20 years ago

Queen's University Belfast refused to fly its flag at half-mast this week to mark the funeral of Mairead Farrell, the IRA member and first-year politics student shot dead in Gibraltar by the SAS. Its decision is a departure from the established protocol for acknowledging the deaths of staff, students and distinguished graduates. According to her lecturers, Ms Farrell's absence from tutorials had not caused undue concern. Records refer to her as a quiet, intelligent student who wrote very good essays and was not given to political diatribe. She first studied politics with The Open University while serving a 14-year prison sentence.

The Sasquatch, otherwise known as Bigfoot, is a large, hairy biped that may (or may not) roam the forests of the American Northwest. But Bigfoot has a problem. Grover Krantz, an anthropology professor at Washington State University, plans to hunt it in a lightweight helicopter built from a kit, using an infrared device that detects animal body heat. "If at all possible," Professor Krantz said, "we will kill it and bring back as much of it as we can. This will establish their existence, and then they can be protected."