Twenty years ago forest fires destroyed about two million hectares of Siberian forests - the loss of an area the size of Wales. Last year 22 million hectares - about half the size of France - were lost to fire. Russian forestry scientists said they were bracing themselves for this year's fire season, which starts in late June.

Siberia's largest forest, the taiga, accounts for one fifth of the world's total forested land and contains half of the planet's evergreen forest. Yet in the space of a couple of decades this seemingly unlimited expanse of trees has suffered an unprecedented tenfold increase in the rate of deforestation caused by fire.

Temperatures will climb into the upper 80s and lower 90s today in parts of the Everett-Seattle-Tacoma urban corridor...more than 20 degrees above normal for late may. Excessive physical activity in heat this intense can be dangerous. The elderly...very young... sick...and persons with heart conditions are most at risk.

The epidemic in Angola, thought to have begun weeks or months before it was recognized, is the largest on record. As of yesterday, there was a total of 376 suspected or confirmed cases in Uíge, including 315 deaths. The disease is spread by contact with body fluids like blood, saliva or urine, though people do not transmit the virus until they become ill. Those who recover can still transmit the virus sexually for about three months.

Ms. Bhatiasevi said that because the virus had also been found in breast milk, infected mothers were being advised not to breast-feed. Healthy mothers of infected children were also being advised not to breast-feed, she said, lest the mothers become infected as well.

Marburg, a close relative of the Ebola virus, causes a hemorrhagic fever that is often fatal within a week. The incubation period is three to nine days. There is no cure, and no vaccine.

Microlensing occurs when a massive object in space, like a star, crosses in front of another star shining in the background.

The near object's gravity bends the light rays from the more distant object and magnifies them like a lens. Here on Earth, we see the star get brighter as the lens crosses in front, and then fade as the lens moves away.

"Normally, a small earthquake might last less than a second; a moderate sized earthquake might last a few seconds. This earthquake lasted between 500 and 600 seconds," said Charles Ammon, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State University.

The quake released an amount of energy equal to a 100 gigaton bomb, according to Roger Bilham, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado.

"The results (of laboratory tests) came in yesterday ... It is indeed a case of Ebola," said Adamou Yada, WHO's representative in Congo, which has faced serious outbreaks of the disease in the past. Nearly 150 people died in 2003.

"Since the beginning (of the outbreak), we have registered 11 cases, including 9 deaths," Yada said in the capital Brazzaville. The latest outbreak is in the forested Cuvette-Ouest region, near the border with Gabon, where the 2003 outbreak struck.

Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted 12 to 15 tropical storms, seven to nine of them becoming hurricanes, and three to five of those major hurricanes, with winds of at least 111 mph.

"We can't predict this far in advance how many will strike land," he said. But given the active season, "be prepared for two or three of these to make landfall."

"This event registered a 9 on the K-Index, which measures the maximum deviation of the Earth's magnetic field in a given three-hour period," said Gayle Nelson, lead operations specialist at NOAA Space Environment Center. "The scale ranges from 0 to 9, with 9 being the highest. This was a significant event."

Possible impacts from such a geomagnetic storm include widespread power system voltage control problems; some grid systems may experience complete collapse or blackouts. Transformers may experience damage. Spacecraft operations may experience extensive surface charging; problems with orientation; uplink/downlink and tracking satellites. Satellite navigation may be degraded for days, and low-frequency radio navigation can be out for hours. Reports received by the NOAA Space Environment Center indicate that such impacts have been observed in the United States.

These robots were programmed to stop after two generations, because we wanted to show just a proof of concept. Also, they cannot reproduce without a supply of power and more cubes provided at the right place and at the right time, so they are fairly constrained and under control. So there is no danger they will "take over the world". Other forms of artificial self-replication can be more concerning - computer viruses and genetically modified crops, for example, are less controllable. Ray Kurzweil has an interesting discussion on the Ethics and concerns of self-replication technologies.

Another friend, Stuart Wilson, 24, managed to take video footage of the lights.

The shaky video shows a dozen pricks of light forming shapes such as diamonds, lines, characters and what looks like the Southern Cross.

The lights were visible for 10 minutes before flying in different directions and vanishing, Mr Wilson said.

"It's possible aliens are driving them, but until I see one I'm not going to be convinced," he said. "This is pretty close, but I didn't see any little green men."

But Mr Webster didn't need convincing.

"I was never into sci-fi but now I'm going to do my homework on UFOs," he said.

The models bear a striking resemblance to the mask which covered the mummified face of King Tutankhamun when his remains were found by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 and other ancient portraits.

"The shape of the face and skull are remarkably similar to a famous image of Tutankhamun as a child where he was shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom," said Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Yellowstone ranks 21st most dangerous of the 169 volcano centers in the United States, according to the Geological Survey's first-ever comprehensive review of the nation's volcanoes.

Kilauea in Hawaii received the highest overall threat score followed by Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount Shasta in California. Kilauea has been erupting since 1983. Mount St. Helens, which erupted catastrophically in 1980, began venting again in 2004.

In their vision, humans become extinct in an Ice Age 5 million years from now. "Shagrats," or giant rodents, and "gannet whales," large aquatic birds, have evolved during this stretch of time.

The Ice Age melts away 100 million years later, marking the beginning of the end of large mammals and giving rise to creatures like the "ocean phantom," a jellyfish the size of a truck; the "swampus," a relative of the octopus that emerges from swamps to feed; and the "toraton," a reptile bigger than dinosaurs.

In 200 million years, evolution brings bizarre animals like "flish," birds that evolved from fish; "bumblebeetles," beetles that fly; and "megasquid," multi-ton, land-based squid creatures.

"Squibbons," a hybrid squid-gibbon ape, live in trees, eat plants as well as flish and "represent the pinnacle of intelligent life on Earth," according to Dixon and Adams' vision.

Today was a great day! We tracked a storm from its beginnings as a small cumulus cloud crossing the dryline, to its development into a full mesoscale system complete with two funnels that lowered several hundred feet out of a wall cloud before they dissipated back up into the cloud. Fortunately for the farmers and residents of Dundy County, no tornadoes touched down. It was a thrill to behold. Megan's Boston accent finally came out as she kept repeating "This is wicked awesome!" We captured great video and photos. A few are included below and some in my photo album that you can view at right. Take a look!

As of 3 May, the Ministry of Health in Angola has reported 308 cases of Marburg haemorrhagic fever. Of these cases, 277 were fatal. In Uige Province, which remains the epicentre of the outbreak, 297 cases, of which 266 have been fatal, were reported. The large increase in the number of reported cases for Uige is the result of retrospective investigation and entry into the database of cases that occurred previously. However, new confirmed cases and deaths continue to be reported in Uige.

The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.

Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the "number of the beast," or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book's apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.

"This is very early confirmation of that number, earlier than any other text we've found of that passage," Dr. Aitken said. "It's probably about 100 years before any other version."

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 mummy, found two months ago, was covered from head to toe in brightly colored cartonage burial material depicting a range of graphic scenes, including the Goddess Maat of balance and truth who was shown with outstretched arms that took the shape of feathered wings.

Also shown were the four children of the falcon-headed god, Horus, and the rituals and processes to mummify the person, who Hawass believed must have been wealthy considering his burial location and fine gold used for the mummy's mask.

Some descriptions from witnesses sound like the plot to a horror movie -- water roiling with tentacles; otherworldly creatures suddenly launching into the air from beneath the surface; nightfall bringing to the surface vicious predators that slip back into the depths at daybreak, like vampires of the sea.

A Humboldt squid can grow to the size and weight of a hockey player. So, imagine Todd Bertuzzi with bulging eyes, eight arms, two tentacles, three hearts, a beak for a mouth, a brain wrapped around his esophagus and gullet with a willingness -- nay, eagerness -- to dine on his own kind every other meal, and you get a sense of how the squid has earned such a fearsome reputation.

Mexican fishermen call the creature el diablo rojo -- the red devil.