North Korean, Russian, United States and South Korean delegates discussing ways to scrap North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme returned to the main talks venue late on Wednesday, fuelling speculation they would meet overnight to try to agree on basic principles for ending the three-year stand-off.
It is an unusual spat, to say the least: four places in Scotland all vying to be the recognised home of someone not even due to be born for another 200-plus years. Nonetheless, a spat has broken out over boasting rights to fictional <i>Star Trek</i> engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott following the death last month of the actor who played him.
A Florida man confessed to a murder that never happened, hoping it would persuade his wife to leave him, the <i>Ocala Star Banner</i> reported on Wednesday. Teddy Akin (28) told his wife he had killed a hitchhiker and stolen his wallet, and later repeated the same story to investigators after police arrested him.
The 250-million-year-old galesaurus on Annelise Crean’s workbench at the South African Museum is a superbly prepared fossil, its tracery of delicate off-white bones standing out from a matrix of fine grey sandstone. But where the dusty eye sockets should be, there is a surprise: the creature has protuberant, glistening and definitely not prehistoric brown eyeballs.
President Thabo Mbeki told university vice-chancellors of his deep dissatisfaction with tertiary education and demanded a ”short-term emergency plan” to remedy its failure to meet the country’s ”social and economic” needs. The message is conveyed in a document co-written by Mbeki, Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena.
The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that organises the development of the Firefox Web browser said on Wednesday it has formed a corporate subsidiary, not to make money but to better focus its activities. Mozilla will work mainly on developing and delivering free software products such as the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail program.
Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva is the undisputed queen of women’s pole vault and this season became the first female to go over five metres. The 23-year-old from Volgograd has set her targets even higher and now plans on jumping 5,50m.
The European Union warned Iran on Tuesday that it would end two years of negotiations over nuclear projects if Tehran fulfils threats to end its freeze on the enrichment of uranium. A United States intelligence estimate on Iran concluded that it could be 10 years before Tehran had sufficient material to arm a nuclear warhead.
The collapse of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica in 2002 has no precedent in the past 11 000 years, according to a study to be published on Thursday that points the finger at global warming. Measuring about 3 250 square kilometres in area, the Larsen B iceshelf broke away from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, eventually disintegrating into giant icebergs.
The symbols of Ukraine’s orange revolution last year have been registered as profitable trademarks in the name of the eldest son of the revolution’s leader, Viktor Yushchenko. Questions are now being asked as to how much money these highly popular logos have generated for the Yushchenko family.