A study of the crater left by the meteorite which many believe caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65-million years ago is being opposed by activists who fear it could prove fatal to marine life. The month-long study off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico involves researchers from Cambridge University and Imperial College London, and United States and Mexican universities.

Hong Kong police are searching for a man who handed out HK$1 000 (R753) notes to passers-by on a busy street, a spokesperson said Thursday. The man, soberly dressed and in his forties, is known to have handed out at least HK$7 000 in the city’s crowded Mongkok district, but officers believe he gave over more.

The United States investigators searching for Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction have given up the hunt and left Iraq with an appeal to the Pentagon for the release of several Iraqi scientists still being questioned, it was reported on Wednesday. Charles Duelfer, who led the Iraq Survey Group, has returned to the US and will deliver a final report in the spring.

The battle over attempts to introduce a version of creationism into the curriculum of United States schools has become focused on a small town in Pennsylvania. Biology teachers at a high school in Dover have rejected the instructions of local officials to read a statement in class on Thursday questioning the theory of evolution.

The international tribunal for Rwanda was criticised on Wednesday for its failure to charge Tutsis suspected of killing Hutus in the 1994 genocide. Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian historian and expert witness on the genocide, said he would stop cooperating with the tribunal because no Tutsis from the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebel army had been indicted.