A mineral recently discovered in Serbia has the same composition as kryptonite – the fictional substance that robs Superman of his powers – the British Museum said Tuesday. While the material is not a perfect match, its chemical breakdown is strikingly similar.\nA drill core of the unusual mineral was unearthed in Serbia by the mining group Rio Tinto PLC, which turned it over to mineral expert Chris Stanley at the Natural History Museum for analysis. The material is white, powdery and not radioactive – unlike the glowing green crystals usually depicted in the Superman comics. It will be formally named Jadarite when it is described in the European Journal of Mineralogy later this year.
The United States, Russia, China and the European Union are for the first time ready to listen to an Iranian proposal that would allow Tehran to keep some of its uranium enrichment program intact instead of mothballing it completely, government officials said Tuesday. Speaking on the eve of talks between top Iranian envoy Ali Larijani and Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, the officials – some of them diplomats, others based in their capitals – said the discussions were key because for the first time they could try to sidestep the deadlock over enrichment by trying to agree on a new way of defining enrichment.
Hundreds of mourners – some weeping, many clutching flowers – filed past the open casket of former President Boris Yeltsin in a soaring cathedral Tuesday, paying tribute to a man who brought epochal changes to Russia but left behind a tarnished legacy. The United States announced it would send former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to Wednesday’s funeral for the first president of post-Soviet Russia. Yeltsin died Monday of heart failure at age 76.
Pat Tillman ’s brother accused the military Tuesday of “intentional falsehoods” and “deliberate and careful misrepresentations” in portraying the football star’s death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire. “We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public,” Kevin Tillman told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing. “Pat’s death was clearly the result of fratricide,” he said, contending that the military’s misstatements amounted to “fraud.”
Rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil field near the Somali border on Tuesday, killing 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese workers in the dawn raid. The Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group that has fought alongside insurgents in Somalia, also kidnapped seven Chinese workers, said Bereket Simon, an adviser to the Ethiopian prime minister.\n“This was a cold blooded killing,” Bereket told The Associated Press. “This was organized.”
British anti-terrorist police on Tuesday arrested an outspoken Islamic activist and five others accused of raising funds for terrorism and inciting others to commit terrorist acts overseas. The activist, Abu Izzadeen, already faces charges of encouraging terrorism following a speech last year in which he allegedly praised the suicide bombers behind the July 7, 2005, London transit attacks that killed 52 commuters.
