Rebels recover black boxes from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, will hand over to investigators

Rebels have recovered the black boxes from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and will hand them over to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a rebel leader said Sunday.

Alexander Borodai also said the bodies recovered from the crash site in eastern Ukraine would remain in refrigerated train cars at a station in the rebel-held town of Torez, 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.

Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile Thursday at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Both deny shooting down the plane. All those onboard the flight - 283 passengers and 15 crew - were killed.

It was immediately not clear Sunday if the rebels and the Ukrainian government were working together or were at odds with each other on recovering the bodies - and from their comments, many of officials didn't appear to know either.

Mourinho taunts Arsenal over Fabregas deal

Jose Mourinho has taunted Arsenal by claiming he needed just 20 minutes to persuade Cesc Fabregas to join Chelsea because the former Gunners midfielder didn’t want to return to his old club.

Mourinho signed Fabregas from Barcelona for £27 million ($46 million) earlier in the close-season despite Arsenal having first option to take back the Spain star.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger reportedly didn’t want to re-sign Fabregas because he was happy with Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere and Mikel Arteta as main central midfielders.

But Blues boss Mourinho, who has had many verbal jousts with Wenger, couldn’t resist the chance to tweak his rival as he insisted Fabregas had no interest in a reunion with the club he left to join Barcelona in 2011.

Gist

like2...

Latest News

Los Angeles - A judge has branded Rihanna's latest stalker a "ticking time bomb".

Genetic blueprint unveiled for vital food crop wheat

 As far as agricultural genome research goes, this may be the best thing since sliced bread - wheat bread, that is.

An international team of scientists on Thursday unveiled a genetic blueprint of wheat in an accomplishment that may help guide the breeding of varieties of the vitally important food crop that are more productive and more hardy.

Researchers who are part of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, formed in 2005 by a group of wheat growers, plant scientists and breeders, unveiled what they called a chromosome-based draft genome sequence of bread wheat, also known as common wheat.

The work makes it easier to identify genes controlling agriculturally important traits like yield, disease and pest resistance and drought tolerance, according to Frédéric Choulet, a plant genomicist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), one of the lead researchers.