The heavy rain that poured over Valdez and other southern Alaska communities this week had eased to lighter showers by Wednesday, National Weather Service forecasters said. Conditions were expected to improve by the weekend in southern and eastern parts of the state.

The break in the weather gave affected residents a chance to assess the damage or return to homes following evacuations Tuesday in some communities, including Valdez, 97 miles east of Anchorage and the terminus of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline. No injuries were reported.

At least one home, a trailer, disappeared under a mudslide when no one was home, said Lee Revis, a Valdez newspaper editor who was among 100 people who fled their homes when a river breached a nearby levee and flooded the area.

Floodwaters from various rivers left mangled piles of mud, rock and tree branches along the Richardson Highway, damaged bridges and crumbled pavement. In one section, debris was six feet high over a 200-foot stretch, McCarthy said.

The road is the only way out of Valdez by vehicle. Until it's passable again, the only other ways in or out of town are by plane, boat or state ferry. With much of the incoming freight carried by vehicles, local merchants such as the two grocery stores were ordering supplies to be ferried in, said city spokeswoman Sheri Pierce.

Meanwhile, residents were stocking up on supplies.

"The bread shelf was very bare when I went," Pierce said. "Everything else looked OK."

The increased intensity of the storm probably caused it to change color from its original white in late 2005 to red, the findings published by the team claimed on NASA's website on Wednesday.

"No one has ever seen a storm on Jupiter grow stronger and turn red before," said Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We hope continued observations of the Little Red Spot will shed light on the many mysteries of the Great Red Spot, including the composition of its clouds and the chemistry that gives it its red color."

Although it seems small when viewed against Jupiter's vast size, the Little Red Spot is actually about the size of Earth, and the Great Red Spot is around three times Earth's diameter across. Both are giant storms in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, powered by warm air rising in their centers.

The Little Red Spot is the only survivor among three white-colored storms that merged together. In the 1940s, the three storms were seen forming in a band slightly below the Great Red Spot. In 1998, two of the storms merged into one, which then merged with the third storm in 2000.

In 2005, amateur astronomers noticed that this merged, larger storm was changing color, and it became known as the Little Red Spot after becoming noticeably red in early 2006.

Scientists are not sure why the Little Red Spot is growing stronger. One possibility is a change in size. These storms naturally fluctuate in size, and their winds spin around their central core of rising air. If the storm were to become smaller, its spiraling winds would increase the same way spinning ice skaters turn faster by pulling their arms closer to their bodies.

Another possibility is that it's the only survivor. "The lack of other large storms in the same latitude on Jupiter leaves more energy to feed the Little Red Spot," said Simon-Miller.

Supported by the GSM Association's development fund, they will start with a project in Nigeria to use biofuels for power generators supplying mobile base stations located beyond the reach of the electricity grid.

"We're planning to replicate this in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. India and Bangladesh have also expressed interest," said Ben Soppitt, program manager emerging markets at the GSM Association (GSMA).

Starting in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, fuel will be processed from palm, groundnut, pumpkin seeds and jatropha.

The crops to generate the biofuel will be cultivated close to the base stations, helping local farmers, cutting dependency on fossil fuels and reducing fuel transportation needs. The cost of fuel, including security to protect transport and storage, can be 80 percent of the cost of a rural phone network.

MTN operates in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East and had 31 million subscribers, while Ericsson is the world's biggest cell phone networks company with around 30 percent market share.

AFRICA TAKES THE LEAD

"The early adoption of biofuel-powered mobile networks would place Africa at the forefront of a new wave of innovation," said Karel Pienaar, chief technology officer at MTN.

Soppitt said the cell phone industry could be the world's first to put alternative energy at the core of its operations.

"Ericsson has been working on this for a while, and with their significant market share the entire market will move with them," he said.

Rural areas in emerging economies where most new cell phone subscribers come from are often not connected to the electricity grid, which means that the base stations to connect cell phone users to the network are powered by generators.

In Nigeria, 75 percent of the country is not grid-connected.

Fuel consumption by these base stations can be significant. Ericsson estimates 25,000 liters of fuel are needed every year to power a base station. The same amount would power close to 20 cars, each driving 20,000 kilometers, for a year.

Worldwide, tens of thousands of new base stations are erected every year, most of them in rural areas as operators aim to expand the coverage of their networks. There are currently close to 2.5 billion cell phone users on the planet.

The GSMA hopes that the introduction of biofuels will be significantly cheaper than using diesel, and hopes for total cost reductions of 30 percent or more.

"You need to achieve a 30 percent improvement to create sufficient momentum for change," Soppitt said.

Ericsson estimates around 0.5 square kilometers of palm oil crops are needed to generate the fuel for 20 base stations, the equivalent of 83 football fields.

The crops will be processed into fuel at local facilities.

Ericsson will control farming methods, making sure crops are not genetically manipulated, are grown sustainably and do not require fresh clearing of land by cutting forests.

Solar and wind energy are also being investigated as alternative power sources for remote base stations.

His findings appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa, an international journal for animal taxonomists.

The biodiversity of Europe has been combed through so extensively since Victorian times that new mammal species are rarely found there, and few scientists had expected new creatures as large as mice to be discovered on the continent.

"New mammal species are mainly discovered in hot spots of biodiversity like Southeast Asia, and it was generally believed that every species of mammal in Europe had been identified," Cucchi said. "This is why the discovery of a new species of mouse on Cyprus was so unexpected and exciting."

Cucchi said a bat discovered in Hungary and Greece in 2001 was the last new living mammal found in Europe. No new terrestrial mammal has been found in Europe for decades, he said.

Cucchi compared the new mouse's teeth with those from mouse fossils collected by paleontologists. The comparison showed the new mouse had colonized and adapted to the Cypriot environment several thousand years before the arrival of man, the university said in a statement.

The discovery indicated that the mouse survived man's arrival on the island and now lived alongside common European house mice, whose ancestors had arrived with man during the Neolithic period, the university said.

"All other endemic mammals of Mediterranean islands died out following the arrival of man, with the exception of two species of shrew. The new mouse of Cyprus is the only endemic rodent still alive, and as such can be considered as a living fossil," Cucchi, a Frenchman, said in a telephone interview.

Shrews are small mammals that resemble mice but have a long, pointed snout and eat insects.

Cucchi, an archaeologist and expert on the origin and human dispersal of house mice, found the new species of mouse while working in Cyprus in 2004. He was examining the archaeological remains of mice teeth from the Neolithic period and comparing them with those of four known modern-day European mice species, to determine if the house mouse was the unwelcome byproduct of human colonization of the island 10,000 years ago, the university said.

"The discovery of this new species and the riddle behind its survival offers a new area of study for scientists studying the evolutionary process of mammals and the ecological consequences of human activities on island biodiversity," Cucchi said.

Locusts had been found in Mauritania, and were laying eggs that were expected to hatch in the next 10 days, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

It warned Algeria, Mali, Morocco and Senegal to step up monitoring and to prepare to treat any outbreaks quickly.

"We are taking it very seriously," FAO official Keith Cressman told the BBC.

He said that while locust infestations were not uncommon in the area at this time of year, they must be dealt with or they could develop into the devastating swarms seen in 2004.

They swept across north and west Africa, leaving 60% of Mauritania's population - 400,000 people - needing food aid.

The FAO said the outbreak would offer the chance to test a new environmentally friendly pesticide which uses a natural fungus which kills locusts within one to three weeks.

Desert locusts breed rapidly, maturing in just three weeks, and are capable of travelling up to 100km (60 miles) a day.

Locusts can eat their own weight in food every day, which means a single swarm can consume as much food as several thousand people.

But geologists are this week sinking a borehole on nearby Kefalonia in an attempt to test whether its western peninsula of Paliki is the real site.

The scientists hope to find evidence that the peninsula once stood proud, separated from Kefalonia by a narrow, navigable marine channel. It is only in the last 2,500-3,000 years - and after Homer's time - that the channel has been filled in, the team contends.

"We can't prove the story of the Odyssey is true, but we can test whether Homer got his geography right," said Edinburgh University geologist Professor John Underhill, who is supervising the drilling operation.

'Leading' candidate

At issue are a few lines of hotly debated text, in which Homer describes Odysseus' native land.

He talks of low-lying terrain, furthest out to sea and facing dusk.

The team, which includes geologists, classicists and archaeologists, argues that modern-day Ithaki does not fit this description.

It is dominated by high ground and, being on the eastern side of the Ionian arc of islands, actually looks - if anywhere - towards "dawn and sun".

"This has always been a contentious issue since antiquity," said James Diggle, a professor of Greek and Latin and fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.

"Many different candidates have been suggested and the general feeling has been that the island that has the same name now - Ithaki - must be Ithaca, but it simply doesn't square with all the geographical information we have about the original Ithaca.

"The suggestion we advocate, and are now testing with the geology, is a radically new one; involving as it does splitting the island of Kefalonia into two," he told BBC News.

Catastrophic collapse

The Paliki solution was first proposed in Robert Bittlestone's 2005 book, Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca. Paliki is certainly flatter than Ithaki, and the most westerly point in the Ionian arc.

But to prove its hypothesis, the team will have to show - at the very least - that the sea once flowed through a tight channel that is now the Thinia isthmus joining Paliki to the main part of Kefalonia.

Homer and his poems have been placed in the 8th Century BC
On the face of it, this a tall order - literally: the highest point on the isthmus is some 180m above sea level.

To suggest the Mycenaean landscape could have changed so radically in so short a time seems extraordinary, especially since modern seismic surveys in the area indicate the amount of uplift experienced by Kefalonia over the past 3,000-5,000 years is perhaps 6m at most.

The team's argument is that the channel has been covered by a colossal infall of rock from the surrounding hills, particularly those on the eastern side of the Thinia valley.

"The bedding planes all dip very steeply towards the valley, and they are natural planes along which landslip and rockfall can occur - and do, periodically," explained Professor Underhill.

"This happens in winter, never mind in the frequent earthquakes they experience there. There are very interesting Pathe news pictures taken after the devastating earthquake of 1953 which demonstrate that whole hillside degraded significantly; huge volumes of rock came off the slopes."

Trojan echoes

This week's investigations involve sinking a 100m-plus borehole at the southern end of the valley. If the Paliki solution stands up, it should find a loose aggregation of rock and debris through the core's entire length.

"If we hit hard rock, the theory will not fly," said Professor Underhill.

Archaeological investigations have put Troy in Turkey
But assuming the borehole is successful, then the team will apply for funding to carry out a more extensive programme of drilling. Ground-penetrating radar, gravity and seismic surveys have already been conducted; carbon-14 and other dating techniques would need to be brought in to prove the infall occurred in the right timescale.

The team is encouraged by the writings of the 1st-Century-BC Greek geographer Strabo, who mentions the existence of a channel many years after Homer is presumed to have lived in the Ionian region.

And, of course, this is by no means the first time that science has sought to match current features on the landscape with Homeric descriptions.

The city of Troy featured in the Iliad is now widely recognised to have been in north-western Turkey. A study of river sediments in the region would even seem to fit with aspects of the military campaign that Homer's story says eventually led to the destruction of the city.

If the existence of a Bronze Age channel on Kefalonia is proven, it is quite likely to set off anew heated arguments about specifics and meaning in the Odyssey.

And some will continue to contest Ithaca's location. Sarantis Symeonoglou is professor of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St Louis, US. He has spent years trying to tie locations on Ithaki to details in the poem.

"I have been digging [there] longer than anyone, since 1984. I already have solid evidence that the site of the city of Odysseus is where Homer says, on the saddle of Aetos, at modern (and ancient) Ithaca. The palace is in a terrible ruined condition, but identifiable! I found a corner of it," he told BBC News in an e-mail.

John Bennet, a professor of Aegean archaeology at Sheffield University, UK, commented that any new discovery of a channel should be viewed in a wider context.

"For the archaeological world, what is very interesting is the possibility that there has been major geographical, geomorphological change on the island of Kefalonia, which means the way people have lived on the island has changed significantly from the Bronze Age into the broadly Classical period.

"As a result of that there will be a new phase of general archaeological data that will benefit all of us."