At least 90 people died and 150 were injured in a stampede at a Hindu temple in the western state of Rajasthan, police said Tuesday.

The stampede occurred at the Chamunda temple, inside a fort on the top of a hill near the historic town of Jodhpur.

"We are zeroing in on the final figure. It may reach 100, but presently we have confirmed 90," Rajiv Dasoth, a police inspector general, told local television.

One witness, who gave his name as Santa, said the stampede occurred as authorities tried to stop pilgrims from entering the temple to make way for a VIP. But police gave a different account.

"The stampede started after a barricade near the temple broke and there was huge confusion and people started running down a steep slope and fell on each other," Dasoth told Reuters.

Local television showed volunteers carrying bodies and trying to revive them on the street.

One child cried over her father's lifeless body, wailing "Daddy, please get up."

Bodies were piled high in a local hospital, with the injured writhing in pain as medical staff rushed to help, a Reuters photographer said.

"We will definitely conduct an inquiry and if we find people were negligent, we will definitely take action," Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria told reporters.

Last month, a stampede outside a mountaintop Hindu temple in northern India killed at least 145 pilgrims.

Authorities ordered an investigation into that disaster, which occurred after rumors of a landslide triggered panic among pilgrims who ran down a narrow mountain trail from the Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh state, only to meet thousands of people walking up.

In January 2005, at least 265 Hindu pilgrims, including several women and children, were killed in a stampede near a remote temple in India's Maharashtra state.

Shivlal Verma

Islamic anger over Israel's nuclear program and bids by Iran and Syria to gain more influence threaten to turn this week's 145-nation International Atomic Energy Agency meeting into an unprecedented showdown between the West and the developing world.

Opening Monday, the IAEA's general conference has traditionally been an annual chance for the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency's member countries to plan general nuclear policies that range from strengthening nonproliferation to programs of medical and scientific benefit.

Decisions are traditionally made by consensus, a practice that had led all sides to bridge sometimes substantial differences and opt for compromise on most issues for most of the general conference's 52-year history. A vote on any topic is unusual and considered a huge dent in the meeting's credibility.

But Islamic frustration over Israel's refusal to put its nuclear program under international purview and resistance by the Jewish state to Muslim pressure on the issue threatens to force a vote for the third year running.

After losing the vote two consecutive years, Islamic nations are threatening to up the ante this year, warning they will call for a ballot on every item, no matter how uncontroversial, unless they get conference backing on the issues close to their heart.

"In all my years of dealing with the general conference, I have never seen it as divided as this," said one conference veteran Sunday, the eve of the conference. The diplomat demanded anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment to the media.

As in the past two years, Islamic IAEA members are expected to put forward a resolution urging all Mideast nations to refrain from testing or developing nuclear arms and urging nuclear weapons states "to refrain from any action" hindering a Mideast nuclear-free zone.

Israel, widely considered the only Mideast nuclear weapons state, last year called for a vote on that resolution because of the introduction of a separate Arab-backed resolution deeming Israel a "nuclear threat" and refusal by its sponsors to withdraw it. The resolution was defeated but the fact it was put to the ballot further weakened the consensus principle.

Arab members — backed by Iran — this year have again asked conference organizers to include a similar item. Although it is now labeled "Israeli Nuclear Capabilities" instead of "Nuclear Threat," the Jewish State still objects to being singled out. And diplomats told The Associated Press ahead of the meeting that it will again force a vote on the Mideast nuclear-free zone resolution unless the second item is withdrawn.

Focusing on Israel by name "is substantially unwarranted and flawed," said a letter prepared for review by the conference from Israel Michaeli, the Jewish State's IAEA representative.

Sponsors of the item should instead "address the most pressing proliferation concerns in the Middle East," said the letter in allusion to Iran's defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusal to stop uranium enrichment and world concerns about allegations that Tehran had past plans to make nuclear weapons.

On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council approved a fourth resolution critical of Tehran's defiance on uranium enrichment, which can create both nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads.

But Iran, along with ally Syria, figures even more directly at the Vienna conference because they are among four nations seeking their geographic region's nomination for a seat on the IAEA's decision-making 35-nation board.

Iran's bid is strategic. Tehran is running to counteract a U.S. push to have Afghanistan or outsider Kazakhstan elected over Syria, which is under IAEA investigation for allegedly hiding a secret nuclear program, including a nearly completed plutonium producing reactor destroyed last year by Israel.

Tehran is ready to withdraw from the race if Afghanistan does so, narrowing the field to favored Syria and Kazakhstan, diplomats told the AP. But as of Sunday, Afghanistan, backed by the U.S. and its allies, was not ready to do so.

If the regional group does not agree on a candidate by the time the conference turns to the issue, the meeting will also be asked to vote on which nation should take the board seat. >>>>

In sync with the sun and the moon, the traditions of 1,400 years and the acts of Muslims all over the world, members of one of Egypt's seven official moon-sighting committees pulled into a parking lot high on a ridge overlooking hazy Cairo at sunset Saturday.

There were government astronomers in open-neck shirts, snapping open tripods to support their telescopes. Taking a preliminary look through the scopes at Cairo's western horizon, the astronomers didn't bother to announce what they saw at first glance: nothing.

There was a 70-year-old Muslim cleric, wearing glasses of stratified thicknesses, a gauzy black robe with gold tassels and a beatific smile. Declining a look through the telescopes, the cleric, Abdul Monim al-Berri, only sat and looked on, his presence as one of Egypt's leading religious scholars giving the gathering the stamp of religious approval. "I'm the legitimacy," he said.

And there was an al-Jazeera satellite news crew, trying to go live to tell the world the news from the parking lot, but having trouble with audio.

Frustrated, the network's reporter folded her arms across her chest and rocked back on her heels in the gravel, as she stared blindly at the sky.

Together, the committee members were on a mission: to look for the crescent moon that signals the start of Ramadan, Islam's holiest month, and to tell the world whether they had seen it.

From Senegal to Saudi Arabia and beyond, moon-spotting committees scaled minaret staircases and fanned out across deserts at twilight Saturday, as Muslims have since the founding of Islam in the 7th century, to look for a sliver of white in the sky.

Word from the committees would plunge the world's more than 1 billion Muslims into Ramadan.

For religiously observant Muslims, Ramadan is four weeks of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting with family and friends, interspersed with works of charity for the poor.

"This night of witness is extremely important for we Muslims. It is the night that unifies us all," Berri said.

In the parking lot, as around the world, ancient ways met with modern advances Saturday.

The prophet Muhammad said Muslims should begin fasting when they saw the crescent moon that opens the lunar month of Ramadan. But since the 7th century, science has provided the extras -- telescopes and observatories, for example.

The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference even proposed to launch a satellite to monitor the moon for Ramadan.

Science has also allowed precise tracking of the moon and the sun, allowing astronomers to know in advance that the crescent moon starting Ramadan will be visible in the Middle East no sooner than Sunday.

In the parking lot and in most of the Middle East, technology deferred to religion. Astronomers went through the motions, at least, of looking for the crescent.

"It's a matter of Islamic law we have to be here. But it's 100 percent sure we're not going to see it today," Faleh Mohammed, head of one of Egypt's government astronomy institute, told the al-Jazeera reporter.

A rumor went through the crowd that Libya had announced the start of Ramadan -- different countries often pick different days for the start and squabble over each other's decisions.

Mohammed scoffed. "What do they see in Libya that we don't see with our telescopes?" he asked.

Mohammed Yousuf, an astronomer in his eighth year of moon-watch duty, rose from another telescope.

The last time a member of a moon-watch committee thought he had spotted a crescent moon at this point in the lunar month was in 1991, Yousuf said. Other members of the committee were able to convince the man he had seen light glancing off a bird's wings, and error was averted, Yousuf said.

Even in Muhammad's time, Yousuf recounted, a man who believed he had spotted the crescent moon was about to announce Ramadan to the world -- until a friend leaned in and removed a stray eyelash from the man's eye.

At the next telescope over, astronomer Ahmed Mohem Fathi grumbled at Cairo's pollution, thick enough to veil any moon.

By 6 p.m., Mohammed was speeding off, rushing toward a news conference in Cairo with some of Egypt's top religious and government officials to announce the findings.

The word of Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, would be: No moon Saturday, therefore the moon's appearance Sunday was inevitable, and Ramadan would start Monday.

Egyptian radio and television carried the grand mufti's announcement live. For many of Cairo's 16 million people, the joint broadcasts were a jolting reminder that Ramadan almost was upon them.

Traffic slowed to gridlock in a half-hour. Families rushed to buy food for the first of the month's lavish meals and aid baskets.

At 6:17 p.m., the same time when the crescent is expected to appear Sunday, the astronomers bent in earnest over their telescopes.

Bystanders fell silent.

The men stood in the hush, minute after minute, squinting at the rim where earth met sky.

In the silence, the rusty voice of a single old man rose from a mosque in the valley below. Carrying out a ritual older than the moon-watch committees, the man called the faithful to evening prayers.

"Allah akbar," the mosque singer cried. "God is great."

From his chair in the parking lot, Berri raised his fingers to the sky as if to pinch the absent crescent moon.

He then brought his fingers to his mouth and kissed them.

"This is the best part, the mingling of science and religion," Berri said. "It's beautiful."

Ellen Knickmeyer

When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans. An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults — 57 percent — said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.

"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

Pat Loder, a Milford, Mich., woman whose two young children were killed in a 1991 car crash, said she clung to a belief that God would intervene when things looked hopeless.

"When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

While doctors should be prepared to deal with those beliefs, they also shouldn't "sugarcoat" the truth about a patient's condition, Loder said.

Being honest in a sensitive way helps family members make excruciating decisions about whether to let dying patients linger, or allow doctors to turn off life-prolonging equipment so that organs can be donated, Loder said.

Loder was driving when a speeding motorcycle slammed into the family's car. Both children were rushed unconscious to hospitals, and Loder says she believes doctors did everything they could. They were not able to revive her 5-year-old son; soon after her 8-year-old daughter was declared brain dead.

She said her beliefs about divine intervention have changed.

"I have become more of a realist," she said. "I know that none of us are immune from anything."

Loder was not involved in the survey, which appears in Monday's Archives of Surgery.

It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.

Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital, was the lead author.

He said trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists "are much more heavily engaged in the death process," he said.

Jacobs said he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue.

"You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that" and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent, he said.

Relatives need to know that "it's not that you don't want a miracle to happen, it's just that is not going to happen today with this patient," he said.

Families occasionally persist and hospitals have gone to court seeking to stop medical treatment doctors believe is futile, but such cases are quite rare.

Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face.

Sise, a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, said miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near.

"That's just not a realistic situation," he said.

Sise recalled a teenager severely injured in a gang beating who died soon afterward at his hospital.

The mother "absolutely did not want to withdraw" medical equipment despite the severity of her child's brain injuries, which ensured she would never wake up, Sise said. "The mom was playing religious tapes in the room, and obviously was very focused on looking for a miracle."

Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner-tubing earlier this year came close.

The boat backed into her and its propeller "caught her in the side of the head. She had no pulse when they pulled her out of the water," McCormick said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: '"God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here.'"

Like many hospitals, Duke uses a team approach to help relatives deal with dying trauma victims, enlisting social workers, grief counselors and chaplains to work with doctors and nurses.

If the family still says, "We just can't shut that machine off, then, you know what, we can't shut that machine off," McCormick said.

"Sometimes," she said, "you might have a family that's having a hard time and it might take another day, and that's OK."

LINDSEY TANNER

Ruling Was Unamimous, Unlike Legalization of Gay Marriage Case

The California Supreme Court today ruled unanimously that doctors cannot cite their religious beliefs as grounds to deny gay and lesbian patients medical care.

Justice Joyce Kennard ruled that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian couple cannot claim a free speech or religious exemption from California's anti-discrimination law.

The ruling extends a state law barring sexual orientation-based discrimination to the medical profession.

The case, which drew 40 "friends of the court" briefs, pitted gay advocacy groups against religious and medical organizations.

Guadalupe Benitez, now 36, had maintained that the California medical clinic that was treating her polycystic ovary syndrome had "dumped" her when she asked for artificial insemination.

In 1999, after a year of surgeries and hormone treatments — all covered by insurance — Benitez was finally ready to get pregnant. But at the crucial moment, her doctor refused to do the procedure for "religious" reasons.

Benitez is a lesbian and sued her doctors under California's civil rights laws, charging that they discriminated against her because of her sexual orientation.

"For me this is a case about doing the right thing and being fair," Benitez told ABCNEWS.com. "Not discriminating against people and doctors not playing the role of God, saying because you are gay, you are not worthy of having a child or a family.

"I did it not only for me, my partner and my children but for other people coming after me, so they don't have to go through the humiliation and frustration and abandonment as a patient," she said.

Religious, Gay Organizations Eyed Case

The doctors received support from the American Civil Rights Union and anti-abortion groups, according to the Associated Press.

The California Medical Association initially supported the Christian doctors, until they received criticism from gay rights groups and joined the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan to oppose them.

The American Civil Liberties Union, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the National Health Law Program and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association backed Benitez, the AP reported.

Benitez sued The North Coast Women's Care Medical Group of San Diego, which had an exclusive contract with her health insurance plan. Also named in the suit were two of the clinic's doctors — Dr. Doug Fenton and Dr. Christine Brody — who lawyers say had a constitutional right to refuse a procedure that violated their religious beliefs.

The case jumped through a series of legal hoops. Benitez initially filed her suit in 2000. The trial court ruled in her favor based on sexual-orientation discrimination, but the appellate court said North Coast's claim that they had been denied freedom of religion was legitimate.

"You can't opt out of the law because of your religious beliefs," said Jennifer Pizer, senior attorney for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit that supports gay causes. "The laws have been in place for a long time. A business can't exclude you because you are gay."

"Doctors have considerable leeway in what procedures they provide," she told ABCNews.com. "But they can't pick and choose on the medically irrelevant characteristics of the patient."

Benitez, who is a medical assistant, and her partner, Joanne Clark, 49, have subsequently had three children by in-vitro fertilization at a San Diego fertility clinic — at their own cost, because they had to go "out-of-network" for their care.

As a result, the couple, who have been in a committed relationship for 18 years, said they were forced to pay for a repetition of all tests and hormone treatments. Today, they have a 6-year-old son and twin 2-year-old girls.

Their ordeal began in 1999, when Benitez was diagnosed with an ovarian condition that can cause infertility. She said North Coast "promised" one of the doctors would eventually perform artificial insemination, even though Brody specifically told them she would not do it on "lesbians."

"We had no where else to go," Clark said.

When the time came, the director of the clinic refused, "because the staff objected," said Clark, who stays at home with the children, while Benitez works as a medical assistant.

Benitez's lawyer, Pizer, compared their response to the civil rights era: "I don't treat black patients, but I will refer you to someone who will."

"It opened our eyes to discrimination," Clark said. "We knew how black people felt and didn't realize how deep it went and how on-guard it makes you."

SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

As many as 129 out of 146 people killed in the stampede at Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh's Bilaspur district have been identified and the bodies handed over to their relatives, officials said on Monday.

"Identity of 129 deceased have been known and their bodies were handed over to their relatives. Efforts are on to identify the remaining 17 bodies," Ropar Deputy Commissioner B Purshartha told PTI.

At least 146 devotees, including 30 children and 38 women, were killed and more than 50 injured yesterday in a stampede at the temple shrine triggered by rumours of a landslide.

"The Punjab Government is providing all kind of assistance to the relatives of victims for transportation of bodies from Bhai Jaitta civil hospital here," he said.

As many as 104 dead were from Punjab. While 58 from Patiala, ten belonged to Sangrur and nine Bathinda. Six dead were from Barnala, eight from Mansa, two each from Ropar and Ferozepur, one each from Muktsar and Ludhiana.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, who visited the hospital and the site of the incident, assured that the state government in coordination with the Himachal Pradesh will improve the infrastructure at the shrine to ensure "maximum safety" of the pilgrims.

The Himachal Pradesh Government has ordered a commissioner-level inquiry into the incident.

Both the Punjab and Himachal Pradesh Government had already announced an ex-gratia of Rs one lakh each to the dead and free treatment for the injured.

This was the second such incident at the hill shrine as in 1981, as many as 53 pilgrims lost their lives after a similar stampede. >>>>

One of the world's oldest Bibles, the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered in Egypt in the 19th century, is to be made available online this week, the Leipzig University library said Monday.

The Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century, is one of the two most ancient copies of the entire Bible in Greek. The other is the Codex Vaticanus.

The manuscript was uncovered by a German scholar in St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai desert. Much of it, written on some 350 pages of vellum, ended up in St. Petersburg.

In the 1930s, most of this treasure trove was then sold by Stalin to the British Museum in London.

Some 40 pages also ended up going to Leipzig University, while yet more pages were found in the 1970s in a walled-up room at St Catherine's monastery.

The project, sponsored by the British Museum and Leipzig University, aims to put the Bible back together in digital form -- scanning all the pages held in Britain, Germany, Russia, and Egypt -- and making it available on the Internet.

As of Thursday, "more than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Museum, will be available online at www.codex-sinaiticus.net," according to Leipzig library curator Ulrich Johannes Schneider.

Another part of the Codex will be made available in November and the remainder by next year, according to Schneider.

The codex, which is believed to contain the most accurate version of the New Testament, can be viewed online in high-definition pictures, with a full transcript of the Greek text, and translation into English and German of some key passages. >>>>

An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.

Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.

The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.

The group said the three women — Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City — are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests.

A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.

The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said.

The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not.

Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops — Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.

The ceremony "is not in compliance with their man-made rules, but it's certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops who are in good standing with the church," as provided by the church's ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group's spokeswoman.

The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women — two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement — for participating in a woman's ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.

Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.

STEVE LeBLANC

Three US women priests to be ordained, excommunicated

Three women are to be ordained as priests Sunday here in one of American's most Catholic cities, but they will face automatic excommunication by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

The trio is to be ordained in a ceremony performed by a woman at a Protestant church affiliated to the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ, in Boston's first female ordination.

The move has angered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which has sent out an email to local priests reminding them of Vatican law that women are allowed to have key roles within the church, but cannot become priests.

The Archdiocese says the three women will be automatically excommunicated. Historically, the Vatican's position has been that women cannot become priests because Jesus did not have female apostles.

However, the women say they are united in the belief of being called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they believe to be wrong church teaching.

"We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying unjust law," said Gabriella Velardi Ward, 61, a New York based architect.

"Excommunication or not, I will still be able to serve the people of God," she told the Boston Globe.

The two others are Gloria Carpeneto of Maryland and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of New Jersey.

Dana Reynolds of California, a women consecrated as a bishop in Germany earlier this year, will perform the ceremony.

Reynolds and the others are members of the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests, holding ordinations for women since 2002. The organization reports 28 women Catholic priests in the United States.

The organization claims its ordinations are valid because its first bishops were ordained by Catholic bishops in good standing. The identity of the bishops is kept secret to protect them from being sanctioned by the Vatican.

The Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, led by Rev. Jennifer Wegler-McNelly, offered support by renting its historic edifice with Tiffany windows depicting women of the Bible.

However, the Archdiocese was stern in its email warning.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church."

Referring to "the loving ministry of Jesus Christ, we pray for those who have willingly fallen away from the church by participating in such activities."

The Boston ordination ceremony is scheduled to coincide with the first joint conference of four organizations advocating for the admission of married men and also women into the priesthood. The meeting is expected to draw 200 participants.

Marcia Scott-Harrison

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080720/ts_alt_afp/usreligion;_ylt=AmY_IwJm7Zyr3lJESVRVcU9Tsa8F

Lipizzan horses' white colour due to mutated gene: study

The white coat of the Lipizzan horses performing at Vienna's prestigious Spanish riding school is caused by a mutated gene, a new study showed Sunday, solving a decades-old mystery over the horses' colour.

White and grey horses, including Lipizzans, are born with a darker coat but lose their colour between the age of six and eight due to chromosome mutations, Austrian and Swedish researchers found in the study published Sunday in the scientific journal Nature Genetics.

These genetic changes cause pigment-producing melanocyte cells to be produced more rapidly in these horses so that the stock is quickly used up and the horses lose their pigmentation, according to one of the study's co-authors, Monika Seltenhammer of Vienna's University of Veterinary Medicine.

The study also found that the same chromosome was responsible for the horses' heightened risk of melanoma, a serious skin cancer.

Between 70 and 80 percent of grey and white horses aged 15 or older develop skin disease, said Leif Andersson of the department of medical biochemistry and microbiology at Sweden's Uppsala University.

But the horses are hardly at risk, as the disease cells do not spread as quickly as in humans, said Seltenhammer. >>>>

The Church of England voted late Monday to allow women bishops, British media said, despite fears the move will prompt a major split after more than 1,300 clergy threatened to leave if it was passed.

The General Synod, the church's legislative body, held the crunch vote at a meeting in York, northern England, following a passionate eight-hour debate which pitched conservatives against liberals.

The vote took place across the three houses of the General Synod. Bishops voted to bring forward legislation to ordain women bishops by 28 to 12, clergy were in favour by 124 to 44 and laity by 111 to 68.

The Church of England, led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has about 77 million followers.

It first ordained women priests in 1994 amid a storm of controversy.

For conservatives, female and gay clergy -- an issue which has also caused bitter splits in the church in recent years -- cast doubt on the interpretation of Christianity's sacred text, the Bible.

But liberals argue it is time to take a more inclusive approach.

"It seems to me a total nonsense that the church proclaims a gospel of equality for all while seeming to categorise some of its ordained ministers as unacceptable," Reverend Ferial Etherington was quoted as saying by The Times newspaper in the debate.

The General Synod earlier rejected compromise measures designed to accommodate those who could not accept women bishops.

It narrowly rejected a proposal to create three male "super-bishops" who would have tended to those opposed to women bishops. It also voted against creating new dioceses for parishes which are against female bishops.

The Church of England's two most senior figures -- Williams and John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York -- reportedly favoured a compromise which would please both sides.

In his Sunday sermon, Williams said Jesus was with those on both sides of the debate.

But he said he would be in favour of "more rather than a less robust" form of accommodation for objectors at the start of Monday's debate.

Sentamu, who was born in Uganda, said: "There is a wonderful African saying: 'He who travels fast, travels alone and he who travels far, travels in the company of others.'

"I would like to travel in company with everybody in the church."

A total of 1,333 clergy have threatened to leave the Church of England if they are not given legal safeguards to set up a network of parishes that would remain under male leadership.

Traditionalists now face a decision on whether they will stay in the church or not ahead of its once-a-decade get-together in Canterbury, southern England, later this month.

"It is getting worse. It is going downhill very badly. It is quite clear there is a pincer movement and we are being squeezed out," Father David Houlding, a leading traditionalist, told The Times.

Even before this vote, liberals and conservatives had been at odds over the ordination of homosexual clergy since the consecration of openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the US in 2003.

Nearly 300 conservative Anglican bishops and archbishops formed a breakaway movement, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA), after a conference in Jerusalem last month.

FOCA claims to represent half of the world's Anglicans and many of those associated with it are staying away from the Lambeth conference.

Katherine Haddon

The Dalai Lama said Sunday that "it's totally wrong, unfair" to call Islam a violent religion. The Tibetan spiritual leader, appearing at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, offered a defense of Islam in response to a question about the rise of violent religious fundamentalism. He added that he has made a point of reaching out to Muslims since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Dalai Lama arrived at Lehigh on Thursday for a series of talks on a 600-year-old Buddhist text. He took a break Sunday to lecture on "Generating a Good Heart," and afterward took questions from Lehigh President Alice P. Gast that had been submitted in advance by the public.

Asked why so many Americans are depressed and anxious, he joked: "I'm the wrong person to ask. You should ask Americans." Then he answered that U.S. society is too competitive and that people always want "something more, something more, something more."

The Dalai Lama, who attracted a capacity crowd of about 5,000, did not mention next month's Beijing Olympics. The Chinese government has demanded that the Dalai Lama express support for the Olympics and repudiate efforts to disrupt them as a condition for continued talks.

China has governed Tibet since the 1950s. The Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid a failed uprising in 1959, has said he wants some form of autonomy that would allow Tibetans to freely practice their culture, language and religion.

The Dalai Lama, who turned 73 on July 6, said Sunday that he's looking forward to "complete retirement." He joked that he's now considered a "senior most respected adviser" to Tibet's government in exile.

He is scheduled to speak at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

MICHAEL RUBINKAM