SYDNEY - AUSTRALIA on Saturday welcomed the first elephant ever born in the country with the arrival of a 100kg male calf at a Sydney zoo, keepers said.

The calf, yet to be named, was born at the harbourside Taronga Zoo just after 3am (1700 GMT, 1am Singapore time) to a 12-year-old Asian elephant named Thong Dee, the zoo's director Guy Cooper said.

PARIS - PEOPLE who live alone in middle age face nearly double the risk of developing cognitive problems in later life compared with married or cohabiting counterparts, according to a study published on Friday.

Researchers interviewed 2,000 people selected randomly in the Kuopio and Joensuu regions of eastern Finland in the 1970s and 80s, when their average age was 50.4 years.

SYDNEY - FOSSILS of three new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in Australia, including a meat-eater larger than Velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies, suggesting Australia may have a more complex prehistoric past.

The two plant-eating and one carnivore dinosaurs, the first large dinosaurs unearthed since 1981, were found in Queensland and date back 98 million years to the mid-Cretaceous period.