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World's oldest 'drinkable' beer salvaged

HELSINKI, Finland, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Divers have discovered what is being called the world's oldest beer in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea east of Stockholm, researchers say.

While salvaging what is believed to be the world's oldest champagne, several bottles of beer were also discovered, Finland's Helsingen Sonomat reported.

The bottles, preserved on the seabed at about 160 feet deep, were brought to the surface from a 200-year-old shipwreck near Foglo in the archipelago south of the Finnish island of Aland.

Until now, the title for the oldest drinkable beer ever to have been found was some Ratcliff Ale brewed in 1869, discovered in the vaults of the Worthington White Shield Brewery in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England, in 2006, the Sonomat said.

"This is much likely the world's oldest beer. We can now say that we have both the world's oldest champagne and the world's oldest beer bottles in our possession," Rainer Juslin of Aland's provincial government told the Stockholm News.

The cold temperature and darkness on the sea have optimized the storage, and pressure in the bottles has prevented any salt water getting in through the corks, the News said.

NASA plans close encounter with the sun

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- NASA has started development of Solar Probe Plus, a mission to study the sun more closely than ever before, with a target launch date of 2018, the agency says.

The spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere at approximately 4 million miles from the sun's surface, into a region that no other probe has ever encountered, an agency release said.

The mission will carry five separate science investigations hoping to discover more about our sun than any previous mission, NASA said.

"The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics -- why is the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? " Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington, said.

"We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers."

A revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield will withstand temperatures exceeding 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation as the spacecraft approaches the sun.

NASA has earmarked $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests of the mission's science experiments.

China covered up cooking oil contamination

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Authorities in China allegedly covered up the discovery of cancer-causing chemicals in cooking oil for five months, an Internet watchdog site said.

Food safety monitors in Hunan province reportedly found high levels of the carcinogen benzoapyrene in 42 tons of Camellia oil used for cooking in China but suppressed the news to maintain social stability, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported.

An Internet blogging site leaked word of the coverup two weeks ago, the newspaper said.

The Hunan Jinhao Camellia Oil Corp. initially dismissed the claims as rumors but backed down in the face of mounting media pressure and admitted a batch of its oil had been contaminated.

In a statement on its Web site, the company admitted it "did not inform the public about the substandard products in time and did not inform people thoroughly about the recall process."

Hunan authorities have seized 22 tons of the oil manufactured between March and April, and 11 tons have been recalled from markets, but 9 tons remain in circulation, the Beijing News reported.

Hepatitis drug passes first trial step

CARDIFF, Wales, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Researchers say they've completed the first trials of a drug to treat infections caused by the Hepatitis C virus that affects 170 million people worldwide.

Completion of this first phase for INX-189, a drug discovered and prepared by researchers at Cardiff University's Welsh School of Pharmacy in 2008, significantly improves the chances of the drug becoming an approved medicine, a university release said.

Hepatitis C, which can lead to liver cancer, cirrhosis and death, is the leading cause of liver transplantation in Western countries.

The current treatment involves two drugs -- ribavirin and interferon -- that have to be given as an injection and have severe side effects that often lead to patients failing to complete treatment.

The first clinical trial is an important first step, Cardiff researchers said.

"This is still a very early stage of the trials process but nonetheless a significant development," Professor Chris McGuigan said.

"Successfully completing phase 1a demonstrates that the drug is safe, with no drug-related side effects at all in a single dose of 100mg.

"We believe that INX-189 offers the possibility of more potency against Hepatitis, more rapid action in the liver, and fewer side effects than existing treatments," McGuigan said.