BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A senior U.S. Homeland Security official is in Argentina to discuss money laundering, human trafficking — and dinosaur eggs.

Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Monday that she plans to hand over to Argentina's government a cache of more than 8,100 pounds (3,675 kilograms) of fossils seized two years ago by ICE agents at a gem and mineral show in Tucson, Arizona.

When superhero Tony Stark isn't donning his Iron Man armor to personally rough up villains, he's pitching the U.S. military on new gadgets to fight the War on Terror.

"They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire," Stark tells a group of military officers in the Iron Man film that opened last week. "I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once."

In the wake of a thousand-year drought in Australia and last weekend's lethal cyclone in Burma, the world's climate modellers are drawing up plans for a global supercomputing centre that would provide detailed local forecasts of future climate change.

Meeting at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, the scientists liken the billion-dollar project to CERN, the international particle accelerator near Geneva, and to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. They hope to present their plan to the G8 meeting in Japan this summer.

SAN FRANCISCO - A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.

Last year's survey commissioned by the Apiary Inspectors of America found losses of about 32 percent.

As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite, said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, president of the group.

ON CAPE COD BAY, Mass. - A spotter bangs three times on the boat's cabin roof, signaling the captain to cut the throttle — now. In the foggy gray of Cape Cod Bay, the reason for the abrupt stop soon becomes apparent: The research vessel is surrounded by rare North Atlantic right whales, their glossy black heads bobbing just above the surface as they feed on plankton slicks.

Ship strikes are the top human-related cause of death for these mammals, which are in danger even from this vessel, a slow-moving research boat called the Shearwater. But new technology could soon help safeguard the whales by using sound, not sight, to track the creatures' movements.

PARIS (AFP) - An orbital X-ray telescope has found a chunk of matter in the universe whose existence had long been theorised but evidence for which had been lacking, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Wednesday.

The discovery made by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope is part of so-called baryonic matter, which comprises less than five percent of the cosmos.

PARIS (AFP) - Curbing a notorious form of industrial pollution may ironically harm Amazonia, one of the world's natural treasures and a key buffer against global warming, a study released Wednesday has found.

Its authors see a strong link between a decrease in sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rise in sea temperature in the northern Atlantic that was blamed for wreaking a devastating drought in western Amazonia in 2005.

For more than a century "tipper" trucks—so called for their ability to lift their cargo beds at an angle that allows their contents to empty without manual intervention—have helped construction crews haul heavy building materials, including tons of asphalt and gravel at a time. The typical model of tipper seen on construction sites worldwide is the dump truck, which uses a hydraulic lift to raise one end of its cargo bed high into the air while its contents slide out of the back or to the side. Munich-based truck maker F.X. Meiller GmbH & Co KG has seen the future of construction hauling, and it is a sleek all-wheel drive tipper capable of dumping on all four directions.

In the wake of the near panic over the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed James Killian, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to become the first special assistant to the president for science and technology. Ever since, the relationship between the nation’s chief executive and the White House’s resident authority on nuclear fission, the workings of DNA and the greenhouse effect, among an array of topics, has had its highs and lows.

Two whirling dust devils towering nearly a kilometre high have been seen at the exact spot where the Phoenix Mars lander is due to touch down in a few weeks. The dust vortices should pose no threat to the landing, but could provide dramatic views from the probe when it alights on the flat, relatively barren landscape.

Phoenix is due to land in an oval-shaped region dubbed "Green Valley" in Mars's northern polar region on 25 May. In preparation for the landing, other spacecraft already at Mars, including NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), have been monitoring the site.

When E.T. phoned home, where did he call? If it was a local connection, Mars was the likeliest place. Although the chances are slim, scientists hold out the possibility that Martians of some sort existed – and may yet exist – on the Red Planet, pictured here. Orbiters and rovers sent to investigate have found evidence of a watery past and hints of organic compounds, key ingredients for life. Some have even suggested the probes themselves accidentally killed alien microbes. Nevertheless, the search continues.

Spanish police have arrested a couple accused of illegally trafficking a "priceless" haul of artefacts from Latin America for resale in Europe.

The artefacts, which predate the discovery of the Americas by Columbus, were allegedly destined for France.

An Interpol investigation in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador led to the arrest of the Spanish man and Colombian woman.

Police searched their Spanish home and luggage to find 700 pieces allegedly looted from archaeological sites.

IN my travel kit I am carrying a copy of Lady Hester: Queen of the East by Lorna Gibb. The indomitable Hester Stanhope, an aristocratic trouser-wearing and waterpipe-smoking British virago who dubbed herself Queen of the Bedouin, was not intimately acquainted with the notion of modesty. She grandly described herself as "the oracle of the Arabs" as she moved in influential circles from Constantinople to Jerusalem in the 19th century, apparently swearing madly in various obtuse dialects.

TEHRAN -- Piotr Steinkeller, professor of Assyriology in Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University, believes that the prehistoric site of Jiroft is the lost ancient city of Marhashi.

He developed the theory in his paper during the first round of the International Conference on Jiroft Civilization, which was held in Tehran on May 5 and 6.

BURIED for more than a 1,000 years, these beautifully cast fragments of a Viking sword could be a once-in-a-lifetime find for two metal detector enthusiasts in the Isle of Man.

Only the 13th recorded Viking sword found in the Island, it was unearthed by Dan Crowe and Rob Farrer while metal detecting in the north west of the Island.

Bonnie Moffet uses her stout walking staff to point toward one of the stick figures carved into the sandstone cliff that is radiating heat out into the prairie afternoon.

"Don't touch the cliff, but look closely," she says. "Can you see the pink?" I hold my breath and lean in. Sure enough, the rectangular torso of the centuries-old petroglyph, or rock carving, shows a faint rose tinge that's just different enough from the stone to show up, even in the sunlight that's baking southern Alberta's Milk River Valley.

RABAT - Archaeologists have uncovered shells used for finery by prehistoric man 85,000 years ago in a cave in eastern Morocco, the country's heritage institute said today.

A research team led by archaeology and heritage institute (INSAP) member Abdeljalil Bouzouggar and Nick Barton from Oxford University found the 20 perforated shells in a cave near Taforalt between March and April this year.

Scientists have deciphered the genetic blueprint of the duck-billed platypus, one of the oddest creatures on Earth.

The animal comes from an early branch of the mammal family, and like mammals it is covered in fur and produces milk. However, it lays eggs like a reptile.

Researchers say this unique mixture of features is reflected in its DNA.

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered how an antibiotic works to modulate the activity of a neurotransmitter that regulates brain functions, which eventually could lead to therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, epilepsy, stroke, dementia and malignant gliomas.

Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have identified Heme Detoxification Protein, a unique protein encoded in the malaria genome that represents a potential target for developing new malaria drugs.

The team, which includes researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the United States National Institutes of Health, the United States Food and Drug Administration as well as other researchers at Virginia Tech, has characterized heme and demonstrated that it plays a major role in protecting Plasmodium as the pathogen pursues infection of its host. The findings were published April 28, 2008, in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens (Jani D, Nagarkatti R, Beatty W, Angel R, et al. (2008) HDP-A Novel Heme Detoxification Protein from the Malaria Parasite.