Washington, Dec 6 : In a new research, an international team of geologists has determined that the decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes, like, dry spells.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B. C. to 1100 A. D.

Their analysis has revealed increasingly dry weather from 100 A. D. to 700 A. D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

DOYLESTOWN, Pa., Dec. 5 -- A Philadelphia-area woman was sentenced to life in prison Friday for shooting another parishioner because she was jealous of the woman.

Mary Jane Fonder, 66, once again denied killing Rhonda Smith, 39, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. She denied resenting the attention that Smith was getting.

"I'm sorry, so very sorry this poor woman was murdered," Fonder told Judge Rea Boylan. "But in the name of God ... I did not kill Rhonda Smith."

Smith was shot in the office of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, where she was working. Fonder was convicted of first-degree murder Oct. 31 and faced an automatic life sentence with no parole.

London, December 6 : Eyewitnesses’ likelihood of giving false information about any crime in subsequent retellings increases if they had described the offence to someone just after it occurred, according to a new study.

The finding attains significance as it suggests that eyewitness accounts of crimes can be more untrustworthy than earlier believed.

Washington - Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said late Friday that Congress was considering a short-term funding deal for the US automotive industry and that a vote on some sort of bail-out for the Big Three was expected by next week.

Congressional leaders are to spend the weekend ironing out a deal over how to help the US automotive industry survive the economic recession.

London, Dec. 6: Soviet Union dictator Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin had planned to blow up more than 1,200 buildings in Moscow, including the famous Bolshoi Theatre and St Basil''s Cathedral before the Nazis moved into the city to capture it, documents have revealed.

An exhibition of secret papers staged to commemorate 90 years of military counter-intelligence showed the extraordinary lengths the Soviet high command was prepared to go to if the city fell, The Telegraph reports.

London, Dec 6 : Intelligent men produce better quality sperm, UK research has shown.

They produce more of it and it is of higher quality, suggesting they are better equipped to start a family than their intellectually inferior friends and colleagues, the study’s researchers said.

To reach the conclusion, researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry at King''s College London compared archived data on 425 Vietnam War veterans.

This dated back to 1985, when the men had given sperm samples as part of an extensive medical and undergone intelligence testing.

Comparing the two clearly showed that the brainiest men had the best quality sperm, reports the Telegraph.