Alex Kirby writes in bbcnews.com that Caribbean coral reefs have declined 80% in the last 30 years. All the coral seems to have been struck at about the same time. Some causes for the destruction are hurricanes and disease, overfishing and pollution. While coral is beginning to grow back, it’s not the same kind as the coral that’s been lost.
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Adam Tanner writes that scientists say we may eventually live to be hundreds of years old. “I think we are knocking at the door of immortality,” says Michael Zey. “?What was science fiction a decade ago is no longer science fiction.” But Dr. Geoffrey West isn’t so sure, because we’re bound to the Rule of Four. He says, “Four is the magic number of life.”
Researcher Donald Louria says, “There is a dramatic and intensive push so that people can live from 120 to 180 years. Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.”
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Sam Hemingway writes in The Burlington (VT) Free Press that researchers have recorded underwater sounds from Champ, the Nessie of Lake Champlain, using sonar equipment. They’re a rapid series of ticks similar to sounds made by whales or dolphins?only ten times louder.
“What we got was a biological creature creating biosonar at a level that only a few underwater species can do,” says Elizabeth von Muggenthaler. Champ’s existence has been debated since the publication of Sandra Mansi’s 1977 photograph of a serpent-like creature. Over the years, hundreds of Champ sightings have been reported by fishermen and boaters.
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Rowan Scarborough writes in The Washington Times that captured Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq are able to beat lie-detector tests. This is frustrating our attempts to find hidden weapons and to learn what happened to Navy Capt. Michael Speicher, who has been missing since the Gulf War.
How do they do it? U.S. officials think that lying may have been so routine in Saddam?s government, that the lies don’t show up on a polygraph. It’s also known that Iraqi intelligence trained some people to “beat” the machine.
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