The former graduate student accused of carrying out the Colorado cinema shooting that killed 12 was being treated by a psychiatrist at the university where he studied, court papers revealed today.

A university has said it received a suspicious package, but would not confirm the contents or whether the sender was a former student accused of killing 12 people in the Colorado cinema shooting.

The man accused of killing a dozen people in a Colorado movie theatre during a showing of the new Batman film made his first appearance in court, sitting silently in a red jailhouse jumpsuit and with his hair dyed bright red.

Police say Batman shooting suspect James Holmes is refusing to co-operate with authorities.

A VAST Earth-like ocean covered a third of the surface of Mars 3.5 billion years ago, research suggests.

Authorities evacuated hundreds of people from villages in southern Chile after a snowcapped volcano considered dormant for thousands of years erupted, sending minor earthquakes rippling through the region.

SCIENTISTS fear global warming has passed an ominous tipping point after Nasa satellite data showed the already relentless melting of the Arctic increased greatly during the northern hemisphere’s hot summer months.

The North Pole could be free of ice during the summer by 2040 thanks to the dramatic effects of global warming, a new scientific study has warned.

The DNA mismatch between John Mark Karr and evidence in the JonBenet Ramsey murder was a setback for prosecutors, but they promised to continue searching for the six-year-old beauty queen’s killer.

MOST Americans knew JonBenet Ramsey only in death — as the blonde-haired little girl in the pink cowgirl outfit, bouncing across the stage with a million-dollar smile.

An American expatriate school teacher said publicly today he was with JonBenet Ramsey when she died in what he called “an accident", a stunning admission after a decade without answers in the six-year-old’s murder.

The chief of the University of Colorado’s flagship campus has called on the school to sack a professor who compared some World Trade Centre victims to a Nazi war criminal and faces allegations of academic misconduct.

NEW satellite observations show that sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster while air temperatures in the region are rising sharply, scientists say.

New satellite observations show that sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster while air temperatures in the region are rising sharply, scientists say.

December’s great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake – the most powerful in more than 40 years and the trigger of a devastating tsunami – shook the ground everywhere on Earth’s surface, scientists have found.

THOUSANDS of people in northern India braved a cold winter’s night on Saturday to ring temple bells and pray for a miracle after the space shuttle Columbia exploded on re-entry with an Indian astronaut on board.

A US geologist says the Himalayan region could be struck by worse quakes than last week's 7.7-magnitude disaster.