The Hague - Dutch Economy Minister Maria van der Hoeven will lobby her European colleagues to support the financing of a new climate satellite developed by the Dutch, a ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Dutch are hosting the triennial European Space Conference in The Hague.

The Dutch government has reserved 78 million euros (100.54 million dollars) to finance the 115-million-euro Tropospheric Ozone- Monitoring Instrument or Tropomi.

The Tropomi is a measuring instrument for ozone in the troposphere, the lowest part of the atmosphere containing 80 per cent of the world's air.

Washington, November 25: Experiments on an animal model of obesity-induced diabetes have shown that lining the upper portion of the small intestine with an impermeable sleeve can help lose weight and restore normal glucose metabolism

The study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Weight Center and Gastrointestinal Unit is the first controlled test of a new procedural approach to treating obesity.

Reporting their findings in the journal Obesity, the researchers said that the procedure reproducing several aspects of gastric bypass surgery led to a significant reduction in the animals'' food intake and a resolution of diabetes symptoms.

Sana'a, Yemen - Somali pirates have hijacked a Yemeni cargo ship in the Arabian Sea and demanded 2 million dollars as ransom for its release, maritime sources said on Tuesday.

The sources in the south-eastern Yemeni port of Mukalla told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the vessel, Erina, was attacked as it sailed from Mukalla to the Indian Ocean island of Socotra on November 19.

Armed pirates took the ship to the port of Eyl in the semi- autonomous Puntland region in northern Somalia, they said.

Washington, Nov 25: In a new research, scientists at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), Canada, have shown that global warming can actually change the molecular structure of organic matter in soil.

“Soil contains more than twice the amount of carbon than does the atmosphere, yet, until now, scientists haven’t examined this significant carbon pool closely,” said Myrna J. Simpson, principal investigator and Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry at UTSC.

Hong Kong - The mother of a Hong Kong brother and sister who climbed down drainpipes from their 34th-floor apartment was Tuesday put on probation for child neglect.

The girl, 7, and her brother, 5, were nicknamed "spider-kids" by the Hong Kong media after clambering down drainpipes on a Saturday morning in June while their mother was sleeping.

The girl was eventually pulled to safety by residents in a 28th-floor flat while the boy managed to get three floors further down before being rescued. Both children have since been put in care.

The children's 27-year-old mother pleaded guilty to two counts of neglect at an earlier court hearing. At a sentencing Tuesday, she was given a one-year probation term.

Washington, Nov 25: Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have developed a method that could lead to solar photovoltaic cells with greater efficiency and lower cost.

Using computer modeling and a variety of advanced chip-manufacturing techniques, researchers have applied an antireflection coating to the front, and a novel combination of multi-layered reflective coatings and a tightly spaced array of lines to the backs of ultrathin silicon films to boost the cells’ output by as much as 50 percent.

The carefully designed layers deposited on the back of the cell cause the light to bounce around longer inside the thin silicon layer, giving it time to deposit its energy and produce an electric current.