The apocalypse is experiencing severe delays, please arrange alternative transport, see: Global warming, natural disaster or financial meltdown.

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has been put off line for at least two months following a 'quench'. Helium liquid had leaked out meaning that the large electro-magnets were not being cooled, subsequently they heated up to nearly 100 degrees. Fortunately none of the magnets were irreversibly damaged, however due the the nature of the environment even relatively minor repairs are extremely time consuming. The collider tube has be to brought up to ambient temperature from it's maintained near absolute zero to allow workers in.

However this is the latest blow to the initially spectacularly successful project. On the start-up day protons completed a full circuit of the 27km is much less than predicted time. Shortly after a 30-ton transformer broke and had to be replaced, no mean feat for something buried under mountains of EU farming subsidies.

Here at the innit24 newsroom we wish them all the best for the future (if there is one) and would like to extend our thanks for most-kindly delaying the end of the world so we can all watch the new season of House.

ROBOTS WITH BRAINS...

The world's first Frankenstein-like creature has finally been created. This week's New Scientist (out today) reports that scientists at the University of Reading have created a so called "animat", a robot with the actual brains of rats. Before I explain how it works, I would like to refer to the actually article, as this will prevent me from making mistakes.
The story is great though. What the scientists have created is a robot that can learn! If the robot 'sees' a wall, the brain will tell the 'body' to stop or even go back, because the brain 'knows' that it cannot go through walls. A video on how this looks like is available here.
I think this is by far one of the most interesting scientific breakthroughs in quite a while. This is the first time that scientist can study in detail how a brain works. The information they might gather can lead to a cure of illnesses such as Alzheimer's.
Schreiber