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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Toyota will build a 300 million Australian dollars ($277 million) plant in Melbourne that will produce greener engines that deliver reduced carbon emissions, the company said Friday.

The plant will begin operations in the second half of 2012, said Toyota Australia chief executive Max Yasuda. It will include the production of more than 100,000 hybrid engines and four-cylinder new generation engines annually.

Toyota Motor Corp. has said the more environmentally sustainable engine will deliver reduced carbon emissions and improved fuel consumption.

The plant is backed by AU$63 million in federal and state government funding.

"A partnership between local carmakers, the government and suppliers is fundamental for ensuring we evolve our industry to deal with the challenges of a carbon constrained world," Yasuda told reporters.

Federal Industry Minister Kim Carr said the investment would secure up to 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government may resume funding of embryonic stem cell research for now, an appeals court said Thursday, but the short-term approval may be of little help to research scientists caught in a legal battle that has just begun.

It is far from certain that scientists actually will continue to get federal money as they struggle to decide what to do with research that is hard to start and stop.

After U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary order barring the funding on Aug. 23, the National Institutes of Health suspended work on funding new research projects on embryonic stem cells. While NIH didn't immediately comment Thursday on the temporary stay from the appeals court, the government's process for approving these grants is unlikely to resume before a final court resolution.

With appeals, that could be many months off.

"No way this would be a scientific reprieve," said Patrick Clemins of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Scientists who already have received taxpayer money for stem cell experiments can continue their work until their dollars run out, but 22 projects that were due to get yearly checks in September were told after Lamberth's order that they'd have to find other money. Most of the researchers have multiple sources of funding and are working now to separate what they can and can't continue, Clemins said.

Medical researchers value stem cells because they are master cells that can turn into any tissue of the body. Research eventually could lead to cures for spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other ailments, they believe.

The Obama administration is asking the appeals court in Washington to strike down a preliminary injunction by Lamberth that blocked the funding. Lamberth left little doubt that he is inclined to issue a final order barring that funding, but he has yet to issue that ruling, which inevitably will set off a new round of appeals.

Lamberth concluded that those who challenged the government support had demonstrated a strong likelihood of success in their lawsuit. He said the clear intent of a law passed by Congress was to prohibit federal spending on research in which a human embryo is destroyed.

Steven H. Aden, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which is involved with that lawsuit, said after Thursday's action, "The American people should not be forced to pay for even one more day of experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments and violate an existing federal law."

Lamberth rejected the administration's request to let funding continue while it appealed his preliminary order, but the three-member appeals panel disagreed on Thursday. It is suspending Lamberth's ruling for now.

The appeals judges pointedly cautioned that their three-paragraph order "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits."

"Nothing has really changed, because all issues are still out there and still unresolved," said Dr. Norman Fost, director of the bioethics program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was on the National Academy of Sciences committee that wrote the first national guidelines on embryonic human stem cells.

Samuel B. Casey, part of the legal team representing those who filed the lawsuit, said, "We expect that when the court of appeals reviews the merits of the case, it will agree with the logic that led Judge Lamberth to issue the preliminary injunction."

He added, "We remain confident in our case against the unlawful, unethical and unnecessary federal funding of experimentation on human embryos."

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the appeals court order "will allow this important, lifesaving research to continue while we present further arguments to the court in the weeks to come."

John Robertson, a University of Texas professor who specializes in law and bioethics, said Thursday's appeals court order doesn't relieve researchers working on multiyear projects of the uncertainty of whether there will be funding beyond this year.

"They've received the first year of a grant, and they will have to stop when the money runs out," Robertson said in an interview.

Lisa Hughes, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, said her organization was pleased.

"It is crucial that federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research be restored permanently, and this stay is a step in that direction," Hughes said. "While this issue continues to be argued in the courts, we call on Congress to move swiftly to resolve this issue and secure the future of this important biomedical research."

The appeals judges in the case are Karen LeCraft Henderson, Janice Rogers Brown, and Thomas B. Griffith. Henderson was appointed by George H.W. Bush and Brown and Griffith were appointed by George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The La Nina climate phenomenon is strengthening, increasing the likelihood an active hurricane season could get even busier.

The update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday comes as residents of Texas are cleaning up from the deluge of Tropical Storm Hermine, and Tropical Storm Igor is drifting in the Atlantic.

La Nina is marked by a cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean and was reported to be developing a month ago. It strengthened throughout August and appears likely to last at least through early 2011, NOAA's Climate Prediction Service said.

"La Nina can contribute to increased Atlantic hurricane activity by decreasing the vertical wind shear over the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean," the center noted.

Wind shear is a sharp difference in wind speed at different levels in the atmosphere. A strong wind shear reduces hurricanes by breaking up their ability to rise into the air, while less shear means they can climb and strengthen.

NOAA has been calling for an above-normal tropical storm. The forecast issued in August anticipates 14 to 20 named tropical storms. The hurricane season started June 1 and ends Nov. 30, but the peak period runs from August through October.

La Nina's cooling of the tropical Pacific is the opposite phase of the El Nino event, which is marked by unusually warm tropical water in that region. Each can take place every few years, usually with neutral conditions in between.

Both can impact climate worldwide by changing the direction and strength of winds and altering air pressure and rainfall patterns.

In addition to hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, the impact of La Nina can include above-average rain or snowfall in the Pacific Northwest and below-average precipitation in the Southwest and in portions of the middle and lower Mississippi Valley and Tennessee Valley.

In other regions, La Nina tends to suppress hurricane activity across the central and eastern tropical North Pacific and increases rainfall in Indonesia.

NOAA said its computer climate models disagree on how strong this La Nina will be, but all concur it will last at least through early 2011.

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Online: http://www.cpc.noaa.gov

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Four prisoners with links to al-Qaida being guarded by American troops escaped from a maximum-security prison in Baghdad and are still at large, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The breakout from Karkh Prison, formerly called Camp Cropper, is an embarrassment for the U.S. military, which has handed over control of all of the detention facilities it used to run to the Iraqi government. But at the request of the Iraqis, the U.S. has retained custody over some of the most dangerous prisoners, including those with ties to terrorist groups or Saddam Hussein's former regime.

U.S. troops found two detainees attempting to escape from the compound on Wednesday evening, the military said in a statement. When they conducted a sweep of the whole facility, they discovered that four other detainees were missing.

"U.S. Forces-Iraq, Iraqi Security Forces and the MoJ (Ministry of Justice) are working to apprehend these individuals," said Maj. Gen. Jerry Cannon, head of American detainee operations in Iraq. "This event is under investigation."

There was no details on how the escape happened, who was to blame or who the people were that escaped.

An Iraqi military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The Associated Press that the Americans informed them Thursday morning that four Iraqis being held by the U.S. had broken out of the facility, although it was not clear exactly when or how they escaped.

He said the men were linked to al-Qaida and facing the death penalty.

The top American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed the prison break during a high-level meeting Thursday, said an official with knowledge of the meeting.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Austin apologized to al-Maliki and said the people responsible for the escape would be held accountable.

An Iraqi security official said Iraqi troops had cordoned off the area near the prison - including the Jihad neighborhood and the airport, where the facility is located, as part of the search for the fugitives. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Jihad residents said there was an intense Iraqi military presence in the neighborhood, and locals were banned from driving.

On July 15, the U.S. military handed over about 1,500 prisoners to Iraqi authorities during the changing of the guard at Camp Cropper, but continued to hold on to some 200 detainees at the request of the Iraqi government. They are kept in a separate part of the prison dubbed Compound 5, and guarded by American soldiers.

The prisoners who remain in U.S custody are "former regime elements, al-Qaida operatives and very dangerous detainees," said Cannon during a previous interview. He said they would eventually be handed over to the Iraqi government before American forces pull out of the country entirely by the end of next year.

Thursday's escape is the second since the U.S. transferred custody of the detention facility to the Iraqis.

Just a week after the handover, four al-Qaida-linked detainees awaiting trial on terrorism charges escaped from the Iraqi section of the prison.

The $48 million complex has been used by U.S. forces since April 2003 and can hold up to 4,000 prisoners. It's now divided into six detainee compounds, and is manned by 700 Iraqi corrections officers and about 100 support staff.

The prison once held Saddam Hussein and other senior members of his regime.

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Associated Press writer Barbara Surk contributed to this report.

LONDON (AP) -- John Travolta was onto something. Women are most attracted to male dancers who have big, flamboyant moves similar to the actor's trademark style, British scientists say in a new study.

Kris McCarty and colleagues at Northumbria University and the University of Gottingen in Germany asked 19 men aged 18 to 35 who were not professional dancers to dance in a laboratory for one minute to a basic drum rhythm. They filmed the men's movements with a dozen cameras, and then turned those movements into computer-generated avatars so the study could focus on moves, not appearances.

Scientists then showed the dancing avatars to 37 women, who rated their skills on a scale of 1 to 7. According to the women, the best dancers were those who had a wide range of dance moves and focused on the head, neck and torso.

The research was published this week in the journal, Biology Letters, a publication of Britain's Royal Society. It was paid for by the German Research Foundation.

"In principle, it is possible to break down the motion patterns that are informative and attractive to women," said Rufus Johnstone, a reader in the evolution of animal behavior at Cambridge University. He was not connected to the research.

Johnstone said there were similarities between animal mating rituals and what happens in modern dance clubs.

"There are lots of cues females use when choosing a mate, like a peacock puffing out its tail," he said. "Dancing for humans could signal whether a male is fit because it requires the expenditure of a lot of energy."

Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University and one of the study's co-authors, said women may subconsciously judge how fit a man is by the fluidity of his dancing. He said their research was likely subjective and different cultures would have different measures for what constitutes good dancing.

Neave advised bad dancers to improve their core body moves.

"The movements around the head, neck and trunk were the most important," he said. "The good dancers had lots of different movements and used them with flair and creativity."

Johnstone said men who are bad dancers shouldn't despair.

"Among animals, courtship rituals are very important when there are very obvious physical displays," he said. "In humans, I suspect it is much more complicated and may come down to more than whether or not a man is a good dancer."

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Online:

http://www.rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Four prisoners with links to al-Qaida have escaped from the U.S.-controlled part of a maximum-security prison in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

The breakout from Karkh Prison, formerly called Camp Cropper, is an embarrassment for the U.S. military, which has handed over control of all of the detention facilities it used to run to the Iraqi government. But at the request of the Iraqis, the U.S. has retained custody over some of the most dangerous prisoners, including those with ties to terrorist groups or Saddam Hussein's former regime.

An Iraqi military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The Associated Press that the Americans informed them Thursday morning that four Iraqis being held by the U.S. had broken out of the prison, although it was not clear exactly when or how they escaped.

He said the men were linked to al-Qaida and facing the death penalty.

An American military spokesman, Col. Barry Johnson, confirmed there was an escape, but provided no details.

"We are working with Iraqi Security Forces to resolve this," he said. "Our first priority is recapturing the individuals involved."

On July 15, the U.S. military handed over about 1,500 prisoners to Iraqi authorities during the changing of the guard at Camp Cropper, but continued to hold onto some 200 detainees at the request of the Iraqi government. They are kept in a separate part of the prison dubbed Compound 5, and guarded by American soldiers.

Maj. Gen. Jerry Cannon, who is in charge of U.S. detainee centers in Iraq, previously described those prisoners who remain in the U.S custody as "former regime elements, al-Qaida operatives and very dangerous detainees." He said they would eventually be handed over to the Iraqi government before American forces pull out of the country entirely by the end of next year.

Thursday's escape is the second since the U.S. transferred custody of the detention facility to the Iraqis.

Just a week after the handover, four al-Qaida-linked detainees awaiting trial on terrorism charges escaped from the Iraqi section of the prison.

The $48-million complex has been used by U.S. forces since April 2003 and can hold up to 4,000 prisoners. It's now divided into six detainee compounds, and is manned by 700 Iraqi corrections officers and about 100 support staff.

The prison once held Saddam Hussein and other senior members of his regime.

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Associated Press writer Barbara Surk contributed to this report.