The government should set a deadline for coal-fired power stations to adopt "clean" technologies or close, according to a parliamentary committee.

A coal-fired station produces about twice as much carbon dioxide as a gas-burning facility of equal power.

The committee heard evidence that five or six other new coal-burning stations may be built in the UK by 2015.

The UK government believes - as do others - that the answer is "clean coal", particularly technologies which capture carbon from the flue gases and store it away in natural underground voids, perhaps under the sea bed.

Thousands of Chinese fled for cover in fear of an earthquake Tuesday, alarmed not only by warnings from seismologists but also by an unusual mass movement of frogs, state media said.

Residents of Zunyi, a southern city that saw little damage in China's massive earthquake last week, noticed the amphibians' march on Monday, Xinhua said, quoting Vice Mayor Zeng Yongtao.

Local forestry officials had said the toads' movement was simply because it was mating season, although their explanations were attacked on China's lively Internet discussion boards.

The owl has leather straps on its legs, suggesting it may be an escapee from a falconry, The Daily Telegraph reported. It also appears to be attracted to children, suggesting that it belonged to a family.

"I banged on the window and this huge owl flew off our house and onto another one nearby," he said. "It must have had a six-foot wingspan, I couldn't believe it."

The owl, with its size and sharp talons, could kill pets and harm children. The local school sent parents a warning letter.

Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer.

Then, using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the city's weather engineers will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before they reach the stadium.

Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near the Bird's Nest will be seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain won't fall until those clouds have passed over.

A parrot who never stopped chattering lost his voice after four days' freedom in the wilds of Cambridgeshire.

Harley, an African Grey, used to call his owners "Mum" and "Dad", could recite his telephone number and was never lost for words.

But after four days in the wild he appears to have lost his tongue and has returned traumatised, skinny and mute.

The wasp relies on cockroaches for its grisly life cycle but unlike many venomous predators, which paralyze their victims before eating them, the wasp's sting leaves the cockroach able to walk, but unable to initiate its own movement. Researchers have discovered that the wasps sting the cockroaches once to subdue them, then administer another, more precise sting right into their victim's brain.

Then the wasp grabs the cockroach's antenna and leads it back to the nest 'like a dog on a leash', says one researcher. The team found that they could restore spontaneous walking behavior in stung cockroaches by giving them a compound that reactivates octopamine receptors in the insects' central nervous system. Researchers were also able to create their own zombies by injecting unstung cockroaches with a compound that blocks the receptors producing a similar effect to that of the venom.

One of the most interesting mysteries of Death Valley National Park is the sliding rocks at Racetrack Playa (a playa is a dry lake bed). These rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow these rocks slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move.

No one knows for sure exactly how these rocks move - although a few people have come up with some pretty good explanations. The reason why their movement remains a mystery: No one has ever seen them in motion!

The prevailing winds that blow across Racetrack Playa travel from southwest to northeast. Most of the rock trails are parallel to this direction. This is strong evidence that wind is the prime mover or at least involved with the motion of the rocks.

American health officials recently have grown alarmed at an unusual spike in incidences of Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM), a lethal affliction of the central nervous system caused by a rare warm water amoeba, AP reports.

The parasite typically thrives in warm fresh water and enters through the nostrils, where it leads to rapid olfactory necrosis. It then follows the nerves into the cranial cavity itself, where it devours the brain tissue. Coma, and, almost unfailingly, death, follow within a couple of weeks.

A new look at some old bones have shown that velociraptor, the dinosaur made famous in the movie Jurassic Park, had feathers.

The fossil specimen that the group examined was a velociraptor forearm unearthed in Mongolia in 1998. They found on it clear indications of quill knobs—places where the quills of secondary feathers, the flight or wing feathers of modern birds, were anchored to the bone with ligaments. Quill knobs are also found in many living bird species and are most evident in birds that are strong flyers. Those that primarily soar or that have lost the ability to fly entirely, however, were shown in the study to typically lack signs of quill knobs.

The velociraptor in the current study stood about three feet tall, was about five feet long, and weighed about 30 pounds. Combined with its relatively short forelimbs compared to a modern bird, this indicated it lacked volant, or flight, abilities. The authors suggest that perhaps an ancestor of velociraptor lost the ability to fly, but retained its feathers.

The web, located in Lake Tawakoni State Park near Wills Point, Texas, has encased several mature oak trees and even blocks out the sun in some places, The New York Times said Friday.

Scientists say the web may be a combined effort of social cobweb spiders or it may be an example of ballooning, in which lightweight spiders throw out silk filaments to ride the air currents.

State biologist Mike Quinn said a large number of crickets and webworms in the area after this summer's record-breaking rains may have also contributed to the web.