Hiroo Onoda, speaking in 2001: "I was fighting and doing my best... I've never regretted anything" A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender after World War Two ended and spent 29 years in the jungle has died aged 91 in Tokyo. Hiroo Onoda remained in the jungle on Lubang Island near Luzon, in the Philippines, until 1974 because he did not believe that the war had ended. He was finally persuaded

Mikhail Kalashnikov: "I created a weapon to defend the fatherland's borders" The inventor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov, has died aged 94, Russian officials say. The automatic rifle he designed became one of the world's most familiar and widely used weapons. Its comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture, as well as reliable and easy to maintain. Although honoured

Maria was found in a Roma camp near Farsala, central Greece DNA tests have confirmed a Bulgarian Roma couple as the biological parents of mystery child Maria, found in Greece last week, Bulgarian officials say. They identified the couple as Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev. The officials are investigating whether the mother had sold the child - a claim she has denied. Maria was found at a Roma camp i

The governor of Texas has called a special legislative session in an attempt to pass an anti-abortion law blocked when a Democratic senator undertook a marathon delaying speech. Republican Rick Perry ordered lawmakers to return on 1 July. Senator Wendy Davis spoke for more than 10 hours on Tuesday, blocking Republicans from banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Republicans ran out of time

Children at schools in the Spanish Canary Island of La Gomera are learning an ancient local language in which people communicate through whistling On a Spanish island, an ancient whistling language that once seemed to be dying out is now undergoing a revival. The night has not yet fallen in La Gomera, one of the smallest Canary Islands. From the top of the hill I can see, scattered in the distance

Cecilia Gimenez' attempt to restore the prized Ecce Homo fresco stunned Spanish cultural officials An elderly parishioner has stunned Spanish cultural officials with an alarming and unauthorised attempt to restore a prized Jesus Christ fresco. Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez has held pride of place in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza for more than 100 years.

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed. <link> <caption>Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland has questioned</caption> <url href="http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/general/popularscience/jackcopelandjune" platform="highweb"/> </link> the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest. He belie

Rucksacks loaded with school books have been linked to higher levels of back pain in a study of Spanish school children. The findings,reported in Archives of Disease in Childhood, external, said many pupils had "excessively loaded" backpacks. This was linked to higher levels of back pain in the 1,403 school children taking part in the study. The research took place at Hospital da Costa in Burela a