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Officials in Iraq have announced the arrest in Anbar of a man suspected of abducting and killing all fifteen members of the national taekwondo team. The fifteen sportsmen were ambushed in May 2006. The team was traveling in convoy towards Jordan to attend a training camp when they were stopped by gunmen. The skeletal remains of thirteen of them were recovered near the highway the following year and the other two remain missing. The attack occurred near Khalidiyah between Fallujah and Ramadi. US forces and Iraqi commandos made the joint arrest

On Monday, computer company Apple announced that they had had two billion downloads from the iTunes App Store. The 1 billionth application, or app, was downloaded in April 2009 and the 1.5 billionth app was downloaded in July. This announcement means that in the space of just five months, the number of apps downloaded from the App Store has doubled. There are currently over 85,000 apps available on the App Store. In comparison to this number, rival platform Google Android has roughly 10,000 apps, whereas Palm Pre has less. There are about 50

Two powerful suicide attacks struck different areas of northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, apparently targeting the country's security forces. In the first attack, a bomber killed at least six people and wounded more than 60 others outside a police station in Bannu. Shortly thereafter, in Peshawar's commercial district, another attacker blew himself up outside a bank affiliated with the Pakistani army, killing ten people and wounding more than 70 others. Authorities in Bannu said the suicide bomber exploded a small truck full of explosives,

Geelong defeated St. Kilda by 12 points in the 2009 Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Both sides advanced after winning their Qualifying and Preliminary Finals. The AFL finals series groups the best eight teams into two groups - the first through fourth and fifth through eighth. The winners of the Qualifying Finals (first v fourth, second v third) get a week off, the losers play the winners of the Elimination Finals (Fifth v eighth, sixth v seventh). Australian rules football is played on a f

Afghan officials are recounting a sample of the votes from last month's disputed presidential election, in an effort to resolve weeks of uncertainty about the outcome. Preliminary results from the August 20 vote show the incumbent candidate, president Hamid Karzai, in first place, with 54%. But if enough votes are found to be fraudulent, and his tally falls below 50%, he will face a run-off against his chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. To speed up the recount process, the United Nations-backed panel investigating the fr

Eight children were taken to hospital on Friday after being struck by a car in Suffolk, England. 20 schoolchildren were out on an educational trip through the village of Worlingham in Suffolk, England at roughly 14:00 BST with a teacher and an assistant to supervise. They were being introduced to the local area when a driver lost control of a Nissan Note and ploughed into the group of children, who were eight and nine years old. The accident occurred near a church where a funeral was taking place. Eight pupils had to be taken to hospital. Tw

The president of Russia's Chechnya region has launched a libel action against the head of Russian rights group Memorial. Ramzan Kadyrov is seeking ten million rubles (£207,800) from Oleg Orlov who accused him of involvement in the kidnap and murder of another rights activist. Orlov has told the court he did not mean direct involvement, but "political guilt" when he laid responsibility for Natalya Estemirova's slaying upon Kadyrov. "I didn't speak of his involvement, I spoke of his guilt. These are two different things," Orlov testified. Kadyr

Five boys have been charged with raping a 15-year-old girl in a park in Greater Manchester, England. The boys, who are aged 13–17 years old, are alleged to have attacked the schoolgirl in Queen's Park close to Bolton town centre in the early hours of Thursday morning. Police were called at around 01:00 BST on that day. The boys were arrested on Friday and charged on Saturday morning. The alleged offenders are due to appear in Bolton Magistrates' Court later today. They have all been remanded in custody. The girl has been receiving counselling

A dust storm has hit Sydney, Australia, the second such storm in a matter of days. People awoke to find the sky red and yellow after winds stirred up dust and began to blow it across the greater Sydney region. According to the New South Wales Department of Environment, the storm was estimated to have started at around 4:00 a.m.–5:00 local time. Long droughts in Australia recently have made the soil very dry. The new storm has not caused any damage and was not as severe as the one that struck the area earlier in the week. People who have di

The Iranian government has announced that the nation will be participating in a missile defense test which could take place as early as tomorrow. According to the IRNA, Iran's official news agency, the test is an annual exercise aimed to "maintain and develop" defense capabilities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The exercise is named 'Great Prophet 4' and will involve shooting a variety of live missiles at targets. Reports say the drill will be conducted in several unknown locations and will last for several days. The exercise also falls

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California have confirmed the existence of the superheavy element 114 — otherwise known as ununquadium — ten years after its first observation by Russian scientists. Containing 114 protons, this is the heaviest element detected in multiple laboratories and another step towards the theorised island of stability, the "holy grail" of such research. The elusive element was first detected in 1998 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, when a plutonium target was bombarded wi

A petrol pump at a Tesco supermarket became extremely popular with local customers due to an underpricing error. The supermarket filling pump in the village of Milton near Cambridge, England, starting dispensing fuel for per litre (equivalent to US$2.64 per gallon (US) ) for six whole days. Because of the fault, this meant that customers would be paying £20 for 50 litres of fuel instead of the usual price, £54. Six days after the fault was first noticed by customers, a mechanic fixed the pump on Thursday. It wasn't until the Tesco staff hear