Links

The European Space Agency is moving rapidly to develop its next Mars rover. It already has one vehicle set to go to the Red Planet in 2022, but is now pushing ahead with a second robot, which will depart in 2026.

A giant Galápagos tortoise whose legendary libido has been credited with saving his species from extinction has officially entered retirement.Diego and 14 other male tortoises have returned to their native Española, one of Ecuador's Galápagos islands.

Scientists using highly sensitive vibration detectors have decoded honeybee queens' "tooting and quacking" duets in the hive. Worker bees make new queens by sealing eggs inside special cells with wax and feeding them royal jelly.

Scientists have identified a green light in the atmosphere of Mars. The glow comes from oxygen atoms when they're excited by sunlight.

For almost half a century, Benedictine monks in Herefordshire dutifully logged the readings of a rain gauge on the grounds of Belmont Abbey, recording the quantity of rain that had fallen each month without fail.

Europe's Solar Orbiter (SolO) probe makes its first close pass of the Sun on Monday, tracking by at a distance of just over 77 million km. SolO was launched in February and is on a mission to understand what drives our star's dynamic behaviour.

Inside the palatial walls of Belgium's Africa Museum stand statues of Leopold II - each one a monument to the king whose rule killed as many as 10 million Africans. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town".

One of Uganda's best known mountain gorillas, Rafiki, has been killed. Four men have been arrested, and they face a life sentence or a fine of $5.4m (£4.3m) if found guilty of killing an endangered species.

John Cleese has laid into the "cowardly and gutless" BBC after an episode of Fawlty Towers was temporarily removed from a BBC-owned streaming platform. In it, the Major uses highly offensive language, and Cleese's Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war".

An episode of Fawlty Towers famous for coining the phrase “Don’t mention the war!” has become the latest classic British TV programme to be taken down from a BBC-owned streaming service, as broadcasters continue to conduct a reappraisal of old content.

The attacker, a 22-year-old man, was a former pupil who had broken into the school in the town of Vrutky. Police said they had later shot dead the attacker and the situation was under control.

Statues of Confederate leaders and the explorer Christopher Columbus have been torn down in the US, as pressure grows on authorities to remove monuments connected to slavery and colonialism. Statues of Columbus in Boston, Miami and Virginia have been vandalised.

Tears streamed down her face, as Yannes told George their relationship was no longer working out. Along the promenade, the 28-year-old from Hong Kong heaved a sigh of relief and slowly walked back home, with her heart broken.

You might have started seeing more of them on streets and in parks, gliding past you with a faint electric hum. As lockdowns lift and people avoid public transport, e-scooters – stand-up, electrically powered scooters – are becoming more popular.

The first Arab space mission to Mars is preparing to lift off within weeks. Fuelling is due to begin next week. It will take seven months to travel the 493 million km (308 million miles) to reach Mars and begin its orbit, sending back ground-breaking new data about its climate and atmosphere.

For centuries, scientists have obsessed over a primordial blob that can shape-shift, clone itself, and live indefinitely.

Dreams have fascinated philosophers and artists for centuries. They have been seen as divine messages, a way of unleashing creativity and, since the advent of psychoanalysis in the 19th Century, the key to understanding our unconscious.

Imagine knowing every plate of food you eat could be your last. That breakfast, lunch and dinner are potentially deadly. And you have to eat them anyway.

Whenever I tell this to people, they respond with dramatic incredulity. That can’t be right! Well, it certainly doesn’t feel right. It feels as if heterosexuality has always “just been there.”

When I arrive at Zwolle prison in the Netherlands, it’s initially hard to imagine that the quiet building, situated next to a fast-food establishment and a garden centre, houses 400 or so inmates – including those with some of the most severe psychiatric disorders among the prison population.

On 3 July 2014, Misty Mayo boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles. Desperate to escape her hometown of Modesto in Stanislaus County, 300 miles north in California’s Central Valley, the 41-year-old thought the 4th of July fireworks in LA would be the perfect antidote.

My experience of testing positive for coronavirus antibodies clearly struck a nerve. Two weeks ago I wrote that I'd had no recent symptoms but dismissed a bout of pneumonia in January because it was weeks before the first confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the UK.

You’re not likely to hear about this from your doctor, but fake medical treatment can work amazingly well.

The bizarre Home Office decision to send the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux to Wormwood Scrubs marks a new departure in penal policy.