"Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence," he writes.

"It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun was too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years."

Northern Melting

Canadian aboriginal leaders say their northern communities are in a state of emergency because abnormally mild temperatures have hindered construction of vital winter roads.

"We were told all along that global warming is going to affect our roads and now we see that today," said David Harper, chief of the Garden Hill First Nation.

"Without the winter roads, all essential goods have to be flown into the region."

About 10,000 people live on four Indian reserves in the Island Lake region of Manitoba, some 450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. There are no roads leading to the remote region and goods are normally brought in by air. But during the coldest months of the year, winter roads are built on frozen lakes and rivers to cut transportation costs.

Winter Storms

High winds knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers in the Northeast United States on Wednesday and wreaked havoc for commuters, blowing trees across railroad tracks, overturning tractor-trailers, and making for wild ferry rides.

The wind was blamed for at least one death, a 52-year-old man killed just north of New York City when a tree fell on his car, according to a Sound Shore Hospital spokesman in New Rochelle.

The storm knocked out power to more than 286,000 homes and businesses in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, the Philadelphia area, New York, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

 So What Do You Do With A Toxic Warship?

India's Supreme Court on Monday barred a decommissioned French warship, due for scrapping, from entering the country's waters until a report by a team of environment experts.

The aircraft carrier Clemenceau left France in December for a massive Indian ship-breaking yard amid protests from the environmental group Greenpeace.

The group says the 27,000-ton ship contains hundreds of tons of hazardous material, including 500 tons of asbestos which could pose a risk to the health of scrap workers.

A two-judge bench said it would decide on February 13 -- after examining the final report by the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes -- if the Clemenceau could enter the yard.

The monitoring panel, which reports to the apex court, had previously recommended the vessel not be allowed to enter India because of the toxic waste it carried.

What Do You Do With 17 Toxic Old Nuclear Power Plants?

German nuclear plants that want to prolong operations beyond a national phase-out plan will need approval from the environment ministry, its chief said on Monday.

Debate has been renewed over the future of Germany's 17 nuclear power stations beyond their allocated operational lifetimes. They produce a third of its electricity but must be phased out by the early 2020s.

If Germany is having trouble dismantling old nuclear plants, consider that nuclear plants were built all over the world at about the same time, including the United States. We are all facing the problem of disposing of tons of highly radioactive and toxic waste that nobody wants in their back yards.

Parched Arizona

As much of Arizona enters an 11th year of drought conditions, the state could experience its driest winter season in centuries.

And that has officials worried about agriculture, water supplies and the threat of wildfires.

Arizona's mountains are virtually bare, with snow pack conditions worse than they were at the same time in 2002 - a year that set records as one of the driest in five centuries.

Rural areas are bracing for water shortages by early summer if rains don't come.

Washington Drenched

People in water-logged Washington now have official confirmation of something they've been suspecting: It's been raining a lot.

A streak of 27 rainy days is six short of the record set in 1953. But January, with almost 7 inches of rain so far, could still set a rainfall record for the month by beating the 12.92 inches measured in 1953 at the National Weather Service Observatory at Sea-Tac International Airport.

More seriously, officials worried about the potential for more landslides and floods, warning that the saturated landscape can't hold much more water.

Moscow Deep Freeze

Two people in Moscow died of exposure and 14 more were hospitalized in a single day as temperatures plunged to 18 degrees below zero. Temperatures dropped from about freezing Monday afternoon to minus-28 Celsius (minus-18 Fahrenheit) overnight as a cold wave hit after inflicting record-low temperatures across Siberia.

Electricity monopoly RAO Unified Energy System of Russia said Tuesday that the sharp drop in temperature had caused no supply disruptions in Moscow. But NTV television reported that power was cut off to nearly 30 towns and villages in Ryazan region southwest of Moscow, and that there were also problems in the Volga River region of Samara.

Dead Sea Turtles

A total of 119 rare sea turtles have washed up dead on Pacific beaches in El Salvador this month, and scientists said on Monday they are struggling for an explanation. The dead turtles have been found at different points along the coast since the start of the year.

Landslides

Landslides kill 800-1,000 people a year and climate change may be adding to the risks from hillside slums in Latin America to Egypt's Valley of the Kings, U.N. experts say.

Asia suffered most with 220 landslides in the past century out of about 500 that caused human deaths. Many of the most deadly mudslides were in Latin America and the costliest in Europe.

About 800-1,000 people died in landslides in each of the past 20 years, statistics reveal.

About 100 experts are meeting this week in Tokyo on to discuss ways to prevent and ease damage from landslides amid worries that global warming may make slides more frequent by bringing heavier downpours that loosen soils.

Alaskan Volcano

In Alaska the Augustine Volcano has been erupting. On Tuesday morning a major blast sent an ash plume 8 1/2 miles into the air. An ash fall advisory was issued for communities along the southwest portion of the Kenai Peninsula and east of the volcano. The eruption lasted for five minutes.

9-11 is Still Killing

James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.

All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at ground zero.

While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site have reported ailments such as "trade center cough" since the terrorist attacks, some say that only now are the consequences of working at the site becoming heartbreakingly clear.

"I'm very fearful," said Donald Faeth, an emergency medical technician and officer in a union with two of the ground zero workers who died last year. "I think that there are several people who died that day and didn't realize that they died that day."

Studies have shown that the dust in the air around that disaster was laced with toxic elements, including asbestos, for weeks. Everybody working in and around the site was at high risk for big trouble.

Influenza Warning

The government is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza because of concerns about drug resistance, officials announced Saturday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the recommendation covers the drugs rimantadine and amantadine for the 2006 flu season.

Results of recent lab tests on influenza samples showed that the predominant strain this season — the H3N2 influenza strain — is resistant to the drugs, the agency said.

Battling Bird Flu

International donors pledged $1.9 billion on Wednesday for a global fund to combat bird flu.

The money will mostly be aimed at improving health and veterinary services in developing countries grappling with outbreaks, and at strengthening surveillance programs in areas not yet affected.

The pledge was announced at the end of an international conference in Beijing, exceeding an initial target set by the World Bank to raise at least $1.2 billion.

The Bank has estimated that a pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to $800 billion. Across the globe, millions could die if the H5N1 avian flu virus mutates just enough to pass easily among people.

Economies would be crippled for weeks or months.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 79 people in six countries since late 2003. The victims normally contract the virus through close contact with infected birds.

Turkey is the latest country to confirm an outbreak among people, reporting 21 cases including the deaths of four children in the east of the country. That development marked the progress of the virus from East Asia to the gates of Europe and the Middle East.

Iraq was testing for a human case of the virus for the first time on Wednesday after a 14-year-old girl died of a fever in the Kurdish region close to the Turkish and Iranian borders.

Health officials said the girl died on Tuesday after a two-week illness. She lived close to a lake that is a haven for migratory birds flying south from Turkey.

In the meantime, The World Bank aims to raise $1.2 billion to fight bird flu, Vice President Jim Adams said during a global donor conference in Beijing tasked with securing the resources needed to combat the deadly virus.

The money will mostly be aimed at improving health and veterinary services in developing countries grappling with outbreaks, and at strengthening surveillance programs in areas not yet affected.

Another Coal Mine Disaster

Rescue teams searched early today for two miners who were unable to escape after a fire broke out in an underground coal mine near Melville, West Virginia. Nineteen miners were able to flee the blaze.

The fire started Thursday evening on a conveyor belt at the Alma No. 1 Mine operated by Massey Energy subsidiary Aracoma Coal, about 60 miles southwest of Charleston, officials said.

Twelve miners had gone into the mine to start their shift when a carbon monoxide monitor sounded an alarm around 5:36 p.m. The monitor was located about 10,000 feet inside the mine and about 900 feet underground.

The miners encountered smoke, put on breathing gear and rushed out of the mine, but two were separated from the group. Nine others in another part of the mine also escaped.

The fire came less than three weeks after an explosion at the International Coal Group's Sago Mine in Upshur County killed 12 miners. The disaster's sole survivor, Randal McCloy Jr., 26, remained hospitalized in a light coma Friday.

Chile Goes Socialist

Chileans on Sunday elected the country's first woman leader, a socialist who is joining a growing number of socialist leaders coming to power in the Latin American nations of South America.

She is Michelle Bachelet, 54, a medical doctor and former defense minister who was imprisoned and tortured during the 1973-1990 Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

Bachelet will be the fourth consecutive president from the center-left coalition that formed in the 1980s to oppose former dictator Augusto Pinochet. The coalition has run the copper-producing country of 16 million people since Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

The Bachelet victory consolidates a shift to the left in Latin America, where leftists now run Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, some with politics more extreme than others. A socialist will soon take office in Bolivia and a leftist is favored to win Mexico's presidential election in July.

Bachelet pledges deep reforms to Chile's private pension system, which is admired around the world as a model but considered expensive and inadequate at home.

Stiffing Venezuela

The United States has refused Spain permission to sell 12 transport and maritime surveillance aircraft containing US technology to Venezuela.

Venezuela is the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter and provides subsidized heating fuel to tens of thousands of poor people in the US, but its military spending has stirred concern in Washington, increasingly at odds with Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, over his self-described socialist revolution.
   
The aircraft are part of a $2 billion Spanish deal to supply ships and planes to Venezuela.
   
The spokesman confirmed a report in Friday's edition of El Pais newspaper, which said the US believed that the aircraft sale to Venezuela had the potential to complicate the situation in the South American region. It did not elaborate on what "situation" in South America might be "complicated" by Venezuela having better aircraft.

America The Police State

Satellites have monitored crop conditions around the world for decades, helping traders predict futures prices in commodities markets and governments anticipate crop shortages.

But those satellite images are now increasingly turning up in courtrooms across the nation as the Agriculture Department's Risk Management Agency cracks down on farmers involved in crop insurance fraud. The government also is keeping tabs on who is planting what, how they are draining their fields, and who is growing marijuana. The detail from the pictures is shockingly clear. A virtual spy in the sky on everything we do.

Disorderly Houses Tagged

The City Council in Lincoln, Nebraska, is considering the idea of having police slap “red tags” on doors of “disorderly houses” where give or more people gather and parties are considered unruly and events are disturbing the peace of the neighborhood.

The idea came from Tucson, Arizona, where police are tagging disorderly houses for excessive noise, traffic, obstruction of streets, littering, public drinking, fighting or minors are found consuming alcohol.

The way it works, once a house is tagged, the warning, a big red poster that can be seen a block away like a scarlet letter, must stay there for the next 180 days. If the homeowner or resident dares remove it, he gets fined. If a second event occurs at the house, police cite and fine everyone from property owners to tenants and party guests.

We are indeed America the police state. Notice that police are even starting to dress and look like Nazi SS Storm troopers these days.

Executing A Sick Old Man

A 76-year-old convicted killer — legally blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair — tried to stave off execution by arguing before the US Supreme Court that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to put a feeble old man to death.

Clarence Ray Allen, whose birthday was Monday, was set to die by lethal injection just after midnight. He stood to become the oldest person executed in California - and the second-oldest put to death nationally - since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.

Allen raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court: that executing a frail old man would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

He was condemned in 1982 for ordering a hit from prison that left three people dead.

His heart stopped in September, but doctors revived him and returned him to San Quentin Prison's death row. Apparently they wanted to make him suffer a few more months before killing him themselves, the sick bastards.

How did the story end? It is California. They killed him, of course.

Doctor Assisted Suicides

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people. New Chief Justice John Roberts backed the Bush administration, dissenting for the first time.

The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said.

Ivory Coast Warfare

Rebels in the Ivory Coast, Africa, have warned the country is on the brink of war as protests spread and the peace process faltered.

The ruling party pulled out of the transitional government and UN-backed peace talks and are calling on French and UN troops to leave.

France's defense minister has appealed for calm on a third day of unrest in government-controlled southern cities.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged an immediate end to "orchestrated violence" in the divided nation.

The country has been split in two since a failed coup attempt in 2002, with some 10,000 UN and French peacekeepers patrolling between the rebel-controlled and government areas.

Jong-il In China

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appeared to have left China on Tuesday after meeting Chinese leaders in Beijing to discuss six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

South Korea's news agency cited a source in Beijing as saying Kim, who reports said was also looking at trade and commerce on his visit to China, headed toward Pyongyang on a special train.

Pyongyang later announced that he told leaders he would help remove obstacles blocking talks on his nuclear arms program.

Mongolia Government Crisis

Mongolia's coalition government collapsed late on Friday after parliament voted to accept a mass resignation from the cabinet of the country's prime minister.

All 10 cabinet members belonging to the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), which has dominated politics for most of the nation's 14 years of post-Soviet democracy, triggered the crisis when they resigned on Friday.

Livestock War

A battle for livestock between Ethiopian and Kenyan nomads has left 38 people dead in drought-stricken northern Kenya, officials and aid workers said Thursday. Dongiro warriors crossed into Kenya from Ethiopia Friday and attacked Turkana herdsmen to steal their animals. The fighting killed 30 of the raiders and eight Kenyan women and children.

Monster Jellyfish

Slimy jellyfish weighing as much as sumo wrestlers has Japan's fishing industry in the grip of their poisonous tentacles.

Vast numbers of these super sized jellyfish have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.

Representatives of fishing communities around the country gathered in Tokyo on Thursday, hoping to thrash out solutions to a pest that has spread from the Japan Sea to the Pacific coast.

"It's a terrible problem. They're like aliens," a spokesman for the fisheries federation said.

There are no official figures on the size of the problem, but the financial losses are obvious.

"If your nets are full of jellyfish, of course there is no space for fish," one fisherman said.

Cutting up and disposing of the giants can turn a three-hour fishing trip into a 10-hour marathon, while valuable fish are poisoned or crushed under the weight of the unwanted catch.

China’s World Roots

The Chinese are said to have discovered gunpowder, paper and the compass, but it may be too early to claim they discovered America.

A map purported to date from 1418 suggesting a Chinese fleet sailed to America decades before Christopher Columbus was displayed in Beijing Monday, but the piece of yellowing paper is the center of a storm of criticism over its authenticity.

The map, which is said to be an 18th-century copy of the 1418 original, shows both North and South America in unusual detail.

There is an old story that claims a Chinese admiral Zheng He set off with a large fleet of ships about a century before Columbus and landed on both North and South America. The discovery of old circular stones with holes in the center, the traditional anchor for Chinese vessels, on the California coast, supports the claim.

Stars In Their Eyes

Dazzled by the attractions of fame, more than one in 10 young Britons would quit school to become tomorrow's tabloid star, a survey showed Friday.

In a country obsessed by celebrities, a growing number of children are more interested in becoming rich and famous than getting a good education, according to research from the Learning and Skills Council.

Around nine percent thought fame was a great way to earn money without skills or qualifications. These children are caught up in the world pursuit of the false god called money.

And we all know this is a terrible mistake. Those who fail to get on the path of spiritual and mental evolution will perish. And education is a key to developing the mind. Fame only brings trouble. You don’t want that kids. It is not as great as you think.

Nigerian Oil Crisis

Oil neared $67 on Wednesday as Nigerian militants set their sights on Total, Agip and Chevron operations in a drive to halt oil flows from the world's eighth biggest crude exporter.

Militants vowed on Wednesday to extend their campaign of sabotage and kidnapping to all oil companies in Nigeria, including Chevron, and said they had already attacked platforms operated by two other companies.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said in statement they have attacked installations run by France's Total and Italy's Agip, a unit of ENI, but spokesmen for the two companies denied it.

So far, Royal Dutch Shell is the only major operator in the world's eighth largest oil exporter to have said it suffered attacks by the group, which is also holding four foreign oil workers hostage.

Nevertheless, oil prices climbed to their highest level in almost four months on Wednesday after militants threatened to cripple supplies from that leading OPEC oil exporter.

"The reports of attacks on Agip and Total flow stations are correct," the group said in response to a query about attacks on those companies.

"We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said in an email statement to Reuters.

"We will attack all oil companies including Chevron facilities."

China Woes Africa

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, China's top telecoms equipment maker, has signed a partnership agreement with Mali's state telecoms firm the Chinese foreign minister Li visited the African country to boost ties.

Huawei will help Mali's Sotelma develop a wireless network by providing the equipment, setting up the network and helping the company seek financing for the project.

Li's tour comes as Beijing tries to convert diplomatic goodwill in Africa into concrete trade and investment agreements.

Li, who is on a six-nation tour of Africa aimed at increasing Beijing's economic and diplomatic presence on the continent, signed a $3.72 million donation with his Malian counterpart as part of an accord for economic and technological co-operation.

Africa's third-largest gold producer after South Africa and Ghana, Mali is one of the world's poorest nations, with more than 90% of the population living on less than $2 a day.

After visiting Cape Verde and Senegal, which resumed diplomatic ties with China in October, the Chinese foreign minister will head to Liberia and major oil producers Nigeria and Libya.

Mali is also desperate to become an oil producer and has given exploration rights to several companies, including Chinese state-run oil and gas firm Sinopec Corp.

They said greater agricultural co-operation and cotton sales were also discussed. Mali is one of sub-Saharan Africa's top cotton producers. Chinese entrepreneurs are already involved in the sugar, health and textile industries.

China has steadily built up its influence in the world's poorest continent since the 1960s and 1970s when it offered its support to newly independent African states and threw its weight behind independence movements.

Beijing says it offers economic aid and co-operation "without strings", in contrast to Western countries which often demand commitments from poor African countries to fight corruption and improve human rights.

Pluto Space Mission

The world's first mission to Pluto blasted into space on Thursday on an Atlas 5 unmanned rocket to begin a 9 1/2-year journey to the only unexplored planet in the solar system.

After two days of delays due to poor weather and a power outage, the 197-foot tall rocket lifted off at 2 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

High winds at the Florida launch site forced the first scrub of the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft on Tuesday, followed on Wednesday by a storm-triggered power outage at the mission control center in Laurel, Maryland.

With an unprecedented five solid-fuel strap-on boosters, the rocket sent the relatively tiny spacecraft into space faster than any object launched by man before. It sprinted into the sky and quickly disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.

"The five solid rocket boosters are burning just fine, sending the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to the very edge of our solar system," said launch commentator Bruce Buckingham.

The launch sparked a small protest and was overseen by the Department of Energy because the spacecraft carried 24 pounds of radioactive plutonium. The plutonium is designed to decay over time, providing heat that the probe's generator can turn into electricity to power instruments and systems.

NASA has used the non-weapons grade plutonium, processed into ceramic pellets, for 24 previous science missions which, like New Horizons, travel too far to tap the sun's energy for solar power.

NASA chose the largest expendable rocket in the U.S. fleet to get the New Horizons spacecraft moving as quickly as possible on its 3 billion mile journey to Pluto. After additional boosts by two upper-stage motors, the probe was expected to move at 36,000 mph.

Next year, the spacecraft is expected to pick up an additional 9,000 mph by bouncing off Jupiter's massive gravity field for a slingshot maneuver toward Pluto. Even so, it will take New Horizons until July 2015 to reach Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

Space Dust

A capsule containing comet particles and interstellar dust has landed on Earth Sunday after a seven-year space mission.

The US Stardust probe released the capsule as it flew back to Earth after a 3 billion-mile trip.

The capsule plunged through the atmosphere and touched down in the Utah desert during the early morning hours.

Scientists believe the first cometary dust samples ever returned to Earth will shed light on the origins of the Solar System.

"We travelled about three billion miles in space, we visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it and it landed here on Earth this morning," said Dr Don Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator.

Lined Up For A Shuttle

Europe is looking to thumb a ride for its $1.21 billion space laboratory which has been gathering dust on Earth since the U.S. space shuttle was all but grounded after a 2003 crash.

The U.S. shuttle is the only vehicle that can carry large equipment to the International Space Station and its grounding has left the European Space Agency wondering how else it might send the Columbus research center into orbit.

U.S. space agency NASA halted shuttle flights for more than two years after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas in February 2003, killing seven astronauts.

It launched the Discovery shuttle last July but the fleet was quickly grounded again because of new problems.

The next shuttle flight is tentatively scheduled for May. But there are other countries with scientific projects also waiting to catch a ride.

Astronaut Revelation

Astronaut Mike Mullane has flown on the shuttle three times. In a newly published book, “Riding Rockets,” Mullane, now retired, calls this ship the most dangerous spacecraft humans have ever ridden.

NASA's bureaucracy helped make it that way, he said, by discouraging questions about safety and other matters. Astronauts deserve some share of responsibility too, Mullane said

He says the shuttle is "the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown, by anybody, And I say that because it has no powered-flight escape system ... Basically the bailout system we have on the shuttle is the same bailout system a B-17 bomber pilot had in World War Two."

Mullane said a powered-flight escape system that would have blasted shuttle astronauts from the doomed craft might have saved the Challenger crew when that shuttle exploded seconds after launch on January 28, 1986.

It probably would not have been able to keep the Columbia crew alive as their ship disintegrated on re-entry on February 1, 2003. These two disasters claimed 14 lives.

"That was the true tragedy of Challenger: Nothing was learned,” he said. “Columbia was a repeat of Challenger, where people had a known design problem" and launched anyway.”

He said the astronauts knew all of this but kept their mouths shut for fear they would lose their place in the program.

Irish Roots

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have discovered that as many as one in 12 Irish men could be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland. The heritage includes more than 3 million men worldwide who are among his offspring.

His genetic legacy is almost as impressive as Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who conquered most of Asia in the 13th century and has nearly 16 million descendants, said Dan Bradley, who supervised the research.

The research was carried out by Ph.D. student Laoise Moore, at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity. Moore, testing the Y chromosome that is passed on from fathers to sons, examined DNA samples from 800 males across Ireland.

The results — which have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics -  showed the highest concentration of related males in northwest Ireland, where one in five males had the same Y chromosome.

His team then consulted with genealogical experts who provided them with a contemporary list of people with surnames that are genealogically linked to the last known relative of the “Ui Neill” dynasty, which literally means descendants of Niall.

The results showed the new group had the same chromosome as those in the original sample, proving a link between them and the Niall descendents.

“The frequency (of the Y chromosome) was significantly higher in that genealogical group than any other group we tested,” said Bradley, whose surname is also linked to the medieval warlord. Other modern surnames tracing their ancestry to Niall include Gallagher, Boyle, O’Donnell and O’Doherty.

All of this is of special interest to this Irishman because when you study the surnames of Ireland, the name O’Donahue comes up amidst the names O’Donnell and O’Doherty. The “O” was dropped from the family name several descendants back. The story suggests that Aaron C. Donahue can trace his roots directly back to Irish royalty.

Clonaid Hires Hwang

Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean science superstar disgraced when his pioneering stem cell research in human cloning was declared a hoax, has a new job offer from Clonaid, a UFO cult that says it has produced six human clones.

Clonaid, a company linked to a group that believes humans were cloned from prehistoric alien visitors to Earth, said it had offered him a post in one of its laboratories.

The firm has never provided proof of the six clones it says it has produced and does not reveal where its laboratories are located.

Hwang quit his post at Seoul National University in December after his claim to have cloned human embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat diseases such as Parkinson's, was shown by a special panel to have been faked.

"We at Clonaid believe that Dr Hwang has cloned human embryos and has the knowledge to develop stem cell lines," the company said in a message posted on its website.

Clonaid is linked to the Raelian Movement, whose leader Rael -- a former French sports journalist named Claude Vorhilon -- says cloning is the first step toward eternal life.

Medical Malpractice

South Korean doctors mistakenly removed part of the stomach of a patient due to have thyroid surgery, while removing the thyroid gland of another scheduled for stomach surgery.

The surgical mix-up took place at Konyang University Hospital in the city of Taejon and involved two women in their sixties who were both in for surgery the same day, a hospital spokesman said.

Medical staff found out about the mix-up, which took place on December 29, only after they were filing paperwork on the two women, he said.

Doctors later performed the correct surgical procedures on both women and re-attached the part of the stomach they had removed from the patient with the thyroid problem. I wonder if they got charged for the extra surgery?

Eating Among Friends

A German cannibal who killed a man who wanted to be eaten told a court Monday that he had only been carrying out his victim's wishes and had not expressly sought to kill him.

"I wanted to eat him, but I didn't want to kill him," Armin Meiwes, 44, told judges in three hours of testimony at his retrial.

Meiwes was sentenced in January 2004 to 8-1/2 years for manslaughter, but the Supreme Court ruled last April that the judges had been too lenient and ordered a retrial.

He had admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brandes, 43, but was spared a murder conviction and a possible life sentence because the victim had demanded to be eaten.

Meiwes told the court that he had severed Brandes's penis at his request and that both had tried to eat it, without success.

Brandes steadily lost more blood and finally dropped unconscious, at which point Meiwes said he decided to pray.

"I didn't know whether I should pray to the devil or to God," said Meiwes.

Proving He Is Alive

An Indian man who was believed dead caused panic when he returned, causing villagers to think he had come back as a ghost, the Times of India reported.

Children screamed "Ghost! Ghost!" and villagers locked their doors when Raju Raghuvanshi returned from jail earlier this month to his village.

The man’s brothers, who had shaved their heads to mourn his death in line with Hindu tradition, fled when he appeared.

Villagers and family members have ostracized him, forcing Raghuvanshi to file a complaint with local police. The village council has demanded he prove he is not a ghost. We have to wonder how he proved that.

TV In The Bedroom

A study by an Italian sexologist has found that couples who have a TV set in their bedroom have sex half as often as those who don't.

"If there's no television in the bedroom, the frequency (of sexual intercourse) doubles," said Serenella Salomoni whose team of psychologists questioned 523 Italian couples to see what effect television had on their sex lives.

On average, Italians who live without TV in the bedroom have sex twice a week, or eight times a month. This drops to an average of four times a month for those with a TV, the study found.

Feathery Trail

A bungling German thief left a Hansel and Gretel-style trail of feathers which led police from the crime scene to his front door, authorities said Tuesday.

Police in the western city of Bochum said the man ripped open his quilted jacket as he broke into a shop to steal a karaoke set and did not notice it was leaking feathers all the way home. A witness saw the break-in and quickly told police.

"All they had to do was follow the feathers,” the chief of police said.

Woman In A Chimney

Los Angeles Firefighters rescued a woman who was found mysteriously stuck in the chimney of a house, officials said.

"We were called out and discovered the female, who was approximately 20-years-old, was stuck about eight feet down from the top of the chimney," a fire fighter said. He said the apparatus allowed for the woman to be pulled out of the chimney without having to break it open.

But firefighters said: “we have no idea how she got in there in the first place or what she was doing.”

Odd Zoo Pals

Gohan and Aochan make strange bedfellows: one's a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; the other is a four-foot rat snake. Zookeepers at Tokyo's zoo presented the hamster — whose name means "meal" in Japanese — to Aochan as a tasty morsel in October, after the snake refused to eat frozen mice.

But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make friends with the furry rodent, according to keepers. The pair have shared a cage since.

"I've never seen anything like it. Gohan sometimes even climbs onto Aochan to take a nap on his back," a zoo spokesman said.

That Bottle Traveled

A four-year-old British girl was stunned to receive a reply to her message in a bottle from a boy in Australia, her nursery said.

Alesha Johnson chucked the bottle into the sea on the northwest English coast in July. It contained a picture of herself and a brief message with her address.

"My name is Alesha. If you get this message, please write back," it read.

This week she gained a new friend when Bob, 10, from Perth on the Western Australia coast, wrote back saying he found her bottle in a local boatyard.

Time Warp

After five months of hearings and 6,000 public comments, the U.S. Department of Transportation declared on Wednesday what time it is in Indiana.

Turns out it will still depend on where you are.

Eight Indiana counties will move to the central time zone, joining 10 others clustered in the northwest and southwest corners of the state.

The remaining 74 counties will remain one hour ahead in the eastern time zone.

The switch takes place on April 2, when Indiana along with most of the rest of the United States advances its clocks forward one hour to observe daylight savings time.

Previously, much of the state -- excepting five southeastern counties and the 10 central time zone counties -- ignored daylight savings time.

And that concludes our Luciferian News Hour for another week. Be sure to tune in tomorrow night at 8 p.m. to hear the new show by Zurx, and return on Sunday night at 9 p.m. for the Voice of Lucifer with Aaron C. Donahue and his psychic sister, Jennifer Sharpe.