Georgian police said two Russian soldiers almost missed their unit's pullback from Georgia yesterday after getting drunk, but Russia's military denied the incident happened.
The uniformed soldiers were handed over by Georgian police to the Russian military at the Karaleti checkpoint, just hours before a Russian troop withdrawal. A Reuters correspondent witnessed Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict zone, cursing the pair as they were marched past.
A Georgian police officer said the soldiers were detained late on Tuesday while driving a car in the Kareli region of Georgia. He said they had been drinking heavily, and asked the arresting officers: "Where are we?"
Vladimir Ivanov, deputy spokesman for Russian forces in South Ossetia, said the Georgian version of events was designed to cast a shadow over the Russian pullback.
Fingerprints could reveal your surname
Police could one day predict the surname of male suspects or victims of crime from DNA alone, British researchers said yesterday.
Scientists at Leicester University, where DNA fingerprinting was invented in 1984, said they had demonstrated that men with the same surname were highly likely to be genetically linked.
The finding could help genealogy researchers as well as detectives investigating crimes using traces of DNA found in blood, hair, saliva or semen. The technique is based on analysing DNA from the Y chromosome that imparts maleness and which, like surnames, is passed down from father to son.
Not surprisingly, the likelihood of a good genetic match depends on the rarity of the name, with the most unusual names having the strongest links.
Palin may be related to Diana, Roosevelt
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is distantly related to the late Princess Diana and late US President Franklin Roosevelt, genealogy experts said yesterday.
The governor of Alaska and the princess are tenth cousins, while Mrs Palin and Mr Roosevelt are ninth cousins, said Ancestry.com, online genealogists based in Provo, Utah.
The genealogical connections are not the first to gain attention in the US presidential campaign. Last year, Lynne Cheney said she found while tracing her family roots that her husband Vice President Dick Cheney was a distant cousin of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Other researchers discovered Mr Obama is distant cousins with actor Brad Pitt.
Mrs Palin and the late princess descended from John Strong and his wife Abigail Ford, Ancestry.com said.
Mr Strong was born around 1605 in England and emigrated to the US, where he died in Massachusetts in 1699, Ancestry.com said.
Sudanese women arrested for tight trousers
More than 35 young women wearing tight trousers have been arrested for "disturbing the peace" in south Sudan, police said.
Officers said the arrests in Juba, capital of the semi-autonomous region, were part of a crackdown on youth gangs that have sprung up recently and have a reputation for drinking, fighting and public nudity.
The women were arrested on Sunday night, but released without charge on Monday after appearing in court.
South Sudan is generally seen as much more liberal than the largely Muslim north, with which it fought a two-decade war that was ended by a 2005 peace deal.
McCain and Obama in comic books
The life stories of US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama hit comic book stands yesterday.
IDW Publishing, a San Diego-based company, said it produced the comic book biographies of the two candidates to capitalise on the election. The two biographies will be sold separately in comic stores, and together in a bound edition at bookstores.
In his comic, Mr McCain, the Republican nominee for President, is shown being struck by captors in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. Mr Obama, the Democratic nominee, is portrayed as a community organiser sitting around a kitchen table listening to Chicago residents.
"It really is a kick to do something that is something so out of the norm for comic books," said Scott Dunbier, special projects editor with IDW. Mr Dunbier said he came to appreciate the two candidates more after fact-checking their biographies.
The company tried to stay neutral as it told the life stories of the two senators. Both comics feature the candidates on the cover standing in front of the US flag. Mr McCain smiles as he faces to the right, while Obama has a stoic expression as he looks left.