SEOUL – South Korean scientists said they have created a glowing dog.

South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Yonhap news agency reported.

A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.

The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog’s food.

“The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,” the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying.

He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans.

The latest discovery published in ‘Genesis’, an international journal, took four years of research with roughly 3.2 billion won ($3 million) spent to make the dog and conduct the necessary verification tests, Yonhap said.

Jeremy Laurence

VATICAN CITY  –  Pope Benedict XVI announced today that God created the Big Bang.

“The universe is not the result of chance,”  Pope Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.

“Contemplating the universe we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God,” he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica on the feast day.

While the Pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth — and perhaps elsewhere — eventually emerged.

Some atheists say science can prove that God does not exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were “mind limiting” because “they only arrive at a certain point … and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality …”

He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.

“In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality … we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth,” he said.

Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been trying to shed the Church’s image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the words of the Bible.

Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.

The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism — the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible — and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.

But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God’s existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.

KENTUCKY -  Anticipating another “biblical” flood, Kentucky is building an ark for some of its elite citizens.

Under the guise of building a “tourist attraction”, the state of Kentucky is preparing for a biblical flood, which state lawmakers anticipate happening by June of 2011.

The state has promised generous tax incentives to a group of entrepreneurs who plan to construct a full-size replica of Noah’s ark, load it with animals and the elite members of Kentucky society.

Since Gov. Steven L. Beshear announced the plan on Wednesday, some constitutional experts have raised alarms over whether government backing for an enterprise that promotes religion violates the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state. But Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, said the arrangement posed no constitutional problem, and brushed off questions about his stand on creationism.

“The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,” he said at a news conference. “They elected me governor to create jobs and to protect them from biblical earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.”

The so-called “theme park” was orginally conceived by the same Christian ministry that built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., where dioramas designed to debunk evolution show humans and dinosaurs coexisting peacefully on an earth created by God in six days. The ministry, Answers in Genesis, believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old — a controversial assertion even among many Bible-believing Christians.

Although the Creation Museum has been a target of ridicule by some, it has drawn 1.2 million visitors in its first three years — proving that there is a sizable paying audience for entertainment rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The audience may be too big.  “As soon as word gets out that we have the only ark in America and… when everyone realizes that the second flood is coming… we are going to have a real security problem on our hands,” said Governor Beshar.  “I’ve already put in a preliminary notice to the National Guard to protect the ark.  We only have room for so many people and… the animals.”

The ark is to be built with wooden pegs and timber framing by Amish builders. Animals including giraffes will be kept in pens on board.  The Governor has selected the animals that he wants on the ark.  “I don’t want any cats.  I don’t think there is a place for cats in the new world,” said Governor Beshar.

Kentucky will be using Federal stimulus money to fund the ark.  “Finally, there is a good use of government tax dollars,” said Senate-Elect Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Find out what all those dead white men didn’t tell you about their masterpieces.

The original title of The Iliad was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Rape Helen.

The story of Genesis was actually an attack ad from the Pear Advisory Council intended to discredit apples.

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises in forty-eight minutes while under the influence of barbiturates provided by Gertrude Stein.

Newton’s Principia Mathematica was originally pitched as a graphic novel, but it was accepted for publication only on condition that it be rewritten as the seminal text in the history of the physical sciences.

On his death bed, Franz Kafka asked not only that all his works be destroyed, but also that someone please drown his cat.

John Milton was inspired to write Paradise Lost after he was locked out of his apartment for an entire night.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a last-ditch effort to get out of jury duty.  It didn’t work.

Cicero’s On Duties was considered pornographic and banned upon publication by the Holy Roman Emperor until someone explained to him what sex was.

William Shakespeare was a corporate composite character for the firm Thousands of Captive Monkeys Ltd., known to have tested in the low fifties with Elizabethan focus groups.