From today's UK papers

THE GUARDIAN

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, controversial history professor and media favourite Niall Ferguson and astronomer royal Sir Martin Rees are three of the eminent dons who will deliver interactive, online lectures on an internet learning site due to launch today at www.boxmind.com .

Scientists from Oxford University are preparing to start trials of the world's first genetically modified insect, an unnatural born killer moth that will fly over cotton fields, passing a deadly gene on to its pestilent kin as an alternative to pesticide

THE TIMES

A Scots teenager, Paul Rose, studying at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, is suing his father for money to help fund him through university

Gene tweaking has led Dr Armand Leroi, an evolutionary biologist at Silwood Park, Imperial College's outpost in Berkshire, to a startling hypothesis: shorter people are genetically primed to live longer than their loftier counterparts.

Lake Chad, once the fourth-largest body of water in Africa, has shrunk by almost 95 per cent over the past 38 years, according to research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

DAILY MAIL

Researchers at the University of Arizona who have been putting spirit mediums through their paces are convinced that some do have an uncanny ability to produce facts about the deceased relatives of people who come to them.