Science News

GONAIVES, Haiti - Hundreds of people fled this waterlogged city Saturday for higher ground as powerful Hurricane Ike threatened to unleash heavy rain and compound a disaster caused by a previous storm. Food was distributed to famished residents, including to emaciated inmates at the local jail.

HAVANA (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike charged toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico as a ferocious Category 4 storm on Saturday, while Tropical Storm Hanna drenched the U.S. Atlantic coast after barreling ashore in the Carolinas.

MIAMI (AFP) - Tropical Storm Hanna raced across the southeastern United States on Saturday, battering the coast with powerful waves, rain and wind as Florida and Cuba kept a wary eye on a dangerous hurricane.

MIAMI - For those who live in its path, hurricane season stirs up anxiety even before devastating winds and rains hit land.

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos - Hurricane Ike barreled toward the Turks and Caicos as a powerful Category 3 hurricane Saturday, prompting an exodus of tourists and residents from the normally idyllic Atlantic island chain.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Space Agency obtained on Saturday the first images of an asteroid 360 million km (224 million miles) from earth, part of a space mission which scientists hope will help them understand the origins of the planets.

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - A super-sharp Earth-imaging satellite has been launched into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central California coast.

PARIS (AFP) - European scientists were jubilant on Saturday after the pride of their space fleet, racing towards a rendezvous with a comet in 2014, enjoyed a close encounter with an asteroid likened to a "diamond in the sky."

PARIS (AFP) - A European robot freighter decoupled from the International Space Station (ISS), positioning itself for a fiery, suicide descent into Earth's atmosphere.

A European cargo ship the size of a London double-decker bus bid farewell to the International Space Station late Friday after five months docked at the orbiting laboratory.

WASHINGTON - At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Environmental and animal rights activists dressed as dolphins Wednesday staged a die-in in Washington to protest what they called the "horrific butchering" of thousands of dolphins by Japanese fishermen every year.

TAIPEI (AFP) - Officials at Taiwan's biggest zoo said Wednesday they hoped to welcome a pair of giant pandas from rival China as early as November, a move expected to draw millions of tourists to the capital.

LONDON - After meeting with animal rights activists, the British military said Tuesday that it will study alternative materials to replace the bearskin hats worn by the soldiers who guard Buckingham Palace.

Black-footed ferrets at the Smithsonian's National Zoo have birthed two kits sired by males who died in 1999 and 2000.

PARIS (AFP) - A fresh storm has broken out over an ancient fossil presented by its defenders as a forebear of humanity and dismissed by its critics as the remains of a vulgar chimp.

A turtle that toddled alongside the dinosaurs died just days before laying a clutch of eggs. Now, about 75 million years later, paleontologists are announcing their find of the fossilized mother-to-be and the eggs tucked inside her body.

CARACAS, Venezuela - An ancient tar pit exposed when Venezuelan oil workers laid a pipeline has yielded a rich trove of fossils, including a type of saber-toothed cat that paleontologists had never found before in South America. Scientists say the find holds the promise of many discoveries to come.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US-led team of archaeologists said Thursday they had discovered by chance what is believed to be the largest find of Stone Age-era remains ever uncovered in the Sahara Desert.

SYDNEY (AFP) - The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

FRIDAY, Sept. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Variations of two new genes appear to increase the risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease in childhood, researchers say.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials have disclosed safety probes into over 20 medicines by companies such as Eli Lilly and Co and Biogen Idec, a step required by Congress to address concerns the agency had been slow to warn of risks.

WASHINGTON - Scientists have mapped the cascade of genetic changes that turn normal cells in the brain and pancreas into two of the most lethal cancers. The result points to a new approach for fighting tumors and maybe even catching them sooner. Genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from the culprits for the next patient, making the puzzle of cancer genetics even more complicated.

BRNO, Czech Republic (Reuters) - Just a few steps from the monastery where Gregor Mendel pioneered the field of genetics some 150 years ago, Czech officials hope to nurture their own biotech revolution.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A large study of Swedish twins indicates that a common genetic cause underlies both low birth weight and the propensity to develop type 2 diabetes.

WASHINGTON - President Bush says if Congress doesn't permit offshore drilling to increase U.S. oil supplies and possibly ease gasoline prices, lawmakers should not expect voters to support them in November.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - It's the season for Alaskans to be rewarded just for living here and this year's take is extra sweet: $3,269, a record share of the state's oil wealth combined with a special cash payout to help with stratospheric energy prices.

MADRID (AFP) - The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world's energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America's pain at the gasoline pump has been years in the making, but there will be a big push in Congress next week, when lawmakers return from summer break, to fix the problem by expanding offshore oil drilling.

CEDARBURG, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Presidential rivals John McCain and Barack Obama, back on the campaign trail after their party conventions, clashed over the ailing U.S. economy on Friday as unemployment hit its highest monthly rate in nearly five years.

LONDON (Reuters) - It's a discovery that would make even Sherlock Holmes proud. British scientists have developed a new crime-fighting technique that allows police to lift fingerprints from bullets even if a criminal has wiped down a shell casing.

Food for thought: Intellectual activities make people eat more than when just resting, according to a study that sheds new light on brain food.

Summer is over. School, crisp breezes and colored leaves are inevitable. But is the same true for catching a cold?

DARMSTADT, Germany - The Rosetta deep space probe successfully passed close to an asteroid 250 million miles from Earth, the European Space Agency said Friday night.

MADRID (AFP) - The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world's energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said.