Housework may be a hated chore but it can reduce the risk of a certain form of uterine cancer, U.S. and Chinese researchers reported.
And a second study showed that patients with breast cancer who exercised regularly were more likely to survive.
The reports, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida, strengthen other findings that show exercise lowers the risk of several forms of cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes.
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The right stuff: The three-man crew headed to the International Space Station next month passed a preflight exam at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center, space officials said.
The pair, who have been training together for years, will be launched aboard a Russian rocket in April. A Dutch astronaut, Andrei Kejpers, will join them for a week and then return with the current two-member crew.
The exam tested how the trio would cope with the depressurization of the space station and the subsequent loss of oxygen, a problem similar to what the current residents had to contend with earlier this year.
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No-fish zone: So-called "dead zones," oxygen-starved areas of the world's oceans that are devoid of fish, top the list of emerging environmental challenges, the United Nations Environment Program warned in its global overview.
The spreading zones have doubled over the last decade and pose as big a threat to fish stocks as overfishing, UNEP said its Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, released at the opening of the agency's eighth summit for the world's environment ministers.
The new findings tally nearly 150 dead zones around the globe, double the number in 1990, with some stretching 27,000 square miles. Dead zones have long afflicted the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, but are now spreading to other bodies of water, such as the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Adriatic Sea, Gulf of Thailand and Yellow Sea, as other regions develop, UNEP said.
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Wangari Appleseed: Kenya's assistant environment minister won a $100,000 prize for leading a campaign to combat deforestation by planting more than 25 million trees across Africa.
Wangari Maathai, 63, was awarded the Sophie Prize for her work for the environment, justice and human rights. The prize is named after the 1990s international bestseller "Sophie's World," a novel and teenager's guide to philosophy.
The awards committee said Maathai's Green Belt Movement, mainly women, had planted about 25 million trees in a campaign to slow deforestation and erosion. The movement has spread to about 20 African nations.
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AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
