Shuttle comeback delayed
NASA has pushed back the date of the next space shuttle launch to March or April 2005, citing unresolved technical problems with insulation foam on the external fuel tanks. It was a piece of loose foam that damaged Columbia, leading to its destruction and the grounding of the fleet in February 2003.
Comet double bill
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Two comets still barely visible may brighten enough to be seen easily with the naked eye. NEAT (C/2001 Q4) and LINEAR (C/2002 T7) will be visible close together from the southern hemisphere in May, after making their closest approaches to the sun.
Bird flu in Texas
A contagious and virulent strain of bird flu spread to live bird markets in Houston, Texas, on Monday, after it was first found three days earlier in a chicken farm, where the entire flock was killed. The US Department of Agriculture says the virus does not resemble the strain that recently killed 22 people in Asia.
Plague of locusts
Locusts could devastate the whole of west and north-west Africa this year unless donations for a $9 million eradication programme materialise now, the UN鈥檚 Food and Agriculture Organization warned on Monday. Exceptional rainfall last year boosted populations in Mauritania and Western Sahara. They could grow out of control unless sprayed with pesticides.
Vaccine controversy
Andrew Wakefield, the doctor whose research sparked the controversy over links between autism and combined vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), faces possible investigation for research misconduct by the UK鈥檚 General Medical Council. On 20 February, The Lancet, which published Wakefield鈥檚 research in 1998, said he had failed to disclose receiving funding from lawyers seeking damages for parents who claimed their children had been damaged by the vaccine.