World Briefs

To help figure out what's happening inside the fastest-moving Greenland glacier, a US rocket scientist sent 90 rubber ducks into the ice, hoping someone finds them if they emerge in Baffin Bay.

The common yellow plastic bath toys are one part of a sophisticated experiment to determine why glaciers speed up in the summer in their march to the sea, said Alberto Behar of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

The Jakobshavn Glacier is very likely the source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912 and researchers focus on it because it discharges nearly seven per cent of all the ice coming off Greenland. As the planet warms, its melting ice sheet could make oceans rise this century.

The ducks - each labelled with the words "science experiment" and "reward" in three languages, along with an e-mail address - would tell scientists where the water ends up, if they are found and if somebody e-mails the discovery.

Train robbers killed by poison gas

At least 15 Indian train robbers looking to steal diesel from a freight carriage died over the weekend after inhaling poison gas stored in another tank they accidentally broke open, police said.

A police patrol party said they found 30 other people lying unconscious on both sides of a forested train track in India's Assam state.

The train was earlier stopped by dozens of armed people who police believe were members of a gang which frequently steals crude oil from trains and pipelines carrying oil to refineries in the oil-rich state.

Historian jailed for stealing Lincoln letter

A US historian who pleaded guilty to stealing letters written by former US Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln was sentenced to 18 months in prison over the weekend.

Edward Renehan, 52, pleaded guilty in May to one count of interstate transportation of stolen property and admitted stealing a March 1, 1840, letter by President Lincoln and two letters dated August 9, 1791, and December 29, 1778, by President Washington.

The letters, part of the personal collection of former US President Theodore Roosevelt, were taken from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Mr Renehan had been the acting director of the New York-based historical and cultural group.

Mr Renehan later sold the letters to a New York gallery for $97,000, the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan said.

In sentencing Renehan, who faced a maximum of 10 years in prison, US District Judge Denny Chin called the case "baffling". "By all accounts, Mr Renehan is a pre-eminent historian and biographer, and yet he engaged in this stealing," said Judge Chin. "It's really hard to understand. I'm not sure that I've heard a convincing explanation."

He was ordered to report to prison by January 2.

Free funeral prize still unclaimed

The winner of a free funeral has not turned up to claim his prize after ticket number 11 was chosen in a raffle in southern Italy, an Italian newspaper reported.

The holder of the winning ticket in the raffle - held in the town of San Marco in Lamis - is entitled to a free lined coffin, a tombstone, copper candlesticks and a grave site, Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported.

There is no deadline for claiming the prize and the winner can give it to somebody else, raffle organisers said, according to the paper.

Almanac predicts global cooling

The world is set for a "big chill", possibly a mini-ice age, according to the venerable and whimsical Old Farmer's Almanac, first published in 1792 and the United States' oldest continuously published periodical.

The 2009 edition, published earlier this month, predicts that the earth already has entered a sustained period of global cooling.

Sarah Perreault, assistant editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac, said the almanac is predicting a period of global cooling partly due to the lack of sunspots, a situation which some scientists believe causes cooling on the sun and, subsequently, the earth. She said the staff still uses the weather prediction method devised by almanac founder Robert B. Thomas, using a combination of solar sciences, meteorology and climatology.

Ms Perreault said the method is not exact. Since the almanac is published so far in advance, it cannot take into account the most up-to-date information on Pacific Ocean oscillations El Ñiño or La Ñiña, for instance. Still, the almanac has an 80 per cent success rate for its weather predictions, she said.

The format for the Dublin, New Hampshire-based almanac has been roughly the same throughout its history, with its yellow cover and hole punched in the upper-left corner for hanging in barns and outhouses.

Divers reunite hero with lost medals

Divers defied the murky waters of the River Thames over the weekend to recover priceless medals for a British war hero after he feared they were lost forever.

World War II veteran Charles Brown, 93, was taking part in a Dunkirk veterans river cruise last week when his medals slipped out of his jacket pocket and into the water at Teddington, as he boarded a boat.

When the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) heard about the loss it offered to recover the irreplaceable medals which included an OBE (Order of the British Empire) awarded for his work for war veterans and his Dunkirk and Normandy campaign medals.

Malcolm Miatt, lifeboat operations manager at RNLI Teddington, said: "I wasn't sure that we'd find the medals because they have been down there all week and visibility from the silt was bad due to all the heavy rain recently. "However, our divers found them almost immediately, there was no drama."

When he heard the news, an overjoyed Mr Brown took a taxi from his retirement home to the river to be reunited with his medals.