In spring 2004, at the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Frombork-based Baltic Research Centre, Jerzy Gąssowski received an interesting challenge - find the remains of Nicolas Copernicus.

To be sure, something was known of his death. He had died in Poland at age 70, and he was buried at his church somewhere, but he died while his work was being printed so the man who theorized that the sun, rather than the Earth, is at the center of the universe, was not yet famous enough to merit a monument. But the provost of the Frombork metropolitan church, bishop Doctor Jacek Jezierski, did not think the job impossible.

He believed they could at least narrow down the location and, once that was done, use modern forensics techniques to get a match. Using 'georadar' Gąssowski and his team were able to narrow down the location, the Holy Cross altar of the Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral in Frombork and, since few people lived to be 70, hone in on what they believed was a match.

MÜNSTER, Germany -- Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

"We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I'm not a Muslim."

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.

The research, which appears to offer evidence of a hidden mechanism guiding the way biological organisms respond to the forces of natural selection, provides a new perspective on evolution, the scientists said.

The researchers -- Raj Chakrabarti, Herschel Rabitz, Stacey Springs and George McLendon -- made the discovery while carrying out experiments on proteins constituting the electron transport chain (ETC), a biochemical network essential for metabolism. A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order.

"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a ''''blind watchmaker''''?" said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton. "Our new theory extends Darwin''''s model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness."

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Supreme Court Wednesday took up the issue of freedom of speech and religion in a case in which a small sect wants to place its own monument alongside one of the Ten Commandments in a public park in Utah.

The sect, called Summum, filed a lawsuit against the small city of Pleasant Grove for rejecting their monument while allowing the Ten Commandments erected in 1971 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles because it had a historic value.

Summum sued the city for violating their right to free speech and lost, but an appeals court sided with them, ruling that their star-shaped monument had every right to stand alongside the other which it deemed of a religious and not a historic nature.

The Eagles had convinced Pleasant Grove, founded by 19th century Mormons, that the Ten Commandments monument was a tribute not to the Christian religion but to the Mormon pioneers who settled the area.

The nine supreme justices on Wednesday began hearing arguments from both sides involving the constitutional principles of freedom of speech, religion and the separation of church and state.

UNITED NATIONS, New York: Saudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that only one narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday.

More than a dozen world leaders are expected to attend, including President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, making a rare appearance at the UN headquarters.

Officially, the United Nations does not sponsor religious discussions, so the two-day session of the General Assembly is being billed as a meeting on the "Culture of Peace," and most of those attending are government rather than religious figures.

But human rights defenders are crying foul that Saudi Arabia is being given the platform of the United Nations to promote religious tolerance abroad while it actively combats anything similar at home.

Israeli police have had to restore order at one of Christianity's holiest sites after a mass brawl broke out between monks in Jerusalem's Old City.

Fighting erupted between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion.

Two monks from each side were detained as dozens of worshippers traded kicks and punches at the shrine, said police.

Trouble flared as Armenians prepared to mark the annual Feast of the Cross.

Tapestries toppled

Shocked pilgrims looked on as decorations and tapestries were toppled during Sunday's clash.

Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on.

Daniel Ginnes carried a banner declaring: "No More Mr Nice Gay." Brian Lindsey held up a sign billing Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as a "prophet, polygamist, paedophile." Hundreds of others simply chanted: "Mormon s*****."

More than 2,000 gay rights protesters marched on a Mormon temple in Los Angeles on Thursday, throwing the church and its followers on to the front line of the battle over California''s decision to ban same-sex marriage.

Earlier this week, 52.5 per cent of voters in the supposedly liberal state decided to back Proposition 8, a ballot measure that adds 15 words to the constitution, saying that: "Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California."

The development marked a massive setback for gay rights and left 18,000 couples, who had married in the five months since California legalised same-sex weddings, in legal limbo.

A controversial anti-blasphemy law is being scrapped by the Dutch government. The move is remarkable as two of the current three members of the ruling coalition are Christian parties and they had originally wanted to maintain the ban.

In scrapping the law the cabinet is meeting the demand of parliament where a majority of parties argued that offering religious groups an extra layer of legal protection is outdated.

As an alternative the cabinet is now seeking to strengthen anti-discrimination laws against groups whatever their background, thus taking the religious component out of the equation.

Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, says the law will now offer the same protection to all.

There has been much discussion about the balance between freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against in the past few years in the Netherlands, particularly around the role of Islam in society.

Yesterday, the American people chose Barack Obama as the country''s 44th president, promising a sea change in US policy that could affect not just the US, but the whole world.

Here we take a look at what Obama has pledged over the lengthy presidential campaign, to see what his administration will mean for science and technology.

In September, Obama unveiled a comprehensive Science and Technology Policy (pdf).

In it he promised to lead a new era of scientific innovation in America and to restore integrity to US science policy. This would be achieved by doubling the federal investment in basic research and by addressing the "grand challenges" of the 21st century, he said. The rhetoric gained him the public endorsement of 61 Nobel laureates.

Obama lacks a science background, though, and over the past 50 years it has been Republican, rather than Democratic administrations, that have tended to spend more on science. Whether Obama and his team can buck this trend in the current dire financial situation remains to be seen.

Key adviser

Among the local ballot measures to be decided on Election Day, California’s Proposition 8 is perhaps the most fiercely contested. Backers of the proposition to ban same-sex marriage in the state cast their campaign in apocalyptic terms. “This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” born-again Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Chuck Colson told the New York Times. Tony Perkins, the president of the Christian right’s most powerful Beltway lobbying outfit, Family Research Council, echoed Colson’s language. “It’s more important than the presidential election,” Perkins said of Prop 8. “We will not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage.”

The campaign for Prop 8 has reaped massive funding from conservative backers across the country. Much of it comes from prominent donors like the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic conservative group, Knights of Columbus. Prop 8 has also received a boost from Elsa Broekhuizen, the widow of Michigan-based Christian backer Edgard Prince and the mother of Erik Prince, founder of the controversial mercenary firm, Blackwater.