Four boys and two teachers have been taken to hospital after a failed science experiment at a school in the northern Melbourne suburb of Preston. Paramedics say a science class at Saint John’s Greek Orthodox College was evacuated after a large amount of magnesium caught fire. The magnesium let off a large flash, but paramedics [...]

France has expelled to Romania scores of gypsies as part of a crackdown on crime ordered by president Nicolas Sarkozy. About 100 Roma have been flown to Bucharest in the first expulsion since Mr Sarkozy vowed action last month against Roma communities, otherwise known as gypsies. Those who leave voluntarily are being offered cash handouts. [...]

A pair of marijuana growers in western Canada appear to have been using bears to protect their illegal crop, but the well-fed animals proved to be a bit lax in their guard duties, police say. Police say officers were dismantling two large outdoor plots of marijuana near Christina Lake, British Columbia, when they realised there [...]

Google boss Eric Schmidt says adults will soon be able to change their names in order to disown their past online identities. The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins wrote in his recent interview with Mr Schmidt that the CEO “predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his [...]

NORTH Korea flew an unmanned plane for surveillance or as a decoy after it fired a volley of shells near the disputed sea border with South Korea last week. The impoverished but nuclear-armed communist state has also aired rare footage of its new main battle tank, which was being closely analysed by South Korean authorities, [...]