Baby can wait as expectant dad finishes spacewalk
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and blazed through his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday. Expectant father Randolph Bresnik and Michael Foreman were so far ahead despite their late start and interrupted sleep the night before - false fire and decompression alarms jolted them awake - that their commander handed them extra work. More »
Ukraine's `hot air' bedevils global climate deal
KONSTANTINOVKA, Ukraine (AP) - Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance. For others beyond this manufacturing graveyard, however, Ukraine's economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza. In an era of climate change regulation and carbon trading, Ukraine, ironically, is profiting from the smokeless smokestacks of its industrial shutdown. More »
Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin
ROME (AP) - A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery. Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth. More »
Museum: Galileo's fingers, tooth are found
ROME (AP) - Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday. Three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from the astronomer's body by admirers in 1737, 95 years after his death, as his corpse was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb - opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence. More »
Biologists save fish after landslide
NILE, Wash. (AP) - A gigantic landslide that buried a highway, uprooted homes and rerouted a river in Washington state's Cascade Range left hundreds of smaller victims: fish. The landslide that inundated the Naches River last month created a barrier of millions of cubic yards of silt, mud and rock that slowed - and likely confused - spawning salmon and hungry trout. Then workers opened a freshly dug river channel that stranded small fish in ponds and marshes. More »
3 new ancient crocodile species fossils found
WASHINGTON (AP) - A 20-foot-long crocodile with three sets of fangs - like wild boar tusks - roamed parts of northern Africa millions of years ago, researchers reported Thursday. While this fearsome creature hunted meat, not far away another newly found type of croc with a wide, flat snout like a pancake was fishing for food. And a smaller, 3-foot-long relative with buckteeth was chomping plants and grubs in the same region. More »
Researchers ask: Are caged chickens miserable?
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Are cramped chickens crazy chickens? Researchers are trying to answer that question through several studies that intend to take emotions out of an angry debate between animal welfare groups and producers. More »