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Laughing Yoga Club Banned in India

They are designed to reduce stress and improve well-being, but one laughing yoga club in Mumbai has been ordered to stop its early morning giggling sessions after complaints from grumpy neighbors.

The Bombay High Court told police to clamp down on the laughing yoga group after a 78-year-old resident complained it caused "mental agony, pain and public nuisance", the DNA newspaper reported on Tuesday.

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U.S. Sues to Return Tyrannosaurus Skeleton to Mongolia

The U.S. government is suing to force an auction house to return the fossil of a dinosaur that roamed Mongolia 70 million years ago to the Asian country.

The nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar is believed to have been unearthed between 1995 and 2005, and is one of several specimens first discovered in the Gobi desert in 1946.

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YouTube Piano Sensation Makes London Debut

A pianist who launched her career by posting videos of herself on YouTube translated her online success into reality with a solo performance at one of the world's most famous music venues on Tuesday.

Ukrainian-born Valentina Lisitsa dazzled a crowd of thousands at London's Royal Albert Hall, her fingers flying through a two-and-a-half-hour virtuoso performance.

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Swiss Chemical Process Makes Eco-Friendly Jeans

It takes lots of water and chemicals to make a pair of jeans, and environmentally conscious clothing makers caught on years ago to the need to make more sustainable versions these popular pants.

But a Swiss chemical company said Tuesday its process for making eco-friendly jeans could streamline those efforts, saving enough water to cover the needs of 1.7 million people per year if one quarter of the world's jean-makers started using it.

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Paleontologists Catch Turtles in Flagrante

German paleontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle pairs that died while mating some 47 million years ago, sinking into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, a report said Wednesday.

The find represents the first-ever fossil record of copulating vertebrates (animals with a backbone), said a report in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

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Scientists Lead Rat Race for Better PET Scan

Scientists in Australia have devised a method of scanning lab rats' brains as they scurry about freely, eliminating the need for anesthesia or forced restraint, a report said Wednesday.

Lab rats currently have to be anaesthetized for most PET (positron emission tomography) scans, as any movement would distort the three-dimensional images used to study the functioning of organs.

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Spain Needs Bank Audit before Agreeing Bailout

Spain will await the results of two audits of its stricken banks before finalizing a request for European funds to aid in their recapitalization, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Tuesday.

Spain came under pressure from the leaders of the world's most powerful economies at the G20 summit in Mexico to move quickly to resolve its debt crisis, which has threatened the stability of the entire Eurozone financial sector.

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Science World Commemorates Father of Computer Science

Scientists will gather from Bangalore to Texas on Saturday to honor British mathematician Alan Turing, a pioneer of the modern computer whose code-cracking is credited with shortening World War II.

On the June 23 centenary of his birth in London, several cities will host conferences and exhibitions to celebrate the work of a man hailed as a rare genius today but persecuted for being gay when he was alive.

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China's Contemporary Music Scene Takes Off

After decades struggling with official censorship, China's contemporary music scene is finally taking off, fuelled by live shows, the Internet and a government eager to cash in on a growing market.

Chinese indie bands came late to the music scene, largely missing out on the lucrative days of vinyl records, cassettes and compact discs, and also suffered enormously from state broadcasters' preference for pop.

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Obama: China, Russia Know Dangers of Syrian Civil War

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said Russia and China understood the dangers of a Syrian civil war but had not yet "signed on" to a plan to prod President Bashar Assad from power.

Obama said after meeting Presidents Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao at the G20 summit in Mexico that he hoped work could take place on a political transition plan to present to the Syrian people in the next two weeks.

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