Science

MOSCOW — After more than two decades of drilling, Russian scientists have reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake in Antarctica that had been hidden under miles of ice for 20 million years, potentially holding life from the distant past and a clue to the search for life on other planets.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia have “rediscovered” a large, grey monkey so rare it was believed by many to be extinct.
They were all the more baffled to find the Miller’s Grizzled Langur — its black face framed by a fluffy, Dracula-esque white collar — in an area well outside its previously recorded home range.

GENEVA — The U.N. telecom agency says countries are poised to decide this week whether to drop the 40-year practice of adding leap seconds to keep atomic clocks in sync with the Earth day.
The International Telecommunication Union says a U.S.-backed proposal would allow atomic clocks to run unadjusted for the planet’s irregular rotation.

HALIFAX — Canada’s chilly winters have historically been ideal for making icewine, but some of the country’s largest producers say unstable temperatures have changed the way they harvest the sought-after grape.
And although warmer-than-usual temperatures have caused grape growers to shift gears, they say the country’s icewine should taste better than ever.

MOSCOW—A Russian space probe designed to boost the nation’s pride on a bold mission to a moon of Mars has come down in flames, showering fragments into the south Pacific west of Chile’s coast, officials said.

CANBERRA, Australia — A newly discovered horse fly in Australia was so “bootylicious” with its golden-haired bum, there was only one name worthy of its beauty: Beyonce.

LOS ANGELES — NASA’s latest rover to Mars fired its thrusters Wednesday to adjust its course to the red planet for a landing in August.
Deep space antennas tracked the choreographed manoeuvre, which was expected to last three hours.

TORONTO — It’s only the size of a housefly, but this critter doesn’t take to the air on wings — it hops.
The unimaginably tiny frog, averaging just 7.7 millimetres from snout to butt, has now earned the distinction of being the smallest vertebrate in the world.

FULTON, Texas — Raising its slim, white neck out of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the world’s last surviving whooping cranes hungrily searches a Texas marsh for the blue crabs and berries it devours during its annual migration to the Gulf Coast.

NEW YORK—Scientists have found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star outside the solar system—an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.
The discovery shows that such planets exist and that they can be detected, said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.