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Jacksonville is bananas for bananas. Consumers here eat so many that Dole Fresh Fruit has bestowed on us the title "Top Banana City." But how much do you really know about bananas? 1. They're naturally radioactive, but it's no big deal. We're exposed to low levels of natural radiation every day; it's even emitted by our bodies. So it's OK to keep eating bananas, radiation and all. 2. Bananas are berries. Botanically speaking, "berry" is defined as a fruit produced from a single ovary, so bananas are in the same category as grapes, cranberries and tomatoes. But botanically, strawberries and...

Looking back, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. I’d asked an Indian chief to contact the next village by radio, and heard the threat loud and clear: ‘If the gringo comes here, he’ll be killed.’ It was my Peruvian guide, Cho, who came up with a solution: instead of passing through the hostile village, we’d inflate our rubber rafts and paddle over to a long shingle island. There, I could continue my mission to walk the entire length of the Amazon river, without fear of attack. Which is exactly what we did. Then, at the other end of the island,...

Sleeping Beauty's kingdom was overgrown by vines when she fell into a deep sleep. Researchers at the Smithsonian in Panama and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee received more than a million dollars from the U.S. National Science Foundation to discover why real vines are overtaking the American tropics. Data from eight sites show that vines are overgrowing trees in all cases. "We are witnessing a fundamental structural change in the physical make-up of forests that will have a profound impact on the animals, human communities and businesses that depend on them for their livelihoods," said Stefan Schnitzer, research associate...

Rochom P'ngieng, dubbed "jungle woman" when she emerged in Feb 2007, has still has not learnt to speak and refuses to wear clothes. Her father said she had been admitted to hospital after refusing to eat for a month and had made several attempts to return to the forest...

CALAIS, France (AP) - French police cleared out, then bulldozed, a squalid forest camp near the northern city of Calais on Tuesday, detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain. French Immigration Minister Eric Besson called the site - known as "the Jungle" - a "base camp for human traffickers" who promise the migrants passage for enormous fees or dump them there after bringing them across Europe.

Note: The following text is a quote: Madhatta Haipe Extradited to U.S. for 1995 Hostage Taking Involving U.S. and Philippine Citizens WASHINGTON—The Justice Department today announced that Madhatta Haipe, a citizen of the Philippines, has been extradited from the Philippines to face trial in the District of Columbia for various crimes relating to the hostage taking of U.S. and Philippine citizens in 1995. Haipe was arrested Aug. 27 upon his arrival in the United States and is expected to make his initial appearance this afternoon in federal court in the District of Columbia to face a seven-count indictment filed on...

JAKARTA (AFP) – Four calves of the world's rarest species of rhino have been found in remote jungle on Indonesia's Java island, giving hope to efforts to save them from extinction, an official said Tuesday. "Four Javan rhinos of six to seven months age were seen by scientists on the beach near the jungle during a recent field survey," Agus Primabudi, the head of the Ujung Kulon National Park in West Java, told AFP. Alerted to the presence of humans, the baby rhinos fled into the park to where two adult rhinos aged roughly 35 to 36, believed to be...

Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat - five times the size of a typical city rat - and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science. Unearthing new species of mammals in the 21st century is very rare. The discoveries by a team of American and Indonesian scientists are being studied further to confirm their status. The animals were found in the Foja mountains rainforest in eastern Papua province in a June expedition, said US-based Conservation International, which organised the trip along with the Indonesian Institute of Science. "The giant rat is about...

ROXBURY, Conn. (AP) ― A school custodian's impromptu after-hours karaoke performance prompted a police response when a teacher thought she was being threatened over the loudspeaker. State police say a teacher at Booth Free School barricaded herself inside a classroom Wednesday when she mistook someone singing a Guns N' Roses song over the public address system for a threat. She was working after hours and thought no one else was in the building. Then she heard someone say over the loudspeaker that she was going to die. Six troopers and three police dogs showed up and found three teenagers, one...

The whale's back and fin were out of water and exposed to the sun Whale with swimmers A 5.5m long minke whale has been spotted more than 1600km (994 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, deep inside the Amazon rain forest. The whale ran aground earlier this week but after being freed with the help of vets and biologists it disappeared shortly afterwards. It is the second time this week in Brazil that a lost animal has been spotted in an unexpected location. The minke whale ran aground on a sandbar deep inside the Amazon. Local people had been splashing...

The world's first boardwalk was nailed down at the Jersey Shore in 1870 to solve the nuisance of sand being tracked into hotels. Now boardwalks themselves are the problem in some Shore towns. Plans to redo the fabled boards of Wildwood and Ocean City this fall have environmentalists and activists fighting local officials over the wood for the projects. In bid specifications for the work, both Cape May County towns have requested wood from the ipe, a tropical tree that grows in Central and South American rainforests, fragile regions some environmental groups argue are being ravaged by unscrupulous loggers. The...

Animal behaviourist Kevin Richardson has such an intimate bond with big cats that he can spend the night curled up with them without the slightest fear of attack. Richardson, 32, who is based in a wildlife conservation area near Johannesburg in South Africa, works his unusual magic on other species too. Cheetahs, leopards and even unpredictable hyenas hold no threats for him. So instinctively in tune is he with these beasts, whose teeth are sharp enough to bite through thick steel, that mother hyenas even allow him to hold their newborn cubs without pouncing to the rescue. But lions are...

CHRISTMAS, Fla. -- A popular Central Florida tourist attraction faces fines this weekend after a tour boat filled with children and other riders began to take on water and sink in alligator-infested water. Officials said a boat at Jungle Adventures Nature Park in Christmas was carrying more than 12 people Saturday when it broke down during the tour. "All of the sudden, water started coming in through the rear and the guide told us to shift to the front, right side of the boat," rider Evangelo Mondo said. "We had gators out there. We were all very scared the water...

A Cambodian girl who disappeared aged eight has been found after living wild in the jungle for 19 years, police say. The girl is believed to be Rochom P'ngieng, who disappeared while tending buffalo on the edge of the jungle in remote northern Rattanakiri province. Her father says he has identified her through scars and will have DNA tests taken to prove she is his daughter. But the BBC's Guy De Launey in Phnom Penh says there are other possibilities to her identity. Members of Vietnamese hill tribes often cross into Cambodia through the jungles, he says. Many are seeking...

A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child has apparently been found after living in the wild for 19 years, police said Thursday. The woman — believed to be Rochom P'ngieng, now 27 years old — cannot speak any intelligible language, so details of her saga have been difficult to confirm. "She is like half-human and half-animal," said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district in Rattanakiri province. "She's weird. She sleeps during the day and stays up at night." The father of Rochom P'ngieng, a member of the Pnong ethnic minority, said he recognized...

QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala -- Across Central America, growing numbers of impoverished children appear to be setting out for the United States on their own, risking robbery, rape and death as they try to sneak illegally through Mexico and across the U.S. border. Last year, 6,460 underage illegal immigrants from Central America were detained in the United States while traveling without their parents and sent to government shelters, a 35 percent increase over the previous year. Many others likely slipped in undetected.

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past. The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge. It was traditionally thought that before European colonisation, the Amazon had no advanced societies. Winter solstice The archaeologists made the discovery in the state of Amapa, in the far north of Brazil. A total of 127 large blocks of stone were...

NAKED and armed only with blowpipes, members of Colombia's last nomadic indigenous tribe emerged from the Amazonian jungle and gathered in the central plaza of a remote town, saying that Marxist guerrillas had threatened to wipe them out. "The guerrillas told us they did not want to see us ever again," said one of the few Indians that spoke any Spanish, as the members of the Nukak Maku tribe walked into the town of San Jose de Guaviare, situated deep in the southern jungles. The tribal group, 76 in total, of whom 27 are children, had been fleeing guerrillas for...

Evidence of 'jungle yeti' found By David Green BBC News Online, Manchester Adam Davies plans to write a scientific paper on the discovery Fresh evidence has been found in the jungles of Sumatra supporting claims that a mythical 'jungle yeti' may exist, claim two UK explorers. Adam Davies and Andrew Sanderson found footprints which seem to match examples they found three years ago, which were shown to be from a new species of ape. The orang pendek, as it is known, is said by islanders to walk like a man. The pair, from Stockport and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, now plan to write...

Tue Feb 7, 2006 12:11 AM GMT166 Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists said on Tuesday they had found a "Lost World" in an Indonesian mountain jungle, home to dozens of exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants. "It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the U.S., Indonesian, and Australian expedition to part of the cloud-shrouded Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea. Indigenous peoples living near the Foja range, which rises to 2,200 metres, said they did not...