a number of British and Egyptian conservators under the aegis of the British Museum began work at the tomb in response to concerns about its deteriorating condition. In the process of cleaning the walls between the tomb's inner and outer chambers they stumbled upon an inscription believed to be the first evidence of a huge attack from the south on Elkab and Egypt by the Kingdom of Kush and its allies from the land of Punt, during the 17th dynasty (1575-1525 BC).

Israeli archaeologists said today they had discovered a 12,000-year-old neolithic settlement west of Jerusalem which they believe is the largest of the period ever discovered in the Holy Land. The settlement, in Motza 5km west of Jerusalem, was home to 2,000 people and dates to 9,500 BC, Hammadid Khalife, head of the archeological team, told AFP. "We discovered a real treasure on the site consisting of 58 flint blades, found together, which at the time served as a kind of currency," Khalife said. "The origin of the stone and the way the blades were made show they come from northern Syria," he added.

The Baghdad museum is lending some of its greatest treasures to the US, just months after fearing much of it had been looted. The museum in the Iraqi capital was hit by a wave of looting in the days following the fall of Baghdad. But after recovering much of what was thought to have been stolen, the Iraq museum is keen to show off its items of cultural importance. Among the valuables which will form part of a travelling exhibition is the collection of Assyrian jewellery known as the Nimrud artefacts.

At a time when Roman and Greek women were treated as slaves, women in ancient Egypt were queens, priestesses and tutors. Although they did not usually take part in politics or the administrative hierarchy, they did participate in certain activities outside the home becoming bakers, weavers and gardeners. They could engage in business deals, inherit property, own and rent land, take part in legal cases and grant freedom to their slaves. Their legal and economic rights in fact equaled those of men. Egyptian women played a big role in the arts where they worked as dancing and music teachers. They were known for their slim figures as they believed that obesity was synonymous with ugliness. They were professional beauticians, always clean and attractive, with perfumes a basic part of their daily routine.

A tomb dating to the late Pharaonic age (400BC) has recently been unearthed by an Italian team excavating on Nelson Island in the Mediterranean, 4 kilometres from Abu Qir Bay. The tomb contained three mummies, which were badly damaged by sea water, some earthenware utensils and a number of shabti statues. Shabti figures represented the servants of the deceased in the afterlife. Most of the shabtis are decorated with text from chapter 6 of the Book of the Dead.

A MAN spotted two jellyfish like objects which he could only describe as UFOs flying over his Daventry home. On the same day an hour before a cameraman recorded footage of similar colour and shape vessels in the night sky in Worcestershire. Adrian Dalton, 32, of Hemans Road, Daventry was standing in his back garden with his son on Tuesday, July 22 between 10pm and 10.30pm. He first became aware of them when he saw two black objects in the distance which he thought were birds. Next thing, they were above his home. He said: "They were like two brown jellyfish in the sky, they looked like they were swimming and I had not taken any drugs."

It's 3 p.m. on a July day under a hot Aegean sun. If you walk across the searing sand of Schinias Beach, wade into the clear water of the Bay of Marathon, and look back, you'll see sunbathers, beach umbrellas, and behind them a ragged line of tavernas. Rock music from beach bars drifts through the air, along with aromas of grilled lamb and seafood. Beyond the sand stands a hodgepodge of summer cottages that cater to vacationers, many of them from Athens, 26 miles distant. Over to the right, the arc of beach is quieter, backed by a forest of pine trees. Behind it, out of sight, lies an extensive wetland. Nothing hints of the world-altering event that took place here in 490 B.C., when Persian ships landed on this beach. As the invaders headed inland, a phalanx of greatly outnumbered Greeks counter-attacked across the adjoining plain of Marathon. Battle cries and screams filled the air as Greek spears penetrated Persian wicker shields. Athenians swept into the enemy from the rear, sending many disoriented Persian soldiers fleeing to die in the marsh.

Almost lost in the sumptuous display of Mesopotamian antiquities in the "Art of the First Cities" exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum is a small limestone fragment, triangular in shape and delicately carved. The piece shows Naram-Sin, a king of the ancient Akkadian empire, seated beside Ishtar, goddess of love, fertility and war. In the show's catalog it is described as an "extraordinary" example of the era's art. It also has another distinction. In terms of its archaeological pedigree, it might as well have fallen out of the sky. Until about four years ago, when a scholar spotted it in the Upper East Side home of a prominent collector, the Naram-Sin limestone was essentially unknown. No record of its excavation or history of ownership has emerged. In antiquities circles, that empty space amounts to a warning label: this piece may be the fruit of plunder.(free registration at NYT)

Former Interior secretaries Bruce Babbitt and Stewart Udall decried a Bush administration effort to privatize key functions of the National Park Service, saying it will turn crown jewels like Yosemite into spectacles like Niagara Falls or Disneyland. The two men, who spent more time overseeing the nation's lands than any other, took turns Tuesday on a conference call with reporters lambasting the plan as a "radical and reckless ... attempt to dismantle the National Park Service as we know it today." What the nation will ultimately have as private companies take over park functions, warned Babbitt, who served eight years under President Clinton, means "is not national parks but amusement parks, as the profit motive saturates everything."

SAVANNAH, Ga. - The strong currents and blinding murkiness of the Savannah River make diving treacherous even in 40 feet of water, but the bottom holds a sunken treasure that's eluded Civil War historians for more than a century. The CSS Georgia wasn't the most storied Confederate ironclad. Too slow and bulky to attack the Union blockade off Savannah, the armored ship was moored in the shipping channel off Fort Jackson to deter naval invasion. Confederate troops scuttled the Georgia in December 1864 to hide its secrets from Gen. William T. Sherman's advancing army. Its wreckage has remained in the mud and silt of the Savannah River ever since. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has hired a team of archaeological divers to study the sunken ironclad, holding out the possibility that it might be raised and preserved.

"Not since Galileo turned his telescope towards the heavens in 1610 has any event so changed our understanding of the universe as the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope." So says Nasa's official introduction to the Hubble, but officials at the US space agency are now planning its demise and that is upsetting many scientists. The facts are simple. Launched in 1990, the telescope was always destined to have a limited life. Planning is well under way for a new space telescope - the James Webb - to launch in 2011 and the Hubble mission is slated to end by 2010.

The king of killers or fearsome freeloader? It is one of the big questions currently in palaeontology. Was Tyrannosaurus rex really a scavenger - a huge, awkward, lumbering beast that waddled out of the bushes to pick off the remains of a carcass left by real predators? It is not an image we have become used to - not one, certainly, that Hollywood has presented to us. We like our T. rex to be the monster from hell, threatening to rip the heads off poor, screaming kids when their jeep gets stuck in Jurassic Park. But the evidence that the "tyrant lizard king" may not have been the best of predators is overwhelming, claims Dr Jack Horner.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said a shared global system for monitoring changes in the Earth's climate is essential for the United States and the world. Mr Powell was speaking at the opening of a major international environment conference in Washington, attended by delegates from about 30 countries. He said many environmental issues are too big for individual governments to tackle, adding that partnerships between politicians, scientists and the private sector are essential to improve the environment. However, the BBC's science correspondent Richard Black says some observers are concerned that calls for a unified system are no more than an excuse to delay action on global warming.

The world's oldest living person is believed to have been discovered in war-torn Chechnya - beating by nine years the current record holder. Health officials in the separatist Russian republic say great-great grandmother Zabani Khachukayeva is 124 years old. If her age is authenticated, Mrs Khachukayeva would beat the current record-holder - Japanese woman Kamato Hongo. Mrs Khachukayeva, a devout Muslim from the south-western Achkoi-Martan district, is said to remain energetic and be in comparatively good health despite impaired hearing.

A million-dollar mystery was solved early Wednesday with experts certifying that a nickel that had been missing for decades is the fifth 1913 Liberty Head nickel. Relatives of the late George Walton, a North Carolina coin dealer, took the coin to the experts at the American Numismatic Association convention that opened Wednesday. The relatives did not want to be identified. The family had put the coin away after Walton's death because they didn't believe it was genuine, said Paul Montgomery, president of Bowers and Merena Galleries, a Louisiana-based coin dealer and auction house.

Beneath the serene surface of Yellowstone Lake, where death from hypothermia comes within 30 minutes, seethes a boiling underwater world. And like a pot too long on the stove, it could boil over, says U.S. Geological Survey geologist Lisa Morgan, Ph.D., of Colorado. She and others from the USGS have been studying the hottest hot spot in the 7,731-foot elevation lake, a spot which Morgan has termed an "inflated plain." It lies south-southwest of Storm Point near Mary Bay, in the northern end of the lake. Morgan, representing both the USGS and Yellowstone Volcanic Observatory, is in the process of mapping the lake floor with seismic reflection images. She uses a sonar system that emits sound waves. Morgan has taken 240 million soundings in the last four years.

Leave it to California to come up with creatures that could be from Mars. Leave it to scientists to make them green. A new species of bacteria has been discovered thriving without oxygen in the harsh waters of northern California's Mono lake, where conditions perhaps resemble places on the red planet that might support similar life forms, scientists announced Wednesday. A dye used in the laboratory to sort living things from dead stuff rendered the creatures green in an image released by NASA. Under a microscope, the bacteria look like miniature corkscrews winnowing through samples of the highly alkaline water in which they thrive.

Some 700 pieces of earthenware made in the ancient Shu Kingdom have been unearthed by archeologists after they were buried thousands of years ago at the Sangxingdui Ruins in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Sanxingdui, which is listed among China's top 10 archaeological finds of the 20th century, has long been suspected to be the remains of the Shu Kingdom that suddenly disappeared 3,000 - 5,000 years ago. Some of the most striking pieces made of various materials like bronze and jade were found accidentally in 1986 in Sanxingdui, a small village in Guanghan City, Sichuan.

Head of Iran Bastan Museum Achaemenid research projects, Shahrokh Razmjou, declared in Tehran on Monday that the Achaemenid palaces known as Persepolis is to be reconstructed on computer, IRNA reported. He told IRNA that cultural heritage experts will reconstruct various parts of Persepolis on computer based on archeological records. Razmjou added that the reconstruction will not be imaginary and will be based solely on collection of documentary information. The official said, "The research was categorized by the palaces, while accurate information and documents have already been collected for the computerized reconstruction of Persepolis and the palaces of Achaemenid dynasty will be reconstructed optionally.

CAIRO, July 30 (KUNA) -- UK museum officials refused to return the "Rasheed stone" to Egypt as a loan, fearing that it might affect the number of visitors who annually visit the museum to view the unique pieces presented in the Egyptian history sections. The officials in the museum said, in accordance to Al-Ahram daily that "the Rasheed stone which encoded the hieroglyphic language, is exhibited in the UK museum since 1802." Head of the Supreme council for ancient monuments in Egypt Dr. Zahi Hawas had requested from officials in the UK museum to return the stone for 3-6 months to be exhibited in the new Egyptian museum, but the request was refused. Meanwhile, Dr. Hawas said that his country launched a campaign to return all ancient monuments, as it requested from Berlin's museum to return the head of the Queen Nefertiti statue to Egypt.

China says it is closing off vast sections of the Great Wall to tourists and ramblers alike in an effort to protect the ancient monument from the ravages of time and trampling. From 1 August, tourists will be restricted to areas of the wall that are restored and officially designated as tourist sites. Those who stray off the beMost of the Great Wall of China is not as it appears on the television adverts and postcards. Far from it. Most of the wall is in fact in a terrible state of repair. It is overgrown, worn down by the elements and assaulted by locals who steal its stone. In the last few years it has begun to be trampled too by hoards of hikers looking for a unique Great Wall experience. Well, not any more, or so says the Chinese Government.

These two images from space show how unsustainable water use in Central Asia has caused a dramatic retreat in the Aral Sea. In the 18 years which separate the images, the sea has virtually split in two and a great white expanse of salty desert has claimed the seabed revealed by the contracting waters. The most recent image was taken this month by the European Space Agency's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (Meris) on board Envisat, the world's most powerful environmental monitoring satellite. The older image is from 1985 and was taken by the US space agency Nasa's space shuttle crew.

A 500-year-old drawing from the school of master painter Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered in a box in New Zealand. The pastel drawing, estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is so rare that its owner does not want to be identified. Wrightway Studios director Noel McGrevy confirmed that a very old and rare painting had been brought into his Auckland restoration studio recently so the frame could be repaired. Mr McGrevy said he could not disclose any more about the drawing except to say that he advised the owner to put it in a secure place because it was so valuable. Another source said the 16th-century drawing was not by da Vinci but probably by one of his students.

What causes the unusual white color on some Martian mountains? The answer can be guessed by noticing that the bright areas disappear as springtime takes hold in the south of Mars: dry ice. Dry carbon dioxide ice sublimates directly to gas from its frozen state. The frosty mountains, named Charitum Montes, have been covered with carbon dioxide ice over the Martian winter. The serene scene is not a photograph, but rather a computationally constructed digital illusion resulting from the fusion of two color images from the Mars Orbital Camera and topographic data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter.

Almost 2,000 years ago, at a temple in Roman London, someone with slender fingers took a small tin box, scooped a blob of white paste into the lid, and used that as a palette to smear the paste on to ... a face? Hands? An image of a god? The archaeologists jostling for position yesterday, as the box was opened for the first time in almost 2,000 years, had no idea. The beautifully made box was easier to open than a new jar of Marmite. There was a gasp as conservator Liz Barham gently twisted off the lid to reveal perfectly preserved fingerprints, so small they may have been those of a woman or even a child. There was a second gasp as the smell hit the company.

Joe Saunders, an archaeologist at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, gives two good reasons for preserving ancient earthworks constructed by Native Americans: They don't make them anymore, and they're part of a pre-historical culture. Saunders has participated in a statewide project designed to create a road tour of mounds called the Mounds Heritage Trail. The project, he said, will allow people to view mounds from the roadside only. "It's still in the formative stages," said Nancy Hawkins, archaeologist manager for the state. Once completed, the project would call for markers to designate certain Native American mounds located on private property that tourists could see from the road. The state also plans to develop a brochure as a guide for the mounds, Hawkins said.

This 4,300-year-old town -- now mainly an archaeological ruin with two important museums -- knows political and military upheaval well. Dynasties have risen and have fallen here since the earliest days of settled human civilization. King Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws here. Nebuchadnezzar sent his vast army from here to Jerusalem to put down an uprising and bring the Jews back as slaves. Some say Alexander the Great, who lead his great army out of Macedonia to conquer most of the known world, died here in 332 BC. The American military is just the latest to pass through the Euphrates River city. And now US soldiers and civilian occupation officials struggle with mixed success to put the city -- with its deep resonance in so many important cultures -- back together yet again.

The British Museum has refused to loan the 2,200-year-old Rosetta Stone to Cairo. It was originally found in Egypt and unlocked the mystery of hieroglyphics. But British curators say they can't let a piece central to their collection go. British Museum officials said: "The trustees do not consent to the loan of what might be called "iconic" objects. "To loan such pieces would result in our disappointing the five million or so visitors who come to the museum every year. "The Rosetta Stone, which has been in the collection of the British Museum since 1802, is central to the museum's collection." Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, says he only wants the stone for three to six months for the opening of a new wing at Cairo's Egyptian Museum. In contrast to the British Museum's policy, Hawass said items that might be considered central to the Egyptian Museum collection are part of a 50-piece show of Tutankhamen relics being lent to the British Museum. He said the real thing "should be in Egypt's possession permanently, but I want to be realistic and I don't want to get into a fight with the British Museum".

In his Essays on Christian Art and Culture in the Middle East (Vol 2, 1999) published by Leiden University, Ezzat Salib, a restorer with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) working in collaboration with the Egyptian-Netherlands Cooperation for Coptic Art Preservation (ENCCAP), wrote: "A programme of conservation of the textile collection of the Coptic Museum began in 1990, when I returned from Switzerland after a specialised training with the Abbeg Foundation in Bern." The museum's programme has two objectives: to stabilise the fibres and the structure of the textiles in the museum, of which there are more than 8,000 specimens, and to provide proper storage and exhibition conditions to ensure their preservation. The most badly damaged textiles have been attacked by fibre-eating insects, while others have been adversely affected by ultraviolet light which fades dyes and breaks down fibres. Heat makes the fabrics brittle, and humidity causes physical deterioration. For the study of textile structures, fibre identification, and decayed wool, good storage and study areas are a basic necessity.

Europe is aflame, with little prospect of any imminent change in the weather to cool it off. Four people have died in forest fires in France, and firefighters across the continent are fully stretched. The forecast for Rome and Lisbon is 37C, for Athens 33C, and no respite is in sight. For Europe's farmers, totally dependent on the weather, the outlook is dire, and remedies are few. The European Union has begun to act. Its agriculture ministers debated the drought a week ago, at the insistence of two of the worst-affected countries, Austria and France.

A Brazilian physicist has resolved a paradox thrown up by Einstein's theory of relativity.According to the theory, objects travelling at close to the speed of light appear to get shorter when viewed by stationary observers. But from the viewpoint of those on the moving object, the observers - who are receding at close to the speed of light - appear shortened instead. Other dimensions remain the same. When these notions are applied to a submarine just below the water's surface, an inconsistency seems to arise. Spectators on an anchored ship would see the submarine shrink as it moves parallel to the surface at near-light speed. The resulting density increase would sink the vessel. The submarine crew would see the opposite: water rushing past them would contract and get denser, making the submarine more buoyant and causing it to rise.

Derelict fishing nets, plastic bottles, cigarette lighters, television tubes, spray cans, broken toys, and thousands of other pieces of plastic and non-biodegradable junk converge on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands every year, scarring a seascape nearly void of people with tons of human waste. "It's absolutely horrifying the scope of seeing it uncontained out here and definitely impacting the environment," said Jean-Michel Cousteau in an e-mail to National Geographic News sent from the Searcher. "Every time we go ashore, we are startled and shocked by the amount of debris that systematically litters the coastlines and reefs."

WASHINGTON - The rate at which ozone is being destroyed in the upper stratosphere is slowing, and the levels of ozone-destroying chlorine in that layer of the atmosphere have peaked and are going down -- the first clear evidence that a worldwide reduction in chlorofluorocarbon pollution is having the desired effect, according to a new study. "This is the beginning of a recovery of the ozone layer," said Professor Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the scientist who led the ozone trend-analysis research team. "We had a monumental problem of global scale that we have started to solve."

LONDON (Reuters) - Archaeologists excavating the site of a major Roman temple in London have found a sealed box containing a white cream still bearing the fingermarks of the person who last used it, nearly 2,000 years ago."This is of major significance," said Museum of London curator Francis Grew Monday. The substance, which will now be chemically analyzed, could be face cream or even face paint, he told reporters. "We are in completely uncharted territory here. Not only is the quality of workmanship of the box exceptional, but to find one in such good condition still sealed and with its original contents will raise huge interest around the world," he added.

Scientists say they have found what they believe to be the wreckage of the Russian sailing vessel Kadiak, which sank in 1860 in shallow waters near Spruce Island. "We have discovered what we believe to be a significant archaeological site," said Dr. Brad Stevens, who spearheaded the project. If the scientists are correct that their discovery is the remains of the Kadiak, then that makes it the first shipwreck found from the Russian American colonial period, which also makes it the oldest shipwreck found in Alaska. The Kadiak, piloted by Capt. Illarion Ivanovich Arkhimandritov, was a Russian American Company ship, based out of Sitka but home-ported in Kodiak. The Kadiak transported ice from Kodiak to San Francisco.

VICTORIA -- Prehistoric human remains and artifacts discovered in one of the continent's oldest known cemeteries will undergo extensive analysis, despite complaints of grave desecration from several American Indian tribes. Federal officials say they hope to minimize destructive tests on the human bones and promptly rebury them when studies are complete, but tribes say they are considering legal action to halt further analysis. "These are our ancestors," said Walter Celestine of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe in East Texas. After more than 18 months of talks with archaeologists, tribes and others, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged the tribes' concerns and vowed to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act that prescribes treatment of such sites. Corps officials insisted that more study is warranted, given the knowledge to be gained about prehistoric culture.

A Neolithic grotto grave was recently found in Nongshan Mountain in southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, unveiling the burial secrets of the Luoyue people, ancestors of one China's largest ethnic groups, the Zhuang. Situated in Xianhu Town in Wuming County of Nanning, the autonomous region's capital, the grave is older than three others unearthed earlier in the autonomous region, which only date back to the early years of the Qin Dynasty (221 BC - 206 BC). From the 100-square-metre site, archaeologists have excavated more than 80 archeological findings, including stone implements, pottery, jade and clam ware, a few skeletons and some fossils of pandas, elephants and rhinoceros. A wealth of stone shovels made of fine-grained shale, which is rather delicate and fragile, have also been unearthed for the first time.

Beaches turning to mud and changes in wildlife are among the signs of warming climate recorded by an Inuit community in Canada. They say increasingly unpredictable weather is significantly altering the way they live. They are having to get used to unfamiliar birds and fish arriving from further south. Some believe the warming could be the start of a process that may prove unstoppable. The Inuit live in Sachs Harbour, a tiny community on Banks Island, which lies north of Canada's North West Territory, lapped by the Beaufort Sea.

Meet the latest spaced out modern artist - a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US. Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: "the semi-living artist". Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three-year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away.

Nine in 10 of London's ladybirds suffer from a sexually transmitted disease. The figure is well above that of the ladybird population outside the UK capital and scientists have been looking for an explanation. "We think it's the car pollution," Dr Greg Hurst of University College London told the BBC. Ladybirds feed on greenfly and greenfly thrive in polluted conditions. It seems that in London, the greenfly do so well that the ladybirds breed very quickly and their generations get mixed up; one generation may easily breed with the next or previous one.

The hours spent mastering the violin or piano are worthwhile - music lessons boost children's memories. Researchers from Hong Kong have found children who are given musical training have better verbal memories than those who have not had lessons. They say their findings could help people recovering from a brain injury as well as healthy children. Psychologists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys between the ages of six and 15.

Flip a coin 100 times and you'll get roughly as many heads as tails. But computers often stumble at generating random numbers - and now researchers have figured out why1. Random-number generators are used in computer simulations for all areas of science, from high-energy physics to evolutionary biology. Almost all produce a sequence of supposedly haphazard numbers by calculating each one based on a subset of those that came before.

GREEK police have arrested a man who amassed an astonishing private hoard of over two thousand treasures dating from the Stone Age to the Ottoman Empire at his home and garden, police said today. The man, 54, was arrested on Friday in the north of the country and is accused of taking part in illegal archaeological digs as well as black market sales and purchases of antiquities in Greece and abroad. Police discovered the treasures hidden away at the man's home in Apsalos, in the Pella region west of Greece's second city Salonika, as well as in his garden, in a nearby shed and a disused railway depot. The objects stored away by the man included 1,260 silver and gold coins, 747 artifacts, 37 stone tools, 35 rings, two funeral stelae, and a marble base relief.

LONDON (Reuters) - The last of the City of London's ancient perimeter gates is to return to the capital after more than a century in ignominious exile. Temple Bar -- an elaborate stone archway complete with spikes for traitors' heads -- will become a feature of a new development near St Paul's Cathedral, just half a mile from its original site. "It was a very important landmark that simply got lost," said John Ansell, administrator of Temple Bar Trust, set up to return it to London. Finished in 1672, the gate stood on the original Temple Bar site on The Strand, the artery joining Westminster, the seat of political power, and London's financial center, The City.