Space feat is child's play for toy story star

A hero's welcome has greeted the world's longest-serving astronaut - Buzz Lightyear, the much-loved character from the Toy Story movie - on his return home to earth. The tiny figurine never achieved his dream of heading 'to infinity and beyond!' in the hit 1995 film, but has since jetted into space as part of a real-life Nasa crew.

A model of Buzz flew on board the space shuttle Discovery in May last year and was taken onto the International Space Station as part of an educational programme to teach children about space. Now Buzz holds the record for the longest time spent in space by any astronaut, with his 467 days surpassing Valeri Polyakov's 437 days on board the Mir space station in 1994. This week the Discovery - with seven human astronauts and Buzz on board - undocked from the space station and returned to Florida.

A pet cat which was presumed dead in a building fire a month ago has been found alive buried beneath 16ft of rubble. The lucky moggy, aptly named Smoka, survived despite the remains of the premises being torn down by bulldozers. The cat was discovered as the debris was being cleared away, her head sticking out from under the rubble - 26 days after the Ohio fire.

Her owner had assumed one-year-old Smoka had died in the blaze on August 10. The fire broke out in Franklin, about 30 miles north of Cincinnati. Smoka had lost a lot of weight and has been eating a lot since to make up for it. She was finding it difficult to walk but otherwise she seemed OK.

T-Rex for sale

An unusual item is going under the hammer at a Las Vegas auction - a 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur. The 170 fossilised bones represent one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons to date and are expected to fetch more than three million pounds.

Experts say the bones were discovered more than 15 years ago in South Dakota. They comprise more than half the skeleton of a 40-foot-long, 7.5 ton dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago. San Francisco-based auctioneer Bonhams & Butterfields said bids for the T-Rex dubbed 'Samson' begin on October 3 at the Venetian hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Tom Lindgren, a natural history specialist for Bonhams & Butterfields, said Samson is the third most complete T-Rex skeleton ever discovered. He is one of only 42 specimens discovered in the last 100 years with more than 10% of the bones.