Reuters - A new chapter in Mars exploration opens on Sunday when a small robotic probe jets down to the planet's arctic circle to learn if ice beneath its surface ever had the right chemistry to support life, mission managers said on Thursday.

Reuters - Heavy rains and flooding have killed five people and forced about 13,000 from their homes in south-central Chile, some evacuated after rivers swelled and burst their banks, the government said on Thursday.

AP - One of the nation's oldest farm groups said Thursday a proposed foot-and-mouth disease research laboratory on the U.S. mainland, near livestock, could be an inviting target for terrorists. Commercial livestock representatives and the Bush administration insisted it would be safe to move an island lab to sites near animals.

AP - Toyota is building a $192 million plant in Japan to produce batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles, as it seeks to keep its lead in an intensifying race for green cars among the world's automakers.

Reuters - U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told Congress on Thursday that crude oil prices have reached record-high levels of $135 a barrel because global oil production has failed to keep up with demand.

LiveScience.com - More than 50 percent of wide-ranging oceanic shark species are threatened with extinction as a result of overfishing, according to a new study.

AFP - Deposits of silica detected in 2007 by the US robot Spirit on Mars were formed by volcanic vapors or hot-spring-type events crossing through soil and could contain traces of past life, scientists found in a study out Thursday.

Reuters - The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season will be active with 12 to 16 named storms, six to nine of which are expected to become hurricanes, the U.S. government's top climate agency predicted on Thursday.

AP - Chain saws scream in a northern Michigan forest, but it's not the familiar sound of lumberjacks.

AFP - Oil prices leapfrogged to record highs above 135 dollars on Thursday on runaway fears about strained energy supplies and fervent demand, analysts said.