Record-breakers in the news today

Football fans around the world will be tuning in tomorrow to watch English football’s most prestigious domestic cup competition – the FA Cup final.

This year’s final sees last year’s Premier League Champions Manchester City take on struggling underdogs Wigan.

The most wins of the FA Cup is 11, a record held by by Manchester United (1909, 1948, 1963, 1977, 1983, 1985, 1990, 1994 and 1996, 1999 and 2004). The most goals in a final is seven; when Blackburn Rovers beat Sheffield Wednesday 6-1 in 1890 and when Blackpool beat Bolton Wanderers 4-3 in 1953. The biggest victory is six when Bury beat Derby County 6-0 in 1903, a year which saw Bury avoid conceding a single goal in all their five Cup matches.

Sticking with the world of sport, Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton is used to having glamorous support from the paddock on race days, with his popstar girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger regularly in attendance showing her support.

However, it’s another of his VIP guests who has been getting all the attention in the practice rounds ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix – his bulldog Roscoe.

The 2008 world champion has been seen walking his prized pooch around the paddock during breaks after obtaining a special VIP pass for his pet, complete with a photograph of the dog wearing trendy headphones.

The fastest 100 m with a can balanced on head by a dog is 2 min 55 sec achieved by Sweet Pea, an Australian Shepherd/Border Collie cross and her owner Alex Rothaker (USA) at the college of Lake County, Grayslake, Illinois, USA, on 3 September 2008.

The US government has intervened in the row over the 3D-printed gun, demanding that designs for the weapon be taken offline.

The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.

The most powerful mobile phone gun is a 0.22 calibre (0.22 in) pistol, disguised as a cell phone, which can fire a (close-range) lethal round of four bullets when numbers 5,6,7,8 are pressed in quick succession. It is believed that these phone-guns are made in Croatia, and have already been regularly seized in drug raids across Europe over the past decade.

Finally, researchers at Michigan State University in the US have found a strain of bacteria that can infect mosquitoes and make them resistant to the malaria parasite.

The study, in the journal Science, showed the parasite struggled to survive in infected mosquitoes.

Malarial parasites of the genus Plasmodium carried by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles (the world’s most dangerous mosquito) have probably been responsible for 50% of all human deaths since the Stone Age (excluding wars and accidents). Each year in sub-Saharan Africa alone 1.4-2.8 million people die from malaria.