Scientists have unearthed a giant virus more than 30,000 years old from the frozen soil in a remote region of Siberia.

While this ancient virus is harmless to people, the scientists behind the discovery warn that the discovery suggests that the thawing of permafrost in polar regions, as a result of either climate change or mining, could bring threats to human health.

The ancient virus, named Pithovirus sibericum, infects amoebas, not humans or animals.

It survived in the Siberian ice from a period when woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats roamed the earth.

Its discovery was reported by the researchers, from French and Russian institutions, in an article published this week by the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A section of the Great Wall of China has been set aside for graffiti in a bid to save other parts being vandalised by tourists.

Authorities chose a popular stretch of the ancient monument where visitors can scrawl their names in the hope it will stop the spread of graffiti.

A spot on the Mutianyu section in Huairou County, about 43 miles north-east of Beijing, was chosen. It is one of the most popular tourist spots along the wall.

The graffiti section will be set up at one of the fighting towers that has become a common place there for tourists to scrawl on the walls.

It attracts millions of tourists per year, 40 per cent of whom are estimated to be foreigners, which explains why most of the graffiti is in English.

A Japanese rocket roared into orbit early Friday (Thursday afternoon ET) carrying what NASA calls its most precise instrument yet for measuring rain and snowfall.

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite is the first of five earth science launches NASA has planned for 2014. The 4-ton spacecraft is the most sophisticated platform yet for measuring rainfall, capable of recording amounts as small as a hundredth of an inch an hour, said Gail Skofronick Jackson, GPM’s deputy project scientist.

The $900 million satellite is a joint project with the Japanese space agency JAXA, and it lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center at 3:37 a.m. Friday (1:37 p.m. Thursday ET). In a little over a half hour, it had reached orbit, deployed its solar panels and began beaming signals back to its controllers, NASA said.

That data will boost not only immediate storm forecasts, but also aid climate scientists who have been working on long-term models of a changing world.

The craft has enough fuel for at least five years and is expected to last longer — so when combined with earlier missions, it will give NASA an unbroken 25- to 30-year rainfall record, Jackson said.