Thomas H. Maugh II

LOS ANGELES — Two new drugs can significantly lengthen survival in patients with metastatic melanoma, the advanced and generally lethal form of skin cancer, researchers reported Sunday.

Everyone is familiar with stories of businessmen jumping to their deaths from window ledges during the Great Depression. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that those stories, sometimes viewed as apocryphal, have a strong basis in fact: The rate of suicides rises during times of economic hardship and declines in periods of prosperity.

The association, however, holds strongly only for adults of working age, those between 25 and 54 years old, the authors reported Wednesday in the online version of the American Journal of Public Health.

The fuel rods at a third nuclear reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have been fully exposed to air for short periods of time and at least partially exposed for more than three hours, allowing them to heat up and sharply raising the risk of a meltdown, according to officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant.

The cooling problems at reactor No. 2 represent the most serious development in the ongoing problems at the nuclear power plant to date, according to nuclear specialist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

LOS ANGELES -- It's not exactly young love, but some might find it romantic. On Valentine's Day, an aging lothario that has been flitting from beauty to beauty through the solar system will make his final stop, taking pictures of a battered dowager to send to the folks back home before disappearing forever.

The Stardust spacecraft, which has already imaged asteroid Annefrank and captured interstellar dust from comet Wild 2, on Monday night will swing by comet Tempel 1. There it will take new pictures of the devastation wrought to the comet by NASA's 2005 Deep Impact mission.

In that historic encounter six years ago, the Deep Impact spacecraft released an 820-pound probe that crashed into Tempel 1 at 23,000 mph, sending a luminous plume of debris into space and allowing earthbound researchers to determine what the comet was made of. There was so much debris, in fact, that the spacecraft could not get a clear look at the impact crater

Now, Stardust will be able to image that crater up close for the first time. Moreover, in the nearly six years since that initial encounter, the comet has completed an orbit around the solar system, passing close to the sun.

LOS ANGELES -- A University of California, Los Angeles-led team reported Monday that it has discovered a 6,000-year-old facility in an Armenian cave that contains everything necessary to produce wine from grapes, including a grape press, fermentation vats, storage jars, wine-soaked pottery shards, and even a cup and drinking bowl.

The ancient winery is at least 1,000 years older than any similar installation previously known, and it was found in the same cave where researchers in June announced the discovery of the world's oldest leather shoe.

The cave was abandoned when the roof caved in. All the organic material was preserved by a concrete-like layer of sheep dung that sealed everything in and prevented fungi from destroying the remains.

LOS ANGELES -- In the first major change to cigarette packaging in a quarter-century, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it will require graphic warning labels that cover half a package's front and rear and the top 20 percent of all cigarette ads.

LOS ANGELES -- For many women, morning sickness can be one of the most miserable parts of pregnancy. Unfortunately, new research reported Wednesday suggests that there is little women can do other than grin and bear it, because there appear to be no effective treatments.