Chinese writing '8,000 years old

Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.

State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.

They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.

Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.

The Damaidi carvings, first discovered in the 1980s, cover 15 sq km (5.8 square miles) and feature more than 8,000 individual figures including the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing.

"We have found some symbols shaped like both pictures and characters," Li Xiangshi, a cliff carving expert at the North University of Nationalities in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, told Xinhua news agency.

"The pictographs are similar to the ancient hieroglyphs of Chinese characters and many can be identified as ancient characters."

Until the discovery, the earliest characters included 4,500-year-old inscriptions on pottery from Henan province in central China.

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Google overhauls main search page

Google is overhauling its search system so it returns "universal" results not just those from webpages.

The change means users will also get results from news sites, blogs, video services and other relevant places.

Before now the different categories have been separate which meant searches had to be repeated to pick up all possible results.

The expanded results will be available via a series of tabs that will appear on the results page.

Drilling down

"It's breaking down the silos of information that have been built up," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience.

"It's a broad, long-term vision that will unfold over the next few years," she said.

Initially the changes only affect searches done on Google.com in English.

The change means when users carry out a search, it will also be run in the background on all the other categories of information that Google indexes.

A series of tabs will appear between the search box and the results that let users navigate to other categories.

Clicking on a tab will let people drill down into a specific category of results such as patents or products.

Results returned in other categories, such as blogs or video, will not just be from companies that Google owns.

As well as the changes to searches, the firm is introducing drop-down lists that let users quickly switch to other Google properties, such as GMail, and search for results there.

By making the move Google is following other search sites such as Amazon's A9 and Ask which let users navigate quickly to other categories of information or relevant results.

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'Start pushing', passengers asked

An Indian train driver came up with an original idea when the train he was driving broke down unexpectedly.

Rather than face the prospect of scores of frustrated passengers launching a chorus of complaints, the driver instead asked them to get out and push.

Many chose to get out of their seats and do just that, officials say.

It took them more than half an hour to move the electric train 12ft (4m) so that it touched live overhead wires and was able to resume its journey.

Momentum

"In so many years of service in the railways, I have never come across such a bizarre incident," Deepak Kumar Jha, a spokesman for Indian Railways, told the Reuters news agency.

Officials say the extraordinary display of passenger power occurred on Tuesday in the eastern state of Bihar after a passenger pulled the train's emergency chain, bringing it to a halt in a "neutral zone".

This is a short length of track where there is no power in the overhead wires.

Correspondents say that a train's momentum usually allows it to continue moving through neutral zones.

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