Talks are continuing in Northern Ireland, trying to resolve a political crisis that threatens the power-sharing assembly there. The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been meeting all the political parties in the province as he and his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen, try to broker a deal between the main parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists.
The new interim prime minister of the West African country of Guinea has been sworn in, marking another step towards civilian rule. Jean-Marie Dore was appointed by the general currently in charge of Guinea after the military government agreed to step down. Our West Africa correspondent Caspar Leighton reports.
Jean-Marie Dore made a brief speech in which he set out some big objectives. Reforming Guinea's armed forces was top of the list, most small order in a country that has in effect been controlled by the military for decades. The current government took power in December 2008 after the death of Lansana Conte, himself an army man who staged a coup 24 years earlier. Mr. Dore said he would organize elections and prioritize the economic revival of Guinea, which is the world's largest exporter of bauxite and is rich in other minerals.
The American space agency NASA says it's given up trying to free its Spirit Rover which has been stuck in soft ground on Mars since May last year. NASA says all efforts to free the robot vehicle have failed and it will now live out its days as a static science station. The rover, which landed on Mars six years ago, has taken thousands of images of the planet's surface. A NASA spokesman said, “Spirit is not dead. It has just entered another phase of its long life.”