A group of nine Chinese scientists will go to west China's Qinghai Province this month to closely examine the relics thought by some to have been left by extraterrestrial beings (ET).

It will be the first time scientists seriously study the mysterious site near Delingha City in the depths of the Qaidam Basin, according to government sources with the Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where Delingha is located.

The site, known by local people as "the ET relics", is on Mount Baigong about 40 kilometers to the southwest of Delingha City.

On the north of the mountain are twin lakes dubbed as the "lover Lakes", one with fresh water and the other with salty water.

The so-called ET relics structure is located on the south bank of the salty lake. It looks like a pyramid and is between 50 to 60 meters high.

Let's try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object which you are grasping. Hold it tightly, clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why you hold on.

But there's another possibility. You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.

So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.

-- Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pp. 34-35

An expedition is being planned for this summer to the upper reaches of Turkey's Mount Ararat where organizers hope to prove an object nestled amid the snow and ice is Noah's Ark.

A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up Turkey's tallest mountain, at 17,820 feet, from July 15 to August 15, subject to the approval of the Turkish government, said Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock- The Trinity Corporation of Honolulu, Hawaii.

The goal: to enter what they believe to be a mammoth structure some 45 feet high, 75 feet wide and up to 450 feet long that was exposed in part by last summer's heat wave in Europe.

"We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it," McGivern said.

No one could call the yen Mickey Mouse money, but in one struggling Tokyo neighbourhood it is about to come up against a rival currency inspired by another popular cartoon character with a high-pitched voice.

From tomorrow, shoppers in Takadanobaba will be able to buy their groceries with notes bearing the unmistakable features of Astro Boy, the most popular Japanese animation hero of all time.

Community groups hope the currency - named horsepower after Astro Boy's units of strength - will encourage residents to shop in local stores and revitalize the slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood.

In denominations of 10, 100 and 200 horsepower, 1 HP = 1 yen at current exchange rates and will be legal tender at dozens of Takadanobaba shops, including supermarkets.

Astro Boy, who appeared in comic form in 1952 before becoming a huge TV hit, wasbuilt with a boy's heart inside in Takadanobaba's fictitious science min istry, on April 7, 2003 - then several decades into the future - the creation of a scientist whose son had died in a car accident.

Shoppers who use the currency will be rewarded for responsible consumer habits. Those who re-use plastic carrier bags, for example, will receive a 10 HP (5p) refund.

This is not the first time the people of Takadanobaba have turned to the diminutive robot with the soft mohican and unfeasibly large eyes to turn around the local economy.

Before his birthday last year, they organized several days of celebrations and special promotions, including the mural, above, to persuade the legions of Astro Boy fans to part with their money.

From his early days in downtown Tokyo, Astro Boy, the most famous creation of the late manga illustrator and animator Osamu Tezuka.

Success might see the idea taken up in other parts of the world. But is the eurozone ready for the 100 Tin Tin note?

We are born into a vast room whose walls consist of a thousand doors of possibility. Each door is flung open to the world outside, and the room is filled with light and noise. We close some of the doors deliberately, sometimes with fear, sometimes with calm certainty. Others seem to close by themselves, some so quietly that we do not even notice.

- Terry Teachout

Freedom requires responsibility. And yet how many of us are truly willing to take responsibility for our own freedom, for our own lives? How many of us, for example, take true and total responsibility for something as basic and fundamental as our own food, for that essential connection to the earth that sustains our very lives? The vast majority of us depend totally upon Power and its Economic System to provide that for us. We eschew any caring for, or connection to, the land. We’re unwilling to make the effort it would take to produce our own food. We literally refuse to get our hands dirty. We, by and large, much prefer immersing ourselves in the infinite greed of the marketplace and the ease and comforts of “civilized” life it provides – for our cars and our oil furnaces, our roads and our televisions, for our fresh strawberries and pomegranates delivered fresh in the dead of winter. Most of us have lived this way for so long that, like teenagers living off their parents, we simply take for granted the effort, the networks and organizations, that bring those things to us. Just as they don’t really understand what it takes to keep the lights on and put food on the table, we have little if any idea about where food or electricity comes from or how they got here – little if any idea about what, exactly, it took to achieve and maintain this state of being, this level of ease and comfort. And then, wanting the comforts but lacking both true knowledge of (and any responsibility for) them, we complain like spoiled teenagers about the necessary restrictions the System requires of our minds and our lives.