* mount diablo buckwheat, a pink wildflower thought extinct, is found in a California state park. It was last seen alive six decades ago.

* Astronomers find what appears to be a rocky earth-like planet 15 million light-years away but doubt it could sustain life as we know it.

* Days after South Korean scientists announce a faster way to create human embryonic stem cells, British researchers successfully create their first cloned embryo.

* Bucking trends, the east antarctic ice sheet is gaining mass—about 45 billion tons a year, report University of Missouri climatologists.

* Two-thirds of childhood cancer survivors grow up to suffer second cancers, heart problems, and blindness, report University of Texas oncologists.

* Colombian scientists believe they can wipe out cocaine production by unleashing moth caterpillars on the crop. But the larvae could endanger other native species.

* American geologists find a new underwater volcano that’s active in the Pacific near Samoa. Less than four years old, it is growing eight inches every day.

* The New York Times reports that a White House environmental official repeatedly edited global warming reports to soften the link between man-made greenhouse gases and climate change.

* Prehistoric cro-magnon bones excavated in the Czech Republic display Neanderthal-like features, indicating that early humans and Neanderthals may have interbred.

* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers ending Endangered Species Act protection for grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

* German researchers find the first gene linked to male-pattern baldness, on the X chromosome.

* The magnetic north pole, located in Canada for centuries, has moved to international waters north of Alaska, a geophysicist says.

* Ancient crocodile skeletons in Brazil are linked to others in Pakistan, suggesting land once connected the two regions.