I first encountered this idea while working on my book Parasite Rex. I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It's in the fluke's interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.

Those parasites were weird enough, but then I got to know Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host's body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat's nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety. (When researchers test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to make them panic.) The anxiety attack made the healthy rats shy away from the odor and in general makes them leery of investigating new things. Better to lie low and stay alive.

Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn't make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.

The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person's immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That's why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people's bodies (and brains). It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.

Given that human and rat brains have a lot of similarities (they share the same basic anatomy and use the same neurotransmitters), a question naturally arose: if Toxoplasma can alter the behavior of a rat, could it alter a human? Obviously, this manipulation would not do the parasite any good as an adaptation, since it's pretty rare for a human to be devoured by a cat. But it could still have an effect.

Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

It's controversial work, disputed by many. But it attracted the attention of E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Torrey and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia. Torrey lays out more links in this 2003 paper. While none is a smoking gun, they are certainly food for thought. It's conceivable that exposure to Toxoplasma causes subtle changes in most people's personality, but in a small minority, it has more devastating effects.

A year later, Torrey and his colleagues discovered one more fascinating link. They raised human cells in Petri dishes and infected them with Toxoplasma. Then they dosed the cells with a variety of drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Several of the drugs--most notably haloperidol--blocked the growth of the parasite.

So Fuller and the Oxford scientists joined forces to find an answer to the next logical question: can drugs used to treat schizophrenia help a parasite-crazed rat? They now report their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (press release). They ran the original tests on 49 more rats. Once again, parasitized rats lost their healthy fear of cats. Then the researchers treated the rats with haloperidol and several other anti-psychotic drugs. They found that the drugs made the rats more scared. They also found that the antipsychotics were as effective as pyrimethamine, a drug that is specifically used to eliminate Toxoplasma.

There's plenty left to do to turn these results into a full-blown explanation of parasites and personalities. For example, what is Toxoplasma releasing into brains to manipulate its hosts? And how does that substance give rise to schizophrenia in some humans? And even if the hypothesis does hold up, it would only account for some cases of schizophrenia, while the cause of others would remain undiscovered. But still...the idea that parasites are tinkering with humanity's personality--perhaps even giving rise to cultural diversity--is taking over my head like a bad case of Toxoplasma.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said the quake could cause a localized tsunami but ruled out a Pacific-wide tsunami.

New Zealand's High Commissioner to Vanuatu, Paul Willis, said the earthquake was "short and sharp."

"As far as I can see there was no damage," he said in a telephone interview.

A phone call to the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office in Port Vila was not immediately answered.

Vanuatu is an 80-island archipelago located about 1,400 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia. A volcano on one of the country's islands began erupting in November after a 10-year slumber, causing thousands of residents to flee to makeshift camps.

In Estonia, where temperatures fell to minus 26 C in the southeastern part of the Baltic nation, several fires were caused by overheating, killing two people Sunday.

Fire engines from the Soviet era had to be taken out of mothballs as they were more effective in resisting the icy temperatures.

Two more people died from cold in Lithuania over the weekend, bringing the total to eight and about 100 fires were caused by faulty heaters.

Three elderly people also died in Ukraine, raising the total to 21 deaths since temperatures dropped at the start of last week.

Five deaths from hypothermia were reported in neighbouring Poland, where rail and road traffic was seriously disrupted Sunday, bringing the total of people to have died from the cold since October to 127

In Turkey, a man died of exposure after walking in snow-covered mountains in the north of the country, the Anatolia news agency said.

And in eastern Germany, a man died in a pile-up caused by black ice.

Across the northern swathe of Europe, from Russia across the Baltics to the Scandinavian states, authorities sought to keep energy supplies running, road and rail traffic circulating and health authorities alerted in the midst of the extreme conditions.

In the Moscow region, authorities resolved a number of cases of failed heat supplies to homes and traffic problems caused by heavy snowfall, news reports said, while regions struggled to keep ageing heating systems operational.

Forecasters there said temperatures would fall on Monday to minus 24 C (minus 11.2 F) but would rise later in the week to minus 12 C (minus 10.4 F) on Thursday.

In Turkey, heavy snowfall swept across the north and east on Saturday, isolating more than 3,600 villages and cutting off electricity supplies to hundreds of others.

Rescuers took more than 11 hours to transport a sick woman to the nearest hospital 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

Elsewhere, cold conditions provoked large numbers of road accidents.

The cold front reached eastern parts of Germany overnight Saturday with temperatures dropping from freezing to minus 19 C in less than 24 hours.

Icy roads also caused many accidents in the Czech Republic, including a crash between three cars that injured seven people in the east of the country.

In Sweden, at least 500 car accidents were reported due to difficult driving conditions.

In Denmark, snow and ice shut down Copenhagen's airport for several hours on Friday and Scandinavia's main airline SAS cancelled 144 flights on Saturday. but air traffic was returning to normal on Sunday.

Gas supplies to several European countries have also been disrupted as Russian officials concentrated on ensuring supplies for Russian households.

Poland's national gas company said deliveries were reduced to major industries to ensure supplies to consumers.

Italian energy group ENI said that Russian gas deliveries had fallen short of ordered deliveries for a sixth day on Sunday.

Meanwhile an explosion on a Russian gas supply pipeline, attributed by officials to sabotage, cut supplies to Georgia and Armenia and looked likely to take several days to repair.

Last week Russia's own gas supplies were reduced by 10 percent.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Sheikh Mohamud Omar, who arrived in Mogadishu from his village near Baidoa in southwestern Bay province eight weeks ago, tells excruciating tales of deprivation in his home region.

"One meal a day was standard for the past six months, but even that meager food is disappearing and people are heading towards maybe one meal every two or three days," he told AFP.

"What we expect there soon is no meal at all and starvation," Omar said as he stood near a market stall, predicting that many -- mainly women, children and elderly -- would not survive the drought in Bay and neighboring Bakol province without an immediate infusion of outside assistance.

While the FAO says up to 11 million people in four nations -- Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia -- are deemed at imminent risk of starvation, the nearly two million affected Somalis face perhaps the most extreme difficulties.

With virtually no infrastructure for relief distribution, piracy cutting ocean-going food aid supply lines, rampant instability from 15 years of anarchy and its worst harvest in more than a decade, Somalia has become the poster child for the Horn of Africa drought disaster, officials say.

"We are facing a humanitarian challenge of historic dimensions," the UN special envoy for Somalia, Francois Fall, said last week, warning of "extraordinary suffering and loss of life."

The recent movements have raised fears that the chronic unrest that Somalia has suffered for more than a decade could get worse as livestock die in increasing numbers, crops fail and farmers and herders compete for rapidly diminishing food and water or leave for the city.

"The number of people migrating is increasing (and) may lead to violence," FAO nutritionist Noreen Prendeville told reporters in Nairobi. "

Yet impoverished and insecure Mogadishu, the epicenter of the anarchic violence that has engulfed Somalia for the past 15 years, is far from a welcoming destination for many of the new arrivals who brush shoulders with heavily armed militiamen clustered around markets and squares.

"I abandoned the horror of hunger, but finding shelter is difficult here" said Ahmed Abdulle Mumin who fled Bakol with his wife and two children and whose family is now entirely dependent on handouts.

"There are too many of us to be helped," lamented Asha Adan, a mother of three, who was begging nearby and grew annoyed with a reporter's interruptions. "We don't want to hear your questions, I need food, do you have any?"

Indeed, the huge influx of their hungry country cousins has taken many in Mogadishu aback, overwhelmed rudimentary social services offered by private aid groups and taxed Islamic traditions of hospitality and charity among residents who already had little to offer.

"The local agencies are powerless, they have no money," said Medina Elmi, the chairwoman of Mogadishu's Save Somali Women and Children organization, in comments echoed by others.

"Cash is short and even though the people coming to Mogadishu are hungry, there are many people here that are too," said local journalist Hassan Dusos.

"We can hardly support the huge number of beggars," said Ali Muhyadin Ahmed, a stallowner at Mogadishu's main Bakara market. "We are eating less just to keep our businesses running."

But hunger keeps the Mogadishu migration moving, even from relatively calm areas of the country.

"What is making us flee is not violence," said Hasan Ibrahim, a 65-year-old retired soldier who is suffering from tuberculosis and came to Mogadishu from Bakol. "Where I was it was peaceful, but you can't eat peace."

Source: Agence France-Presse

To be sure, there have been some constructive changes. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is pushing legislation to improve fisheries management. Regional fisheries managers have acted to protect deep sea corals. And, explains James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Policy, the president has moved to improve coordination on ocean-related policy by the many agencies of government that have jurisdiction over aspects of the problem, a key commission concern. The administration is developing a long-term research plan and is planning to protect a large area around some Hawaiian islands as a marine sanctuary. All of this is promising -- though a big test will come when the administration has to propose funding for oceans research in its coming budget.

Still, there is little sense of urgency about a problem the oceans commission described in stark terms: Americans, the report warns, are "starting to love our oceans to death." If that is to be averted, "reform needs to start now, while it is still possible to reverse distressing declines." Mr. Connaughton says Mr. Bush is deeply committed to the problem. Yet the president himself does not talk about it.

Tackling this meaningfully is going to require regulatory initiatives across a range of areas: pollution, runoff, development, environmentally harmful farming practices and others, requiring substantial sums. None of this is possible without sustained and vocal presidential leadership. Ecosystems are at a tipping point, verging on a collapse from which they won't recover. The stakes are as immense as the oceans, which will not wait for the White House to gear up to save them.

Metal Storm Inc., a munitions company headquartered in Virginia but with its roots in Australia, has been developing a gun that can shoot at blistering speeds, albeit in short bursts as each barrel is reloaded.

A Metal Storm gun of any size -- from a 9 mm hand-gun up to a machine gun size or a grenade launcher -- has no moving parts other than the bullets or munition inside the barrel. Rather than chambering a single slug for each shot - very quickly in the case of machine guns -- the bullets come pre-stacked inside the barrel and can be shot all at once, or one at a time, as the shooter decides through the electronic controls.

Because there are no moving parts, the weapon is less likely to jam, and will presumably need less maintenance.

Lashing many barrels together increases the number of rounds per second. Once fired, however, each spent barrel has to be reloaded.

Starting in 2006 the company will demonstrate its prototypes with applicability that is especially likely to interest the U.S. military. The weapon system can be mounted on an unmanned ground combat vehicle, an unmanned aerial vehicle, and might be used as a defense against rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Metal Storm's speed allows it to lay down a blinding wall of slugs that can intercept and pulverize incoming enemy fire, according to company CEO David Smith. As long as the grenade or mortar is fired from outside a range of about 50 meters or 162.5 feet and a Doppler radar is in use, a Metal Storm system could be an effective defense, he told UPI.

Closer than that and there is just not time to react.

"But if you are from 50 meters and beyond, if everything can work fast enough -- the radar -- there is enough time mathematically" to shoot down incoming fire, Smith said.

At least 153 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq by enemy rockets and mortars since the start of the war. Nearly 2,000 have been wounded.

The grenade launcher barrel can also carry less-than-lethal munitions, like small bean bags, sponge grenades or smoke. On Jan. 16, the Army awarded Metal Storm a $975,000 contract to further develop its non-lethal rounds.

"Our so-called competition is (the) Mk19 - grenade machine gun," Smith said. "It's enormously heavy. It takes six people to carry it into a battlefield scene. It's not mobile.

"But the military has had this transition out of big system warfighting into much lighter, higher firepower that can be carried into battle by individuals or light vehicles. Our guns have no moving parts -- so they have the same amount of fire power at significantly reduced weight ratio."

Metal Storm technology has been under development for about a decade, but a series of small-business innovative research contracts awarded recently by the Department of Energy and the Army mean prototypes are now being produced and demonstrated.

"We are to the point we can start providing prototypes. The Army is very, very parochial in how they buy weapon systems," Smith said. "But now we can put it into an actual environment."

The company is also studying whether it can mount a Metal Storm weapon on a small helicopter, particularly looking at the recoil effect from the gun.

Smith said such a system - deployable down to the squad level -- could be useful in a place like Iraq, where it's a common tactic for insurgents to launch a mortar and then run. By the time soldiers on foot or in a vehicle get to the launch site, the shooters are long gone. But a UAV quickly launched can see where the shooters run to, and if a gun is on board, can shoot at them.

The Australian military is testing a Metal Storm gun of its own, the Advanced Individual Combat Weapon (AICW). The AICW combines both an assault rifle and a 40 mm grenade launcher in a single unit with a common trigger, allowing the shooter to choose which munition he wants to fire without having to refit his weapon. It also allows three grenades to be fired at once, whereas one is the only option in the current generation of weapons.

Metal Storm Inc. will demonstrate a high-explosive munition with a 10-meter (32.5 feet) or burst radius in Singapore on Feb. 6, Smith said, and for the Army's Picatinny Arsenal and Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center later that month.

The phenomenon was first spotted by a friend of Hassanain's father, but the group only saw it clearly enough after the twilight faded into night.

"He was the first one to see the glow and drew our attention to it, but we couldn't see it until it was a bit dark," Hassanain said.

Excited by the rare and unexplainable spectacle, the teenager pulled out his mobile phone and shot a video clip of the occurrence.

"My father's friend said it was too dark for the camera in the mobile phone to record it clearly, and he felt this thing was best viewed by the human eye. Luckily for me, the video is clearer than I had expected," he added.

The phenomenon, though not yet reported in the UAE, is unusual but not rare, according to local experts.

Marine biologists attribute the phenomenon of glowing waves to bioluminescence in a variety of marine fauna and flora.

According to a local biologist, the source of bioluminescence in the present case must be tiny plant like organism called dinoflagellates (phytoplanktons), a majority of which are plankton, and live in the sea. They live in the sea where they obtain energy from the sunlight during the day, and emit a bright blue light at night. The phenomenon was featured in the Leonardo Di Caprio's movie, The Beach.

Dr Reza Khan, Head of Dubai Municipality's Zoo section in Jumeirah, said that the phenomenon, also known as Red Tide, usually occurs following a spurt in the growth of a species of dinoflagellates, which depends on climatic conditions and marine environment.

"The phenomenon is not rare and has been reported before in Khor Dubai," he said, adding that the video clippings and photographs of the phenomenon he has seen were not taken locally.

Responding to a question on the toxic aspect of the phenomenon, Dr Khan said that some species of the unicellular organisms are known to be toxic and affect filter feeders such as shellfish. "To know if the bloom involves a toxic species, samples would have to be tested," he explained.

Human deaths due to consumption of shellfish in areas experiencing a red tide have been reported in many countries and a number of initiatives have been undertaken in these countries to prevent Red Tides.

Walking to the home of maverick scientist Rupert Sheldrake in Hampstead -- London's cozy but glamorous artistic village that's been home to John Keats, George Orwell, D.H. Lawrence and, more recently, novelist John LeCarre and actress Emma Thompson -- I am not surprised to find that his plain brick house looks out on Hampstead Heath. This famous (and still remarkably wild) expanse of grasslands and groves was the spot where Keats met William Wordsworth for long rambles, discussing the passions and ideas that would be immortalized in their Romantic poetry. Sheldrake, one of the world's leading spokesmen for a more holistic and democratic vision of science, might easily be grouped with the Romantics, except that his insights about the world are based on empirical research rather than poetic feelings.

Sheldrake's bold theories about how the universe works sparked controversy in 1981 with the publication of A New Science of Life. Actually it wasn't the book itself that brought Sheldrake's ideas to prominence but an incendiary editorial by the editor of the respected British journal Nature, Sir John Maddox, who fumed, "This infuriating tract…is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." That was quite a lot of attention for a young scientist, especially one who at that time was working as a plant physiologist in India.

What so infuriated Maddox was Sheldrake's theory of "morphic resonance" -- a complicated framework of ideas proposing that nature relies upon its own set of memories, which are transmitted through time and space via "morphic fields". The theory holds that these fields, which operate much like electrical or magnetic fields, shape our entire world. A panda bear is a panda bear because it naturally tunes into morphic fields containing storehouses of information that define and govern panda bears. The same with pigeons, platinum atoms, and the oak trees on Hampstead Heath, not to mention human beings. This theory, if widely accepted, would turn our understanding of the universe inside out -- which is why Sheldrake has so often felt the wrath of orthodox scientists.

For the past 20 years, he has pursued further research on morphic fields even though no university or scientific institute would dare hire him. Much of his empirical explorations focus on unsolved phenomenon such as how pigeons and other animals find their way home from great distances, why people experience feelings in amputated limbs, why some people and animals can sense that someone is staring at them. He believes morphic resonance may offer answers to these questions.

His experimentation has been underwritten by freethinking funders like the late Lawrence Rockefeller and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Through the years Sheldrake has supported his family largely through lecture tours, which draw curious crowds around the world, and a series of books exploring various aspects of what is often called "New Science." He's written on ecological, spiritual, and philosophical themes, as well as a manifesto on how science could be democratized (Seven Experiments that Could Change the World) and a bestseller on animal behavior (Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home). His current research involves thousands of rigorously empirical tests probing the existence of telepathy. John Maddox nonetheless has continued to accuse him of "heresy," saying he should be "condemned in exactly the same language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo."

'Science is the last unreformed institution'

When Sheldrake answers the door, I find a tall, surprisingly youthful man in a golf shirt and Birkenstock sandals with socks who hardly seems a menacing troublemaker out to destroy civilization as we know it. He welcomes me into his home, which wonderfully fits my expectations of what a slightly bohemian biologist's house should look like: shells, antlers, giant pinecones, fossils and exotic-looking houseplants on display in comfy rooms also filled with books, art, musical instruments, oriental carpets and a few patches of peeling paint. Upstairs is his office, which overflows with scientific journals and papers, and a spacious library room crammed with books on every conceivable subject. A corner of the library houses a small laboratory, which was recently commandeered by his teenage sons as a computer center.

It's a gorgeous sunny morning and Sheldrake suggests we sit in the backyard, which looks to me like a mini-botanical garden. It turns out that I am visiting on a rather momentous occasion. His three-year appointment to an research post at Trinity College in Cambridge will be announced today. It marks a homecoming of sorts to the place where he studied as an undergraduate, earned a Ph.D. and was named a Fellow of Clare College for seven years, where he served as Director of Studies in Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

I ask if his appointment signals a growing tolerance of outspoken ideas in science. Not quite, he explains. It's a unique endowment created in the memory of Fredric Myers, a Fellow of Trinity College who was fascinated by psychic phenomena, although today it is generally awarded to researchers out to debunk the existence of such phenomena. "But it does mean I will be getting a salary for the first time in 25 years and money to do my research," he says with a sincere grin.. "But in the field of biology the holistic approach I advocate is more remote than ever. Funding drives most research toward biotech projects."

"Science is the last unreformed institution in the modern world today," he adds in a matter-of-fact rather than harsh tone. "It's like the church before the Reformation. All decisions are made by a small powerful group of people. They're authoritarian, entrenched, well-funded and see themselves as a priesthood."

Sheldrake's views are widely shared by many people -- indeed by so many that it's seen as a looming problem in Britain and Europe as the public increasingly looks upon science as a tool of corporations and big government, not an institution that benefits average citizens. Kids seem less inclined to pursue careers in the field and taxpayers are growing reluctant about financing research.

"If science were more responsive to democratic input, this would look different," he says. He points out that popular programs on television dealing with scientific themes focus primarily on four topics that interest people: 1) alternative medicine; 2) ecological issues; 3) animals; and 4) parapsychology. But very little scientific funding goes toward research in these areas. He wonders what would happen if people could participate in choosing the kind of research they fund with their tax money?

That's the idea behind Sheldrake's recent proposal to let the public vote on how to spend one percent of the overall science budget -- an idea greeted with even more horror than morphic resonance in some scientific circles. But other scientists are giving it serious consideration as a way to win back the public's trust.

More than a symbolic gesture, this would actually add up to quite a sum of money to initiate interesting new research that the scientific establishment won't sanction. Sheldrake notes that independent scientists, including Charles Darwin, have been responsible for many important breakthroughs because they probe for answers in ways quite different than their well-funded peers in universities, research institutes or corporations. But looking around Britain today the only other independent scientific researcher Sheldrake can think of is James Lovelock, who conceived the revolutionary Gaia Hypothesis, which posits that the earth is a living organism.

The power of public participation

Public participation is essential to Sheldrake's own research because otherwise he couldn't afford to do it. Right now he's enlisting people worldwide to study email telepathy ( the ability to know who's emailing before you get a message). His website (www.sheldrake.org) offers all the details necessary to conduct your own telepathy experiments and to report the findings.

Eighty percent of the population reports experiences with telephone telepathy (email telepathy's older cousin), he explains. In the controlled experiments he's conducted, where subjects choose which of four close friends is phoning, they're right 42 percent of the time -- significantly higher than the 25 percent that would occur by random chance.

"I think we all have a capacity for telepathy," Sheldrake notes. "But it is really a function of close social bonds. It doesn't happen with total strangers. At least not in an experimental setting. And of course some people have a better sense of telepathy than others, just the same as with the sense of smell." He hopes the on-line experiments can identify individuals with particularly strong telepathic skills, who can then be studied further.

"What I am interested in are the mysteries of everyday life -- a lot of these simple things are not being investigated," Sheldrake says staring up at the sunny sky with that "lost-in-thought" look you typically associate with scientists. A few moments later he pulls his attention back in my direction, smiles apologetically and continues. "I prefer to explore things that people know in their lives or the lives of their friends. I am interested in science that is rooted in people's experience. Indeed, the word empirical means experience."

By now the two of us have been talking in his garden for several hours and Sheldrake picks up a garden hose to water several tall exotic-looking plants. I meanwhile silently marvel at the tenacity he's shown in keeping his research going all these years and the gentle spirit he possesses in the face of hostility toward his work. John Maddox has said he practices "magic instead of science" yet Sheldrake brings up Maddox with almost fondness -- perhaps because the scathing editorial in Nature turned The New Science of Life into a bestseller and launched Sheldrake's career as an independent scientist.

It's time for me to go, and a taxi is honking in front of the house to take me to Paddington Station, but I must squeeze in one more question. "How do you refresh yourself, renew your creativity and stay calm in the face of so much criticism?" Sensing my anxiety about missing the train, he efficiently ticks off three answers in the methodical manner you'd expect from a former science whiz kid. "One. Playing the piano, usually Bach. Two. Meditating. Three. Taking walks, usually out on the heath."

After a hearty handshake I jump into to the cab and, watching Hampstead Heath disappear through the back window, decide that I sold Rupert Sheldrake short earlier today. Comparing him to fellow Heath hikers Keats and Wordsworth, I viewed Sheldrake as a cool and rational man of science while they were warm and passionate poets. But I can see now that, even as a dedicated scientist, Sheldrake possesses a poetic imagination in how he thinks about the world and how he lives his life.

As she was farewelled at St Raphael's Slovenian Catholic Church in Merrylands yesterday, Mrs Perko's only son Izzy Perko told of his mother's colourful migration to Australia, her love of all things Slovenian and her daredevil ways which had never waned.

"She escaped Slovenia with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pocket full of black pepper to ward off the guard dogs, and for that

I am most grateful," Mr Perko said.

Within the Slovenian community, Ms Perko was known for her vocal protests about the famous Kransky being labelled as a Polish or German sausage.

Her love of Slovenia, the official home of the gourmet sausage, was only subdued by her memories of Nazi occupation and the brutal regime of Yugoslavian dictator Marshal Josip Tito.

In her final years, Ms Perko remained a valiant volunteer for Meals on Wheels and the St Vincent de Paul charity.

The discovery was detailed in the Jan. 16 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Although previous studies strongly indicated that some flavanol-rich foods, such as wine, tea and cocoa can offer cardiovascular health benefits, we have been able to demonstrate a direct relationship between the intake of certain flavanols present in cocoa, their absorption into the circulation and their effects on cardiovascular function in humans," said biochemist Hagen Schroeter of the University of California, Davis.

The study relied on volunteers from the Kuna Indians, who live on the San Blas islands off the coast of Panama. High blood pressure and other signs of cardiovascular disease are rare among the Kuna. And they are known to consume large amounts of flavanol-rich cocoa—three to four cups a day.

Previous studies found that Kuna who migrated to the suburbs of Panama City on the mainland drink only about four cups of cocoa per week and do not enjoy the same level of cardiovascular health.

The islanders have twice the level of urinary nitric oxide, a chemical associated with healthy flow of blood through the arteries. And those who drank cocoa with more flavanols had higher levels of nitric oxide.

Also, higher levels of epicatechin in the bloodstream were accompanied by improved blood flow. Lab tests showed that flavanols allow vascular tissue to relax.

Finally, tests showed that pure epicatechin consumed by people had much the same effect as flavanol-rich cocoa.

"The results of this study provide direct proof that epicatechin is, at least in part, responsible for the beneficial vascular effects that are observed after the consumption of certain flavanol-rich cocoas," Schroeter said.

Daytime temperatures in Moscow hovered around minus 30 C Thursday while they were expected to sink to around minus 37 C in the capital and closer to minus 40 C in the surrounding countryside overnight Thursday to Friday.

Weather forecasters predicted a relative warming trend over the weekend -- when temperatures could "warm" to an average of minus 20 C -- but said the Arctic cold was likely to set in again next week and last through January.

Another cold front was expected to settle over western Russia and "the deep freeze may continue in the capital until the end of January," Gazeta said, quoting the Fobos weather forecasting center.

In Moscow, city medical authorities said that seven people died as a result of exposure to the cold while another 25 people were hospitalized with hypothermia, Interfax news agency reported. A total of 93 people sought medical attention.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from cold from other cities and towns in Russia also experiencing unusually frigid weather.

Authorities however said they would continue a "strict" energy conservation regime including power cuts to non-essential factories and Moscow municipal authorities recommended that employers give staff days off on Thursday and Friday to save energy.

Meanwhile concern continued in Russia and Europe after the state-run energy giant Gazprom confirmed it had scaled back gas shipments to clients in Europe as a result of the extraordinary demand.

Gazprom said it was fulfilling all contractual obligations but said it was not immediately able to meet demand over and above those levels due to surging consumption in Russia itself.

Italy was particularly affected by the cutback in Russian gas supply and Italian Industry Minister Claudio Scajola called an emergency meeting with energy companies to discuss the situation.

The ITAR-TASS news agency meanwhile reported that production at the Noyabrskneftegaz oil field in Russia's far north region of Yamalo-Nenetskiy region had been halted as a result of the cold.

Temperatures there were at an all-time record low of minus 61 C (minus 78 F).

Authorities said a 52-year-old man was killed just north of New York City as he was pulling out of his driveway to go to work, and an 80- year-old Massachusetts woman was killed on Cape Cod as she drove on a road.

Power failures were reported in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, the Philadelphia area, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine.

Some customers had their electricity back within hours, while others were told that wind damage to utility poles and wires was so extensive that repairs might take days.

In Maryland, a storm-caused power-outage forced NASA to scrub its launch Wednesday of an unmanned spacecraft on a voyage to Pluto. The power went out at the Maryland lab that is managing operations for the mission.

Gusts exceeded 60 mph around the Boston area early Wednesday afternoon, including an 85 mph gust at an observatory in Milton, south of Boston.

Louise Donase was stuck in traffic on New York's Tappan Zee Bridge, watching as gusts of wind tore the mudflaps from the trucks around her. Then the green tractor-trailer on her right was blown over, right onto her brand new Honda.

"The noise was deafening," she said in an interview at her desk in White Plains, where she works for the Westchester County technology department.

"It came over right onto my car and the SUV in front of me. ... I was afraid the truck would ignite."

Another tractor-trailer flipped on the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey and New York. A fallen tree blocked commuter train traffic between Connecticut to New York's Grand Central Terminal.

And out in the bay, a New York Waterway ferry running from New Jersey to Manhattan met some high seas that reached the passenger deck and prompted a rush for the life preservers.

At Boston's Logan International Airport, incoming flights were delayed more than 2 1/2 hours by the weather at midafternoon, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Earlier in the day, departures were delayed an average of one hour and 39 minutes at Newark International Airport and 56 minutes at New York's La Guardia Airport, where winds were gusting at 59 mph, the Port Authority said.

A total of nearly 11,500 people were reported missing to the Find Family National Call Center, a center run by federal and state workers. The reports included people from throughout the Gulf Coast area, but most were from Louisiana.

As of Wednesday, all but about 3,200 had been located, the agency said.

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical examiner, said he planned to ask state and parish officials to recheck about 400 addresses where authorities have consistent information about people missing from badly flooded neighborhoods. Most are in east New Orleans; about 50 are from St. Bernard Parish.

It's possible some of those missing were washed into Lake Pontchartrain, or their bodies remain in the rubble that still blankets much of the city. Over the last several weeks, at least one family returning to a wrecked home has found the remains of a relative inside.

Some of those still listed as missing likely have been found already by relatives but the center hasn't been notified of their status, the call center said. Others may not want to be found because of criminal or legal problems.

More than 1,300 Katrina-related deaths have been reported across five states, with 1,080 of those from Louisiana. Seventy of those killed in Louisiana remain unidentified, Cataldie said.

But Brown, who was relieved from his command in the hurricane region and stepped down from FEMA in September, said it was time to learn from Katrina's aftermath to make things better in the future.

"I think it's important to realize that all of us made mistakes. ... After a while you get a different perspective," Brown told The Associated Press after his speech. "I still do believe that things weren't working too well down there."

Brown said he doesn't want to play the blame game.

"Let's figure out what went wrong and what we can do to make it work better next time," he said. "It may not be a Katrina, but it may be a big wildfire out West next time."

Brown's comments were in contrast to testimony at a congressional hearing in September, when he blamed most of the government's failures on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin — both Democrats. Specifically, he targeted them for failing to evacuate the city, restore order and improve communication.

"These are not FEMA roles," Brown said at the time. "FEMA doesn't evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications."

Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown was an attorney, held local government posts and headed the International Arabian Horse Association. President Bush appointed him to head the agency in April 2003.

FEMA came under fire immediately after Katrina struck the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines Aug. 29, killing more than 1,300 people in five states and leaving some 3,200 more unaccounted for.

Brown said his biggest concern was the current emphasis on reorganizing FEMA, particularly in light of past budget cuts that had left hundreds of vacancies in an agency with 2,500 employees while its parent Homeland Security Department thrives.

"It's time to stop organizing and get FEMA back to what it was before — get its budget back up to where it was," he said.

Scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory recorded the center of the quake off the Ka'u coast, about 52 miles from Hilo and about 10 miles east of Na'alehu, putting it roughly midway between the Lo'ihi seamount and Pahala.

Lo'ihi is an active volcano south of Kilauea volcano, and the Lo'ihi seamount is about 3,200 feet below the ocean surface.

Yesterday's earthquake originated from an area about 26 miles deep, scientists at the observatory reported.

Many children have been reduced to a meal a day, and the UN's World Food Programme is appealing for donations to feed millions of people to avoid a catastrophe.

"Pastoralists living in these arid, remote lands have very few survival strategies left and desperately require our assistance to make it through until the next rains," said Holdbrook Arthur, WFP's regional director for Eastern and Central Africa.

Hilary Benn, Britain's international development secretary, visited Kenya for three days this week and concluded "there are unacceptable levels of severe malnutrition in Kenya, and urgent action is needed ..."

The WFP recently estimated 2.5 million people in Kenya, 1.4 million in Somalia and 1.5 million in Ethiopia are victims of the drought.

The Kenyan government said 30 people have died from food shortages, and puts the figure at risk from the crisis at 3.5 million. More than half the country's 70 districts are affected.

Benn went to Wajir, in northeast Kenya near the border with Somalia, where children have been dying of starvation in the local hospital – six in the last two months of 2005, and three so far in January.

The people depend on their livestock to survive, but with the drought, there is no grass for emaciated animals to eat.

Nomadic herders who have watched their animals die came to the city of 400,000 in hopes that aid agencies would feed them.

The drought has become so severe that elephants are leaving Kenya's game preserves seeking water, putting them in conflict with villagers, the Kenya Wildlife Service warned.

The strain has been confirmed in 12 of Turkey's 81 provinces, while outbreaks in another 19 provinces are being investigated, WHO said.

There have been no confirmed cases of bird flu in Iraq, although the UN Food and Agriculture Organization believes it might already have spread to Turkey's neighbours, Iran and Iraq.

The Iraqi girl had a severe lung infection. Some of the chickens her family kept in the house have also died.

"There are suspicions that they died of bird flu, but it is not certain yet and is not proven by laboratory checks," said Dr. Abdul Jalil Naji, an Iraqi health official.

The WHO is worried that the flu, which may be spread to humans who have close contact with birds, could mutate and spread from person to person.

If that happens, the world could face a pandemic.

WHO has sent a large number of samples from Turkish patients to a lab in Britain for testing.

The United States on Wednesday pledged $334 million US, significantly more than the $200 million US minimum that was expected.

On Tuesday, the European Union and the Swiss drug-maker Roche sharply increased their commitment to combat bird flu with a $121-million pledge, $20 million more than promised. China has offered $10 million.

The pledges were coming as China reported its sixth human fatality from the deadly H5N1 strain.

"What we've seen today is that the world really does care and wants to respond effectively to the threats of avian influenza and a possible human pandemic," David Nabarro, the UN's co-ordinator on avian and human influenza, said at the Beijing gathering.

On Wednesday, health officials in northern Iraq announced they were investigating whether a 14-year-old girl died of bird flu in Sulaimaniya, which is close to the Turkish and Iranian borders.

This week, Turkish officials announced a fourth child's death from the virus.

The World Bank and the United Nations have said at least $1.5 billion is needed to avert a pandemic. Representatives from aid agencies now predict pledges could reach $1.7 billion.

About 45 percent of the money would be spent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Laos, where the H5N1 strain is endemic. At least 77 people have died of the disease since 2003.

The woman's French surgeons made their first scientific presentation on the partial face transplant at a medical conference here this week.

The news about her smoking came even as American surgeons said that they were growing more comfortable with the French doctors' decision to try the operation and that they hoped to offer such transplants to more patients.

The 38-year-old Frenchwoman received a new nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor after being mauled by her dog last spring. The woman has been identified only as Isabelle because of French privacy laws.

The woman suffered a tissue-rejection episode last month but is now doing well, her doctors said. However, they said she has resumed smoking, which besides being bad for health is especially a problem after surgery because it impairs circulation to tissues and could raise the risk of rejection.

Some doctors have questioned the woman's psychological fitness for the operation because of reports that she had taken sleeping pills in a possible suicide attempt when the dog attack occurred -- an allegation Dubernard repeatedly has denied.

He said she received extensive psychiatric evaluation and counseling before the operation.

Some American doctors at the conference said it is time to stop debating whether the French operation was ethical or wise and focus now on making such transplants as safe and widely available as possible.

"Face transplants can be done and should be done," said Dr. Warren Breidenbach, the surgeon who did the first hand transplant in the United States at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1999.

Another Louisville transplant expert, Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, said: "A number of us here are interested in making this a widespread procedure available to the public. It's the future, and could benefit millions of people."

Problems with other novel types of transplants surfaced at the medical conference.

Doctors have been encouraged that success rates were roughly 90 percent among the 24 hand transplants performed to date, but a Chinese surgeon surprised the conference by reporting that up to half of the nine or so patients in his country have since rejected the new body parts because they couldn't afford immune-suppressing drugs.

One patient even asked to have the new hand amputated after the one-year period during which the hospital provided free medication ended, said Dr. Guoxian Pei, chief of orthopedics at Nanfang Hospital at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China.

Dr. Frederic Schuind, a surgeon at Erasme Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, revealed that a hand transplant recipient in his country had made "a mild suicide attempt." The patient had been deemed psychologically stable enough to undergo the operation even though he had attempted suicide as a teenager.

The incidents prompted several surgeons to say that no such transplants should be done unless surgeons first make sure patients are psychologically healthy and prepared to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.

"We need to alter the risk-benefit balance" before hand or face transplants are done more commonly, said Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.

But the map got a cool reception from some Chinese scholars and seems unlikely to persuade skeptics that Chinese seamen were the first to round the world.

Liu Gang, a partner in a well-known Beijing law firm and an amateur historian, said Monday that he bought the map for $500 in a Shanghai book store in 2001 and only subsequently discovered its value. He said he had consulted scholars in the field and had done extensive research of his own before deciding to present his findings to the public.

"The main issue is not the map itself," he said at a news conference. "It is the potential of the information in the map to change history."

At issue are the seven voyages of Zheng He, whose ships sailed the Pacific and Indian Oceans from 1405 to 1433. Historical records show that he explored Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, using navigational techniques and ships that were far ahead of their time.

But a small group of scholars and hobbyists, led by Gavin Menzies, a former British Navy submarine commander, argue that Zheng He traveled much farther than most Chinese and Western scholars say. Notably, Mr. Menzies claims that Zheng He visited America in 1421, 71 years before Columbus arrived there.

His 2003 book, entitled "1421: The Year China Discovered America" (William Morrow/HarperCollins), laid out extensive but widely disputed evidence that Zheng He sailed to the east coast of today's United States in 1421 and may have left settlements in South America.

Mr. Menzies has welcomed Mr. Liu's map as evidence that his theory is correct, and the two have cooperated in efforts to demonstrate its authenticity. Strictly speaking, Mr. Liu credits Zheng He with having navigated and charted the Americas at least several years before Mr. Menzies says he sailed there, though both say that is a minor contradiction.

Zheng He's achievements have been the subject of speculation for years, partly because much of the historical record was destroyed when later Chinese emperors changed their minds about the wisdom of connecting with the outside world. Last year, China's Communist government commemorated the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's better known voyages, but Beijing has not actively promoted the idea that he sailed far beyond Asian and African shores.

If the map genuinely dates to 1418, it reveals knowledge of longitude and latitude and the basic shape of the world, including the fact that it is round, that could not have come from European sources and could have been derived only from Zheng He's voyages, Mr. Liu says.

He referred to 15th-century books and memorial inscriptions and 16th-century maps that credit earlier Chinese discoveries among a variety of indirect evidence to support his thesis.

But Mr. Liu acknowledged that he had no hard evidence of the existence of a 1418 map beyond the word of the mapmaker who said he made the copy in the late 18th century, a time when all of its cartographical achievements would have been commonplace.

Gong Yingyan, a historian at Zhejiang University and a leading map expert, argues that the map is too full of anachronisms to date from the 15th century.

He said, for example, that Chinese cartographers did not use the style of projection seen in Mr. Liu's map - the rendering of a three-dimensional globe on a flat sheet - until after Europeans introduced that technique to the Chinese much later.

The map's Chinese notes about the cultures, religious and racial features of people in the continents of the world also contain vocabulary that would have been unfamiliar to a reader in the early 15th century, he said. He cited the term the map uses for the Western God, which he said was not used until after the Jesuits arrived in China in the 16th century.

"I had high hopes when I first heard about the existence of such a map," Mr. Gong said. "But I can see now that it is an entirely ordinary map that proves nothing."

The family of Raju Raghuvanshi believe he died after a distant relative told them that he succumbed to a stomach ailment at a hospital in another city. The family, which lives at Katra village, 510km northeast of Bhopal, had performed last rites and organised a community feast to ensure peace for his departed soul, the Times of India reported.

When Raghuvanshi reached Katra on January 1, villagers locked their doors when they saw him and his friends and brothers fled when he approached them.

Raghuvanshi contended that none of his family members visited him at the hospital and instead believed the word of the relative that he had died.

"I don’t know why they are doing this to me. The panchayat (village committee) wants proof that I am alive".

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the fire did not disrupt anything.

He said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was having a breakfast meeting with some members of Congress at the Pentagon, in an area unaffected by the fire, and the fire did not disrupt the secretary's schedule.

The damage caused was estimated at 200,000 U.S. dollars.