For readers of Le Petit Prince - in which a tiny ruler journeys through space and discovers the secrets of human frailty, then dies and is reborn - it will be a somewhat prosaic act of reclamation.. Some think he was shot down by German artillery, others believe he passed outwhen flying too high.Now Comex is launching a full-scale recovery operation with planes and boats scouring the coast where he was thought to have died. He wrote about the early days of the Aeropostale - the flying postal service between Europe and South America - and a mystical voyage, with the pilot as both leader of men and standard-bearer of humanism.Nobody knows what happened to St-Exupery in 1944. Mr Bianco contacted the engineering company Comex, who rang a US research firm, who in turn found St-Exupery's old publishing house and called Aerospatiale, which made the plane.St-Exupery, born in 1900, was an aviation pioneer who used the image of the pilot as a transcendental modern hero in his novels Southern Mail, Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars and Flight to Arras. "I broke it with a hammer and discovered a silver bracelet inside."As well as St-Exupery's name, those of Consuelo, his Argentine wife, and his American publishers, Reynal and Hitchcock, were inscribed on the bracelet.

Also found were pieces of debris from the Lightning P38 plane in which he disappeared while flying a solo reconnaissance mission over the South of France in 1944. "I found a piece of airplane in my net," said local fisherman Jean-Claude Bianco. A bracelet was discovered off the coast of Marseilles, inscribed with the name of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the pilot, metaphysician and author of the classic children's fairy-tale Le Petit Prince. A SHINING clue to the disappearance of one of France's important inter-war writers was fished out of the sea last week. Some have been revived after lying dormant for more than 100 years in the dried moss collections of museums. Their extreme hardiness is due to their ability to undergo complete dehydration, where they entirely lose their body fluids and survive in low-oxygen conditions without ill-effects."Terrestrial tardigrades become immobile and shrink into a form known as the 'tun' state when the humidity decreases," said Kunihiro Seki and Masato Toyoshima, from Kanagawa University."In this state they can survive extreme temperatures, as low as minus 253C or as high as 151C, as well as exposure to a vacuum or to X-rays."The scientists subjected the tardigrades in their active and dehydrated states to a range of very high pressures for 20 minutes at a time, using a special fluid called perfluorocarbon to prevent the tun tardigrades from rehydrating.They found the dehydrated tardigrades could survive pressures three times higher than the pressure which killed the active forms of the animal.Understanding how the tardigrade is able to survive extremes of humidity, pressure and temperature may help to develop new preservation methods, such as long-term storage of human organs for transplant operations, the Japanese scientists said..

A TINY animal no bigger than a pinhead that lives in roof gutters and between the cracks of paving stones has been rated by scientists as among the toughest life forms on Earth. Tardigrades, which are more commonly known as "water bears" because of their chubby appearance under a microscope, can survive pressures, temperatures and radiation exposure that quickly kill all other animals. In their active state, tardigrades walk around on eight stumpy legs looking for food and are covered in what appears to be armoured plates.Japanese scientists report in the journal Nature that tardigrades can survive pressures that are 6,000 times greater than sea-level barometer readings - more than twice the pressure that destroys the vast majority of the most rugged bacteria.The capacity of tardigrades to survive extreme conditions is renowned. The judgment that the former dictator was entitled to immunity as a former head of state was "an erroneous statement of international law", said Christopher Hill of Amnesty International.. He was taken to a military barracks, then a prison ship, and died from terrible wounds on his way to a naval hospital. He was buried in a mass grave that was later obliterated by a road, when bodies that were uncovered were pushed off a cliff into the sea.The Spanish case is likely to decide the outcome of the separate extradition requests for the general from the authorities in Switzerland and Sweden, as well as an application lodged with a Paris court by a Chilean exile, two of whose brothers were murdered by the Pinochet regime.Human rights groups meanwhile branded the ruling as "outrageous", saying it only underscored the need for the United Nation's International Criminal Court to be operating as soon as possible.

What's the point of him remaining in detention if he's immune from the legal process? I hope this doesn't contaminate the decision of our National Court."Eleven judges in Spain's National Court meet this afternoon to decide whether or not to approve Judge Garzon's extradition request A decision is expected before the weekend. The meeting is bound to be overshadowed by yesterday's High Court decision.Pat Bennetts, whose brother, Michael Woodward, was a British priest tortured and killed in Chile in September 1973, said yesterday at her home in Spain that she was "very disappointed" by the ruling: "Anybody who had a victim close to them would be.""How could you think Pinochet should be immune as head of state? You couldn't possibly deny that he was responsible for so many murders," she said.Mr Woodward was working with the poor in the shipyards of Valparaiso when he was picked up by a naval patrol in the early hours of 22 September 1973. The important thing is that Pinochet remains in detention, because that means he is still at the disposal of the legal process."Marcela Pradena, a Chilean lawyer who has been campaigning in Madrid on behalf of General Pinochet's victims ever since she was detained and tortured in Chile 25 years ago, described the ruling as "terrible, the worst thing that could happen, the decision guarantees his impunity. This was established by the Nuremberg trial and ratified by the UN in 1946."Mr Garces denied he was disappointed at the British ruling: "This is a very complex legal matter, and it is usual that controversial decisions are subject to appeal. But it is an international norm incorporated into international law that there is no immunity for heads of state or government from crimes against humanity. The High Court decision means the warrant was invalid, but the general remains in detention until appeals are heard.Joan Garces, one of the chief lawyers helping Judge Garzon, said yesterday: "I cannot comment on the ruling as I do not yet know its legal basis.