Black bear about to bear cubs live on Internet
WASHINGTON (AP) — A black bear named Lily is may be about to give birth in the wild live on the Internet. Biologist Lynn Rogers says the birth in Lily's den outside Ely, Minn. is a video first. Rogers and his North American Bear Center put a camera in Lily's den that streams her activity live.
NASA: No word from Phoenix Mars lander
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NASA says there's no word from the Phoenix lander that is presumed to be frozen near the Martian north pole. The space agency said Thursday the Mars Odyssey spacecraft passed over the Phoenix landing site 30 times during the last three days and did not hear anything.
Coal baron debates Kennedy over mountaintop mining
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Don Blankenship and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the coal baron and the conservationist, are certain they could win over the world if only the public could see mountaintop removal mining through their eyes. On Thursday, they got their shot. Blankenship, the outspoken chief executive of Massey Energy Co., went toe-to-toe with Kennedy, the celebrity environmental attorney, in a debate that amounted to a prize fight for the hearts and minds of Americans who know next to nothing about coal.
Feds allege crime in death of wild jaguar in Ariz.
PHOENIX (AP) — Investigators say a contractor and possibly an Arizona Game and Fish Department employee acted criminally in the death of what was believed to be the last living wild jaguar in Arizona. The allegation is in a federal report obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers
WASHINGTON (AP) — Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world's most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful. The errors are in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-affiliated body. All the mistakes appear in a subsection that suggests glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by the year 2035 — hundreds of years earlier than the data actually indicates. The year 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035.
Experts may have found bones of English princess
LONDON (AP) — She was a beautiful English princess who married one of Europe's most powerful monarchs and dazzled subjects with her charity and charm. Now an international team of scientists say they think they've found the body of Princess Eadgyth (pronounced Edith) — a 10th-century noblewoman who has been compared to Princess Diana. "She was a very, very popular person," said Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at Bristol University in western England. "She was sort of the Diana of her day if you like — pretty and full of good works."
Nobel Prize-winning scientist Nirenberg dies at 82
NEW YORK (AP) — Marshall Nirenberg, a scientist whose work untangling fundamental genetic processes earned him a Nobel Prize, has died. He was 82. Nirenberg's sister Joan Geiger says he died of cancer Jan. 15 in New York City.
Experts: Haiti at risk for another big aftershock
NEW YORK (AP) — Haiti can expect more aftershocks in coming weeks, and while the usual pattern suggests they will become weaker and less frequent, another one as strong as Wednesday's jolt is certainly possible, scientists say. The battered nation has felt more than 45 significant aftershocks since the Jan. 12 quake. Wednesday's event, originally estimated at magnitude 6.1 but later revised to a 5.9, tied an earlier aftershock as the strongest so far.
Scientists warned Haiti officials of quake in '08
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Scientists who detected worrisome signs of growing stresses in the fault that unleashed this week's devastating earthquake in Haiti said they warned officials there two years ago that their country was ripe for a major earthquake. Their sobering findings, presented during a geological conference in March 2008 and at meetings two months later, showed that the fault was capable of causing a 7.2-magnitude earthquake — slightly stronger than Tuesday's 7.0 quake that rocked the impoverished country.
Rare bird's breeding ground found in Afghanistan
BANGKOK (AP) — The first known breeding area of one of the world's rarest birds has been found in the remote and rugged Pamir Mountains in war-torn Afghanistan, a New York-based conservation group said Monday. A researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society stumbled upon the small, olive-brown large-billed reed warbler in 2008 and taped its distinctive song — a recording experts now say is probably the first ever. He and colleagues later caught and released 20 of the birds, the largest number ever recorded, the group says.