Humanity’s claim to uniqueness just suffered a major setback: scientists reported that a newly discovered ancient species related to humans also appeared to bury its dead.

A fossil find adds another twig to the human evolutionary tree, giving further evidence that the well-known “Lucy” species had company in what is now Ethiopia.

Straight into a new year and it’s just as we left off in 2014 with Irish horticulture getting stronger and stronger.

A US company that has flown unmanned capsules to the Space Station unveiled a spacecraft designed to ferry up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

A US grand jury has brought espionage charges against five Chinese military officials for allegedly targeting six US companies and stealing trade secrets, publicly accusing China of cyber-spying for the first time.

Multiple births are increasingly the result of drugs given to women to make them produce eggs – not from using multiple embryos from IVF, or lab-dish fertilisation, new research shows.

A stunningly well-preserved skull from 1.8 million years ago offers new evidence that early man was a single species with a vast array of different looks, researchers said.

TWO incomplete, sun-whitened human skeletons lie spoon-fashion beneath a drought-stunted palo verde tree in the Arizona desert.

The Taoiseach will deliver a message that Ireland is making progress towards exiting the bailout when he meets US President Barack Obama in the White House today.

The Taoiseach and Tánaiste are in Washington today for high-level meetings with business and political leaders.

The Taoiseach has become the first international leader to visit Freedom Tower — the under-construction building on the site of the Twin Towers which came down in the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

US president Barack Obama was officially sworn in yesterday ahead of today’s ceremonial inauguration, an event which is expected to attract well short of the 2m citizens who attended the groundbreaking occasion four years ago.

Doctors treating US secretary of state Hillary Clinton for a blood clot said today they were confident she would make a full recovery, after locating the damage.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sustained a concussion last week after becoming extremely dehydrated and fainting while suffering from a stomach virus, the State Department said.

AN UPSTATE New Yorker from Kerry has launched her campaign to become the first Irish-born Congresswoman in the US House of Representatives.

TARA SINCLAIR is a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University.

A SHRINKING brain may be the price that has to be paid for being human, a study has found.

WAVING American flags, thousands flooded to the White House in spontaneous celebrations after the death of Osama bin Laden.

Americans gathered in jubilant crowds to cheer, sing and applaud early today after their president announced that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Americans gathered in jubilant crowds to cheer, sing and applaud early today after their president announced that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Osama bin Laden has been killed in a helicopter raid on a mansion in Pakistan.

Scores of football fans were killed as they watched the World Cup final on TV by two al-Qaida-linked suicide bombers in Uganda.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney has been admitted to the hospital after experiencing discomfort, the latest health scare for the 69-year-old Republican leader who has a long history of heart disease.

A SPACECRAFT designed to rocket wealthy tourists into space as early as 2011 was unveiled yesterday in what backers of the venture hope will signal a new era in aviation history.

NASA is charged with spotting most of the asteroids that pose a threat to Earth, but doesn’t have the money to complete the job.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama looked set to engage in a heated debate tonight as the former First Lady tried to get her presidential campaign back on track.

Barack Obama would need a “foreign policy instruction manual” to keep the US safe, Hillary Clinton suggested today.

Historians will today seek the release of US grand jury records in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, whose espionage trial for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union became a defining moment in the Cold War.

Nasa may be going to the same old moon with a ship that looks a lot like a 1960s Apollo capsule, but the space agency said it is going to do something dramatically different this time: stay there.

THE US Government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, and even then chaos might ensue.

Astronauts today gave the space shuttle a four-and-a-half hour inspection using cameras on the orbiter’s robotic arm early to see if its heat shield was damaged by a mysterious object that apparently floated off the spacecraft.

The US' prisons are becoming major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists, but states and local authorities are too cash-strapped to prevent or monitor recruiting, a new report says today.

The US is imposing a ban on arms sales to Venezuela because of what it claims is a lack of support by President Hugo Chavez’s leftist government for counterterrorism efforts, the US state department said tonight.

Now that a US jury has delivered a verdict that al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, his lawyers face an uphill battle as they try to save a client who apparently wants to die.

ACADEMICS on both sides of the Atlantic are now openly calling for the resignation of Government chief science advisor Dr Barry McSweeney, who is embroiled in continuing controversy over the origins of a doctorate he received in America.

US intelligence agencies did not anticipate they would know in advance about any successful coup against Saddam Hussein, according to documents analysing the situation in Iraq over the past 25 years.

NASA hopes to return astronauts to the moon by 2018, nearly a half-century after men last walked the lunar surface, by using a distinctly retro combination of space shuttle and Apollo rocket parts.

More than five years after filing suit, US federal prosecutors are wrapping up their groundbreaking racketeering case against major cigarette makers, accused of conspiring for decades to mislead the public about the health risks of smoking.

Republican and Democratic lawyers converged on Ohio today for a potential new overtime presidential court fight, with the focus this time on tens of thousands of uncounted ballots cast by people who would otherwise have been turned away from the polls.

VOTERS grappled with partisan challenges to their registrations, broken equipment and other troubles yesterday as legions of lawyers, election-rights activists and computer scientists watched for signs of voter disenfranchisement.

US polling places experienced scattered problems today as legions of lawyers, election-rights activists and computer scientists watched for any trouble that could disenfranchise voters.