For nearly five months, he led his pursuers a merry dance, swimming nearly half a kilometre across open sea to a new home, laughing at the traps and the poisoned baits and the baying hounds bent on killing him. When the annals of rodentology are written -- as they surely must -- this rat deserves an honoured place.

Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world. The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, Architeuthis dux has long nourished myth and literature, and until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare.

The UN climate summit hit major turbulence on Monday when developing nations walked out of key negotiations and China accused the West of trickery.

World farm monitors on Wednesday declared that a cattle-killing virus that has been a curse through the ages has been wiped out.

On June 5 1981 epidemiologists reported a baffling event: five young gay men in Los Angeles, all previously healthy, had fallen ill with pneumonia.

For nearly five months, he led his pursuers a merry dance, swimming nearly half a kilometre across open sea to a new home, laughing at the traps and the poisoned baits and the baying hounds bent on killing him. When the annals of rodentology are written -- as they surely must -- this rat deserves an honoured place.

Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world. The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, Architeuthis dux has long nourished myth and literature, and until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare.

The UN climate summit hit major turbulence on Monday when developing nations walked out of key negotiations and China accused the West of trickery.