Robin McKie

An official of the dissident group that launched an ambush on the Togo football team has expressed his "condolences".

The fate of five babies, born on different continents, will be dominated by the shifting weather patterns their parents are starting to confront.

David Smith and Stephanie Wolters look at conflicts in the continent's war-torn countries.

Scientists have developed a revolutionary vaccine that could protect billions of people against the world's deadliest disease: malaria.

Ancient bones from the city of Jericho are to be used by British scientists to develop treatments for tuberculosis.

Space engineers were on Saturday making their last nervous preparations for the landing of their Phoenix probe near the north pole of Mars next Sunday. The spacecraft -- designed to look for reservoirs of water and ice in the Martian arctic -- has been built using duplicate parts left over from two previous space missions.

David Budzinski was riding in a four-wheel drive across the Kruger National Park in South Africa in September 2004. His group spotted a few lions and a herd of buffalo near a watering hole, but it wasn't long before the lions charged the herd, singling out a buffalo calf. What followed has become the stuff of internet legend.

It was one small step for man, but could be one giant leap in the career of an actor. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, is to be the subject of a Hollywood biopic. The only question now is: Who is worthy of filling the space boots of the 20th-century icon who ''came in peace for all mankind''?

Across the world, a food crisis is now unfolding with frightening speed. Hundreds of millions of men and women who, only a few months ago, were able to provide food for their families have found rocketing prices of wheat, rice and cooking oil have left them facing the imminent prospect of starvation.

The amount of debris orbiting the Earth has reached a critical level. Old satellite parts, solar panels and the odd astronaut's lost glove now pose serious risks to space missions. A report from the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety is calling for stringent international laws to be brought in to avert a tragedy.

It took Kim Peek just more than an hour to read Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. Four months later, when asked to give the name of the book's Russian radio operator, Peek quoted the entire relevant passage. Studies of Peek's abilities are being used by scientists to shed intriguing light on the human mind.

The world's most sophisticated -- and expensive -- car will begin its historic journey today, when it is blasted towards Mars on an American Delta II rocket.