Nature Hub

  By Emily McGarvey BBC News, Edited by -  Vinuri Randhula Silva, , IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES er Pope Benedict XVI has died, aged 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ailing health.  Catholic Church for fewer than eight years until, in 2013, he became the first Pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415. Benedict spent his final years at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery within the walls of the Vatican where he passed away at 09:34 (08:34 GMT) on Saturday. His successor Pope Francis will lead the funeral on 5 January. The Vatican said the body of the Pope Emeritus will be placed in St Peter's Basilica from 2 January for "the greeting of the faithful". Bells rang out from Munich cathedral and a single bell was heard ringing from St Peter's Square in Rome after the former pope's death was announced. The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, said Pope Benedict was "one of the great theologians of the 20th century&qu

  By Ashraf Padanna BBC Reporter, Trivandrum, Kerala, Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, Published IMAGE SOURCE, SK MOHAN Image caption, The Mambally family is known for its Christmas cakes Prakash Mambally has a story to tell about the first Christmas cake made in India. In November 1883, a merchant named Murdock Brown went to the Royal Biscuit Factory in what is now the southern Indian state of Kerala and asked its owner Mambally Bapu if he would bake him a cake for Christmas. The Scot, who ran a massive cinnamon plantation in the Malabar region of the coastal state (then part of a princely state in British-ruled India), had brought a sample cake back from Britain. He explained to Mr Bapu how it was made. Mr Bapu knew how to bake bread and biscuits - a skill he learnt at a biscuit factory in Burma (present-day Myanmar) - but he had never made a cake. But he decided to give it a try with Mr Brown's inputs. The experiment came with some improvisations. Mr Bapu mixed the cake batter

From -BBC News Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, Pope Francis has condemned human "hunger for wealth and power" at Christmas Eve Mass in the Vatican, seemingly referring to the war in Ukraine and other conflicts. "How many wars have we seen!" he said, adding that the main victims were "the weak and the vulnerable". "I think above all of the children devoured by war, poverty and injustice," the pontiff added. He was addressing worshippers at St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Francis, 86, entered the church in a wheelchair, and sat at the site of the altar for most of the Mass on Saturday evening. "While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbours, their mothers and sisters," he said. He did not specifically mention the Russian-Ukraine war during the service. During the early stages of Russia's full-scale invasion launched on 24 February, the Arg

  By Nadine Yousif & Emily McGarvey, BBC News, Edited by - Vinuri Randhula Silva, Childhood friends in Oman who figured out how to turn carbon dioxide into rock are among five winners chosen for the Prince of Wales's prestigious Earthshot Prize. The annual awards were created by Prince William to fund projects that aim to save the planet. Each winner will receive £1m ($1.2m) to develop their innovation. Prince William announced the winners on Friday at an awards ceremony in Boston in the US. "I believe that the Earthshot solutions you have seen this evening prove we can overcome our planet's greatest challenges," Prince William said during the ceremony. "By supporting and scaling them we can change our future," he said. The winning projects are based in Kenya, India, Australia,  the UK  and Oman. IMAGE SOURCE, EARTHSHOT PRIZE 2022 Image caption, Talal Hasan is the founder of 44.01, a project that promises to turn carbon dioxide into rock IMAGE SOURCE, RO