Health authorities went on high alert today following Iraq’s first reported case of the deadly bird flu virus, culling hundreds of thousands of birds and warning farmers across the country to inspect their flocks.

A computer software error likely sent a Russian spacecraft into a rare ballistic descent that subjected the three men on board to chest-crushing gravity loads that made it hard to breathe, space experts said today.

Two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on the space station finished packing tonight and crammed into a tiny Soyuz capsule to return to Earth.

The three crew members at the International Space Station were today said to be grieving after they were told about the Columbia disaster by a Nasa official.