A memorial service has been held at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on the 50th anniversary of a space disaster in which more than 70 people died. The accident happened when Soviet Union tried to test a new rocket. Marcus George reports.

In Russia, 24 October is known as the "black day" for space exploration. It was on this day 50 years ago when the launch of a prototype rocket known as the R-16 went seriously wrong. The rocket exploded on the launch pad, burning alive and asphyxiating engineers, designers and officials. Official files on the disaster described how many were vaporised in the huge fireball. Soviet authorities immediately imposed a blanket ban on reports, and the papers were only declassified in the 1990s.

The President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai has indicated that he may amend a ban on the use of private security contractors due to come into force by the end of the year. Some US-funded aid projects have said they are making plans to scale back their work or even pull out of Afghanistan completely if the ban goes ahead in December. The Afghan government says the contractors lack accountability.

A unique collection of songs and stories from India, recorded in the early 20th century, has been made public for the first time and is available for free download. The recordings, made by British colonial officers, were part of a huge archive of Indian languages. It was designed to teach future British civil servants the dialects of the Indian regions in which they would work.