Field commanders in times of war aren't just responsible for fighting battles. They also have the responsibility of making sure their soldiers are happy -- and that means facilitating the sending and receiving of mail. No problem in the age of e-mail. But during World War II, the hundreds of thousands of packages and letters threatened to take up valuable cargo space needed for bullets, bombs and other materiel. The solution proved simple enough. The letters -- referred to as "Victory Letters" -- were simply photographed and put on microfilm. And now, the BBC has put some of them on the Internet  along with a number of audio files talking about the importance of V-mails to the young GIs fighting so far away from home.

A Bird of Paradise Lost and Found

As the habitats of many plants and animals are put increasingly under threat by development and human population growth, conservationists are often thrust into a race against time to catalogue endangered undiscovered species. A team of scientists led by Bruce Beehler from Conservation International   recently undertook a month-long expedition to the unexplored Foja Mountains of western New Guinea. A bird expert, he found a bird of paradise that had been lost to science for over 100 years, as well as 20 new types of frog, 4 butterflies and several plants. "The Fojas were a promised land to biologists in search of the unknown," Beehler said, according to the Conversation International Web site. "The human population there is so small, scattered, and confined that the core forest block today is apparently entirely free of human influence."
 
Not Just Monkey Business