Nasa scientists are preparing the coolest, strangest and most sensitive experiment ever launched, to answer a question that has teased physicists for 88 years — does the Earth really twist space into a kink as it spins?
The last message Mike Bloss sent from Iraq was earnest but optimistic. The ex-paratrooper and the electrical engineers he was guarding were surrounded by gunmen. Escape seemed improbable. And yet the Welsh security guard sounded confident that he could shoot a way out.
US troops recapture central Iraq town
Chaos, killing and kidnap
For years his films have been revered as painful explorations of the human psyche, imitated by directors from Woody Allen to Wes Craven, and parodied mercilessly for their sepulchral tone. Now even Ingmar Bergman has admitted that watching his notoriously bleak movies — which earned him the nickname ”the gloomy Swede” — makes him miserable.
Zimbabwean miner Marco Mambo ran a superbly-judged race to win the Old Mutual Two Oceans 56km ultra race in 3hrs 07min 40sec — the fourth fastest in the race’s history — in wet conditions around the Cape Peninsula on Saturday.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi denounced terrorists’ threats to burn three hostages alive as ”cowardly” and vowed on Friday that Japanese troops would stay in Iraq despite tearful pleas from the captives’ families and calls by protesters to bow to the gunmen’s demands.
With macabre scenes of self-flagellation and live crucifixion, a normally quiet Philippines village on Friday witnessed a bloody spectacle as it staged its own Passion of the Christ. The annual Good Friday ritual at Cutud, 70km north of Manila, attracts thousands of tourists and Filipinos for what is seen as the ultimate atonement for Easter — despite criticism from the Catholic Church.
A video found by police in the apartment where members of the radical Islamist group behind the Madrid train bombings blew themselves up appeared to confirm they had been planning fresh attacks. In the video, three heavily armed people read a statement in the name of the Al Mufti Brigades and Ansar al-Qaeda giving Spain one week ”to leave Muslim lands”.
The African Union (AU) on Friday welcomed a ceasefire deal reached by Khartoum and rebels from the western Darfur region and urged the international community to deliver aid to some 770 000 people affected by the conflict. The war has claimed at least 10 000 lives and displaced about 670 000 others inside Sudan and a further 100 000 have fled into eastern Chad.
![]()
Tony Leon’s comments on the Western Cape during a Democratic Alliance rally on Thursday were ”utter rubbish”, the New National Party said on Friday. Speaking at the DA’s final Western Cape election rally, Leon said that since the ANC-NNP alliance had taken over, the province had developed ”the worst and the fastest-growing crime situation in the country”.
Special Report: Elections 2004