London, July 29 : At least 3,000 British passports that were to be sent to the country’s embassies abroad have been stolen.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said 24 parcels containing blank passports and vignettes (blank stickers for visa stamps), were removed from a van that was travelling from a factory in Oldham to the Royal Air Force Base in Northolt near London.

According to the Daily Express, the Greater Manchester Police has been roped in to investigate this security breach.

The Home Office and the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) have taken "preventative action" to guard against forgeries.

London, July 29 : Draft rules under consideration may soon make it compulsory for one to pass a 15-minutes conversation test to obtain a taxi driver’s licence in Walsall, England.

The test would require applicants to convince their examiners that they could keep passengers entertained on a journey.

The drivers would be discussing topics like their favourite places in the West Midlands with the examiners.

The test, originally designed after concerns about foreign drivers'' standard of English, is expected to be approved by Walsall Council at a meeting on July 30.

London, July 29 : What a retired police officer in UK picked up and brought to his rock garden, and kept it there for 15 years, was actually an 80-million-year-old fossil!

Peter Parvin (74) of Maidstone picked up the fossilised fish head from a beach between Pevensey, East Sussex and Dungeness, Kent, during a holiday. It was then in his garden until experts at the town''s museum looked at it.

London, July 29 : The first attempt by NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander to quickly collect and analyze ice samples was foiled by sticky Martian soil that refused to budge from the collection scoop.

On July 26th, the robot drilled holes with a rasp on its robotic arm in a work trench known as “Snow White”.

Phoenix’s robotic arm then scooped up an icy soil sample and attempted to quickly transfer it to the onboard TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer) instrument before the ice vaporised in the thin Martian air.

London, July 29 : Navigation in fruit flies has been attributed to a protein that detects blue light, which also helps fruit flies tune into the Earth''s magnetic field, revealed a new study.

The knowledge about this weak field is vital for explaining the homing and migration abilities of many animals.

It was believed that when struck by blue light, proteins known as cryptochromes detect magnetic fields, perhaps by making charged molecules - called free radicals.

London  - British Airways (BA) and Spanish airline Iberia said Tuesday they were in talks about a possible merger that would help both companies in the "current economic environment."

The firms said the British Airways and Iberia brands would be retained as part of a combined group.

However, it would take several months to reach an agreement on the terms of a possible merger.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh said the proposed merger would help the airlines in the current economic environment.

BA's share price rose by 8 per cent in London on the news.