Two astronauts began a spacewalk today to replace equipment on the international space station as Nasa experts calculated whether the shuttle Endeavour’s crew would need to repair a gouge on the ship’s belly.

When former US schoolteacher Barbara Morgan leaves Earth on a space shuttle next week, she hopes her students back in Idaho learn a lesson from her 22-year wait to get into orbit: perseverance and patience.

A coroner has found that the deaths of two British airmen shot down by an American Patriot missile defence system at the beginning of the Iraq war were “entirely avoidable“.

TODAY’S National Hunt meeting at Southwell has been lost to the weather but the day’s feature card at Newbury looks set to go-ahead, with officials not planning an inspection.

The current cold snap is threatening to wreak havoc with the fixture list over the next few days after this afternoon’s jumps meetings where abandoned due to frost.

Extending his overnight advantage, Glen Allen and co-driver Damien Connolly, in their Toyota Corolla WRC, won the Cork Forest Rally today.

Northern Ireland’s Glen Allen, driving a Toyota Corolla, leads the Cork Forest Rally, the sixth round of the McCauley Trailers National Forest Championship.

A convoy of American special forces and Kurdish civilians came under attack today in what witnesses described as another friendly-fire incident.

Britain's Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon expressed regret today over the “tragic” deaths of two British soldiers whose tank was mistaken for Iraqi armour and destroyed by “friendly fire“.

DREW BLEDSOE got all the hype in his debut as Buffalo Bills quarterback, but it was little known kick returner Chad Morton who proved to be the hero in the New York Jets’ 37-31 overtime victory in National Football League action on Sunday.

Ashley Cole will be back in the Arsenal line-up for the Sunday showdown with Ipswich.