U. S. health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the rate of new diabetes cases in the country increased by
90 % in the last decade as a result of increasing obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The numbers may be underestimated as these are from self reported surveys conducted by the CDC and about a third of people with diabetes don't yet know they have the disease.

New York, Oct 31: Singer Gwen Stefani has introduced her 3-month-old son Zuma to the world by posting her photo on her website.

The photo shows seemingly naked Stefani holding her son with a caption "We wanted to share with you the first photo of Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale. Gwen, Gavin, Kingston and Zuma are all doing well and enjoying being a party of four," reports the New York Daily News.

The photo came after paparazzi photos of the tiny tot began to surface.

Washington, October 31: A team of researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Biology and Soils 
(IBS) captured and released a female Far Eastern leopard, the world''s most endangered big cat, in Russia last week.

The leopardess, nicknamed "Alyona" by the researchers, was found in Primorsky Krai along the Russian-Chinese border.

She was in good physical condition and weighed a healthy 85 pounds, said the researchers.

A preliminary health analysis suggested that the animal might have been eight to ten years old, they added.

London, Oct 31: Madonna has been reportedly taunting estranged hubby Guy Ritchie with weird text messages like ‘you’re going down’.

The 40-year-old director showed crew on the set of his latest film Sherlock Holmes one which read: “You’re going down.”

He said he found his estranged wife’s behaviour odd, but that he is used to it by now.

And he confided in one pal: “This is her idea of a joke – but it’s not funny. Imagine what it was like living with her.”

Washington, Oct 31: Petroleum geologists from around the globe have concluded that the east Java mud volcano was triggered by drilling of a nearby gas exploration well, not by an earthquake.

Lusi, the volcano in question, started to erupt in East Java, Indonesia, on May 29th 2006, and is still spewing huge volumes of boiling mud over the surrounding area. It has displaced around 30,000 people from their homes and swamped 12 villages.

The cause of Lusi was recently considered at a debate at an International conference in Cape Town, South Africa, which concluded with a vote between 74 world-leading petroleum scientists who considered the evidence presented by four experts in the field.

Washington, Oct 31 : With the help of a "living fossil" tree species, a researcher from the University of Michigan is trying to understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future.

The researcher in question is Christopher Dick, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, in the University of Michigan.