'Garden of Eden' Recovering

"A restoration project has revived nearly half Iraq's marshlands, which were drained by Saddam Hussein to punish the country's restive Shiite Muslim majority, the United Nations has said.

The project, which is funded by the Japanese and Italian governments, is aimed at restoring the traditions of the swampy southern region, which may have been the the Bible's Garden of Eden.

The U.N. Environment Program, which manages the project, announced in Tokyo Thursday that satellite data showed close to 50 percent of the marshlands had been restored."