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Three tornadoes struck western Massachusetts on Wednesday according to the National Weather Service's (NWS) Taunton, Massachusetts office, the biggest and longest being an EF-3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale according to meteorologists at the agency. The EF-3 tornado was described by the NWS in a statement as a "very significant tornado" which "will be noted not only for its intensity, but also for the length of the continuous damage path". A tornado is considered an EF-3 when its winds exceed 135 mph (218 km/h). The tornado which began in the

Vanuatu, a small island nation in the Pacific, has denied recognizing Abkhazia as an independent nation. The announcement comes only days after it was reported that Vanuatu had signed an agreement to recognise Abkhazia. Abkhazia has been fighting to break away and gain independence from Georgia. So far only Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and another tiny island state, Nauru, have announced the recognition of Abkhazia. The permanent representative to the United Nations for Vanuatu, Donald Kalpokas, released a statement saying "I have asked my

Space Shuttle Endeavour landed for the final time at 2:34 a.m. EDT (0534 UTC) at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. Wednesday, marking the end of its nineteen-year operational career. The mission, STS-134, is the penultimate of the NASA Space Shuttle program; Atlantis is scheduled to fly the final mission in July. [[File:STS-134 Official Crew Photo.jpg|thumb|left|Official photo of Endeavour'''s final crew, taken in January 2010. ]] The commander of the mission, Mark Kelly, paid tribute to the spaceship shortly after touchdown, saying, "It's sad to

On Monday night, two Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan died in separate incidents. This brings the total death toll to 26 for Australians fighting in the 'war against terrorism'. These events have sparked renewed debates about the role Australians play in this region. Greens leader Bob Brown has called for the return of all troops by the end of this year. Lieutenant Marcus Case (27) died in a Chinook helicopter crash at the Tarin Kwot base in the Zabul Province. Any connection to the Taliban in this incident has been ruled out by Aust

A man claiming to have attached a bomb to his body has been arrested after a stand-off with police officers in a town in Hertfordshire, England. Police were notified of the incident at the Co-operative Bank on Market Street, Watford at approximately 1020 BST (0920 UTC) Thursday. A number of armed officers attended. Noises resembling bangs were heard at approximately 1320 BST (1220 UTC); the male suspect was placed under arrest at about 1345 BST (1245 UTC), just over three hours after the incident began. According to a spokeswoman for the polic

A group of Internet hackers, which refers to itself as Lulz Security or LulzSec, has claimed to have broken into servers for Sony entertainment websites and stolen in excess of one million items of personal details, including email addresses and passwords. Seventy-five thousand "music codes" and three-and-a-half million "music coupons" were also alleged broken into, according to a statement on their website. In a statement, LulzSec reported that, "[f]rom a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING" [sic]. Claiming that Sony had not encrypted da

Although prom may have taken place over two weeks ago at Maine's Sanford High School, the fact that students elected a gay couple as prom king and queen remains the talk of the local community. During the May 14 event, 17-year-old Christian Nelsen was named prom queen, running as a write-in candidate. One of Nelsen's friends, Holly Smith, spoke of the help they provided in getting him elected: "The day of prom, we went downstairs, and he was yelling 'Vote for Christian Nelsen!' And I was helping people spell his name, or telling them how to wr

YouTube on Thursday announced that a new section of its free online video editor is now hosting content released under Creative Commons licenses. Videos licensed under Creative Commons may be reused by anyone, including for commercial purposes, so long as the reusers credit the original creators of those videos. A software engineer at the video sharing company said that their video editor would hold 10,000 Creative Commons videos, and that they would be working with organizations like C-SPAN, Public.Resource.org, Voice of America, and Al Jaze

Fifteen years after the Winnipeg Jets left the province of Manitoba, Canada, an announcement on Tuesday made official what ice hockey fans have been anticipating: The National Hockey League's (NHL) Atlanta Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg. The Thrashers, who have been a target for relocation rumors amid the ownership struggles and financial losses, will leave Atlanta after eleven seasons there in the highest-level professional ice hockey league in North America. The deal, which was finalized early in the morning Tuesday, has just one step to cl

Ratko Mladić, a former Bosnian Serb general, is allegedly too ill to face trial for war crimes. According to his lawyer, 69-year-old Mladić will not survive to see the start of proceedings. Concerns for the health of Mladić come despite a Serbian judge having ruled him fit for extradition to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague only last Friday, a ruling which his lawyer seeks to appeal. “It was impossible to have a coherent conversation with him or to talk of his defence,” said lawyer Milos Saljic, after meeting with Mladić on Sunday.

The fourteenth Quiksilver Ceremonial Punta de Lobos Big Wave Invitational surf championship took place on Saturday in the Chilean city of Pichilemu, often called the "Capital of the Surf." In this year's competition, 24 surfers from countries such as South Africa, Peru, Chile, the United States, and Argentina participated in the championship, including Pichileminians Ramón Navarro and Cristian Merelló, and Hawaiian Köhl Christensen. The surfers competed for a US$20,000 prize. Background The Quiksilver Ceremonial Punta de Lobos has been a tradi

The University of Chicago's Joe and Rika Mansueto Library was shut down by a power outage for a short time on Saturday, preventing library personnel from providing full services to its patrons. The US$81 million library, which opened May 16, includes a 180-seat reading room under a 691-panel glass dome. Five stories underground, a system of five cranes retrieves books sorted into bins, carrying a maximum of about 3.5 million volumes. As of 3:50 p.m. CDT, the automated storage and retrieval system, along with staff computers at the circulation