What's New

SCIENCE It keeps looking and looking AUSTIN, TEXAS - Astronomers at the national meeting of the American Astronomical Society last weekend announced that improvements on the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed them to look deeper into space - some 11 billion light years. And a study of a small slice of the sky resulted in an increased estimate of the number of galaxies. Astronomers now set the number at 125 billion (up from 80 billion). Also, images of dust rings around distant stars gave strong evidence of planets outside the solar system. They believe the dust rings - found around two distant stars - are the result of orbiting planets. RELIGION All aboooooard! MOSCOW - Russia's Far Eastern railway will start a mobile church service after converting two carriages on one of its trains to house an altar and a choir. The train will stop at remote stations, where people will be able to hold baptisms, weddings, or other religious ceremonies. ENVIRONMENT Driving loggers batty CONCORD, N.H. - The unexpected discovery of a single Indiana bat in Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest has stalled logging there until a solution is reached about how to preserve the bat's habitat. The mouse-size bats once common to the area were listed as endangered in 1967 as they succumbed to pollution, pesticides, and logging. Environmentalists are also ready to file an appeal against timber sales in New Hampshire and Maine's White Mountain National Forest. The fire last time WASHINGTON - Most of Australia's large animals were probably driven to extinction by early humans using fire to burn forests, a research team says. An analysis of fossilized egg shells from a huge bird that died out 50,000 years ago suggests that it disappeared after humans repeatedly scorched the earth. More than 85 percent of animals over 100 pounds disappeared at the same time.