Queen Elizabeth is having her swans counted. The annual Swan Upping, a tradition dating to the 12th century involving a census of swans on the River Thames, is conducted by the queen's official Swan Marker. The process involves the Swan Marker rowing up the Thames for five days with the Swan Warden in traditional skiffs while wearing special scarlet uniforms and counting, weighing and measuring swans and cygnets.

Climate change shrinks Scotland's wild sheep

Wild sheep on a remote Scottish island are shrinking, and scientists say global warming is to blame. The Soay sheep should be getting bigger, according to classical evolutionary theory, but they are 5 percent smaller than 25 years ago.

Weary Bulgarians hope ex-bodyguard can clear graft

Ever since communism collapsed 20 years ago, Bulgarians have been waiting for a savior to rid the country of its plagues: corruption, nepotism and impunity for the powerful of the day. Days before the parliamentary election, hopes were pinned on a bodyguard-turned-politician with cropped hair, a karate black belt and the epaulettes of a general.

Moon-lovers remember Apollo with radio chats

Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the Moon in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago. They had some clear and extensive conversations, but they had to be patient -- it takes around 2.5 seconds for a radio signal to reach the Moon and bounce back to another part of the Earth, so it took about five seconds to get a reply.

Venice gets its first woman gondolier

Nine centuries of male monopoly on the canals of Venice ended when the first woman passed the grueling test to become a trainee gondolier. Giorgia Boscolo, the 23-year-old daughter of a gondolier, got the lowest points for one of the 22 places available, and she is now authorized to take passengers on her gondola while completing training.

Soviet nuclear tests still haunt Kazakhs

A flash of blinding light on the horizon, a deafening roar across the steppe and a nuclear mushroom cloud in the sky. The image still haunts Zheyembek Abishev, who was a child when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb near his village in Kazakhstan where generations of his ancestors grazed horses. "All the kids had to lie face down in the ditches during those explosions to keep safe. But I watched anyway," he recalls.

Borneo projet aims to yield lessons on saving forests

Within a vast deforested area on Borneo island, Australia and Indonesia hope to turn an ecological disaster into a lesson on how to help save tropical forests and fight climate change. Half the area has been cleared and half is still forested but under threat unless alternative livelihoods are found for the 20,000 people living in and around the area.

Stoned wallabies make Australian crop circles

The mystery of crop circles in poppy fields in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania has been solved -- stoned wallabies are eating the poppy heads and hopping around in circles. Poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids said livestock that ate the poppies were known to "act weird" -- including deer and sheep in the state's highlands.

Pressured by sex workers, Taiwan OKs prostitution

Taiwan began a process of legalizing prostitution, and in six months, it will stop punishing sex workers after prostitutes successfully campaigned to be given the same protection as their clients. Certain locations in Taiwan will be approved for prostitution. "It's like fishing," a government spokesman said. "The activity may be legal, but in some places you can't do it."

Cuba is "rolling museum" of vintage U.S. cars

The cars predate communist Cuba's 1959 revolution. They hark back to a time when Detroit's Big Three automakers were the envy of the world and a symbol of American economic power. Iron-clad chassis, scooped body and once lavishly appointed interior often seem to be the only original parts of the cars built during the heyday of General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler, that are seen lumbering down Cuba's roads today.

Spain rearranges furniture as economy sinks

Moving a 17-metre high monument to Christopher Columbus 100 metres down the road is how the Spanish government is interpreting the advice of John Maynard Keynes. The economist once argued it would be preferable to pay workers to dig holes and fill them in again, rather than allowing them to stand idle and deprive the economy of the multiplier effect of their wages.

Picking up the pieces from Afghanistan's war

U.S. gunners scanned a lush Afghan valley from their helicopter, as a  white van containing a badly burned baby inched toward another Black Hawk waiting at the army outpost. Eight soldiers had flown into the heart of hostile eastern Afghanistan, in a convoy of one air ambulance and one "chase" helicopter for protection, to collect 18-month-old Amanullah who knocked a pot of scalding water over his legs, penis and scrotum.

In Brazil, extreme weather stokes climate worries

No one could say they hadn't seen it coming. The sand dunes had been advancing for decades before they swallowed the houses of families in Ilha Grande, an island in Brazil's Parnaiba river delta. Standing on a dune that covers his old home, one man describes the landscape of his childhood -- cashew trees as far as he could see. Not a dune in sight.

Angola's hard-hitting beat electrifies the poor

It's not break-dance, it isn't rap either. The name is kuduro and its beat is electrifying dancers from Luanda to Lisbon and New York City. In Angola's capital city, men and women are often seen performing robotic moves, bouncing off walls or pretending to drop dead once kuduro's hard-hitting beat stops. The creator of kuduro, which means "hard-ass" in Portuguese, said he came up with the sound while watching martial arts expert Jean Claude Van Damme dance in a 1994 movie.

Cattle rustling on the rise as U.S. recession bites

Cattle theft is a growing problem as thieves realize that stealing cows is a relatively easy way to raise a quick buck. Stolen cattle are often taken straight from their farm or ranch to auction at a stockyard.  "When people think cattle rustling they think John Wayne. But it's not like that. Cattle thieves are ... technologically savvy. "

Fiat expansion stirs resentment in Italy's south

Staring at the locked gates of a Fiat car factory, Mimmo Vacchiano says many families in this poor corner of southern Italy face a stark choice unless its turnstiles reopen. "If they close this plant, there's nothing else here, only unemployment or the mafia." Pomigliano d'Arco, a town of 40,000 people in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, relies on Fiat for its lifeblood. Residents now fear they may pay the price for cash-strapped Fiat's high-stakes strategy to survive the recession by expanding to become the world's second largest car maker.

Signs of recovery appear in Zimbabwe hospitals

The odors of death and decay are gone from the corridors of Zimbabwe's biggest hospital, replaced by the smells of medicines and food for the patients who are once again coming for treatment. Nowhere is the change in Zimbabwe more evident than in the hospitals that just months ago failed so woefully to cope with a cholera epidemic that killed more than 4,000 people. Doctors and nurses have returned to Harare's Parirenyatwa General Hospital. UNICEF has been helping to pay allowances to some doctors and nurses while the government is now paying them $100 a month like other state employees.

Boom-and-bust corner of California sees new hope

If the U.S. recession has an epicenter in California, it may be the  working-class neighborhoods called the "Inland Empire," full of boarded-up homes, vacant storefronts, jobless workers. It faces years coping with foreclosed homes, jobless rates over 10 percent, a poorly educated workforce and empty warehouses.

Slain leaders' heirs vie for Lebanon votes

The memory of assassinated Lebanese leaders lives in symbols and slogans of their heirs who are battling for Christian votes crucial to deciding the parliamentary election. Nayla Tueni and Nadim Gemayel are young, even by the standards of Lebanon's dynastic politics. Running as allies in the June election, both evoke memories of fathers killed for their views.

Everglades swamped with invading pythons

The population of Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades may have grown to as many as 150,000 as the non-native snakes breed in the fragile wetlands. Wildlife biologists say they have been dumped by  owners who no longer want them and pose a threat to endangered species like the wood stork and Key Largo woodrat. "They eat things that we care about," said an Everglades National Park biologist.

Hi, is that the Somali pirates?"
Your best source is jailed. You track high-sea hijacks by text and email, get through to captors on a satellite phone. Reporting on Somali piracy can be surreal. During the saga of American Richard Phillips, Reuters reporters in Somalia contacted Phillips' captors on their lifeboat stalked by U.S. warships.

Online 'blood plague' offers lessons for pandemics
In 2005, a plague called "Corrupted Blood" caused mayhem in the online game World of Warcraft. An estimated 4 million players were affected by the pandemic. The Corrupted Blood plague accidentally provided something unprecedented -- a chance to safely study a pandemic in a uniquely complex virtual environment in which millions of unpredictable individuals were making their own decisions.

Public pawnbroker keeps Parisians' secrets safe
In the ornate rooms where Auguste Rodin once pawned a hand from one of his sculptures to raise cash, immigrant mothers with toddlers queue to pledge their dowry gold or secure a loan. From Napoleon III's mistress to cash-strapped modern-day bankers, Parisians have stored their jewels and secrets in a discreet building not far from the Seine: the public pawnbroker.

Researchers hope to clear mystery from clouds
Wearing 3-D viewing goggles, scientists peer at virtual pink, blue and purple clouds billowing in cyberspace at a research laboratory in Delft. By tracking how particles move in and around computer-simulated clouds, they hope to shed light on one of the unknowns of climate forecasting: how these masses of water droplets and ice crystals influence changing temperatures.

Global economic crisis hits German sex industry
In one of the few countries where prostitution is legal, and unusually transparent, the industry has responded with an economic stimulus package of its own: modern marketing tools, rebates and gimmicks to boost falling demand. The manager of the "Yes, Sir" brothel in Hanover says, "Times are tough for us too."

America's road hogs veer off freeway, hop on bus
From the movie "American Graffiti" to the song "Route 66," car ownership and the serendipitous pleasure of the highway have been a celebrated part of American life. But signposts suggest America's love of driving is stalling. There were few bidders at the Woodbridge Public auction, where cars were cheap.

African beer keeps head as other markets go flat
As the sun sets over the Congo River, drinkers trickle into Kinshasa's "Staff Franc Congolais" bar, testament to the resilience of Africa's thirst for beer even in difficult places and tough times. "The Congolese drink every day. It's a distraction -- there's no world crisis as far as beer is concerned," says a co-owner, known as "Franc Congolais" after the local currency.

Global crisis sparks gold rush in Brazil's Amazon
Pedro Ferreira spends his days and nights in a cramped, steamy tunnel under the damp earth of the Amazon rain forest, chipping away at a wall of rock glittering with traces of gold. He is one of nearly a thousand wildcat miners who made a five-day boat journey to this remote jungle site to dig for gold -- more highly prized now as investors flock to the metal as a safe haven.

Indians help Africa's leather trade whip recession
In the sulphurous stench of a Ouagadougou tanning factory, leather technician Riyaz Kamal checks the thickness of a goat hide which may end up as a pair of Italian designer shoes. He is one of three Indians working at Burkina Faso's only tannery who left their homeland for a country ranked the world's second least developed by the United Nations.

Japan taps jobless autoworkers for aged care jobs
Changing an elderly person's incontinence pants was one of the first challenges facing former air conditioning technician Naoya Kadohara when he switched to a job caring for elderly people. A similar shock could face many jobless Japanese if government efforts succeed in channelling some of them to fill gaps in the rapidly ageing country's understaffed nursing homes.

Iraq's policewomen struggle to change perceptions
In her Baghdad house, Policewoman Bushra Kadhem serves breakfast to her children then readies for a day manning checkpoints in one of the world's most dangerous cities. She became one of Iraq's first policewomen when an insurgency raged and militants targeted recruits. Now, with violence falling, she must persuade a conservative husband and society to accept her career.

Slum cooker protects environment, helps poor
Kenya's huge and squalid slums don't have much of anything, except mountains of trash that fill rivers and muddy streets, breeding disease. Now Kenyan designers have built a cooker that uses the trash as fuel to feed the poor, provide hot water and destroy toxic waste, as well as curbing the destruction of woodlands.

Cuba readies for possible influx of U.S. tourists
Behind the mangroves that skirt the blue waters of Cuba's Bay of Cardenas, a 1,500-slip marina is taking shape as the island's tourism industry braces for what could be its biggest challenge yet. The Americans are coming -- or they may be, soon. "The Americans will come here in their yachts and they'll put them in the marina," said a security guard.

War-scarred Algeria town still waiting for work
The 15 police checkpoints on the road from the Algerian capital to Dellys are reason enough for an eerie atmosphere over this Mediterranean port town. Pristine, empty beaches, pine forests and a rambling 2,000-year-old casbah should make it a tourist hotspot, yet Dellys is isolated as it tries to recover from a brutal civil conflict that engulfed the north African country in the 1990s.

Cubans indulge baseball mania at Havana's "Hot Corner"

For all the shouting and nose-to-nose confrontations, visitors to Havana's Parque Central might think they had walked into a brawl or counter-revolution ... but here in the park's Hot Corner,  the topic almost always under discussion is baseball, Cuba's national obsession.

Iraq's orphans battle to outgrow abuse

At night, Salah Abbas Hisham wakes up screaming. Sometimes, in the dark, he silently attacks the boy next to him in a tiny Baghdad orphanage where 33 boys sleep on cots or on the floor. Salah, who saw both his parents blown apart in a car bomb, can never be left alone at night.

Colombian soccer club tries to forget cocaine past

Colombian soccer champions America de Cali are first to admit cocaine dollars had a hand in their sporting heyday. But after years of paying the price, they're trying to wipe the slate clean ... Cali's mayor is leading a campaign to have the team removed from a U.S. anti-drugs blacklist.

Big French press find brand power helps online

In a grimy part of eastern Paris an editorial conference is underway, similar to planning meetings in newsrooms everywhere, except this is being blogged live and readers can join in ... The meeting is at Rue89 ... one of the interactive  sites to have appeared as a global crisis in the press squeezes French newspapers.

Shy teen spotlights battle over failing schools

A shy 14-year-old girl plucked from obscurity by the White House has come to symbolize a battle over how to fix dilapidated U.S. schools. Ty'Sheoma Bethea's story proves that one small act -- in this case writing to President Barack Obama -- can have a big impact. It also highlights a battle over how far the federal government should fund U.S. education.

Toxic jatropha shrub fuels Mexico's biodiesel push

All his life elderly Mexican farmer Gonzalo Cardenas has planted a stalky weed that grows wild in southern Mexico to form a sturdy live fence around his tropical fruit trees. Now it turns out the weed, jatropha, could be used to fuel jet planes.

Malaysia Christians battle with Muslims over Allah

The congregation at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral on Borneo island intones in Malay: "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of Allah". Now the government in this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian nation wants to prevent "Allah" being used by Christians.

Rape inquiry sheds light on racism in Italy

When police arrested two Romanians for the rape of an Italian teenager in Rome, a paper owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, reported: "The Romanian beasts have been caught." Three weeks later, prosecutors admitted the "beasts" could not be guilty -- DNA tests had ruled them out .

China's last eunuch spills sex, castration secrets

Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting's eyes in old age -- the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death. China's last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the "Emperor's slave".

The Red Sea might save the Dead Sea

Abundant water from the Red Sea could replenish the shrinking Dead Sea if Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians decide to commission a tunnel north through the Jordanian desert from the Gulf of Aqaba. The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project would supply the biggest desalination plant in the world.

Development takes toll on Chesapeake crabs

It doesn't look like a disaster area. Crab boats dart back and forth on this inlet of the Chesapeake Bay as they have for generations ... But watermen aren't pulling blue crabs out of the Bay ... the U.S. Commerce Department declared the fishery a federal disaster last September.

U.S. energy future hits snag in rural Pennsylvania

When her children started missing school because of persistent diarrhea and vomiting, Pat Farnelli began to wonder if she and her family were suffering from more than a classroom bug. After trying several remedies, she stopped using the water drawn from her well in this rural corner of northeastern Pennsylvania, the forefront of a drilling boom in what may be the biggest U.S. reserve of natural gas.

Exotic animals trapped in net of Mexican drug trade - From the live snakes that smugglers stuff with packets of cocaine to the white tigers drug lords keep as exotic pets, rare animals are being increasingly sucked into Mexico's deadly narcotics trade.

End of an era for the Amazon's turbulent priests - They avoid taking buses, make sure friends know their schedules, and rarely go out when it's dark. For the three foreign-born Roman Catholic bishops under death threat in Brazil's northeastern state of Para, speaking out against social ills that plague this often-lawless area at the Amazon River's mouth has come at a price.

West risks repeating Soviet mistakes in Afghanistan - The foreign warplanes swooped in just as the Afghan village of Ali Mardan was celebrating a wedding. Bombs slammed into the crowded village square, killing 30 men, women and children. After the smoke cleared and the dead were buried, all the able-bodied men left alive took up arms against the invaders. That was 1982...

Drought starts to bite in northern Kenya - Clouds of dust rising above the harsh scrub herald the arrival of more livestock at a borehole in northeastern Kenya, the end for some of a 45 km (28 mile) trek for water that must be repeated every few days. Drought is starting to bite into east Africa's biggest economy and the government says 10 million people may face hunger and starvation.

World's largest wetland threatened in Brazil - Jaguars still roam the world's largest wetland Hyacinth Macaws nest in its trees, but advancing farms and industries are destroying Brazil's Pantanal region at an alarming rate. "It's a type of Noah's Ark but it risks running aground," biologist and tourist guide Elder Brandao de Oliveira says of the Pantanal.

Indonesian city grapples with quake threat - Remember the name Padang. Geologists say this Indonesian city of 900,000 people may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake. "Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake," said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute.

'Protest TV' tries to bring down Georgian leader - It's been dubbed "Protest TV". A man in an improvised prison cell under the 24-hour gaze of television cameras, promising to stay put until Georgia's president quits. Four cameras and a microphone on the ceiling capture his every shuffling move and political rant.  An edited version is broadcast in the evening, before Gachechiladze goes live all night, often with guests.

U.S. farmland fetches top dollar despite recession - On a chilly day in January, more than 200 investors gathered in west central Illinois to haggle over 4,000 acres of prime farmland called the Kilton Farm in the heart of U.S. Corn Belt. The auction came during the most depressing climate for the U.S. economy in decades. But when the hammer fell...

Sunken Green treasures at risk from scuba looters - A corroded mechanism recovered by sponge divers from a sunken wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1902 changed the study of the ancient world.  Hundreds more wrecks beneath the eastern Mediterranean may contain treasures, but a new law opening Greece's coastline to scuba diving has experts worried that priceless artifacts could disappear into the hands of treasure hunters.

In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban - The United States' decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village, whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger. "Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave..."

Spain's jobless lose homes, tensions mount - "'One day this place is going to explode,' said unemployed waiter Miguel Roa, a Spaniard. Since December, he has lost his job and his home as well as seeing his family split as economic crisis ended 14 years of growth in Spain.

Stoic Gaza claws back to what passes for normal - "For 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, the westward sea is like the fourth wall of a crumbling prison bounded to the north, east and south by an Israeli-led blockade, and now smashed in key places by a three-week Israeli military assault."

Morocco tackles painful role in Spain's past - "Slimane Betmaki smiles at the memory of the terror he inflicted on Spanish villagers on behalf of former dictator Francisco Franco."

Pakistani newlyweds live in fear of honor killing - "Pervez Chachar and his young wife live in the police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Their crime? They fell in love and married without their families' permission."

Antarctic sea creatures hypersensitive to warming - "Thriving only in near-freezing waters, creatures such as Antarctic sea spiders, limpets or sea urchins may be among the most vulnerable on the planet to global warming, as the Southern Ocean heats up."

High-risk riches for Mexico's "narco wives" - "Each year, dozens compete in beauty pageants in the sun-baked hills of Sinaloa state where their legendary good looks draw wealthy drug traffickers who will sometimes pluck one out and spirit her off to a mountain hide-out."

Sharks, not humans, most at risk in ocean - "Sharks are the top of the marine food chain, a powerful predator which has no match in its watery realm, until man enters the ocean."

Sunni anti-Qaeda sheikhs vie for west Iraq in poll - "They rose up against al Qaeda, flushed out suicide bombers and brought relative peace to western Iraq. Now, the Sunni Arab sheikhs of Anbar province want to take charge of it, through the ballot box."

Ancient Polynesian seafaring renaissance - "A Polynesian voyaging canoe will set sail from Hawaii in March and head into the South Pacific, aiming to reach tiny Palmyra Atoll near Kiribati using only an ancient seafaring skill known as 'wayfinding.'"

Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath - "The Mumbai attacks have generated a groundswell of public anger across religious and political fault lines against Pakistan for providing refuge for militants on their soil."

Despite slowdown, polo is big business in Argentina - "Celebrities were on hand to help promote a multimillion dollar project aimed at capitalizing on Argentina's position as the world's top destination for polo, a game that could be described as field hockey on horseback."