A US man who accidentally sold his girlfriend’s cat when it was hiding inside a bed he was selling has had the pet returned after 10 days.

Five former American hostages claim Iran’s new president-elect was one of their captors, 25 years after they endured a 444-day kidnap ordeal.

An exhaust centre shop owner who deliberately damaged buildings as he tore through town in an armoured bulldozer has been surrounded by officers determined to extricate him from the vehicle.

The space shuttle Columbia’s skin was almost certainly pierced, allowing superheated air inside the left wing and possibly the wheel compartment during Columbia’s fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, investigators have said.

Just two days before Columbia’s mysterious break-up during its fiery descent, a safety engineer warned by e-mail about risks of “catastrophic” failures from extreme heat causing the shuttle’s tyres to burst inside the spacecraft, Nasa has disclosed.