Newsdesk Archive

Zvi Maoz says that every day excavations at a synagogue among the ruins of the village of Dir Aziz force him to rip another page from his doctoral thesis on synagogues in the Golan Heights. Dir Aziz synagogue, next to Moshav Kanaf, has been excavated over the last five seasons and differs in many respects from other synagogues in the area. Until excavations began here, archaeologists had speculated that in Golan Heights synagogues the Ark was adjacent to the western wall, one of the two shorter sides of the rectangular-shaped structure. This would allow believers to face the general direction of Jerusalem while praying.

A BBC team says it has shown there is no such thing as the Loch Ness monster. Using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation technology to ensure that none of the loch was missed, the team surveyed the waters said to hide Scotland's legendary tourist attraction but found no trace of the monster. Previous reported sightings of the beast led to speculation that it might be a plesiosaur, a marine reptile which died out with the dinosaurs. The team was convinced that such an animal could have survived in the cold waters of Loch Ness, despite the normal preference of marine reptiles for sub-tropical waters.

Ottawa's Nick Raina may have solved one of the world's greatest mysteries. Brushing aside hundreds of years worth of theories by historians and archeologists, the 69-year-old man claims he can build a Great Pyramid just like the one constructed by the Egyptians, in approximately 2450 BC, using simple hand tools and minimal force. Mr. Raina is not an engineer or a scientist. He describes himself simply as "an eccentric old man that moves big rocks." He will give a full-scale demonstration in Perth today at the Stewart Park Festival. Whereas it has traditionally been assumed that the Egyptians built ramps and laboriously dragged more than two million limestone slabs, each weighing approximately 2.3 tonnes, to the top of the Great Pyramid, Mr. Raina said the real answer to the mystery canbe found in a bizarre-looking wooden contraption that sits on his driveway.

A new global map of Mars shows likely locations of water ice based on observations of hydrogen made by NASA's Odyssey spacecraft. The presence of hydrogen is a strong indicator that water -- most of it almost surely frozen -- exists near the surface of Mars, embedded in the soil. Liquid water might exist on the red planet, but no data so far has provided firm indications. The new map is based on more than a year's worth of Odyssey data, much of which has already been announced. The purpose is to show the extent of frozen water on Mars in a visual format. Bill Feldman, a Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher who led the observations, called the map "breathtaking."

For years, one of the main goals in computer graphics has been to recreate a totally convincing human being on screen, something that looks and acts so life-like that it is indistinguishable from a real person. But human beings are hard to recreate, because along with all those tiny details in the way we look, there is the way we move, our expressions. Now there is a new type of computer graphics card which is bringing virtual humans a lot closer.

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Scuba divers may soon uncover the secrets of the CSS Georgia, a mysterious ship buried off the coast of Georgia since the Civil War. The divers are exploring the CSS Georgia as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studies for a proposed river-deepening project. The project could result in discoveries about the CSS Georgia, one of the Confederacy's earliest ironclad naval vessels. Divers will continue their work over the next five or six weeks. The ship is largely unknown even to experts. No one can say for sure exactly how long it was. No formal building plans have survived. Extensive searches of historical records haven't turned up much contemporary information.

A BITTER row between Austria and Italy over which country can claim to be home to the world's oldest ice mummy has been settled thanks to the work of a scientist from an Australian university. The 5300-year-old mummy, known as Oetzi after the Oetz Valley region between the two countries where he was found, was at the centre of the bizarre ownership row after his corpse was found on the mountainous border region separating the two, in the disputed region of South Tyrol. The question of whether Oetzi was an Austrian heading to Italy or an Italian heading to Austria has been the source of heated debate, especially since the ice mummy has proven to be a multi-million dollar tourist attraction.

FORT MACLEOD, ALTA. -- As world landmarks go, southern Alberta's most historic attraction doesn't claim the same stature as the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China or England's Stonehenge. With its peculiar name and isolated location 200 kilometres south of Calgary, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump might seem an unlikely choice for a prestigious UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. Yet the tourist attraction on the eastern slopes of the Porcupine Hills is among just 13 sites in Canada (and 630 around the globe) to be honoured by the United Nations for its important place in world history. Perched high upon windswept bluffs in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Head-Smashed-In is home to one of the largest and best-preserved prehistoric buffalo jumps in North America. More ancient even than the mysterious rock slabs of Stonehenge and the burial pillars in Egypt, the site is sacred to Canada's First Nations and is an archaeological gold mine that details the intricate history of the Blackfoot Indians from 6,000 years ago until modern times.

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.

July 25: UNESCO's World Heritage Committee (WHC) has declared seven of Nepal's renowned world heritage sites highly endangered, thanks to government apathy and political turbulence. At its 27th session in Paris early this month, WHC added the Kathmandu Valley to the list of World Heritage in Danger alongwith the Walled City of Baku in Azerbaijan and the Como National Park in Cte d'Ivoire. The Kathmandu Valley was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979. It is composed of seven zones with monuments surrounded by traditional structures. Prime among them is the 5th century Pashupatinath temple - one of the holiest shrines dedicated to the Hindu God of destruction - Lord Shiva.

Pirate fishing ships in Antarctic waters are devastating fish and seabird populations, a conference on the Southern Ocean was told last week. And an expected increase in krill fishing could have an even greater effect on the region's wildlife. Since the 1980s, fisheries in the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, have been managed in a novel way. Scientists can limit catches to levels that leave the ocean's unique ecosystem in a sustainable state of health, and all fishing boats must be licensed by national governments. However, the vast size and harsh conditions of the Southern Ocean make it hard to police, and conservation efforts are being thwarted by illegal fishing. The Patagonian toothfish has been hardest hit by the pirates, putting the survival of this fishery in doubt.

It is one of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth, with towering peaks, granite-faced cliffs that plunge to indigo fjords, and valleys laced with rushing streams. Humpback, gray, and killer whales cruise the inlets and channels. And deep in the hemlock rain forests of this, British Columbia's central coast, dwells an unusually rare, white form of the common black bear. There may be no more than a few hundred in all, about 160 of them on Princess Royal Island, living amid ten times as many standard black bears. For decades, they have been known as Kermode bears, after B.C.'s early-20th-century provincial museum curator Francis Kermode, the first naturalist to acquire a specimen. No one seems to know who began calling them spirit bears some years ago. Possibly the name came from a misinterpreted Indian term. The local Git-ga'at people traditionally revere living things in general as spiritual. They do accord masala, "the white bear," comparatively high status: Their hereditary chief is the only official allowed to use it as a crest.

Residents of the county almshouse lived in misery, died without dignity and were buried in a potter's field off New Scotland Avenue. Their coffins were stacked five or six deep in unmarked graves during the decades at the turn of the 20th century. They were considered human detritus of the Industrial Age: Amputees who couldn't pull their weight in factories. Indigent single mothers with children they couldn't feed. People, old and poor, debilitated by disease. Homeless, illiterate immigrants. The mentally ill. Forced to do farm labor, men in their 40s died of exhaustion. Babies were stillborn or died from starvation and cholera. Young women succumbed to consumption, dropsy and cancer. Now, working with photos and data from 1,400 skeletal remains, two researchers are laboring against long odds to match bones with names recorded in century-old almshouse ledgers. Their efforts open a window onto a Dickensian underside of Albany history.

This might resemble a fried egg you've had for breakfast, but it's actually much larger. In fact, ringed by blue-tinted star forming regions and faintly visible spiral arms, the yolk-yellow center of this face-on spiral galaxy, NGC 7742, is about 3,000 light-years across. About 72 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, NGC 7742 is known to be a Seyfert galaxy - a type of active spiral galaxy with a center or nucleus which is very bright at visible wavelengths. Across the spectrum, the tremendous brightness of Seyferts can change over periods of just days to months and galaxies like NGC 7742 are suspected of harboring massive black holes at their cores.

A bottle containing a message from a refugee fleeing the Nazis during World War II has been found on a remote Swedish beach. The note, dated to 1943 and scrawled on now yellowed paper, was written in English and asked if the war was over. It was signed by a woman called Maja Westerman from the then Nazi-occupied Baltic state of Estonia, who had fled to Gotska Sandoen, a Swedish island 150 kilometres (92 miles) from where the bottle was found. Thorsten Schwarz, the Swiss tourist who found the bottle, said he hoped to trace the refugee through the internet. Swedish newspaper Soedermanlands Nyheter has published a translation of the note, which reads as follows: "Dear friend, we live on an island. We came here a year ago... the lighthouse keeper's family is very kind... is the war finished... we wait for peace and friendship."

A British sailor whose name is a byword for fortitude, John Ridgway, has picked a new challenge. Ridgway, who in 1966 rowed the North Atlantic, is setting out to save the world's albatrosses. He expects to confront the pirate fishing fleets whose methods kill thousands of seabirds annually. His boat, the 17-metre (57 feet) ketch English Rose VI, has its own website to enable a global audience to participate. Ridgway's voyage, on which his wife is sailing too, will consist of seven legs, each highlighting the plight of a different albatross species. He leaves Scotland on 26 July, heading for the Canary Islands and then to Cape Town in South Africa.

Thousands of archaeological sites are being damaged by farmers, English Heritage has warned. Ploughs had damaged or destroyed valuable sites, including Neolithic long barrows, Roman villas, Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and medieval field systems. English Heritage wants for a new strategy to protect sites but said farmers were not to blame. "They have only been doing what society has asked and agricultural policy has dictated," said chief executive Simon Thurley. "Modern intensive ploughing has arguably done more damage in six decades than traditional agriculture did in the preceding six centuries."

A team of divers led by four prominent maritime archaeologists will explore and map the remains of the Frolic, one of Californias most important Gold Rush-Era shipwrecks. The underwater mapping will take place July 28 through Aug. 8. The Frolic, laden with Chinese household goods bound for San Francisco, went aground off the Mendocino Coast in August 1850, at the north end of what is now the Point Cabrillo Light Station & Preserve in Mendocino. The lost bounty included 21,000 porcelain bowls, marble inset tables, a prefabricated house with oyster shell windows, and 6,109 bottles of Edinburgh ale.

PESHAWAR, July 22: The management of the Peshawar museum has detected some 688 relics of Gandhara period in the godown of the museum, which remained unregistered since the British period, officials said here on Tuesday. Director of the department of archaeology and museum, NWFP, Dr Ihsan Ali said: "Certainly, it came as a surprise for the staff when they detected a large number of unregistered precious pieces in godown of the museum."

SOMERS POINT - From a distance, it looked like Bill Liebeknecht was playing in the dirt. But Liebeknecht, an archeologist, actually was bringing layers of the city's history up to the surface Monday. Liebeknecht and his assistants came here from Trenton and spent the past two days digging holes behind the Atlantic County Historical Society and the Somers Mansion as a requirement for the historical society's expansion project.

Several great whale species were once far more abundant than records suggest, geneticists say. They think there were about 10 times more fin and humpback whales in the North Atlantic than modern estimates claim. But minke whale numbers appear historically to have been much closer to current populations. The findings could radically change the terms of the debate on a possible resumption of whaling. The geneticists, from the universities of Stanford and Harvard, US, report their findings in the magazine Science.

The earliest-known example of prehistoric cave art in Britain could get a new £4.5m museum. A lottery bid is being prepared to allow the cave art to go on public view, although the exact details have yet to be worked out. The art - first revealed in June - consists of 12,000-year-old engravings of birds and an ibex carved into the stone walls at Creswell Crags, on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Nigel Mills, manager of the Creswell Heritage Trust, told BBC News Online that "these discoveries show how important Creswell Crags are in global terms.

In his 15 years as a storm chaser, Tim Samaras had never seen a tornado this close. The thundering twister was heading straight for him. "It looked like a barrel," he said. "It was half a mile [0.8 kilometer] wide." He jumped out of his Dodge Caravan to drop special instrumented probes into the path of the oncoming tornado. But what if the car got stuck in the mud? "We had debris flying overhead, and we could watch the telephone poles get ripped out of the ground and absorbed into the tornado vortex," he said. It took Samaras only six seconds to deploy the probe.

Unusual warm spots on Mars might represent "ice towers" similar to those seen in Antarctica, say researchers. They could even harbour life, Nick Hoffman of Melbourne University told a conference on Thursday. Hoffman detected warm spots in the Hellas Basin after scrutinising infrared images taken with THEMIS, the heat-sensing camera on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. The spots are between 20 and 40 degrees warmer than their surroundings both night and day, and irrespective of whether they are being hit by sunlight. The simplest explanation, claims Hoffman, is that the warm spots are caused by some kind of geothermal activity causing the release of water vapour. If so, they could resemble the ice towers found on Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Ross Island in Antarctica, where the conditions are almost as cold and dry as on Mars.

'Selma', the elusive sea serpent of Seljord in Telemark, has again been spotted. The dog days of summer, which stretch from July 23 to August 23 have traditionally been days where the legendary beast has been spotted in Lake Seljord, newspaper Telemarksavisa reports. "It's good to hear that there is still life in her," said Seljord's cheerful director of culture, Bernt Solvoll. This summer had not featured a single spotting from either tourist or residents, and the previous year was also extremely quiet on the sea serpent front. But on Wednesday Solvoll got a call from a Telemark man who has a cabin near the lake.

CONSTRUCTION workers digging a new house plot in Xylotombou found a lot more than just dirt and rocks as they broke the surface on Monday morning. What they managed to unearth was an ancient Roman grave filled with seven skeletons, a big white amphora, and a large supply of pots and jugs next to the human remains. Workers immediately called the police, who contacted Marinos Avram, head of the Archaeological Museum of Larnaca. Avram and a small team of fellow archaeologists made their way over to the unearthed burial ground to exhume and to examine the findings.

Just before Zahi Hawass was due to begin his lecture at a British Museum colloquium on Ancient Egypt last week, the lights blew. The symbolism was not lost on many in the audience. For the new director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt is a man much given to rupturing what has come to be regarded as the normal order of things. While he was in London for the conference, he dropped a diplomatic bombshell. At a private dinner with the British Museum's director, Dr Neil MacGregor, he calmly announced that Egypt would be applying for the return of the Rosetta Stone. No wonder the lights fused. The 2,000-year-old relic is perhaps the Bloomsbury museum's most important exhibit. It draws millions of people each year, and is seen by more of the museum's 5.5 million annual visitors than any other single object.

A Neolithic grotto grave was recently found in Nongshan Mountain of southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, unveiling the burial secrets of the Luoyue People, ancestors of China's largest ethnic group, the Zhuang. Situated in the Xianhu town in Wuming county of Nanning city, the grave is older than three other 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-sq-m site, archeologists 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.

Bulgarian and US scientists will study an ancient ship with a cargo of amphorae on the bed of the Black Sea off the Bulgarian coastal city of Varna. The government in Sofia is expected to issue Thursday a license for a two-year archeological research under an international interdisciplinarian scientific project studying Bulgarian waters. The main goal of the project is geological research but it is also paired by archeological expeditions hoped to discover submerged pre-historic, antique or mediaeval settlements, havens, and vessels. Under the project, the Archeological Institute in Sofia partners the Institute of Archaeological Oceanography at the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, and the Institute of Exploration, Sea Research Foundation in Mystic, Connecticut.

The sweep of colours shows minute variations in the Earth's gravitational field. If you were to fly over the red areas, you would be tugged ever so slightly downwards; the blues mark regions where the planet's attraction is much weaker. These gravity anomalies, as they are known, are imperceptible to the human senses, and so the scientists have wrapped the data on to a sphere and exaggerated the highs and lows. This gives us a stunning visual representation of the subject under study.

The sky isn't falling in, say scientists - it is rising. And it's our fault. The top of the troposphere - the atmosphere's lowest layer - has risen by several hundred metres since 1979, mostly because of transport and industrial emissions, reckon Ben Santer, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and colleagues. The troposphere's height could even serve as a kind of barometer for the extent of global environmental change. The researchers computer-modelled five possible causes for the shift, three human and two natural. They looked at changes in greenhouse-gas levels, sunlight reflected from airborne solid particles, atmospheric ozone concentration, the Sun's output of heat and light, and dust injected into the atmosphere by volcanoes.

Sniffing for puffs of radioactive radon gas could be the easiest way to find water lurking metres beneath the Martian soil. We already know there should be plenty of water on Mars. Probes have found water vapour in the Martian atmosphere and ice on the surface at the poles. And NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft recently detected traces of hydrogen, almost certainly bound up in ice near the surface. But Mars Odyssey's sensors could only peek into the top metre of soil, and although the European Space Agency's Mars Express - due to reach the planet in December - has surface-penetrating radar that can spot water, it can only probe to between 100 metres and 5 kilometres underground.

Archaeologists Michael Fosha, of the South Dakota State Historical Society, and Steve Holen of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science excavated a mammoth bone along the Missouri River near Whitlock Bay. Evidence of two mammoths had been found at the site. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the South Dakota Historical Society combined efforts for an excavation to determine if the mammoths were killed by humans or died of natural causes. If people see mammoth bones on a beach or exposed in a riverbank, they should call Fosha or Rick Harnois, an archaeologist for the corps. Fosha plans to investigate each site where mammoth bones are found to determine if the mammoth was killed by humans.

An important archaeological site which faced being re-buried under tons of dirt has been saved. Backers of Brading Roman Villa, on the Isle of Wight, are to receive more than £2m from the Heritage Lottery Fund. That means they are now ready to begin work on a £2.7m scheme to replace a 100-year-old rusting metal roof currently covering the site's 4th Century mosaics. It had been feared that if the lottery cash had not been forthcoming the mosaics would have had to have been reburied for their protection.

Police have arrested for forgery the Israeli antiques dealer who presented to the world the burial box purported to have contained the bones of Jesus's brother. The "James ossuary" was first displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum. Oded Golan was arrested on suspicion of forging the ossuary and a tablet alleged to date back to the 9th century B.C. Yesterday, Ed Keall, the ROM's senior curator and head of the Near Eastern and Asian Civilizations department, acknowledged the possibility he and his colleagues "were duped," but said Mr. Golan appeared believable.

AN ENGRAVING of a gladiator carved on the side of a glass by Romans more than 1,500 years ago has been found in a Northamptonshire field. Archaeologists found the ancient fragment of glass on the site of a villa nearNether Heyford last week and it was displayed to the public for the first time at the weekend. Archaeologist Barbara Evans-Reese said the engraved fragment of glass, which shows a male gladiator in a fighting pose, was an amazing find.

Scientists have drilled through the central Greenland ice cap, obtaining an ice core that records climate data for the past 120,000 years. They reached bedrock at 0815 GMT on 17 July after seven years, and 3,000 metres, of drilling in one of the remotest spots on Earth. Air bubbles in the core will tell them how the climate has changed over the entire period - right through the last major ice age. And meltwater obtained from beneath the ice cap may contain microbes that have been isolated from the outside world for hundreds of thousands of years.

The rate of extinction threatening to engulf south-east Asia this century could be a "catastrophic" 20%, scientists say. They base their warning on the example of Singapore, where key habitats have shrunk by 95% since 1819. The scientists say it is the unprecedented rate of habitat loss that now threatens so many species. South-east Asia is one of the Earth's most important biodiversity "hotspots".

A British scientist has died in the Antarctic after being attacked by a leopard seal. Kirsty Brown was snorkelling in waters close to the Rothera Research Station as part of her studies when the animal approached her and pulled her under. Colleagues who witnessed the attack immediately launched a rescue boat to try to save her. And although they managed to retrieve her body and begin resuscitation, the 28-year-old marine biologist could not be revived.

Astronomers have found the first direct evidence that dark energy - a sort of push balancing gravity's pull - pervades the Universe. Ryan Scranton of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and his colleagues have detected a fingerprint of dark energy in the afterglow of the Big Bang, radiation called the cosmic microwave background (CMB)1. The CMB is slightly hotter where there are more galaxies. Dark energy is the only explanation, the researchers argue. Astrophysicists postulated dark energy when distant exploding stars, called supernovae, which were dimmer than expected, revealed that the Universe's expansion is perpetually gaining pace. But no one knows what dark energy is or where it comes from.

Ancient dolphin-like ichthyosaurs had a penchant for baby turtles, palaeontologists have discovered. The diet could have led to their downfall. The marine reptiles lived 230-90 million years ago while dinosaurs stalked the earth. They were thought to have been picky eaters, grazing mainly on small squid-like belemnites. In fact, "they dined out on a wide range of things," says Ben Kear of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. Kear and his colleagues picked through the preserved stomach contents of a 110 million- year-old fossilized ichthyosaur after slowly dissolving the surrounding limestone with acid. They found fish, baby turtles and even a small bird, whose corpse the beast probably swallowed.

The first major Western book printed with movable type, the Gutenberg Bible, has been put online by the University of Texas. This is not the first digital version of the book as sites in England and Japan have versions on the web. The copy of the Gutenberg Bible owned by the university's Harry Ransom Center is one of only five complete copies in the United States. The Gutenberg Bible was printed at Johann Gutenberg's shop in Mainz, Germany and completed in 1454 or 1455. The center said the exact number of copies printed was not known but the best guess was that it was around 180 - 145 on paper and the rest on vellum. Only 48 copies had survived, the center said, adding that its copy was one of 21 known complete copies in the world. It is valued at anything up to US$20 million.

A new genetic study deals a blow to claims that humans reached America at least 30,000 years ago - around the same time that people were colonising Europe. The subject of when humans first arrived in America is hotly contested by academics. On one side of the argument are researchers who claim America was first populated around 13,000 years ago, toward the end of the last Ice Age. On the other are those who propose a much earlier date for colonisation of the continent - possibly around 30,000-40,000 years ago.

The historic Yad Avshalom monument in Jerusalem's Kidron Valley, revered for centuries as a Jewish shrine, was also a Christian holy place in the fourth century, new evidence has revealed. A fourth-century inscription on one of the walls near the monument, recently uncovered by chance, marks the site as the burial place of the Temple priest Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist who baptized Jesus.

Dozens of exquisite medicine bottles have been discovered in a bird nest in Huanglong Cave on Wudang Mountain, a famous Taoist resort in central China's Hubei Province. Words on the bottles showed they were used to store eye medicines during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). A board, 127 centimeters long and 56 centimeters wide, was found in a pavilion below the grotto, which specifies functions of eye medicines made by a Taoist named Yunxia, explaining they could cure 72 kinds of eye sicknesses, including cataracts presbyopia and tearing in the wind. The advertisement also informed buyers to pay the exact fees listed, since the "sacred cave is far above and words can hardly be heard".

THE secretive Environment and Heritage Service (EHS) is again caught in the spotlight. Recently, the it has been unremittingly condemned in the media by those concerned about the conservation of our natural, architectural and archaeological heritage. The critics of EHS include the World Wide Fund for Nature, Friends of the Earth, the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, former Assembly members such as John Dallat and David Ford, and the European Commission. In March, the Northern Ireland Audit Office publicly condemned the "deficiencies" and "poor management practices" of the service.

Experts at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage are renovating the old city of Fujairah that houses the Old Fort of Fujairah, old palaces of the Ruling Family and residences. They have already completed restoring a number of important archaeological sites in Fujairah and are renovating other historic sites to make a complete heritage village that will attract tourists.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. - In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled. Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists will go on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships and a possible human settlement left mummified in the Black Sea's oxygen-free waters.

In an archeological finding of enormous significance, more than 800 tombs from the Silla dynasty (57 B.C.-668 A.D.) were recently excavated near a dam construction site in Ulsan, a discovery that could possibly reshape the current knowledge of the kingdom's early stages. The ancient burial ground is the largest ever found in Korea, even surpassing the mounds of Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province in density and total number. The tombs date back to the second century and early seventh century, and were found nearly perfectly preserving their inner structure and burial articles.

A major excavation of the wreck site of the Mary Rose which could uncover a host of secrets about Henry VIII's warship has been launched. The archaeological dives at the request of the Ministry of Defence form part of a survey ahead of plans to regenerate Portsmouth naval base. The Royal Navy recently announced a £200 million regeneration of Portsmouth so it can be home to the next generation of warships, particularly the new aircraft carriers. But the current route into the naval base is not deep enough for the new super-carriers - which will be twice the size of existing aircraft vessels - and the navy is planning to dredge a new approach into the harbour.

LENGGONG, July 21 (Bernama) -- Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak Monday asked the Culture, Arts and Tourism Ministry to continue efforts to reveal the secrets of Perak's history through archaeological research. According to Sultan Azlan, there were still many highly potential archaeological sites ,like Pulau Kalumpang, Kuala Selinsing, Sungkai and Lembah Bernam, which had yet to be explored. "This is necessary so that the resilience and the origins of the race could be known exactly and exhibited for the understanding of the people and foreign tourists," he said at the launch of the Lenggong Museum of Archaeology here Monday. Also present were Raja Permaisuri Tuanku Bainun, the Raja Muda Raja Nazrin Shah, Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali and Deputy Culture, Arts and Tourism Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow.

Astronomers in Australia say there are 10 times more stars in the visible Universe than all the grains of sand on the world's beaches and deserts. From the darkest parts of Earth, the naked human eye can see about 5,000 stars; from a brightly lit city street, only about 100. But modern telescopes tell a different story. The Australian astronomers used some of the world's most powerful instruments to measure the brightness of all the galaxies in one sector of the cosmos - and then calculated how many stars they must have contained.

The fundamental processes which keep humans and all animals alive evolved more than 600 million years ago in single-celled organisms, scientists say. The research, published in the journal Science, highlights the ancient genetic lineage we all carry in every cell of our bodies. The way our cells function, grow and interact with others uses molecules and methods that first appeared long ago, when the most advanced forms of life were just microbes living in the sea. Studying an obscure microorganism with ancient roots led scientists to this far-reaching conclusion.

Mature trees might not offset global warming by mopping up excess carbon dioxide, suggests a forest study in Switzerland. They may already have all the carbon dioxide that they need. If the phenomenon is widespread, it could be a setback to those hoping that existing and newly planted forests will buffer mounting CO2 levels. Whether these carbon sinks will work is much debated because of its relevance to the Kyoto Protocol, in which countries compensate for their greenhouse-gas emissions by planting forests.

China is on course to become only the third nation ever to place a human in space, following press reports that the first crewed flight will take place in 100 days. A government source told the state-controlled news service Wen Wei Po that the launch would take place within this timeframe. No official date for launch has been set. There has already been some speculation that China's National Space Administration may target 1 October, the date on which the People's Republic of China was founded. But independent space analyst James Oberg says this date is unlikely to be fixed. "They appear to be quite responsible in flying only when they are ready and it shows," he says.

Renaissance potters producing peculiar luster glazes on ceramics were practicing an early form of nanotechnology, Italian researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Physics. The iridescent gold and red luster decorations seen in ceramics from the Umbrian towns of Deruta and Gubbio exploit the reflective properties of metal nanoparticles and copper ions. "These particles were embedded in the glaze that coats pottery. Basically, it was a very thin metal glass layer," Bruno Brunetti, of Perugia University's Chemistry Department, told Discovery News.

When archaeologists found the 4,300-year-old burial of an archer and metalworker at Amesbury in Wiltshire last year, they knew at once that they were looking at the remains of a great Bronze Age chieftain. The astonishing wealth of the possessions found in his grave declared him a man of power. This was, quite simply, the richest early Bronze Age grave ever found in Britain, with some of the country's earliest known items of gold. Included among the man's 100-odd possessions were a pair of gold hair ornaments, three copper knives, a shale belt-ring, archery equipment and arrowheads. No wonder he was described in the media as the 'King of Stonehenge'.

A new society for the study of Loulan, the city known as "China's Pompeii in the desert," has been formed in Korla of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Pompeii is the Italian town that was buried under volcanic ash nearly 2,000 years ago. Loulan, with a history of about 2,000 years, is the site of the ruins of the ancient Kingdom of Kroraina. It was discovered by a Swedish archeologist in 1900. Situated on the eastern tip of the Taklamakan Desert in southern Xinjiang, Loulan was a booming city at the juncture of the southern and northern routes of the ancient Silk Road some 2,000 years ago.

Genetic fingerprinting might soon clear up an ancient Christian mystery - the origins of medieval parchments and even the Canterbury Gospels, thought to have arrived in Britain in 579AD. Cambridge scientists plan to study DNA in parchments prepared from animal skins to trace where they came from. With a £52,000 grant from the arts and humanities research board, Christopher Howe, a Cambridge biochemist, and Christopher de Hamel of Corpus Christi college, have begun to hunt for ways to take tiny samples of tissue from manuscripts.

At the Pyramids Plateau and under the feet of Sphinx, the whole world would mark an international musical event, namely the concert led by the Italian musician Ricardo Motte, scheduled to be held today, with the participation of more than 400 musicians, who came to Egypt for playing such classical musical pieces. The whole world would mark that historical event on air from that spectacular location, that reflects the ancient Egyptian civilization. The Italian TV channel RAI 1; as well as the Stream TV channel and the Italian Rai 3 would transmit the concert on air.

The first stars to form in the Universe had no planets. Only later generations of stars, that contained more metal, were able to have planetary companions, according to new research. To reach this conclusion, astronomers looked at 754 nearby stars like our Sun. Some of the surveyed stars had planets but most did not. The results showed that the more iron and other metals there are in a star, the greater the chance it has a companion planet. The implication is that planets did not form around the metal-poor stars that formed when the Universe was very young.

Summers spent building sandcastles on the beach could be a distant memory by the end of the century. Climate change is changing the face of the British coastline, eroding beaches and marshes. Conservationists warn that if nothing is done, holiday beaches may be lost within 100 years along with habitat that shelters wildlife. International experts are meeting in London on Wednesday to discuss ways to protect the UK's coastal assets. It depends on working with nature rather than against it, say experts from "Living with the Sea", a four-year European partnership headed by English Nature.

Genetically modified crops pose a "very low" risk to human health, according to an independent scientific review. A panel of 25 experts said it found no case for ruling out all GM crops in the UK and that the novel plants were unlikely to lead to the creation of "superweeds". But it raised doubts about the effects the new crops could have on the wider environment - particularly wildlife. Critics, including former environment minister Michael Meacher, argued that GM plants and foods had not been properly tested and it was too soon to say they were safe.

Archaeologists in Northamptonshire are unearthing the recipe secrets of the Romans. Excavations in the county have shown the dish of the day 2,000 years ago was freshly-grilled hare and stuffed dormice. The excavations are at Whitehall Villa, Nether Heyford, just yards from the Grand Union Canal, are revealing the secrets of Northamptonshire's Roman Heritage, including their unusual diet. Archaeologist Martin Weaver said a burned bowl found at the site contained the remnants of hare stew.

Egypt is demanding that the 2000-year-old Rosetta Stone be returned to Cairo and has threatened to pursue its claim "aggressively" if the British Museum does not agree to give it back. The stone, which became the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, was found by Napoleon's army in 1799 in the Nile delta, but has been in Britain for 200 years. "If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity," said Zahi Hawass, director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo. He has begun negotiations with the museum.

MERV, Turkmenistan (AP) -- Genghis Khan's hordes couldn't wipe out the great city at Merv even as they killed hundreds of thousands in their bloody wave of conquest. Centuries later, though, modern man's meddling with nature threatens to obliterate the once magnificent metropolis. Water from Soviet-era irrigation projects that brought new life to the desert country of Turkmenistan is now seeping from the ground into ancient mud-brick castles, putting them on the verge of collapse.

Botanists in the UK are starting a search for some of the country's best-loved and most threatened plants. They want to find the best sites in Britain for wild flowers that thrive in arable crops. The botanists are enlisting the help of farmers and agronomists in tracking down the floral hotspots. They hope landowners will help to save the plants by farming in an environmentally sensitive way.

The fishing in Alaska's Wood-Tikchik State Park is world-class. A 1.6-million-acre (647,500-hectare) wilderness in southwestern Alaska, it is home to all five species of native salmon. In September, the world's largest run of sockeye, or "red," salmon surge from the Pacific to spawn in the headwaters of the park's wild rivers. On the Agulukpak River, more than 2,000 trout per mile (1.6 kilometers) crowd the waters at its peak. Catching fish here is easy. Reaching them isn't. The majority of the park can only be accessed by float plane, boat, or foot.

The Aral Sea is disappearing even faster than previously thought, with a new study of the southern part of the sea slashing its life expectancy by decades. Since the 1960s, the sea has been drying up as a result of poor management of irrigation channels that steal water from rivers feeding it. Once the area of Ireland, it is now a quarter that size and broken into two fragments - the North Aral Sea and South Aral Sea (see map). Because of the costs involved, only the smaller North Aral has been earmarked for rescue (New Scientist print edition, 4 January 2003), and several dams to stem water loss from it have been build since the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, the South Aral has been abandoned, and as it dries up it is wreaking havoc on the environment. It is leaving behind vast salt plains, transforming the climate with hotter summers and colder winters, destroying what remains of local fisheries, and producing massive dust storms that spread disease.

For some it is a miracle tree, a source of many different medicines. But extracts from the Indian neem tree have now been shown to damage the DNA of sperm when fed to mice. The researchers who made the discovery think that neem could be a "long-term genetic hazard", and have called for further investigation to ensure that eating neem products does not produce genetic abnormalities in adults or their children. Proponents of traditional Hindu Ayurvedic medicine passionately dispute the relevance of the results. "Neem has been used by millions of people in India over several centuries, and there has been no genotoxic effect reported so far," says Pramila Thakkar of the Neem Foundation, a Mumbai-based charity that promotes products from the neem tree (Azadirachta indica).

Why does this starfield photograph resemble an impressionistic painting? The effect is created not by digital trickery but by large amounts of interstellar dust. Dust, minute globs rich in carbon and similar in size to cigarette smoke, frequently starts in the outer atmospheres of large, cool, young stars. The dust is dispersed as the star dies and grows as things stick to it in the interstellar medium. Dense dust clouds are opaque to visible light and can completely hide background stars. For less dense clouds, the capacity of dust to preferentially reflect blue starlight becomes important, effectively blooming the stars blue light out and marking the surrounding dust.

Archaeologists unearthed a 14-th century oriental music instrument, while digging at excavation sites in Veliky Novgorod, which is the administrative center of Russia's north-western Novgorod region. Talking to RIA-NOVOSTI, full-time member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valentin Yanin, who heads the Novgorod archaeological expedition, said that archaeologists have found a small iron Oriental music instrument at the Nikitin excavation site in the city's former merchant district. This wind-instrument, which resembles a horse-shoe, was used to make rather unusual guttural sounds.

THE EXHIBITS stare at you. Never have I felt myself being reviewed so fiercely by a show." That is how the Sunday Times art critic described his feelings leaving the Fayum portraits, displayed in the exhibition Ancient Faces at the British Museum from June 1 until July 20, 1997. This is exactly the feeling of those who visit the exhibition of the Fayum portraits now open until 15 July at the Athens Concert Hall (Megaron Mousikis). These artefacts are unique in the history of art. They mark a turning point in the Egyptians' mortuary practices, as of the first century AD, when mummies became gradually endowed with their portraits. These were depictions of the head and shoulders of the deceased, executed either on wooden tablets and placed under the bandages covering the mummy's face or on the linen shroud itself.

MEXICO CITY, Jul 18 (Tierramérica) - The remnants of the past that lie in the depths of Panamanian waters are now covered by a law that protects the Central American nation's historic heritage, a legal tool that recognises the value of underwater archaeology -- and blocks the way of treasure hunters. Panama's Legislative Assembly incorporated subaquatic treasures into the category of national heritage in a Jun. 30 decision. This was good news for archaeologists who are keen on studying the cultural wealth submerged in the country's seas, lakes and rivers. The areas declared archaeological sites cover 30,000 square km on the ocean floor of the Pacific and Atlantic within Panamanian territorial waters. The now-protected area holds vestiges of dozens of galleons of the Spanish and Portuguese armadas from the colonial era.

Evidence of the potentially deadly West Nile virus has been found in a high proportion of British birds, scientists have revealed. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and the researchers have warned that the risk of the virus spreading to humans is increasing with the impact of climate change. It can cause fatal inflammation of the brain in humans. There have been no cases of the virus in the UK but it killed more than 270 people in the US last year. Scientists at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford tested birds mainly in Cambridgeshire, but also in Dorset and South Wales.

Elusive and cannibalistic, the Humboldt, or jumbo, squid (Dosidicus gigas) has a reputation so fearsome that it has earned the nickname "red devil." But to William Gilly, a biology professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, the mysterious squid, which can reach six feet (1.8 meters) long, is a beautiful sea creature that provides important ecological clues. Gilly has studied the behavior and biology of the Humboldt squid for more than two decades, tagging them in the Gulf of California as part of a larger study of their movements in the Pacific Ocean.

Some 264 popes have reigned over the course of almost 2,000 years and in that time they have written major parts of the history of the Western world. Their stories fill some 30 miles (50 kilometers) of shelves in the Vatican Secret Archives, home to many of the pivotal documents of Western history. Here you'll find the petition on behalf of Henry VIII seeking an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Attached are the seals of 85 clergymen and nobles in England, an attempt to persuade the pope of the justness of Henry's request.

A RARE carving has been found among medieval ruins of a lost bishop's palace. The find comes just days before the first anniversary of the death of archaeologist Nick Bogdan who led the dig. The 55-year-old, who died of a heart attack last August, spent eight years excavating the remains of a bishop's palace at Fetternear, near Kemnay, Aberdeenshire. The artefact - which could be up to 800 years old - is a 3ins-long figure of a king carved in bone or ivory.

TWO hugely significant Neolithic finds have been made in Fife within weeks of each other, thanks to sharp-eyed amateur archeologists. Historic Scotland has confirmed that intricate markings on boulders on the Binn Hill, a volcanic plug above Burntisland, are neolithic cup and ring marks which may be 4,000 years old. In a separate find, an outstanding example of a ceremonial Neolithic axe, which may have belonged to a leader or a priest, has been unearthed in a newly ploughed field at Mid-Conlan, just below East Lomond Hill. Amateur archeologists Colin Kilgour and Jock Moyes contacted Historic Scotland after seeing photographs of Neolithic carvings in an exhibition and recognising the designs they had seen as children playing on the Binn Hill.

Chinese archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a complete ancient village on the western edge of Yinxu, an important archaeological excavation site dating back more than 3,000 years, in central China's Henan province. Archaeologists from the Archaeological Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences CASS) and Henan Provincial Cultural Heritage and Archaeological Research Institute unearthed 27 homes (or suites) with 70 rooms during their excavations at Yinxu. The village has the first houses inhabited by ordinary people to be found at Yinxu. "This is the first time that semi-subterranean residences half built into the ground have ever been found at Yinxu or among ruins from the Xia (2100 BC-1600 BC), Shang (1600 BC-1100 BC) and Zhou (1100 BC-771 BC) Dynasties," said Wang Xuerong, an associate research fellow with the Archaeological Research Institute under the CASS.

In 2000, the Navy Museum of Crete decided to embark on an extremely challenging project: the reconstruction of a Minoan ship, the most ancient European seagoing craft. Part of an integrated research program titled Experimental Naval Archaeology and with the cooperation of the Navy Museum of Crete and the NA-U-DO-MO Ancient Shipbuilding Research Group, which designed and constructed the model, the entire project has been under the auspices of the Culture Ministry since last May. The main goal of the project is to build a realistic model of the Minoan ship by the beginning of summer 2004, when it is to sail from Cape Spatha on the island of Crete to Piraeus. The first trial run is scheduled for June next year with a crew of 26, all but two of them oarsmen. The ship is also fitted with sails, and will be accompanied on its first 15-day voyage by ships of the Greek navy, for security reasons and for supply purposes. All parties involved hope the ship will stay in Athens on exhibit during the Olympic Games. Similar reconstructions of historic ships have all been of later models (600-300 BC), and these were not based on scientific data.

WHITERIVER - The land cherished by the White Mountain Apaches may be out of immediate danger from the flames of the "Kinishba" fire, but coming weeks could bring more damage than the flames themselves. The fire has torn away so much growth in surrounding areas that flooding and erosion may now eat away at the Kinishba ruins and one of the Apaches' holy sites where weddings and other cultural ceremonies are performed. Today, a team that specializes in restoring burned areas is expected to arrive and help assess how to keep the treasures from becoming victims of the fire.

If the Bush administration in Washington follows through with a plan now being considered, the archaeological services through the National Park Service would be privatized. While the impact of such a move would be felt nationally, its effects in Tallahassee would be direct. According to a Washington Post news story this week, the Park Service's Southeast Archaeological Center in Innovation Park would be privately run. The center - which protects archaeological and cultural resources in 67 national parks in the Southeast - employs only about 50 full- and part-time archaeologists and other staff members. But its cooperative agreements with Florida State, Florida A&M, the University of Florida and several other institutions provide on-the-job training for students. In a government town already smarting from the effects of "outsourcing," yet another Bush-inspired privatization is further insult to the conscientious efforts of dedicated public employees.

BARACOA, Cuba - (KRT) - At the top of a winding dirt path, past palm trees and overhanging branches, is the entrance to a cave. And inside is one of Cuba's newest and most unusual museum exhibits: ancient remains of a fabled Taino Indian. For years, scholars thought a museum was about the only place one could find traces of the long-lost tribe. The Tainos survived the Spanish conquest - and 1,000 to 3,000 of their descendants can be found in eastern Cuba. The Indians, with help from supporters in the United States, Puerto Rico and other nations, are on a quest to revive what's left of their indigenous culture and customs.

Milan, Italy, July 17 - Archaeologists have discovered what appear to be the precursors of today's industrial kilns, dating back to the iron age. The discovery was made at Piani d'Emma, during a archaeological field campaign carried out by Bergamo University and Lecco's Civil Museum. During excavations traces of metal working were found in conjunction with iron ore extractors, dating 3rd century BC. According to Marco Tizzoni of Bergamo University "it is the most ancient proof of iron ore reduction in the [Lombardy] region found thus far. We are looking at what are probably some of the first proto-historic mines in Lombardy". The kilns were very simple: small clay structures resting at the feet of the mountain, they were used in conjunction with hand driven vents, which allowed for the creation of iron in a paste form". "The ore was mined at nearby sites - archaeologists explained - which were used, according to scant documentation up until [...] the 17 hundreds".

Astronomers have made a 'mass map' of one of the most massive structures in the Universe, showing how much more there is to it than glowing stars and gas. The object is a distant cluster of galaxies that contains 'dark matter,' the unknown component that comprises most of the mass of the Universe. The map shows it is distributed in much the same way as are the visible stars. Researchers believe it will lead to a better understanding of the mysterious dark matter even though it does not help them find out exactly what it is.

Large meteorites are more likely to break up in the atmosphere before they hit the Earth than was previously thought, scientists in Britain and Russia have calculated. The new estimates reduce the likely frequency of potentially catastrophic impacts of large meteorites at the Earth's surface by about a factor of 50, relative to previous forecasts. They come from Philip Bland, of Imperial College in London, and Natalia Artemieva, of the Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres in Moscow1. Bland and Artemieva reckon that objects larger than 220 metres across are likely to strike the Earth every 170,000 years or so, compared with the previously claimed frequency of 3,000-4,000 years. Bodies this big would generate devastating tidal waves if they landed in the ocean.

PREHISTORIC stone tools discovered at Rottnest Island and Rockingham could rewrite the story of Australia's colonisation by early humans. The tools could be at least 70,000 years old. There is no archaeological evidence of early human occupation until about 50,000 years ago. WA Museum archaeologist Charlie Dortch, who found the Rottnest artefacts on a recent field trip with scientists from the Australian National and James Cook universities, said it was a major find. "Rottnest Island stands to become the oldest human cultural site in the country," Dr Dortch said after inspecting the Rottnest site. He would not commit to an age for the artefact in the absence of reliable dating, but one of the team members suggested the Rottnest artefact could be at least 70,000 years old. The location of the Rottnest and Rockingham finds are being kept secret until they can be removed.

Undersea explorer Robert Ballard has likened the ocean floor to a vast museum holding an unrivaled archaeological record of human history. This summer, as Ballard and a team of scientists embark on a 40-day expedtion to the Black Sea and Mediterranean, they will bring an exciting new tool for exploring this underwater realm. Hercules, a groundbreaking underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with mechanical arms, fingers, and a variety of tools, will enable Ballard and his team to conduct the first archaeological excavations of shipwrecks and archaeological sites in the deep sea.

Building work on the new £10.5 million City and County Museum site in Lincoln has revealed the biggest Roman mosaic found in the city for a century. The mosaic was unearthed last month during excavations at what will eventually form the goods lift at the new museum site in central Lincoln. Further work has since unearthed more of the red and white mosaic, which measures approximately four metres square. Experts now believe that it formed the corridor of a luxurious Roman Town House dating from the third or fourth century AD.

WITHIN months, a robotic submarine will slip into the Mediterranean Sea to start excavating a wreck believed to be that of HMS Sussex, a British warship that sank off Gibraltar in 1694. The Sussex sank carrying gold coins that today could be worth $4 billion. The event will mark the beginning of a controversial collaboration between commercial shipwreck salvagers, marine archaeologists and the British government that highlights the long-standing enmities between scientists and those they disparagingly call "treasure hunters". According to the archaeologists, the commercial exploitation of wrecks is ravaging a priceless cultural heritage that lies undiscovered beneath the oceans. They say such operations destroy key archaeological evidence before it can be studied. The so-called treasure hunters insist that without their money and expertise, many wrecks would not be discovered or explored in the first place. And they can even help deter unprofessional looters.

THE Republic's largest Neolithic settlement dating back 5,000 years has been uncovered on a remote mountain - more than 100 years after the site was first mapped by archaeologists. A small team, led by Dr Stefan Bergh of the Department of Archaeology of NUI Galway, working on the plateau at Mullaghfarna, 250 feet above Lough Arrow, Co Sligo, discovered artefacts which link the site to the late Stone Age, 2,500 to 3,000 years before Christ. The existence of some of the 140 hut sites and enclosures high up on the plateau in the Brickleigh mountains, surrounded by cliffs and passage tombs has been known to archaeologists since 1911 but until now the age of the settlement has remained a mystery.

An archaeological dig at the site of the new Terminal 5 building at Heathrow Airport has provided a unique insight into 8,000 years of human history, excavation leaders have said. About 80,000 objects have been unearthed at the 250-acre site, including pottery and flint. A team of 80 archaeologists have spent more than 15 months working on the site and traced how the communities and landscape around Heathrow has changed. The project was the largest single archaeological dig in the UK in terms of the area excavated and the numbers of archaeologists employed.

Coral reefs across the Caribbean have declined by 80% in three decades, UK scientists say. They believe the causes are both natural and human, but found no evidence of climate change damage. Reefs in some areas appear to be recovering, but there are doubts about how well new coral formations will cope. The scientists say this "dramatic" rate of loss appears not to have slowed since 1975. The team, from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, report their findings in the online journal Science Express.

The world stands accused of double standards in its thirst to end the scourge of international terrorism. Aid donors and relief agencies, a report says, are concentrating increasingly on politically strategic countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. They are neglecting emergencies in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It adds that the developed world spends too much trying to exclude asylum seekers, and too little helping them.

Astronomers have discovered clusters of stars drifting in what was thought to be the empty space between the galaxies. The stars have been torn from their parent galaxies, and scattered into the intergalactic voids by gravity from passing galaxies. Torn from their homes, they drift in the space in between the galaxies where, over billions of years, they fade to become cosmic cinders. Finding these cosmic "orphans" has pressed the capabilities of telescopes to their limits.

The European Mars Express took time out from its journey to Mars to turn around and snap a picture of Earth and the Moon. The picture is not only pleasing to the eye but thrilling for project scientists, as it represents the first observational data to be sent home by the probe. Along with other data recently collected and returned, it shows the spacecraft's working as expected. "It is very good news for the mission," said Project Scientist Agustin Chicarro of the European Space Agency (ESA).

The giant rock art murals that grace the walls of hundreds of shelters and caves found in the hardscrabble hills of the high sierra in Baja California Sur, Mexico, date back as far as 7,500 years ago, according to data from an ongoing study of the area. The ancient dates for the paintings cast little light on the mystery of who made them and why, but it suggests that whoever the painters were they came well before the Aztecs established their culture in central Mexico some 3,000 years ago.

MOUNDVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- There are more artifacts than meet the eye at Moundville Archaeological Park. In addition to the exhibits detailing the history of Moundville, the cultural center of the Southeast 10,000 years ago, the park contains a repository filled with historical treasures from across the United States. Mold covers the walls of the white cinder block building. And while it doesn't look like much from the outside, the Erskine Ramsay Archaeological Repository is a top spot in the region for storage and research. It is one of a few facilities in the Southeast that meets federal guidelines for storing precious collections, and the number of artifacts in the repository is growing thanks to government contracts to store the items.

Scientists have identified a region of the sea floor with a depth that rivals the Challenger Deep which, at about 11,000 metres (36,000 feet), is the lowest spot on Earth. The new location lies 200 kilometres (124 miles) further to the east, along the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. It was found during a sonar sea-floor mapping project carried out in 1997 and 2001 by scientists from Hawaii, US. The Challenger Deep has been visited by a number of manned and unmanned submersibles since its discovery, but at present there is no craft in operation that can survive the crushing pressure at its bottom.