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Japanese scientist Akira Iritani has implanted spinach genes in pigs. This is the first time that plant genes have been successfully transplanted into an animal.

The pigs contain a gene called FAD2, which converts saturated fat into an unsaturated fat called linoleic acid. Iritani, of Kinki University in western Japan, says the genetically modified pigs contain 20 per cent less saturated fat than normal pigs, so they?re healthier to eat. ?I know genetically-modified food has met with poor public acceptance, but I hope safety tests will be conducted to make people feel like eating the pork for the sake of their health,? says Iritani.
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NASA has issued a rare alert, warning residents from South Florida to Australia that heavy chunks of a dying, 3 ? ton satellite could strike their areas on Thursday, January 31.

As many as 9 pieces of debris weighing up to 100 pounds each could survive as NASA?s Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer plunges through the atmosphere. The space junk could hit an area bordered by Orlando on the north and Brisbane, Australia, on the south. That includes all of South Florida, as well as Mexico City, Caracas, Venezuela and Bogot

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AIDS will surpass the Black Death as the world?s worst pandemic if the 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS do not get life-prolonging drugs. The illness has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s, and an estimated 14,000 people are infected each day with HIV, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 28 million HIV/AIDS sufferers. Ninety-five percent of new infections are in the world?s poorest countries, where life-prolonging drugs are not available to most people. Without antiretroviral drugs, most people living with HIV/AIDS will die, pushing the death toll beyond the 40 million killed by the Black Death, caused by flea bites, that almost depopulated Asia and Europe in the 14th century.
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At least 17 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been left without electricity by the storms which have ripped across northern Europe. Cars have been overturned, power cables are down, and trees have been uprooted. Ships have been returning to port due to forecasts of hurricane-force winds.

Five people in England and Scotland were killed while driving trucks that were turned over by winds gusting at up to 100 mph. In York a woman was killed when a piece of masonry fell from a church. Power cuts effected around 20,000 homes near the English city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

One man died and a woman was seriously injured when a tree fell on them as they walked on the grounds of a hotel in Scotland. 90,000 Scottish homes were deprived of electricity. read more