Polar soccer

London, April 19 (Reuters): Two nuclear submarines, one British and one American, surfaced near the North Pole today for an impromptu game of soccer, Britain’s Royal Navy said.

The two vessels surfaced through two naturally occurring gaps in the ice about half-a-mile from each other after completing a joint underwater exercise. “The crews of HMS Tireless and USS Hampton are gearing up for a game of football,” Commander John Parris said.

“It will probably be English football (soccer) since I doubt our lot know much about playing American football,” Parris said from Portsmouth in southern England. “I expect there will also be the mother of all snowball fights.”

addition to the military element both ships were carrying scientists interested in tracking signs of global warming.

Piano price

Los Angeles (Reuters): An antique piano formerly used by Elton John and pictured on an album cover, was auctioned off for $164,500, well below the minimum estimate of $300,000, organisers said on Sunday. The other big seller at Heritage Galleries’ auction in Dallas on Saturday was a guitar used by late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. It sold for $117,500, down from a minimum estimate of $250,000. (All sale prices include a 17.5 percent buyer’s fee.) The instrument with the highest estimate, the upright bass used by late Motown session musician James Jamerson on such early ‘60s tunes as My Guy and Heatwave, failed to sell.

Box Kill

Los Angeles (Reuters): Films starring vengeful killers grabbed the top two spots at the North American box office on Sunday, led by Kill Bill-Vol. 2, the second half of writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s serio-comic saga of a rampaging assassin played by Uma Thurman. The finale sold $25.6 million worth of tickets in its first three days since opening to rave reviews on Friday. It sets a new opening record for the Walt Disney Co-owned studio, surpassing the $22.1 million bow of Kill Bill-Vol. 1 last October.