Science News

XI'AN, China (AP) _ Millions of Chinese along the ancient Silk Road gathered Friday to gaze at a total solar eclipse, an event traditionally fraught with superstitious meaning coming one week before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ South Korea refused Friday to allow disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk to resume work on human stem cells citing his "ethical problems" that scandalized the international scientific community with fake research.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) _ Australian electricity producers warned Friday that the government's aim of cutting the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020 to fight global warming could boost power bills by 28 percent. The Energy Supply Association of Australia commissioned a cost analysis of the government's plan to tax air polluters for the carbon they produce from 2010.

TOKYO (AP) _ Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.

TOWSON, Md. (AP) _ Dr. Victor A. McKusick, a key architect of the Human Genome Project and a winner of the National Medal of Science, has died. He was 86. Officials at Johns Hopkins University, where McKusick was a professor of genetics, said he died Tuesday in Towson, Maryland after complications from cancer. McKusick, whose work explored the links between genetics and disease, won the top U.S.

BANGKOK, Thailand Children born after the closure of a coal-burning plant in China had 60 percent fewer developmental problems, a study released Monday suggests, giving ammunition to those who argue the country should embrace cleaner sources of energy.

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ Myanmar's cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta and Indonesia's Sumatra island face high risks of arsenic contamination in groundwater that could cause cancer and other diseases in residents, according to a new study.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) _ A decade-long drought in Australia's most important crop-growing region is worsening and there is little hope for relief from either saving rains or a new government conservation plan, officials said Thursday.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) _ About 1,000 fishermen on Thursday urged the owners of a ferry that sank last month to speed up the retrieval of hundreds of bodies and the ship's toxic cargo, saying a fishing ban imposed after the disaster threatens their livelihood.

RUSUTSU, Japan (AP) _ Leaders of the world's wealthy nations ended a mega-summit Wednesday united in condemning Zimbabwe's recent elections, vowing to fight a food crisis and supporting a plan to slash by half the global emission of greenhouse gases by the middle of the century.

RUSUTSU, Japan (AP) _ The world's top producers of greenhouse gases developed and developing countries alike pledged to battle climate change Wednesday, but failed to agree on numerical targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

TOYAKO, Japan (AP) _ U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday hailed the G-8 summit's success in coalescing behind a global climate change strategy, saying he hopes the plan will help developing nations to become "good stewards of the environment.

RUSUTSU, Japan (AP) _ Inching beyond a pledge made a year ago, the world's top economic powers on Tuesday embraced a goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by mid-century, aiming to keep alive languishing talks on a new global warming pact.

JAIPUR, India (AP) _ In an unprecedented attempt to revive the tiger population in western India, authorities airlifted a female tiger to a national reserve Friday where it will join a male tiger delivered there last week.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) _ Australian government leaders struck an agreement Thursday to conserve water on a crucial river system, but Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the deal will not end the threat that a record drought poses to the waterway's ecological health.

BALI, Indonesia (AP) _ Delegates at a U.N. conference decided against banning toxic waste exports, instead encouraging countries Friday to take their own action to address the steady stream of dangerous chemicals and old electronics that litter the landfills of poor nations.

BALI, Indonesia (AP) _ African and other poor countries at a U.N. conference pushed Friday for a ban on toxic waste exports, saying it would protect them from the steady stream of dangerous chemicals and old electronics damaging their health and environment.

BALI, Indonesia (AP) _ Poor nations welcome hazardous waste from abroad, such as old computers, rusted ships and banned pesticides, in a shortsighted bid to lift themselves out of poverty, despite the dangers to human health and the environment, a U.N. rights official said Thursday.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) _ Australia's worst air polluters must begin measuring their emissions of "greenhouse" gases blamed for global warming as the nation moves toward an emissions trading scheme in 2010, the climate minister said Thursday.

PERTH, Australia (AP) _ A humpback whale that appeared to have been fatally attacked by a pod of killer whales washed up on an Australian beach Thursday, a conservation official said.