AP - Stormy weather, natural gas leaks and the threat of explosions kept hundreds of anxious residents from assessing the damage to their homes on Friday, a day after a large tornado tore through a 35-mile stretch of northern Colorado, killing one person and injuring dozens.

Reuters - A tornado on Thursday damaged the headquarters of beef and pork producer JBS-Swift & Company in Greeley, Colorado, but missed its beef plant, company officials said.

AP - America's wildlife refuges are so short of money that one-third have no staff, boardwalks and buildings are in disrepair, and drug dealers are using them to grow marijuana and make methamphetamine, a group pushing for more funding says.

AP - Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says.

AP - A robotic spacecraft scheduled to land Sunday on Mars will be operated by NASA. But it's scientists at a University of Arizona lab who will be calling the shots on what the robot does.

AFP - Six rare giant pandas were transferred Friday from the world-famous breeding centre at Wolong, joining eight other animals who will leave the site in southwest China due to severe damage caused by last week's quake.

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.