AMSTERDAM - IBM SAYS five hundred Amsterdam homes are being outfitted with 'smart' energy meters in a project intended to give residents better insight into their gas and electricity usage.

Spokesman Rob Jelsma say the homes will receive graphical display screens that inform residents about cost and usage, helping them reduce bills and CO2 emissions.

MOSCOW - SIX volunteers from Russia and Europe on Tuesday emerged from a capsule inside a Moscow research facility where they have been locked away for the last three months to simulate a mission to Mars.

The six stepped out of the module smiling and in apparent good health after 105 days cut off from the outside world at the isolation facility at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP), an AFP correspondent saw.

PARIS - A WOMAN whose face was shredded by her shotgun-wielding husband is doing well after undergoing the world's first near-total face transplant, doctors reported on Tuesday.