AP - Earthquake scientists want to borrow your laptop or maybe a little space in your basement or garage. Researchers don't have enough high-tech monitoring stations to track every instance of ground shaking, so they are enlisting help from ordinary people to document quakes and pinpoint areas of possible damage.

AFP - The World Wildlife Fund on Thursday criticised the release of four poachers who admitted to killing 18 rhinos in Zimbabwe, saying such lax law enforcement is unravelling conservation progress.

AP - Foul weather was forecast for the East on Thursday as a storm lingers off the coast of North Carolina, while the Plains, South and West were to be warm and clear.

AP - Egypt's antiquities council says that archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old red granite head believed to portray the 19th Dynasty pharaoh Ramses II.

AP - China launched a three-man crew into space Thursday, including one who will make the country's first spacewalk — its most challenging mission since its first orbital flight in 2003.

AP - Worldwide man-made emissions of carbon dioxide — the main gas that causes global warming — jumped 3 percent last year, international scientists said Thursday.

Reuters - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday funded a $25 billion loan package for troubled automakers as part of a mammoth spending bill to keep the government running through March 2009, but the legislation did not extend a ban on offshore oil drilling.

AP - Flooding problems persisted Wednesday in the Upper Mississippi Valley, while strong winds blew in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.