A pair of Chinese blogs maintained by a banned Tibetan writer have been shut down in an apparent attempt to block her distributing her work online, French monitoring group Reporters sans Frontières said on Tuesday. Attempts to connect to the blogs on Tuesday were returned with a message saying they did not exist.
Ignoring growing calls for a ceasefire, Israel blasted eastern and southern Lebanon from the air on Tuesday and prepared to advance deeper into Lebanese territory to push Hezbollah guerrillas back from the border. Three weeks after the war unexpectedly erupted, one Israeli minister said its armed forces needed at least another 10 days to complete its offensive.
Rare, mother-of-pearl coloured clouds caused by extreme weather conditions above Antarctica are a possible indication of global warming, Australian scientists said on Tuesday. Known as nacreous clouds, the spectacular formations showing delicate wisps of colours were photographed in the sky over an Australian meteorological base at Mawson Station on July 25.
British families are buying houses and settling down in the picturesque region of Dryanovo in central Bulgaria as local inhabitants escape abroad in search of work. Under Bulgarian law, only foreign enterprises, as opposed to individuals, can buy land so the Davises founded a company called Outdoor Adventure and they hope to set up an adventure sports school and have horses for hire.
Bombs killed at least 40 people on Tuesday, half of them Iraqi soldiers, in the latest blow to the new government’s efforts to inspire confidence in the country’s security forces. The most dramatic blast was a roadside bomb attack on a bus filled with soldiers on a road between Tikrit and Baiji north of Baghdad. At least 20 of them were killed.
South Africa on Tuesday tried to unravel the mystery that has confounded the cricket world for years — how to stop Muttiah Muralitharan from taking wickets. The search drew a blank although Proteas coach Mickey Arthur insisted his batsmen had started to play the Sri Lankan spin wizard ”better and better”.
ABC Television Network pulled a miniseries about the Holocaust it was developing with Mel Gibson’s production company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, quoting an unidentified representative for the network. Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving early on Friday and was reported to have launched into a tirade against Jews.
Badminton players in the United States have become the latest group to suffer the consequences of bird flu, claiming its spread is fuelling a shortage of top-quality, goose-feather shuttlecocks. They say that bird flu’s progress around the globe — and the resultant cull of millions of geese — has dramatically reduced the quantity of feathers available and pushed up the price of the premium shuttlecocks.
<i>Terminator</i> star Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday gave Tony Blair a few suggestions for when he says "Hasta la vista" to being British prime minister. The Hollywood actor, now the Republican Governor of California, was asked if he had any tips for Blair, with whom he signed a partnership agreement to tackle global warming.
Denmark’s train network on Monday was thrown into chaos by a pigeon that alighted on a high-tension electricity wire, causing a short-circuit that brought services to a standstill throughout the country, the national rail company (DSB) said.