yesterday was...

A good day for:

Cosmonauts, with the news that potato plants aboard the space shuttle Colombia have begun to sprout in a specially designed astroculture chamber. By the time the craft lands at Kennedy Space Centre on 5 November, the potatoes will be the size of grapes. It is too early to say whether this will lead to the development of a new range of gastronautical delicacies, but one objective of the experiment is to determine whether potatoes grown in conditions of zero gravity have less starch.

A bad day for:

Alan Turner, owner of a 145mph F-registration Vauxhall Astra GTE saloon, which was stolen from outside his house. The car had been fitted with an alarm, two engine-paralysing immobilisers, a pedal lock and an automatic steering lock. Mr Taylor had also chained and padlocked the steering wheel, locked a chain around the bonnet and secured the chassis, with another chain, to a hook in the drive. "All the thieves left behind," he said, "were the chains and the immobilisers."