By LAKE SALDA, Turkey (Reuters) - As NASA’s rover Perseverance explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home at a lake in southwest Turkey.NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and which is believed to have once been flooded with water.Information gathered from Lake Salda may help the scientists as they search for fossilised traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to...…By LAKE SALDA, Turkey (Reuters) - As NASA’s rover Perseverance explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home at a lake in southwest Turkey.NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and which is believed to have once been flooded with water.Information gathered from Lake Salda may help the scientists as they search for fossilised traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to...WW…

By , ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Converting Istanbul’s sixth century Hagia Sophia back into a mosque would sow division, the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians warned on Tuesday, ahead of a Turkish court ruling on a building that has been a museum since 1934.Slideshow President Tayyip Erdogan has proposed restoring the mosque status of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, a building at the heart of both Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman empires and today one of Turkey’s most visited monuments.The court is set to rule on July 2 on a challenge to its current status that disputes the...…By , ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Converting Istanbul’s sixth century Hagia Sophia back into a mosque would sow division, the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians warned on Tuesday, ahead of a Turkish court ruling on a building that has been a museum since 1934.Slideshow President Tayyip Erdogan has proposed restoring the mosque status of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, a building at the heart of both Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman empires and today one of Turkey’s most visited monuments.The court is set to rule on July 2 on a challenge to its current status that disputes the...WW…