London, November 1: ‘Take That’ has made a record sell-out with its 600,000 tour tickets vanishing in just four-and-a-half hours.

Becoming the fastest selling tour in UK history, the band’s 2009 stadium tour, ‘The Circus’, has managed to displace Michael Jackson’s record sales of ‘Bad tour’ tickets in 1987, reports the Daily Star.

The tour tickets, which were put on sale at 9 am, were all sold by 1.30 pm – despite the added announcement of two extra shows at Wembley and Manchester.

While many fans queued themselves in the cold to make sure they would see their favourite group perform, others crashed the Internet sites by flooding the cyberspace in want of the passes.

Tehran, Nov 1: External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will attend the India-Iran Joint Commission meeting today with Shamsuddin Hoseyni, Iran's Minister of Economy and Finance to discuss various initiatives to enhance their ties, including the India-Pakistan-Iran pipeline project.

The two sides are expected to discuss a way forward in the proposed 7.4 billion dollar Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline which has not yet taken off due to differences over pricing and concerns over security.

London, Nov 1: An alarming report has revealed that the sound of chirping birds might soon be lost for ever among sounds in the countryside, as the populations of farmland birds have plummeted to their lowest levels for over 40 years in the UK.

According to a report in the Daily Express, breeding pairs of countryside birds are 52 per cent fewer than in 1966.

Between 1970 and 2006, the number of corn buntings declined by 89 per cent and turtle doves by 86 per cent.

The crisis, which particularly affects species such as skylarks, grey partridges and lapwings, is likely to get worse, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said diabetes doubled in the last decade, and obesity is the reason for the increase.

Affecting more than 23 million Americans, diabetes is the seventh-leading cause of death in the US, with more than a million and a half new cases diagnosed just last year. The highest rates were seen in the South with West Virginia being the worst hit where 13 in a 1000 adults were diagnosed with the disease in the years 2005-07.  Minnesota was the best off with 5 in a 1000 with the disease.

London, Nov 1: A new world record has been set for the largest gathering of zombies during a Halloween event, with 1,227 people dressed as zombies dancing to pop star Michael Jackson’s superhit song ‘Thriller’ in Nottingham.

The participants were seen covered in fake blood and face paint as they gathered in the Old Market Square, and performed a choreographed zombie dance.

The performance started at 5pm, and it took officials from Guinness World Records half-an-hour to verify the number of participants for the event, which was part of the GameCity festival.

The record had previously been held by the US, when 1,124 people attended Monroeville Mall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in November last year.

Washington, Nov 1: Astronomers have probed the physical conditions in the active inner regions of a number of Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs), with the help of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT).

ULIRGs are characterized by an enormous energy output, which is totally hidden from view for optical telescopes by massive gas and dust clouds inside these galaxies.

When the universe was much younger, such galaxies were much more common than now, and scientists believe that galaxies of this type have played a key role in shaping the present-day universe.