NEW YORK (Reuters) – Eight scientific organizations urged the next U.S. president to help protect the country from climate change by pushing for increased funding for research and forecasting, saying about $2 trillion of U.S. economic output could be hurt by storms, floods and droughts.

“We don't think we have the right kind of tools to help decision makers plan for the future,” Jack Fellows, the vice president for corporate affairs of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 71 universities, told reporters in a teleconference on Wednesday.

“Bigfoot” was rubber gorilla costume

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – No wonder Bigfoot failed a DNA test. Researchers said on Tuesday the hairy heap claimed by two men to be the corpse of the mythical half-ape, half-human creature was actually a full-body rubber gorilla costume. The discovery adds another dimension to what appears to be an elaborate hoax by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise, that sparked an Internet frenzy last week.

Peru joins fray for treasure ship claimed by Spain

MIAMI (Reuters) – Peru has entered the battle for a multimillion-dollar treasure of gold and silver that Spain alleges a U.S. treasure hunting company looted from a Spanish warship sunk in 1804. The South American nation filed a conditional claim on Tuesday asking a U.S. court to turn over information about the find, which Spain believes to be the wreckage of the Spanish warship La Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes and treasure it was carrying back from what is now Peru.

Stem cells could allow “blood farms,” company says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Embryonic stem cells can be used to grow vats of red blood cells, which could lead to the creation of “farms” that could provide limitless sources of blood, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. The team at Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACTC.PK) hopes the finding might help save the struggling company, which is desperately seeking investors to keep it afloat.

Stem cell test to help treat bowel cancer

LONDON (Reuters) – Stem cell scientists have developed a new and more accurate way of spotting aggressive forms of bowel cancer, allowing for tailored treatment that should improve patients' chances of survival. British researchers said on Wednesday those with the most aggressive kind of cancer could be identified early by testing for a stem cell marker protein called Lamin A.

Monster magnets support lovely space lace pattern

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Giant magnetic tentacles are the force that keeps a lacy pattern of glowing gas filaments in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1275 from evaporating in the surrounding hot gas or collapsing under the weight of their own gravity, British astronomers said on Wednesday. The discovery, courtesy of images captured by NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope, helps explain how this delicate pattern has held up for more than 100 million years, and may prove useful in understanding similar structures in even more distant galaxies,