Stinky underwear could soon be consigned to the dustbin of history. Thanks to the invention of what manufacturers claim are the first "pong-proof pants", all student digs and walkers' rucksacks will stay smelling fresh. Tiny fragments of silver woven into the North Face briefs help stop bacteria multiplying. This means they can be worn again and again without getting smelly.

A mysterious object found in a Davenport home turned out not to be a bomb, but a device that was supposed to scare off aliens believed to be living under the ground.

Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

A handwritten score of one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most revolutionary works has been discovered by a librarian cleaning out a cabinet in a seminary in Pennsylvania after being missing for more than a century. The 80-page manuscript for a piano version of Grosse Fuge, thought to have been written by Beethoven himself, dates from the final months of his life when he was completely deaf. The work was described by scholars of the German composer yesterday as an "amazing find" and "extremely important".

Rain fell for an eighth straight day around the waterlogged Northeast on Friday, pushing hundreds of people from their homes, closing roadways and leaving train tracks littered with fallen trees. And it's a good thing reporters had canoes to deal with the rain fall. (Video)