Seventeen killed in plane disaster
SEVENTEEN people have died after a passenger plane caught fire as it was landing and skidded off the runway in the north-east of Iran.
Another 19 people were injured in the crash in which the cockpit also caught fire. There were 153 passengers on the Russian-made Ilyushin plane. On July 15, an Iranian passenger plane crashed soon after take off, killing 168 people on board.
Father jailed for punching referee
A father who punched a referee in the face at his son's junior football match was yesterday jailed. Richard Norman (33) of Treboeth, near Swansea, south Wales, ran up and hit the referee from behind after he abandoned an ill-natured under-14s clash in injury time.
Norman was jailed for 18 months. The single punch was struck with such force that the referee needed a total of 16 stitches to the face.
Lotto luck runs out for couple
A couple who found a winning lottery ticket and cashed it in have been ordered by an English court to pay back half of the prize money to the woman who bought it. Dorothy McDonagh (61) dropped the £1 daily play ticket on the floor of her local Co-op store in Swindon on October 20 last year.
Michael Stacey (43) and his wife Amanda (34) found the ticket, cashed it and then spent half of the winning £30,000 prize money on clearing their debts.
Cycling champ's Tour butterflies
Seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will cross the line in Paris at the end of this year's race on a bike decorated by Damien Hirst with hundreds of dead butterflies.
The cancer-surviving american is taking part in the race after a three-year break and has been riding custom-painted bikes to raise awareness of his cancer-fighting foundation.
Survival hopes for pandas after birth
China announced the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, indicating fresh hope for the notoriously poor breeders. Panda females have only three days a year in which they can conceive.
Female panda You You (pronounced Yo Yo) gave birth to the new cub yesterday at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre in south-western Sichuan. It is You You's third baby, and the tenth panda cub born at Wolong this year.
