Free Republic

Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia recorded the highest amount of coral cover in nearly four decades, though the reef is still vulnerable to climate change and mass bleaching, a monitoring group said Thursday. The northern and central parts of the UNESCO world heritage-listed reef have experienced some recovery while the southern region has seen a loss of coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, a government agency. AIMS CEO Paul Hardisty said that while the coral in the north and central regions was a sign the...

A French priest who helped comfort the wounded after the worst terrorist attack on Paris this century and who survived an ambush in Afghanistan today also emerged as a hero of the Notre Dame fire. Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade, saved the Blessed Sacrament and the Crown of Thorns from the blazing cathedral on Monday night. It was feared that both religious artefacts would be lost as flames engulfed the medieval building, but Father Fournier made sure they were taken to safety. Etienne Loraillere, an editor for France's KTO Catholic television network, said Father Fournier 'went with...

An unusual large galaxy with a shape bordering between spiral and elliptical has been spotted by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 7049 sits in the southern constellation Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies, which provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within. The halo, a ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy, is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding...