AP - Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

AP - A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and blazed through his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday.

AP - Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance.

LiveScience.com - We all know dogs like to smell just about everything, including other animals' poo. Now scientists have figured out how to put the canines' odd pastimes to work to help sniff out the dung of endangered rhinos in Vietnam.

AP - Peggy Pauly lives in a robin-egg blue, two-story house not far from acres of onion fields that make the northern Nevada air smell sweet at harvest time.

Reuters - Residents of a small rural Pennsylvania town sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corp on Friday, claiming the company's natural-gas drilling has contaminated their water wells with toxic chemicals, caused sickness and reduced their property values.

SPACE.com - Two astronauts raced through the second spacewalk of their docked shuttle mission at the International Space Station Saturday, getting so far ahead of schedule they took on jobs slated for future excursions.

AP - The University of Nebraska's governing board on Friday voted not to place tighter restrictions on embryonic stem cell research than those outlined under federal guidelines, which were expanded after President Barack Obama took office.

AP - A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

AFP - Australia said it was "deeply disappointed" after a fleet of Japanese whaling ships set out to kill hundreds of the giant ocean mammals on their annual hunt.