Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50

. Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including "Off the Wall," "Thriller" and "Bad" -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday, CNN has confirmed.

He was 50.

He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon.

"Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color," the Rev. Al Sharpton said. "To say an 'icon' would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by."

Jackson's blazing rise to stardom -- and later fall from grace -- is among the most startling of show business tales. The son of a steelworker, he rose to fame as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, a band he formed with his brothers in the late 1960s. By the late '70s, as a solo artist, he was topping the charts with cuts from "Off the Wall," including "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."

In 1982, he released "Thriller," an album that eventually produced seven hit singles. An appearance the next year on a Motown Records 25th-anniversary special cemented his status as the biggest star in the country.

And then "Dangerous" was knocked out of its No. 1 spot on the album charts by Nirvana's "Nevermind," an occurrence noted for its symbolism by rock critics.

After that, more attention was paid to Jackson's private life than his music career, which faltered. A 1995 two-CD greatest hits, "HIStory," sold relatively poorly, given the huge expense of Jackson's recording contract: about 7 million copies, according to Recording Industry of America certifications.

A 2001 album of new material, "Invincible," did even worse.

In 2005, he went to trial on child-molestation charges. He was acquitted.

Legless frogs mystery solved

.Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs' legs.

Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution.

However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause.

The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous wild frogs or toads being found with extra legs or arms, or with limbs that were partly formed or missing completely.

The cause of these deformities soon became a hotly contested issue.

Some researchers believed they might be caused naturally, by predators or parasites.

Others thought that was highly unlikely, fearing that chemical pollution, or UV-B radiation caused by the thinning of the ozone layer, was triggering the deformations.

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"Deformed frogs became one of the most contentious environmental issues of all time, with the parasite researchers on one side, and the 'chemical company' as I call them, on the other," says Stanley Sessions, an amphibian specialist and professor of biology at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York.

"There was a veritable media firestorm, with millions of dollars of grant money at stake."

After a long period of research, Sessions and other researchers established that many amphibians with extra limbs were actually infected by small parasitic flatworms called Riberoria trematodes.

These creatures burrow into the hindquarters of tadpoles where they physically rearrange the limb bud cells and thereby interfere with limb development.

"But that was not end of the story," says Sessions.

"Frogs with extra limbs may have been the most dramatic-looking deformities, but they are by far the least common deformities found," he explains.

"The most commonly found deformities are frogs or toads found with missing or truncated limbs, and although parasites occasionally cause limblessness in a frog, these deformities are almost never associated with the trematode species known to cause extra limbs."

Ivory bird displays ancient skill

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A sculpted piece of mammoth ivory may be the earliest representation of a bird in the archaeological record.

The 30,000-year-old figurine, found at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany's Ach Valley, depicts what looks to be a diving cormorant with swept-back wings.

It was found with carvings of a similar style - one shaped like a horse's head; the other is half-animal, half-human.

Experts have told the journal Nature that the figurines are among the most exquisite examples of early human art.

It is not possible to say for sure which particular hominid species made the objects.

However, Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Tubingen University, who reports their discovery, says the sculptors were probably modern humans (Homo sapiens).

'Oldest musical instrument' found

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Scientists in Germany have published details of flutes dating back to the time that modern humans began colonising Europe, 35,000 years ago.

The flutes are the oldest musical instruments found to date.

The researchers say in the Journal Nature that music was widespread in pre-historic times.

Music, they suggest, may have been one of a suite of behaviours displayed by our own species which helped give them an edge over the Neanderthals.

The team from Tubingen University have published details of three flutes found in the Hohle Fels cavern in southwest Germany.

The cavern is already well known as a site for signs of early human efforts; in May, members of the same team unveiled a Hohle Fels find that could be the world's oldest Venus figure.

The most well-preserved of the flutes is made from a vulture's wing bone, measuring 20cm long with five finger holes and two "V"-shaped notches on one end of the instrument into which the researchers assume the player blew.

The archaeologists also found fragments of two other flutes carved from ivory that they believe was taken from the tusks of mammoths.

Creative origins

The find brings the total number of flutes discovered from this era to eight, four made from mammoth ivory and four made from bird bones.

According to Professor Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University, this suggests that the playing of music was common as far back as 40,000 years ago when modern humans spread across Europe.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that music was part of day-to-day life," he said.

"Music was used in many kinds of social contexts: possibly religious, possibly recreational - much like we use music today in many kinds of settings."

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The researchers also suggest that not only was music widespread much earlier than previously thought, but so was humanity's creative spirit.

Solar plane to make public debut

.Swiss adventurer Bertrand Picard is set to unveil a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world.

The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night.

Mr Picard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies.

He expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012.

The flight would be a risky endeavour. Only now is solar and battery technology becoming mature enough to sustain flight through the night - and then only in unmanned planes.

But Picard's Solar Impulse team has invested tremendous energy - and no little money - in trying to find what they believe is a breakthrough design.

"I love this type of vision where you set the goal and then you try to find a way to reach it, because this is challenging," he told BBC News.

Testing programme

The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale - in terms of its width - of a modern airliner.

The aeroplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to get it through the dark hours.

Picard will begin testing with short runway flights in which the plane lifts just a few metres into the air.

As confidence in the machine develops, the team will move to a day-night circle. This has never been done before in a piloted solar-powered plane.

HB-SIA should be succeeded by HB-SIB. It is likely to be bigger, and will incorporate a pressurised capsule and better avionics.

It is probable that Picard will follow a route around the world in this aeroplane close to the path he took in the record-breaking Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon - going from the United Arab Emirates, to China, to Hawaii, across the southern US, southern Europe, and back to the UAE.

Measuring success

Although the vehicle is expected to be capable of flying non-stop around the globe, Picard will in fact make five long hops, sharing flying duties with project partner Andre Borschberg.

The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," said Picard.

"We should fly at roughly 25 knots and that would make it between 20 and 25 days to go around the world, which is too much for a pilot who has to steer the plane.

"In a balloon you can sleep, because it stays in the air even if you sleep. We believe the maximum for one pilot is five days."

The public unveiling on Friday of the HB-SIA is taking place at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich.

The real success for Solar Impulse would be to have enough millions of people following the project, being enthusiastic about it, and saying 'if they managed to do it around the world with renewable energies and energy savings, then we should be able to do it in our daily life'."

Windows 7 pricing gets unveiled

Microsoft will not be offering an upgrade version of Windows 7 in Europe.

In the past Microsoft has given people already using Windows a chance to upgrade to a new version when it becomes available.

While that option will be offered in the US, Microsoft said its efforts to comply with competition regulations meant it could not do so in Europe.

European regulators dismissed the claim, saying the move limited choices rather than opening them up.

No choice

Windows 7 is due to go on sale on 22 October around the world.

Anyone outside Europe buying a new PC between now and then - running Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate - will get the chance to upgrade the operating system on it, at no cost, to Windows 7.

While Microsoft will not charge for the upgrade, some PC makers may impose a fee to ship disks with Windows 7 on them to customers.

The worldwide upgrade option programme is due to begin on 26 June.

Those who want to upgrade to Windows 7 on a older PC will pay a reduced price for the software. Stand alone versions of Windows 7, that can run on more than one PC, will also be available.

Microsoft said these upgrade options will not be available to Europeans.

"We will not be able to offer an upgrade product within Europe," said John Curran, Windows business lead at Microsoft UK, adding that only the full version of the software will be available to Europeans.

Microsoft will make an upgrade offer to buyers of new PCs but will send them a full version of the software rather than an upgrade version.

In Europe, the full version will be priced as if it were an upgrade version.

Folic acid protects baby hearts

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Mandatory fortification of bread with folic acid would slash the risk of babies being born with a heart problem, experience from Canada shows.

Rates of severe congenital heart defects among newborns in Quebec fell significantly after the move to fortify flour and pasta began in 1998.

The British Medical Journal online study lends support to calls for introducing fortification to Europe.

But others argue against this, saying it would inevitably harm some people.

The fear is that adding folic acid to products like bread could harm some elderly people if they are deficient in other B vitamins.

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In extreme cases, this can cause irreversible damage to the nervous system.

There is also concern that it may also increase the risk of certain cancers, including bowel cancer, in some people.

In 2007 the UK's watchdog, the Food Standards Agency, agreed with expert recommendations to fortify bread or flour with folic acid.

Since then, at the request of the Chief Medical Officer, an expert working group on folate has been considering the results of recent trials looking at the effect of folic acid on the risk of some types of cancer.

The group is expected to report back to Sir Liam Donaldson this summer.

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Risk reduction

Folic acid is a synthetic form of folate, a B vitamin found in a wide variety of foods including liver and green leafy vegetables.

Pregnant women and those trying to conceive are already advised to take folic acid supplements to reduce the risk that their baby will have a "neural tube" birth defect like spina bifida.

But uptake is not ideal, particularly because some pregnancies are unplanned and can go unnoticed for some weeks.

The latest work suggests folic acid also cuts the risk of baby heart defects.

In the seven years after fortification was introduced there was a 6% drop per year in the birth prevalence of severe heart defects.

This compares with a 9% drop in neural tube defects.

Writing in the BMJ, lead author Professor Louise Pilote of McGill University in Montreal, said:

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"Given that severe congenital heart defects require complex surgical interventions in infancy and are associated with high infant mortality rates, even a small reduction in the overall risk will significantly reduce the costs associated with the medical care of these patients and the psychological burden on patients and their families."

How Susan Boyle won over the world

. Susan Boyle was just a face in the crowd.

Clips of her singing on Britain's Got Talent have notched up almost 50 million views on YouTube.

Her face appears on the front pages of papers in Britain and beyond, she has been offered a seat on Oprah's sofa and has been told she is as good as guaranteed a worldwide number one album.

The rise of the 47-year-old Scot has been a true global phenomenon.

Last Saturday, viewers saw Boyle, with double chin, unkempt hair, frumpy appearance and eccentric demeanour, step onto the talent show stage and proclaim her dream of being a professional singer.

The judges rolled their eyes and the audience pulled incredulous faces. Onlookers, on set and at home, were rubbing their hands at the prospect of another hopeless, deluded loser being crushed by a withering Simon Cowell insult.

Then she opened her mouth and sang I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables.

Her voice confounded all expectations - the judges' eyes bulged, the crowd went wild and Boyle became an instant star.

Boyle has shattered prejudices about the connection between age, appearance and talent. She has proved that you don't have to be young and glamorous to be talented, and recognised as such.

The YouTube millions have cheered on the underdog, and seen in her the possibilities for their own hopes and dreams.

Immediately after her performance, one of the judges, Amanda Holden, said they had been "very cynical", and that the performance was the "biggest wake-up call ever".

Another judge, former newspaper editor Piers Morgan, appeared with Boyle on CNN's Larry King Show.

"I'm sorry because we did not give you anything like the respect we should have done when you first came out," he told her. Referring to her appearance, he said: "We thought you were going to be a bit of a joke act, to be honest with you."

Boyle would have a best-selling album and a world tour by the end of the year, whether she wins Britain's Got Talent or not, he assured her.

And mentioning fellow judge Simon Cowell, Morgan added: "It's fair to say that his eyes have been going ker-ching ever since Susan's performance."

Blogs, newspaper columns and talk shows have been full of discussion about why Boyle has sparked such a reaction.

Swine flu could hit one in three

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A third of the world's population could be infected with swine flu, expert projections suggest.

Researchers say swine flu has "full pandemic potential", spreading readily between people and is likely to go global in the next six to nine months.

Although one in three who come in contact will likely become infected, the Imperial College London team declined to estimate the death toll.

The study based on Mexico's experience is published in the journal Science.

The number of laboratory-confirmed swine flu cases has reached 5,251 in some 30 countries around the world, with 61 having died from the disease, the World Health Organization has confirmed.

Working in collaboration with the WHO and public health agencies in Mexico, the researchers assessed the Mexico epidemic using data to the end of April and taking into account factors like international spread and viral genetic diversity.

Lead researcher Professor Neil Ferguson said it was too early to say whether the virus will cause deaths on a massive scale, or prove little more lethal than normal seasonal flu.

His "fast and dirty" analysis of Mexico's swine flu outbreak suggests that the H1N1 virus is about as dangerous as the virus behind a 1957 pandemic that killed 2 million people worldwide.

But it's not nearly as lethal as the bug that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which caused an estimated 50 million deaths in 1918.

Its full impact on the UK is not likely to be known until the annual flu season in the autumn and winter, when a "really major epidemic" can be expected in the northern hemisphere, says Professor Ferguson.

Prof Ferguson, who sits on the World Health Organisation's emergency committee for the outbreak, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "This virus really does have full pandemic potential. It is likely to spread around the world in the next six to nine months and when it does so it will affect about one-third of the world's population.

"To put that into context, normal seasonal flu every year probably affects around 10% of the world's population every year, so we are heading for a flu season which is perhaps three times worse than usual - not allowing for whether this virus is more severe than normal seasonal flu viruses."

His study suggests swine flu could kill four in every 1,000 infected people.

Professor Ferguson said his findings confirmed that decisions must be taken swiftly on vaccine production.

"We really need to be prepared, particularly for the autumn. At the moment, the virus is not spreading fast in the northern hemisphere, because we are outside the normal flu season, but come the autumn it is likely to cause a really major epidemic.

"One of the key decisions which has to be made this week by the world community is how much do we switch over current vaccine production for seasonal flu to make a vaccine against this particular virus? I think those decisions need to be made quickly."

Google unveils new search tools

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Google said in its quest to create the perfect search engine, it cannot afford to rest on its laurels.

The company's comments came at an event billed as a "state of the union" on search as it unveiled new products that aim to push search in a new direction.

Google has over 63% of the US market compared to rival Yahoo with 20%.

"The race in search is far from over and innovation and continued improvement is absolutely pivotal," said Google's Marissa Mayer.

"I've said this many times but search is still in its infancy. Our engineers are worried about what is the next big thing in search and how are they going to find it," said Ms Mayer who is the vice president of search products and user experience.

She said last year Google released over 365 products and in the first quarter of this year it was 120. Ms Mayer added that this was proof that "Google gets better all the time."

Google has in the past said that despite its lead in the marketplace, users were "one click away" from switching to other alternatives.

Vanessa Fox of SearchEngineLand told the BBC that Google's ability to constantly innovate gives them a leading edge.

"Google is saying we have to provide for all searchers and do things at scale. It means they have to launch all sorts of features while some companies can concentrate on just one thing. The key thing behind why they are still ahead is because they are able to innovate at such a pace," said Ms Fox.

Hyena giggles no laughing matter

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Researchers have begun to unravel the information and social content present in the hyena's famed laugh, which they say is only used in times of conflict.

The pitch and variability of the giggles may be used to indicate age or social status, they say.

Younger hyenas tend to have high-pitched giggles, and dominant females of the strongly hierarchical clans tend to have a narrower range of sounds.

The work will be reported at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

The rich social structure of hyena clans gives rise to many vocalisations, ranging from "whoops" that travel great distances to quiet grunts among close individuals.

But it is the laugh of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) that has given them their more common moniker of "laughing hyenas".

"This is a very complex society of nocturnal animals, so acoustics is a very important communication channel for them," says Nicolas Mathevon, who led the research.

It has been hypothesised by researchers studying hyenas in the wild that the laughing is not, in fact, a sign of good humour.

Yet it remains unclear what social information the short fits of laughter - or giggles, as the researchers call them - convey.

Key coral reefs 'could disappear'

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The world's most important coral region is in danger of being wiped out by the end of this century unless fast action is taken, says a new report.

The international conservation group WWF warns that 40% of reefs in the Coral Triangle have already been lost.

The area is shared between Indonesia and five other south-east Asian nations and is thought to contain 75% of the world's coral species.

It is likened to the Amazon rainforest in terms of its biodiversity.

Temperature change

It's 2099, and across south-east Asia, a hundred million people are on the march, looking for food.

The fish they once relied on is gone. Communities are breaking down; economies destroyed.

That is what we can expect, says the new WWF report, if the world's richest coral reef is destroyed.

And that, it says, could happen this century.

It's billed as a worst-case scenario, but the report's chief author, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, says it is not as bad as the future we're currently headed towards.

"Up until now we haven't realized how quickly this system is changing," says Professtor Hoegh-Guldberg.

"In the last 40 years in the Coral Triangle, we've lost 40% of coral reefs and mangroves - and that's probably an underestimate. We've fundamentally changed the way the planet works in terms of currents and this is only with a 0.7 degree change in terms of temperature.

"What's going to happen when we exceed two or four or six?"

Climate change consequences

Avoiding a worst-case scenario would need significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and better controls on fishing and coastal areas, says the report.

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The Coral Triangle covers 1% of the earth's surface but contains a third of all the world's coral, and three-quarters of its coral reef species.

If it goes, an entire eco-system goes with it - and that, says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg, has serious consequences for its ability to tackle climate change.

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"Pollution, the inappropriate use of coastal areas, these are destroying the productivity of ocean which is plummeting right now. That is the system that traps CO2 - 40% of CO2 goes into the ocean.

"Now if we interrupt that, the problems on planet earth become even greater," says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg.

Indonesia is hosting the World Ocean Conference this week because, it says, oceans have been neglected so far in global discussions on climate change.

It wants the issue to have a bigger profile at UN climate talks later this year.