‘Extraterrestrial sugar’ shows asteroids created life on Earth

The discovery of “extraterrestrial sugar” shows that asteroids may have sparked life on Earth when they struck the planet. Scientists say the “essential building blocks of life” were found inside space rocks. “The extraterrestrial sugar might have contributed to the formation of RNA on the prebiotic Earth which possibly led to the origin of life,” said one.

Scotland's favourite word is revealed

“Dreich” has been voted the Scotland’s favourite word. The word, commonly used to describe wet, gloomy or cold weather conditions, beat “glaikit” and “scunnered” in an online survey carried out by the Scottish Book Trust. Glaikit means stupid or thoughtless while scunnered means being bored or antipathetic.

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Stuffed toy causes zoo alert

Blackpool Zoo says that reports of an escaped monkey came about because of a planned drill. “If you were in the zoo yesterday, you might have heard reports that we had an escaped animal,” the zoo said on Facebook. “Luckily in this case, the monkey was of the soft toy variety and the situation had been orchestrated by our health and safety manager.”

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