STEPHEN HENDRY has made more centuries than any other snooker player in history - more than 400 - but his biggest break has occurred away from the table. Thieves broke into his hotel room on Tuesday night and left his most precious possession behind.

THE JAPANESE electronics giant Mitsubishi dealt a fresh blow to Scotland yesterday by announcing the closure of its video recorder manufacturing plant in Livingston with the loss of 240 jobs.

Right old junk

FOOTBALL REFEREES are expected to apply keen observation and cool judgement, uninfluenced by the baying of a partisan crowd. But now researchers have demonstrated that they are human like the rest of us.

A LARGE spoke was thrust into the wheels of Boris Yeltsin's political bandwagon yesterday when Russia's parliamentarians defied his demand that they sack the country's top prosecutor.

Children are not willing prisoners in their homes; they say watching TV is what they do when bored

RUSSIANS RELISH political "skandals" more than any other blood sport, and the latest to surface in the feral world of Moscow politics is a classic.

THE LAST time you visited the dentist, did you feel comfortable in the chair? You should have - it is designed to be more like a bed. But the last time you ate in a fast-food outlet, you were probably not able to sit on the chairs for more than a few minutes without finding yourself sliding off. That is no surprise: uncomfortable chairs mean a faster turnover for such organisations.

THE INTERNET revolution has prompted Sony, the Japanese electronics giant, into a radical restructuring that will see it increase its focus on new consumer technologies for the digital generation.

The technology to control all our home appliances has finally arrived.

The film was found so frightening when it was first shown that some young women fainted

A leading transport expert, Professor Chris Wright, says that microprocessor devices installed in cars of the future may also act as policemen by keeping records of bad driving, fining us or, in extreme cases, even arresting us by locking us in our cars.

AMSTRAD, the consumer electronics group in which Alan Sugar controls a 29.9 per cent stake, bounced back into the black in the six months to December helped by a shift away from low margin products.

AS AMERICANS waited, agog, to watch the "whole Monica" - the sight and sound of Monica Lewinsky in synchronisation for the first time - the transcript of her evidence showed her still protective of the President and careful not to incriminate him. The transcript, at times defiant, at times vague, was made public yesterday in accordance with a Senate vote on Thursday to release the sworn evidence that she and the other two witnesses - Vernon Jordan and Sidney Blumenthal - had given to prosecutors earlier in the week.