A team of geeks has devoted 5,000 man hours over six months to building a van-sized contraption designed to do nothing more complicated than pop a single balloon. Because, well, why not?

1. "Home-Thoughts, From Abroad", by Robert Browning.

Huge twister kills family but scoops up toddler and dumps her – alive – in a field near her home

Powerful storms stretching from the US Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes in the north wrecked two small towns and killed at least 28 people as the system tore roofs off schools and homes and damaged a maximum-security prison. It was the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

On The Road To 2012: Postcard from Daytona

It is an afternoon session at Sheffield's council-run Ponds Forge pool, and the usual flotilla of keep-fit swimmers is determinedly groping its way up and down the lanes.

It's squeaky bum time for...

Queen's Park Rangers

Mark Hughes, entrusted with keeping QPR in the top flight, has thus far failed to spark the Rs into life, having won just two of his six games in charge.

Test your knowledge in the big IoS quiz

The man who turned mowing the grass into a multimillion-dollar enterprise has died at the age of 87.

Ruth Stone, who has died aged 96, was an award-winning poet whose life spanned the 20th and 21st centuries. During her lifetime she was compared by her contemporaries to Sappho, Dante, Christine de Pizan, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Kate Chopin and Anna Akhmatova. She bequeaths a literary legacy to be reckoned with for the remainder of this century.

Starring: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo

An investigation has been launched into safety failures that may have led to the collapse in strong winds of a concert stage in Indianapolis that killed five people and left more than 40 injured, some of them seriously.

Dave Alvin's latest album may be his best yet, its tales of the flipside of the American Dream set to gritty blues riffs that speak of long months on the road.

Thirty years since Raiders of the Lost Ark came to the big screen, the intrepid archaeologist with the bullwhip is still inspiring travellers, says Matt Barr