Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "CNN Archive 001"

Important News

As of Today change the Old Ones News Network to the Cthulhu News
Network

Now we name the list as it should always have been. A journal to
spotlight the weird and different news storys we have in this wild
bizzare world. Please remember these stories are real. None of the
stories come from Tabloid sources all are from leading respected news
agencys like the other CNN or the BBC. All are presented uneditted
with links to the original story for verification. (note if this ever
takes off the other CNN will never let me keep the name so it will most
likely revert back to the OONN)
FYI Cthulhu is a creation of an 1920's horror writer named Howard
Philips Lovecraft. The writtings of H. P. Lovecrafts have influnced all
major modern horror writers of any worth.
For those who do not know the works and creations of H. P. Lovecraft
here is a decent web link to follow up on : http://www.hplovecraft.com/
or you can ask to borrow my collection I belive I have all the
stories he wrote as published by his long time friend August Derleth
On to the News
Secrets of ex-Nazi's Chilean fiefdom
(BBC) Paul Schaefer - a former Nazi medic, Baptist preacher and
alleged cult leader - has finally been captured in Argentina after
eight years on the run. His arrest means he may face trial on
outstanding charges of the sexual abuse of young boys in Chile. Mr
Schaefer, who is in his 80s, has also been denounced by former
followers and by human rights campaigners. For them, his capture
signals the end to decades of impunity for what they allege are his
strange and terrible crimes. Paul Schaefer was a medic in Hitler's army
during World War II. After the war, he set up an evangelical ministry
and a youth home, purportedly to care for war orphans. But he was
charged with sexually abusing two boys - and in 1961 he fled to Chile,
reportedly accompanied by some 70 followers. There, in a lush valley in
the Andean foothills, he set up Colonia Dignidad - now renamed Villa
Baviera. The colony near the city of Parral, some 350km (220 miles)
south of Santiago, grew to about 300 members - mostly German
immigrants, or their descendants, but including some Chilean followers.
The 137-sq-km (53-sq-mile) Colonia Dignidad boasted a school, a
hospital, two airstrips, a restaurant, and a power station, and
reportedly made millions of dollars through a diversified range of
businesses, including agriculture, mining and real estate. It won over
local people by offering jobs and free schooling and hospital care.
Details of life in the colony are hard to verify. Some visitors have
described a scene from 1930s Germany, with women wearing aprons, with
their hair in pigtails, and men in lederhosen. Defenders say the
members of the colony may be eccentric, but they are harmless, and in
fact do good. "I know them, and I like them," Otto Dorr Zegers, a
prominent Chilean psychiatrist who has worked in the Colonia Dignidad
hospital, told the New York Times. "Their ideology is a little bit
old-fashioned, like that of the Mennonites who went to the United
States, but nothing justifies the co-ordinated, synchronised lies and
distortions that have been invented about them." But "defectors" from
the camp paint a more sinister picture. His accusers say Colonia
Dignidad was Mr Schaefer's fiefdom, where he was worshipped as a god.
They say residents, who are never allowed beyond the gates of the camp,
are kept strictly segregated into genders - so much so that the birth
rate of the camp is extremely low. Residents are taught to shun sexual
desires - with electric shocks administered to the genitals of young
boys, former residents say. And they accuse Mr Schaefer of the almost
daily sexual abuse of young boys. Horror stories have emerged of the
young sons of poor local families "disappearing" within the barriers of
the compound. But Mr Schaefer's story is not confined to the perimeter
fence of the colony - topped with barbed wire, studded with
searchlights, and overlooked by a watchtower. It goes right to the
heart of the Chilean state during the iron rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet
in the 1970s and 1980s - a period with which Chileans are still
struggling to come to terms today. The son of Manuel Contreras - the
head of Dina, Chile's now-disbanded notorious secret police - has told
the Los Angeles Times his father first visited Colonia Dignidad with
Gen Pinochet in 1974. He has spoken of the warm relationship that grew
between his father and Mr Schaefer. Former political prisoners of Gen
Pinochet have testified to a warren of stone-walled tunnels under the
colony, where they were taken to be tortured with electric shocks to
the strains of Wagner and Mozart. The Truth and Justice Commission,
which investigated human rights abuses during Gen Pinochet's rule,
backs such allegations. And despite decades of allegations concerning
the sexual abuse of boys within the compound, charges were not filed
against Schaefer until 1996 - six years after Chile began its return to
democracy. Thanks to Mr Schaefer's close links with Chile's ruling
elite, the colony was able to operate with impunity as a "state within
a state", said a Chilean congressional report. Critics say elements
within Chile's ruling establishment would still prefer to keep details
of his involvement with Gen Pinochet's government concealed. They say
Chile must confront such allegations if it is to complete the process
of coming to terms with its past.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4340591.stm

Tsunami reveals a town's ancient ruins
(CNN) For a few minutes, after the water had receded far from the
shore and before it came raging back as a tsunami, the fishermen stood
along the beach and stared at the reality of generations of legends. Or
so they say. Spread across nearly a mile, the site was encrusted with
barnacles and covered in mud. But the fishermen insist they saw the
remains of ancient temples and hundreds of refrigerator-sized blocks,
all briefly exposed before the sea swallowed them up again. "You could
see the destroyed walls covered in coral, and the broken-down temple in
the middle," said Durai, a sinewy fisherman who, like many south
Indians, uses only one name. "My grandfathers said there was a port
here once and a temple, but suddenly we could see it was real, we could
see that something was out there." Whatever they saw is back under
water and out of sight. But a few hundred yards away, something else
came to the surface. The tsunami scrubbed away six feet of sand from a
section of beach, uncovering a small cluster of long-buried boulders
carved with animals, gods and servant girls. The December 26 tsunami
ravaged hundreds of miles of shoreline across Asia. It killed at least
126,000 people in Indonesia and at least 31,000 in Sri Lanka. In India,
10,700 people are confirmed dead, with more than 5,600 missing.
Mahabalipuram, capital of an ancient kingdom and famous for its
elaborate Hindu temples, escaped mostly unscathed, with only three dead
and limited damage. And there's something else the tsunami gave back --
tourists, drawn by heated headlines in the Indian media about a
rediscovered Atlantis. "People are coming to see what the tsunami dug
up," said Timothy, who sells sea shells and plastic palm trees at a
beachside souvenir stand. "Only because of these new things are people
coming." Tourism is a major employer here, a reflection of a spreading
Indian middle class, and the coast road is lined with mom-and-pop
resorts and cheap restaurants. If the tsunami scared most tourists
away, in Mahabalipuram it also brought some back. On sunny weekend days
hundreds of people now come to take a look at the carvings and splash
their feet in the ocean. "Business is good these days," Timothy said,
smiling. But what did those fisherman see? Archaeologists laugh at the
tales of Atlantis and say it may take years of undersea exploration to
uncover the truth. But nearly everyone around here knows the stories --
cocktails of history and mythology that tell of the great port city
that traded with China and Southeast Asia some 1,300 years ago. This is
a town made for legend. It is home to dozens of Hindu temples, baroque
stone structures often covered with carvings. But legend speaks of its
most famous temples: the Seven Pagodas, named for the vaguely
pagoda-like style of Hindu temples in this part of India. Those
temples, which according to myth are said to have once lined the shore,
were so beautiful that the gods destroyed all but one -- the so-called
Shore Temple, a magnificently carved complex that is now considered a
national treasure. Some fishermen insist they saw more than the six
vanished temples when the waters fell back. "There must have been at
least 20," said Sunderasan, a young man, gesturing toward the sea. "We
had no idea there were so many out there." Archaeologists say
excavations on shore and at sea were already under way before the
tsunami struck, and that divers made promising finds of
barnacle-encrusted blocks that appear man-made. So officially,
researchers express little surprise at what was exposed. "The tsunami
didn't do very much at all," said Alok Tripathi, who runs the
excavations for the Archaeological Survey of India. He dismisses the
talk of 20 temples offshore, saying the fisherman believe "every stone
is a temple." But anonymously, fearing they'd be seen as callous, some
researchers quietly acknowledge the tsunami revealed more than
expected. "From an archaeological perspective, maybe the tsunami was
good. We found some new things," said one, pointing to the exposed
boulders. "But from a human perspective ..." he said, his words
drifting into silence. Finally he added: "There was a lot of deaths, a
lot of damage, a lot of destruction."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/17/tsunami.lost.city.ap/index...

Officials: Diner finds finger in chili
(CNN) A diner at a Wendy's fast food restaurant in San Jose,
California, found a human finger in a bowl of chili prepared by the
chain, local officials said Wednesday. "This individual apparently did
take a spoonful, did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know,
spit it out and recognized it," said Ben Gale, director of the
department of environmental health for Santa Clara County. "Then they
had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited." Local officials
launched an investigation after the incident Tuesday night and the
medical examiner determined Wednesday that the object was a human
finger. Officials are trying to determine whether the finger came in
the raw materials Wendy's used to prepare the chili, Gale said. Wendy's
International Inc. corporate office did not immediately return a call
for comment. Wendy's is the third-largest hamburger chain.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/24/chili.finger.reut/index.html

Ancient Egyptian boats discovered
(CNN) Archaeologists have found the remains of boats used by
ancient Egyptians for trading trips, the culture minister said in
comments published on Wednesday. The boats were discovered in caves in
a pharaonic harbor on Egypt's Red Sea coast around 482 km (300 miles)
southeast of Cairo, Farouk Hosni said in comments carried by Egypt's
state MENA news agency. They were used to transport goods to and from
the Land of Punt, he said. The Land of Punt, mentioned in ancient
Egyptian writings, is thought by most archaeologists to be the coast of
the Horn of Africa. "Excavations discovered a group of sail and mast
ropes, wooden ship beams and thin planks made of cedars, imported from
northern Syria," MENA quoted Zahi Hawas, chairman of Egypt's Supreme
Council of Antiquities, as saying. Hawas said a team from Boston
University in the United States working with an Italian team had made
the discovery.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/31/egypt.boats.reut/index.html

Archaeologists discover ancient Mayan saltworks
(CNN) Underwater archaeologists have discovered 41 new seaside salt
production works used by the ancient Mayans in Central America. The
discovery at Punta Ycacos Lagoon in what is now Belize provides
evidence of extensive salt production to serve the large Mayan cities
on the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, reports researcher Heather
McKillop of Louisiana State University. Her findings are reported in
Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Four
salt works had previously been known in that area. The discovery of 41
new works, along with the remains of wooden buildings from the era of
A.D. 600 to 900, indicates salt was mass-produced and stored before
shipment upriver, she reported. Ceramic pottery was used for boiling
water to produce the salt, she wrote, and a canoe paddle was also
found, indicating that the salt was transported inland by canoe. The
research was supported by a grant from Louisiana State University.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/05/mayan.saltworks.ap/index.html

Exploding toads baffle scientists
(CNN) More than 1,000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a
Hamburg pond in recent weeks, and German scientists still have no
explanation for what's causing the combustion, an official said. Both
the pond's water and body parts of the toads have been tested, but
scientists have been unable to find a bacteria or virus that would
cause the toads to swell up and pop, said Janne Kloepper, of the
Hamburg-based Institute for Hygiene and the Environment. "It's
absolutely strange," she said. "We have a really unique story here in
Hamburg. This phenomenon really doesn't seem to have appeared anywhere
before." The toads at a pond in the upscale neighborhood of Altona have
been blowing up since the beginning of the month, filling up like
balloons until their stomachs suddenly burst. "It looks like a scene
from a science-fiction movie," Werner Schmolnik, the head of a local
environment group, told the Hamburger Abendblatt daily. "The bloated
animals suffer for several minutes before they finally die." Biologists
have come up with several theories, but Kloepper said that most have
been ruled out. The pond's water quality is no better or worse than
other bodies of water in Hamburg, the toads did not appear to have a
disease, and a laboratory in Berlin has ruled out the possibility that
it is a fungus that made its way from South America, she said. She said
that tests will continue. In the meantime, city residents have been
warned to stay away from the pond.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/27/exploading.toads.ap/index....

Ancient tombs found near obelisk
(BBC) Archaeologists have found a vast new network of royal tombs
in Ethiopia, near the site where the 1,700-year-old Axum obelisk is to
be re-erected. Experts using sophisticated imaging equipment discovered
the burial chambers, even older than the obelisk, under a 1963 car
park, said the UN. The stone monoliths were originally erected to mark
burial sites for deceased members of the aristocracy. The final piece
of the Axum obelisk was flown home from Italy on Monday. The whole
structure - seen as a national religious treasure - is to be re-erected
in September following the Ethiopian rainy season. The obelisk was
stolen by fascist Italian troops in 1937. The archaeological team which
discovered the new burial sites was sent to Axum to prepare for the
re-erection of the obelisk. Unesco Director-General Koichiro Matsuura
said it was likely that some of the tombs were still intact. "The site
is a royal necropolis used by several dynasties before the Christian
era," Unesco said, adding that the network stretches far beyond the
perimeter of the present World Heritage site. "The opening of these
new tombs to the public would represent, moreover, an additional asset
for the site, which, by boosting cultural tourism, would contribute to
the economic development of the country," Mr Matsuura said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4484813.stm

Weirdest cures on show at debate
(BBC) Weird and wonderful inventions will be on show during a
debate on medical "quackery" at London's Science Museum. Devices once
used to treat the sick are being taken out of storage for the
adults-only event on Wednesday evening. Many date from the 1800s. They
include Sir Hiram Maxim's Pipe of Peace, a precursor of the inhaler,
and a hand-cranked electric shock machine used to treat toothache and
tics. The debate will take place at the museum's Dana Centre from 1900
BST. Lisa Jamieson, head of Dana Centre programmes, said: "This will
be a unique chance for our audience to discuss their views on
complementary medicines with leading experts in the UK today and to
find out more about the stories behind the Science Museum's unique
medical collection. "We know this topic is important to our audience
and this series of events at the Dana Centre will allow them to get to
the heart of the debate." The debate will ask whether so-called quacks
really offer an alternative form of treatment or just peddle useless
drugs to the foolish. A museum spokesman said: "Much of the medicine of
the past looks like quackery today, yet at the time it was accepted by
the best doctors of the day - and it seemed to work. "Certain theories
and practices have moved from quackery to orthodoxy to quackery again.
"Using images and objects from the Science Museum, this event asks how
do we spot a quack, do the quacks of the past look like the quacks of
the present and how do we know what works and why?" The debate will be
presented by Dr Patrick Wallis, of the London School of Economics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4481903.stm

Gardener unearths Bronze Age tools, weapons
(CNN) A man landscaping his garden in eastern England has
unearthed a major hoard of tools and weapons dating back nearly 3,000
years, an archaeologist revealed on Tuesday. The hoard is among the
largest finds in Britain from the late Bronze Age, consisting of 145
items including spear and axe heads, swords and metal working tools.
"This is one of the biggest late Bronze Age hoards ever found in
Norfolk and is up there among the major finds in Britain," said Alan
West, curator of archaeology at Norwich Museum some 100 miles northeast
of London. "The items are in good condition and this find is another
significant piece in the Bronze Age jigsaw adding to our knowledge of
the period," he told Reuters. Included among the items is a Viking
brooch, and West said it was unusual to find buried items together
dating from different periods. The Bronze Age followed the Stone Age
and is generally classified as running from 2,500 BC to 700 BC,
preceding the Iron Age which ran from around 650 BC to 43 AD. West said
the latest find dated from around 800 BC. "It was probably hidden for
safekeeping by someone who was involved in making the items because it
includes broken swords that would have been for reworking into new
implements," West said. "We have no idea why it was left or why whoever
left it failed to come back to get it," he added. The late Bronze Age
saw a rapid spread in Britain of farming and settlement building,
marking a sharp contrast with the nomadic era that preceded it. It also
saw increasing sophistication in metal working and an explosion of
advanced pottery making techniques. Many of these skills would have
been brought into Britain by people traveling from the continent. West
declined to speculate on the value of the latest find, saying its fate
and value would now have to be determined by a coroner and a team of
experts.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/27/britain.bronze.reut/index....

Friends find treasure buried in backyard
(CNN) It's the stuff of fantasies, and Tim Crebase found it buried
under two feet of earth in his own backyard. There, he and friend Barry
Villcliff found a box stuffed with cash and gold and silver
certificates, some more than a century old. The buried treasure is
worth more than $100,000, according to a coin shop owner. "I was
thinking, 'I've never seen anything like this in my life,"' Domenic
Mangano, owner of Village Coin Shop in Plaistow, New Hampshire. Crebase
said the find came three weeks ago when he and Villcliff were trying to
dig up a small tree. Crebase, 23, heard a thud and saw that he'd hit a
piece of wood. Another look, and he saw the wood was part of a
two-foot-wide box. He ripped the top off and found nine rusted cans
that he and Villcliff, 27, cracked open to find about 1,800 bills,
including more than 900 $1 bills, 200 $2 bills, and 300 $20 bills dated
from 1899 to 1929. There were also piles of gold and silver
certificates and scores of notes from local banks in Methuen,
Haverhill, Amesbury, Newburyport and beyond. They took the stash to
Mangano's shop later that day. "I'm a pessimist; I was waiting until I
got a professional review before I jumped to any conclusions,"
Villcliff said. "Tim, however, was singing and dancing. He was ranting
like a rabid monkey."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/27/treasure.found.ap/index.html

Brain scan 'sees hidden thoughts'
(BBC) Scientists say they can read a person's unconscious thoughts
sing a simple brain scan. Functional MRI scans plot brain activity by
looking at brain blood flow and are already used by researchers. A team
at University College London found with fMRI they could tell what a
person was thinking deep down even when the individual was unaware
themselves. The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, offer
exiting new ways to probe the subconscious, said experts. In the
experiment, Dr Geraint Rees and Dr John-Dylan Haynes measured brain
activity in the visual cortex - the part of the brain that deals with
information sent by the eyes - while volunteers looked at different
test objects on a computer screen. By looking at the functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan results, the scientists were
able to predict what had been displayed on the computer screen better
than volunteers themselves. When two images were flashed in quick
succession, the volunteers only consciously saw the second one and were
unable to make out the first. But the brain scans clearly distinguished
the patterns of brain activity created by the "invisible" images.
Similarly, a separate study by Japanese researchers, published in the
same journal, found that when people were shown stripes tilted in
different directions, there were subtle differences in the pattern of
brain activity obtained by fMRI. The scientists built a computer
program to recognise these different patterns and found they could
predict what direction stripes had been shown with remarkable accuracy.
When volunteers were shown a plaid pattern made up of two different
sets of stripes but asked to pay attention to only one set, the program
was able to tell which one the subjects were thinking about. Dr Rees
said: "This is the first basic step to reading somebody's mind. If our
approach could be expanded upon, it might be possible to predict what
someone was thinking or seeing from their brain activity alone." Dr
Adrian Burgess, from the department of cognitive neuropsychology at
Imperial College London, said: "The technique is bringing out
information that has not been available from MRI scans before. "It
could potentially be used to find out people's latent attitudes and
beliefs that they are not aware of. "You could use it to detect
people's prejudices, intuition and things that are hidden and influence
our behaviour." He said it might be possible to dip into people's
repressed memories or even see people's hidden fears and phobias.
"That's a long way off, but it is exciting."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4472355.stm
Customer finds employee's finger in frozen custard
(CNN) A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a
dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside -- a piece of severed finger
lost by an employee in an accident. Unlike a recent incident at a
Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been
raised about the finger served up to go at Kohl's Frozen Custard and
found later at home by Clarence Stowers. Officials from the state
departments of agriculture and labor went to the shop Monday, and the
owner confirmed one of his employees lost part of a finger in an
accident with a food-processing machine. Wilmington television station
WWAY reported that Stowers found the finger in frozen custard he
purchased Sunday night. Stowers, who did not immediately return calls
Monday from The Associated Press, told the station: "I thought it was
candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat.
So I said, 'OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice
cream off of it and see what it is.'" Stowers said he spit the object
out, but still couldn't identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed
it off with water -- and "just started screaming." Stowers said he
planned to contact a lawyer. Shop owner Craig Thomas said the employee
who lost the finger had dropped a bucket while working with a machine
that dispenses the custard. He tried to catch the bucket when the
accident occurred. Thomas told WWAY that several employees tried to
help the injured worker, and that a drive-thru window attendant
apparently scooped custard from the bucket into a pint before being
told what had happened. Joe Reardon of the Agriculture Department's
food and drug division said state officials closed the shop while the
food processing equipment involved in the accident was cleaned and
sanitized. In March, a Las Vegas woman claimed she bit down on a 1 1/2
inch-long finger fragment while dining with her family at a Wendy's
restaurant in San Jose, California. Investigators have since called her
claim a hoax and charged her last month with attempted grand theft
related to millions in dollars of financial losses Wendy's has suffered
since news of her claim broke.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/02/custard.finger.ap/index.html

Creating 'human-animals' for research
(CNN) On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason
Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them
possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs. The
University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his
plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't
wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the
fetus' brain about two months ago. "It's mice on a large scale,"
Chamberlain says with a shrug. As strange as his work may sound, it
falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National
Academies issued this past week for stem cell research. In fact, the
Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal
tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue
replacement therapies are safe for people. The National Academies --
private, nonprofit agencies chartered by Congress to provide public
advice on science and technology -- consist of the National Academy of
Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of
Medicine and the National Research Council. Doctors have transplanted
pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected
human cells into lab animals for even longer. But the biological
co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic
and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the
monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent. In
the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood,
fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make
paralyzed mice walk. Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the
nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells:
What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head? The
"idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order'
brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be,
raises concerns that need to be considered," the Academies report
warned. In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University
endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made
of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his
experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain
develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.
Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee,
said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain
would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity.
Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring
the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like
behavior. The Academies' report recommends that each institution
involved in stem cell research create a formal, standing committee to
specifically oversee the work, including experiments that mix human and
animal cells. Weissman, who has already created mice with 1 percent
human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human
mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal
Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also
need to authorize the experiment. Few human-animal hybrids are as
advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail
Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to
one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues
and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively
test experimental drugs. Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep
that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected
into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in
his experiment contain about 10 percent human liver cells, though a few
have as much as 40 percent, Zanjani said. Because the human liver
regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting
partial organs into people whose livers are failing. Zanjani must first
ensure no animal diseases would be passed on to patients. He also must
find an efficient way to completely separate the human and sheep cells,
a tough task because the human cells aren't clumped together but are
rather spread throughout the sheep's liver. Zanjani and other stem cell
scientists defend their research and insist they aren't creating
monsters -- or anything remotely human. "We haven't seen them act as
anything but sheep," Zanjani said. Zanjani's goals are many years from
being realized. He's also had trouble raising funds, and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture is investigating the university over
allegations made by another researcher that the school mishandled its
research sheep. Zanjani declined to comment on that matter, and
university officials have stood by their practices. Allegations about
the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as
scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. Human stem cells
have been injected into mice and now sheep. Such research blurs
biological divisions between species that couldn't until now be
breached. Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have
crossed yet, the National Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing
human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even
that policy recommendation isn't tough enough for some researchers.
"The boundary is going to push further into larger animals," New York
Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. "That's just asking for
trouble." Newman and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin have
been tracking this issue for the last decade and were behind a rather
creative assault on both interspecies mixing and the government's
policy of patenting individual human genes and other living matter.
Years ago, the two applied for a patent for what they called a
"humanzee," a hypothetical -- but very possible -- creation that was
half human and chimp. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally
denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention
was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevent the
patenting of people. Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never
intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their
application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning
people into commodities. And that's a point, Newman warns, that stem
scientists are edging closer to every day: "Once you are on the slope,
you tend to move down it."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/29/human.animal.mixing.ap/ind...

Table-top fusion 'demonstrated'
(BBC) A US team has created a "pocket-sized" nuclear fusion
reactor that generates neutrons, Nature magazine reports. Scientists
have tried to harness nuclear fusion - the same process that powers the
Sun - for commercial uses but this goal has remained elusive. The new
device is expected only to have small niche applications, such as in
fine-control thrusters on spacecraft. Full-scale fusion is a key target
because it would provide an abundant source of relatively clean energy.
It works on the principle that energy can be released by forcing
together atomic nuclei - rather than by splitting them, as is the case
of the fission reactions that drive current nuclear power stations. But
controlling fusion reactions is technically very challenging. And
although a large fusion power station is thought to be feasible, its
realisation could still be many years away. There are claims, too, for
so-called "desktop" fusion devices. However, these have proven highly
controversial. The latest claim, though, seems to have convinced
scientific peers. In the Nature study, Brian Naranjo and colleagues,
from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), initiated fusion
of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, using the strong electric field
generated in a pyroelectric crystal. Materials like this crystal
produce these electric fields when they are heated. The researchers
concentrated the field at the tip of a tungsten needle connected to the
crystal. In an atmosphere of deuterium gas, the field generated
positively charged deuteron ions and accelerated them to high energy in
a beam. When this beam struck a target of erbium deuteride, the team
detected neutrons coming from the target with precisely the energy
expected if they were generated by the nuclear fusion of two deuterium
nuclei. The neutron emission was about 400 times stronger than the
usual background level. "Although the reported fusion is not useful in
the power-producing sense, we anticipate that the system will find
application in a simple palm-sized neutron generator," the researchers
write in Nature. Small devices that emit neutrons could be used as
microthrusters in miniature spacecraft. Such fine control would be
employed in certain experimental set-ups in space where precise
positioning of a craft was essential. In 2002, Rusi Taleyarkhan at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, US, caused a sensation when he claimed to
have made hydrogen nuclei fuse by blasting tiny bubbles in acetone with
sound waves, forcing them to implode. Taleyarkhan and colleagues argued
that as the bubbles collapsed, the temperature inside would rise to
millions of degrees, hot enough for two deuterium nuclei to fuse. But
measuring neutrons on a small, laboratory scale has proven notoriously
difficult in the past because neutrons also occur naturally in the
Earth's environment. The claim met with deep scepticism from many of
the key researchers in the field. One attempt to re-run the experiment
by Mike Saltmarsh and Dan Shapiro, then colleagues of Taleyarkhan's at
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, found no evidence of fusion. In
March 2004, Taleyarkhan published further evidence for his fusion
claims. Despite being thoroughly reviewed and published in a respected
scientific journal, the study did little to convince the sceptics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4489821.stm

Planet outside solar system is observed
(USATODAY) New images taken of an object five times the mass of
Jupiter confirm that it is a giant planet closely orbiting a distant
star, an international team of astronomers reported. The astronomers
said this is the first time a planet outside of our solar system has
been directly observed - a claim other scientists have also made. The
team first spotted the object last year as a faint reddish speck of
light circling a dim brown dwarf - or failed star - 225 light-years
away from Earth near the constellation Hydra. At the time, scientists
guessed the faint light was a planet, but said further observation was
needed. The discovery touched off a debate over whether the object was
actually a planet or a background star. Since the mid-1990s, scientists
have discovered more than 130 of these so-called extrasolar planets by
indirect means, but observing them directly has proved difficult.
Refined images taken earlier this year by the Very Large Telescope in
northern Chile show two separate objects bound by gravity moving
together according to Gael Chauvin, an astronomer at the European
Southern Observatory, who led the team. "Our new images show
convincingly that this really is a planet, the first planet that has
ever been imaged outside of our solar system," Chauvin said in a
statement. Added Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of
California, Los Angeles, who was part of the team: "I'm more than 99%
confident." Chauvin's team estimated the mass of the object, called
2M1207b, by measuring its brightness. They found that it was five times
the mass of Jupiter and orbited a brown dwarf, known as 2M1207A, at a
distance nearly twice as far as Neptune is from the sun. Their
observations will be published in a future issue of Astronomy and
Astrophysics, the scientists said. Lynne Hillenbrand, an assistant
professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, said
the findings were intriguing, but cautioned against calling the object
a planet. "The claim of an object being a planet is subject to one's
definition of planet and there are different camps on what that
definition is," Hillenbrand said. In recent months, different groups of
astronomers have published competing claims about directly observing
extrasolar planets. Earlier this month, German astronomers published a
photograph of an object 450 light-years from Earth that they claimed
was the first direct image of an extrasolar planet. But astronomers
sparred over the photo, saying that it was possible that it could be a
brown dwarf based on the object's mass. Last month, scientists using
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope said they directly measured light from
two known Jupiter-sized gas planets orbiting distant stars, but did not
get images of the planets separate from their stars.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-05-02-planet_x.htm

"Agroterror" a new threat to the economy
(CNN) A ranch or a family farm might not immediately come to mind
when thinking of terrorist targets. But an attack on U.S. agriculture
could cause enormous damage to the economy. And that is the aim of
"agroterror." "Agroterror is the intentional use of any chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive device that would harm
our resources in agriculture," said Dr. Corrie Brown, veterinary
pathologist at the University of Georgia. "From the birth of an animal
through to slaughter, the animal can cross many state lines and can be
in contact with many other animals, so the probability of a disease
spreading far and wide in short order is very high," Brown said.
Because the damage from an accidental outbreak of diseases like mad cow
or foot and mouth would be equally devastating, there is not much
difference in getting prepared for either an accidental or a deliberate
spread of a livestock disease. "I actually think Mother Nature is the
most serious terrorist out there," said Brown. "If you look at some of
the diseases that have emerged, certainly the recent highly pathogenic
avian influenza, which can now infect humans: what we're doing with
globalization and with moving animals, people, products all over the
world, we are creating a landscape that is just rife with possibilities
for new disease emergence," she said. The University of Georgia College
of Veterinary Medicine is on the front lines of preparing for such an
outbreak. Two members of the "staff" at the college are Norman, a
healthy young Jersey steer, and Sky, a teaching horse used for
evaluations and as a blood donor. Professors at the veterinary college
say it's important for students to know how a normal farm animal looks
and acts so they can detect when something is not right. "The image of
a cow with mad cow disease is [an animal] staggering around. But to a
person who knows how a cow normally acts, they may appear to be looking
off into space or may just be having behavior signs that just are not
quite right for a cow. Sometimes they will vocalize repeatedly, or
sometimes they do that when they're hungry. So it's important to
understand and to know a little bit about what the 'normal' is to be
able to pick up the 'abnormal' signs with a disease like mad cow
disease," said Dr. Amelia Woolums, a veterinary microbiologist at the
college's department of large animal medicine. While the vast majority
of veterinary students go into companion animal care, not large animal
medicine, every student has some required classes in treating large
animals at the University of Georgia. That knowledge could be critical
in the event of an animal disease outbreak. "The amount of economic
damage that we'll suffer is directly proportional to the time it takes
to make the first diagnosis," said Brown. Veterinarians and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture would be the first to confirm a disease
diagnosis. Foot and mouth disease is usually at the top of the list of
harmful contagious diseases, because it affects cattle, swine, sheep,
goats and wildlife. As was evidenced in Britain in 2001, an outbreak
can be devastating: Trade is shut down immediately. In the case of the
British outbreak, millions of sheep and cattle were killed to prevent
spread of the disease; economic losses were in the billions of dollars.
Norman, the calf, somewhat grudgingly lets Dr. Woolums examine him.
"He's not too crazy about this; we have to look at his tongue and see
if we see any blisters, or any ulcers. The other thing you will see you
don't even have to open the mouth to notice this, would be long strings
of saliva. You can imagine that if your mouth was full of blisters and
sores you might not want to swallow, it's very irritating. One of the
hallmarks of a foot and mouth disease outbreak would be a bunch of
animals with long strings of saliva. It's important to note there are
many other more benign things that can cause that too," said Woolums.
Norman is pronounced in excellent health. Who might be behind an
incident of agroterror? "It's estimated that a third of the scientists
working in the former Soviet program on biological weapons were
focusing on agricultural issues. We don't know where a lot of those
scientists are today," Brown said. While Brown says the U.S. State
Department and the Department of Agriculture have tried to find and
recruit those scientists to help them work in peacetime programs, she
says it would not take a formally trained scientist to trigger an
animal disease outbreak. "It could be anyone, it could be the nut next
door," Brown said. She has traveled the globe working with other
experts to prepare for any form of a disease outbreak. And she believes
knowledge is among the most important tools in that preparation. "I
don't think there is any point in being hushed about it because the
people who might want to perpetrate this have all the information
already," she said. In another part of the university, scientists work
six days a week to detect evidence of mad cow disease. Since June 2004,
eight facilities across the United States have been conducting hundreds
of tests a day on cow brains from slaughterhouses. "If we do find a
positive, we have to send the tissues off to the National Veterinary
Services Lab in Ames, Iowa, for confirmation," said virologist Wayne
Roberts. "All the labs do the same thing, we are under the same
protocol," he said. So far, none of the thousands of tissues tested at
this facility has turned up positive. While less than one percent of
all cows are tested for mad cow disease, Brown said more than 50
percent of animals considered "high risk" because of age or signs of
nervous disorder are tested. Agroterror is not a new weapon. It was
used at least four times in the 20th century during wars. "The Germans
used anthrax and glanders [a bacterial disease ] against Allied
livestock including horses, cattle and reindeer," said Brown. She says
there were also two incidents in Africa. In Kenya, the native Kenyan
people used a plant toxin to poison British cattle. In the former
Rhodesia, anthrax was used to kill some of the native cattle. And as
late as the 1980s, the Soviets used glanders against horses during the
war with Afghanistan. Brown says protecting the food supply is not a
mission that can begin or end at any country's borders. "I believe that
because of globalization we are now reaching out to many other
countries in the world and we are developing a much stronger network of
veterinarians," said Brown. "The career opportunities in the future
will be in biological security, herd health, population medicine,
public health, food safety, the whole global food supply. All of these
issues are global and will require the profession to work together in a
concerted manner," she said.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/26/agroterror/index.html

Light shed on 'unbreakable' code
(CNN) Australian scientists believe they have developed an
unbreakable information code to stop hackers, using a diamond, a
kitchen microwave oven and an optical fiber. Researchers at Melbourne
University used the microwave to "fuse" a tiny diamond, just 1/1000th
of a millimeter, onto an optical fiber, which could be used to create a
single photon beam of light which they say cannot be hacked. Photons
are the smallest known particles of light. Until now, scientists could
not produce a single-photon beam, thereby narrowing down the stream of
light used to transmit information. "When it comes to cryptology, it's
not so much of a problem to have a coded message intercepted, the
problem is getting the key (to decode it)," said university research
fellow James Rabeau, who developed the diamond device. "The
single-photon beam makes for an unstealable key." The security of
information depends on the properties of light that are used to
transmit data. Laser beams which are used at the moment send billions
of photons, making it easy for hackers to steal some of them and break
the code, said Rabeau. The diamond device sends a stream of single
photons, so that if the chain of communication is broken, the
information becomes corrupted and a hacker immediately exposed to both
the sender and the receiver, he said. Only diamonds are known to create
stable single-photon beams at room temperature. Rabeau and his team
have received a Aust. $3.3 million ($2.5 million) innovation grant from
the Victoria state government to develop a prototype and commercialize
the technology.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/03/australia.cryptology.reut/...

Killer dino 'turned vegetarian'
(BBC) The "mass graveyard" of a bird-like dinosaur has been
uncovered in Utah, US, Nature magazine reports this week. Scientists
believe the previously unknown species was in the process of converting
to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty diet. Falcarius
utahensis seems to represent an intermediate stage between a
carnivorous and herbivorous form. The creature, which lived about 125
million years ago, provides a "missing link" in dinosaur evolution.
"Falcarius represents evolution caught in the act, a primitive form
that shares much in common with its carnivorous kin, while possessing a
variety of features demonstrating that it had embarked on the path
toward more advanced plant-eating forms," said co-author Scott Sampson,
of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Falcarius utahensis belonged to
a group of dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs, which were cousins of
Velociraptor dinos and the early ancestors of birds. The bizarre
creature appears to sit halfway between nippy carnivores and later,
lumbering plant-eating therizinosaurs, although scientists cannot be
entirely sure what it ate itself. "Falcarius shows the beginning of
features we associate with plant-eating dinosaurs, including a
reduction in size of meat-cutting teeth to leaf-shredding teeth, the
expansion of the gut to a size needed to ferment plants and the early
stages of changing the legs so they could carry a bulky body instead of
running fast after prey," said James Kirkland, of the Utah Geological
Survey. The adult dinosaur walked on two legs, was about 4m long (13ft)
and stood 1.4m tall (4.5ft). It also had a woolly feather-like plumage
and sharp, curved 10cm-long (4-inch) claws. These formidable talons
were probably a hang-over from the dinosaur's ferocious past, the
researchers say, and may not have had a function in its more sedate new
lifestyle. Falcarius shared an - as yet undiscovered - ancestor with
the Velociraptor, which was almost certainly a fleet-footed,
small-bodied predator, the researchers believe. At some point, two
major groups of dinosaurs split from their carnivorous cousins and
shifted into plant-eating. But until now, the intermediate stages of
this process remained a mystery. "With Falcarius, we have actual fossil
evidence of a major dietary shift, certainly the best example
documented among dinosaurs," said Dr Sampson. "This little beast is the
missing link between small-bodied predatory dinosaurs and the highly
specialised and bizarre plant-eating therizinosaurs." Although the team
cannot know whether Falcarius was a committed vegetarian - it may have
eaten a bit of meat, too - its emergence did coincide neatly with the
evolution of flowering plants. "At the same time Falcarius appeared,
the world was changing greatly because flowering plants were
appearing," Dr Sampson said. "They would have provided a new food
source. It could be that Falcarius was exploiting an open ecological
niche." Researchers were able to get such a complete idea of what
Falcarius looked like, because they were lucky enough to find a "mass
grave" of the species at the base of the Cedar Mountain rock formation,
south of Green River in Utah. James Kirkland estimates hundreds to
thousands of individual dinosaurs - from hatchlings to adults - died at
the 8,000 sq m dig site. No one knows quite what killed them, but mass
deaths have appeared in the fossil record before. Scientists have
suggested drought, volcanism, fire and botulism poisoning as possible
causes. "Mass mortalities are known in a number of dinosaur groups,"
said Dr Sampson. "In this case, it is difficult to work out what
happened. It could have been a spring which dried up, and the dinosaurs
died of thirst. "Or organic poisons could have contaminated the water -
it is hard to know for sure."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4512487.stm

Future tech must protect planet
(BBC) In his final Reith Lecture, Lord Broers calls for the green
agenda to be given centre stage. While technology has often been
responsible for environmental problems, it could also be the only
solution, he believes. Lord Broers also makes some predictions of the
future of technology. He foresees that technological advances could
provide a cure for AIDS and cancer, alleviate poverty and create
hospitals where mistakes are rare. In order to make sure that
technology plays a role in protecting the environment, technologists
and scientists will need to listen more to public concerns, such as
those over GM foods. "It is time now as a matter of urgency and for the
sake of saving our planet, and thus safeguarding the future of the
human race, to move away from the old concept of 'the public
understanding of science' to a new more dynamic 'public engagement," he
says. It needs to be a two-way debate, and part of this will require
schools to give equal weight to both the Arts and Sciences. "It is
still possible in England at least, for young people from the age of
fifteen to study only mathematics and physics, or on the other hand to
do no science or mathematics at all. This depresses me greatly," says
Lord Broers. Instead engineers should learn Shakespeare and arts
graduates should no longer be proud to be technophobes, he says.
Alongside the cultural balance that needs to be struck, there needs to
be more done to address the gender imbalance. "In our schools, girls
now outperform boys in all subjects, and yet most girls are frequently
brought up to assume that engineering and many of the sciences are male
subjects," says Lord Broers. In his final lecture of a series looking
at how technology can hold the key to the future of the human race,
Lord Broers criticises the expansion of air travel and lack of planning
to deal with traffic congestion. He also urges people to take more
responsibility when it comes to conserving energy in their homes.
"Average householders have little idea how much energy they are using,
nor how to reduce their consumption," he says. "Technology could supply
simple solutions, for example, by providing meters that could be
located in kitchens or over back doors that gave the householder a real
time indication of the amount of power they were using." Lord Broers
concludes his lecture with some predictions for what technology can
achieve in coming years. The ability to solve larger and larger
problems will lead to 95% accuracy in weather forecasting, hospitals in
which mistakes are almost never made, reduction in accident rates on
the roads and railways, and the automation of traffic flow. Ultimately
better control of economies and the improvement in managing complex
organisation could alleviate poverty, he predicts. The ability of
technology to identify objects and people could bring an end to manual
supermarket checkouts with keys and money becoming "curiosities of the
past" as radio frequency tags take on their roles. Perhaps the most
significant advances will be made in the field of medicine, he
predicts. "I am confident that vast strides will be made - in the
control of, and perhaps even in the curing of AIDS and some forms of
cancer," he says. If the previous century was about people enjoying the
benefits of technology, the next should be dedicated to ensuring that
the environment is protected, he concludes. "Technology will truly
triumph if we succeed."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4514249.stm
Here's more news of the weird and interesting variety

Swooping grackles attack Houston residents
(CNN) Like a scene from the horror movie "The Birds," large black
grackles are swooping down on downtown Houston and attacking people's
heads, hair and backs.Authorities closed off a sidewalk after the
aggressive birds, which can have 2-foot wingspans, flew out of magnolia
trees Monday in front of the County Administration Building."They were
just going crazy," said constable Wilbert Jue, who works at the
building. "They were attacking everybody that walked by."The grackles
zeroed in on a lawyer who shooed a bird away before he tripped and
injured his face, Jue said. The lawyer was treated for several cuts.It
appears that the birds are protecting their offspring. On Monday a
young grackle had fallen out of its nest and adult birds attacked
people who got too close, Jue said.Another bird attacked a deputy
county clerk."I hit him with a bottle," said Sylvia Velasquez. "The
other birds came, and one attacked my blouse and on my back."Two women
came to help her after she fell to the ground, and the birds attacked
them as well. The group escaped by running into the building."This is a
very Hitchcock kind of story. Very Tippi Hedren," said downtown worker
Laura Aranda Smith, referring to one of the stars of Alfred Hitchcock's
move "The Birds."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/18/birds.attack.ap/index.html

US robot builds copies of itself
(BBC) US researchers have devised a simple robot that can make
copies of itself from spare parts. Writing in Nature, the robot's
creators say their experiment shows the ability to reproduce is not
unique to biology. Their long-term plan is to design robots made from
hundreds or thousands of identical basic modules. These could repair
themselves if parts fail, reconfigure themselves to better perform the
task they have been set, or even to make extra helpers. So far, the
robots, if they can be called that, consist of just three or four
mobile cubes. Each unit comes with a small computer code carrying a
blueprint for the layout of the robot, electrical contacts to let it
communicate with its neighbours, and magnets to let them stick
together. By turning and moving, the cubes can pick up new units,
decide where they belong, and stack them alongside each other to make
new devices. In a little more than a minute, a simple three-cube robot
can make a copy of itself. That offspring version can then make further
copies. It is only a toy demonstration of the idea, but lead researcher
Hod Lipson, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has bold plans
for these intelligent modular machines. "Space applications clearly
come to mind. If you're sending a robot to one of Jupiter's moons, and
the robot breaks, then the mission is over," Dr Lipson told the BBC.
"So you would like to have a robotic system that can adapt, or to
repair itself, remotely. So that would be one clear application." Other
applications could be down mines or in nuclear facilities. The
researchers have previously used aspects of evolution to help them
design robots. Combining this with the biology of self-repair and of
replication would make huge changes to the field of robotics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4538547.stm

Experts: Spam a new propaganda tool
(CNN) "Spam" e-mail, used for years to sell snake-oil medicine,
penny stocks and suspiciously low mortgages, is now being used to sell
neo-Nazi ideology as well. A new computer worm sent right-wing German
messages to millions of computers over the weekend in what anti-virus
experts said was a sign that spam has become a tool for propagandists
as well as scam artists. "We have seen a trend in which worm authors
are using spam not to hawk goods, but as a tool for political
propaganda," said Scott Chasin, chief technical officer for the
anti-virus firm MX Logic. Chasin and other experts said the messages
were sent by computers that had been infected with a new variant of the
Sober worm, which turns computers into "zombies" that can be used as a
base for attacks. Experts described the amount of spam generated as
"staggering." "We've gotten inundated with reports of small networks
getting hammered," said Scott Fendley, an incident handler for the
Internet Storm Center, a warning service that tracks online threats.
Bearing German-language subject lines that translate to phrases like
"Multicultural = multicriminal," the messages point to racist German
Web sites and news articles that could be used to support
anti-immigrant views. The timing of the attack coincided with two
events that might arouse right-wing feelings in Germany: an election in
the state of Northrhine-Westfalia and the 60th anniversary of the end
of World War II in Europe. It came shortly after a similar spam plague
that promised tickets to soccer's World Cup. That attack probably
served as a blueprint for the current campaign, experts said. The
worm's author is likely a neo-Nazi sympathizer motivated by ideology,
rather than a mercenary who would send out messages for any paying
customer, experts said. "It seems like this virus writer does not
consider himself a spammer at this point," said Dmitri Alperovitch, a
research engineer at the anti-virus firm CipherTrust, citing a message
embedded in the worm's code. The worm's author could tap the network of
infected computers in the future to send more spam or knock targeted
Web sites offline, Chasin said.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/05/16/neonazi.spam.reut/index.html

Freemasons condemn Togo election
(BBC) Freemasons in Benin have said they are unhappy with last
month's elections in neighbouring Togo and condemned the world's
acceptance of the results. Marius Adjovi, the master of the Grand Benin
lodge, told the BBC that he was shocked at the support given to the
regime, which officially won the poll. He said he was speaking to
freemasons in France and West Africa with the aim of encouraging talks
in Togo. Freemasons are very influential in French-speaking African
countries. Last year, Presidents Omar Bongo of Gabon and Denis
Sassou-Nguesso of Congo publicly attended a freemasons meeting in Nice.
Faure Gnassingbe, ruling party candidate and son of the long-time
president who died in February, won more than 60% of the votes,
according to official results. The opposition, however, allege
widespread fraud. Violent protests at the results left at least 22
people dead. Most of the 26,000 people who have fled Togo since the
elections have sought refuge in Benin. Mr Adjovi told BBC Afrique that
the situation remained "potentially dangerous". "We express our outrage
at the support given by the African Union, Ecowas [West Africa's
regional body] and western organisations to the regime in place," he
said. Ecowas has backed the polls. In February, they pressed Mr
Gnassingbe into stepping down and holding elections, after the army
announced that he had succeeded his father. Nigeria is hosting a
special summit on Togo on Thursday. Nigeria's President Olusegun
Obasanjo has previously urged Mr Gnassingbe and the opposition to set
up a government of national unity. Correspondents say that freemasons
are less influential in Togo than in the rest of Francophone Africa. Mr
Adjovi said that there was no sovereign freemasons lodges in Togo but
that some Togolese were member of French lodges. Last week, the
European Union parliament rejected the election results. On Tuesday,
Togo's national assembly called this "hostile" and said the EU
parliament had not sent observers to the poll.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4555671.stm

Swiss wrap glacier to slow ice melt
(CNN) Alarmed by the retreat of its Alpine glacier, a Swiss ski
resort on Tuesday wrapped part of the shrinking ice-cap in a giant
blanket in a bid to reduce the summer melt. If successful, officials at
the Gemsstock resort above Andermatt in central Switzerland expect the
example to be followed elsewhere in the Alps, where scientists say
glaciers are under threat from global warming. "We think it will become
common practice to cover parts of the glaciers," Urs Elmiger, a board
member of Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen, the cable car operator behind
the project, told Reuters. A thin protective layer of artificial
textiles, including polyester, was laid over an area of 3-4,000 square
meters (yards). The fleece-like material, hard to distinguish with the
naked eye from snow, will reflect the rays of the sun. The 100,000
Swiss franc ($83,000) blanket will protect one of the main glacier
access ramps, which has to be rebuilt each autumn at the start of the
ski season to cover a yawning 20-meter gap opened up by the ice melt.
"It needs a lot of work, energy and money to rebuild. And one day, if
the melt increases, the cost of rebuilding the ramp will be very, very
high," said Elmiger. But scientists stressed that while such defensive
actions could prove valuable in selected spots, such as access areas or
cable car installations, they were not a solution to the overall
problem of the vanishing ice fields worldwide. "It may be useful very
locally, but it would be totally unfeasible -- economically and
ecologically -- to cover completely even a small glacier," said
geography professor Wilfried Haeberli of the University of Zurich. The
Alpine glaciers -- also in Austria, France and Italy -- are losing one
percent of their mass every year and, even supposing no acceleration in
that rate, will have all but disappeared by the end of the century.
More hot, dry summers like that of 2003 in Europe, when the loss
speeded to five percent, could cut the life expectancy to no more than
50 years, Haeberli added. "We estimate that by the end of the 21st
century, with a medium-type climate scenario, about five percent of
what existed in the 1970s will have survived," he told Reuters. For
Martin Hiller, spokesman on climate change for environmentalist group
WWF International, who was on hand to witness the Alpine experiment,
the move was positive but offered no real answer to ice loss. "The
solution is to switch to clean energy, we need to cut down on harmful
pollutants, such as CO2 (carbon dioxide)," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/10/swiss.glacier.reut/index.html
Cyprus winemaking oldest in Mediterranean
(CNN) Cypriots are the Mediterranean's oldest winemakers, beating
the Greeks to the fermented grape's heady effects by at least 2,000
years, according to Italian researchers. Despite references to wine in
the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer, archaeologists have only now
found evidence that winemaking on the island dates back some 5,500
years. "We found two jugs used for wine and even the seeds of the
grapes. It's amazing," Italian archaeologist Maria Rosaria Belgiorno
was quoted as telling the Cyprus Weekly newspaper. The island's
winemaking tradition is already well documented, but the latest
discovery proves that Cypriots were the region's oldest winemakers, the
paper said. Commandaria, a Cypriot sweet dessert wine, is believed to
be the oldest wine in the world still in production. But the world's
oldest known winemaking process dates back about 7,000 years to Iran.
The origins of wine are unknown. Greek mythology names Dionysus, or
Bacchus -- god of wine and mischief -- as its inventor in the
Mediterranean, while historians believe it was discovered accidentally
when some grapes were left to ferment.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/13/cyprus.wine.reut/index.html

Chinese made first use of diamond
(BBC) Stone age craftsmen in China were polishing jade objects
using diamond 2,000 years before anyone else had the same idea, new
evidence suggests. Quartz was previously thought to be the abrasive
used to polish ceremonial axes in late stone age, or neolithic, China.
But the investigations of a Chinese-US team of scientists indicate that
quartz alone would not have been able to achieve such lustrous
finishes. The team reports its diamond findings in the journal
Archaeometry. Harvard University physicist Peter Lu and colleagues
studied four ceremonial burial axes, the oldest of which dates to about
4,500 years ago. The team used X-ray diffraction and electron
microprobe analysis. This determined that the most abundant mineral in
the axes was corundum, known as ruby in its red form and sapphire in
all other colours. The majority of prehistoric stone objects are
traditionally thought to have been fashioned from rocks containing
minerals no harder than quartz. But corundum is one of the hardest
minerals known to science, second only to diamond. What the researchers
found even more intriguing were the finely polished surfaces of the
axes, which reflect an image like a mirror. To test their ideas, the
researchers took a small stone sample from one of the axes, an artefact
from the Liangzhou culture, and subjected it to polishing with diamond,
alumina and silica, following modern techniques. Using an atomic force
microscope to examine the polished surfaces on a nanometre scale, the
scientists found the diamond-polished surface most closely matched the
surface from the ancient axe. Quartz could not have been the abrasive
used by the ancient craftsmen. "Our understanding of the first use of
diamond is based on textual evidence from 500 BC in India. But even
that - though probably right - is speculative. This is physical
evidence a couple of thousand years earlier," Dr Lu told the BBC News
website. "Any experiment does not give you 100% certainty, but this is
the only possibility that makes sense." However, even with the best
modern polishing technologies available, the research team could not
achieve a surface as flat and smooth as that on the ancient axe. The
authors speculate that the use of diamond and corundum abrasives could
be linked to an explosion in finely polished jade artefacts during the
Chinese neolithic. The use of corundum could have slashed production
times while diamond could have added the finishing touches, they
suggest. Quartz, previously thought to have been the neolithic
lapidary's abrasive of choice, is only slightly harder than jade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555235.stm