London, July 22 : A pet parrot has been credited with saving the lives of a family after it raised the alarm as fire spread through their home.

The blaze broke out in the kitchen of the Hall family house in Fair Oak, Hampshire, at 6.25am yesterday.

As the fire reached the lounge, Bob the African grey''s squawking became more frantic, waking the family.

Hall and his sons, Sam and Trevor, managed to escape from the burning property, grabbing Bob’s cage as they fled.

All three suffered smoke inhalation although three-year-old Bob survived unhurt.

London - The British government has hailed the arrest of Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic as "good news" that will open up a brighter future for Serbia in Europe.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement early Tuesday: "This arrest will help close the region's decades of conflict, and pave the way for a brighter, European future for Serbia and the region."

London, July 22 : A team of researchers from Rutgers and Columbia universities have proposed a new type of electron pairing that they believe may help realise superconductivity at room temperature someday.

The researchers insist that electrons must bind together into pairs called ‘Cooper pairs’ for materials to become superconducting.

“We’ve found that the electrons form much stronger pairs if they team up with one of the tiny atomic magnets – a combination that might be called a quantum-mechanical ‘menage a trios,’” Nature magazine quoted Piers Coleman, physics professor at Rutgers, as saying.

London, July 22: British airports are at risk of terrorist attack from a “threat within,” a report by a former bureaucrat will warn today.

The alert is raised in a security review by former civil servant Stephen Boys Smith.

He demands a crackdown on thousands of people working in shops, cafes and baggage depots.

An insider said: “It is possible they can have a criminal past in another country that is not picked up.”

Experts claim that hundreds of foreign workers with a criminal past may have landed airside jobs.

British staff and pilots undergo rigorous checks, but offences committed overseas often go unchecked, The Sun reported.

London, July 22: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai are to sign an agreement to end the country’s political deadlock.

The handshake, which came despite the killing of more than 100 opposition supporters during the country’s election this year, followed the signing of an agreement for talks on the way forward, The Telegraph reported.

The room at the Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare shook with laughter as the two men, along with the South African President Thabo Mbeki, joked with each other.

Tsvangirai said it was “a very historic occasion” while Mugabe said it was time to chart a “new way” forward.

London, July 22 : Man may soon return to the moon, with the focus being to establish a permanent presence there, using it as a training platform for missions to Mars and beyond.

According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, NASA officials and scientists have said that the proposed return to the lunar surface could happen in the decade after NASA retires the space shuttle in 2010 and begins flying a new generation of rocket booster.

“We’re going back, and this time we’re going to stay,” said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA Ames Research Center. “This is the first step in settling the solar system,” he added.