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Secret Service agent James Bond. It was published by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1955 with a cover design conceived by Fleming. The only Bond novel set entirely in Britain, it features Drax, an ex-Nazi working for the Russians, who plans to build a rocket, arm it with a nuclear warhead, and fire it at London. Moonraker, like Fleming's previous novels, was well received by critics. It plays on fears common in the 1950s, including rocket attacks (following the V-2 strikes of the Second World War), Soviet communism, the re-emergence of Nazism and the "threat from within" posed by both ideologies. Fleming examines Englishness, and the novel shows the virtues and strength of England. Adaptations include a broadcast on South African radio in 1956 starring Bob Holness and a 1958 Daily Express comic strip. The novel's title was used in 1979 for the eleventh official film in the Eon Productions Bond series and the fourth to star Roger Moore as Bond; the plot was significantly changed from the novel to include excursions into space. (Full article...
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Did you know...

Hoverfly

... that insects that pollinate plants include butterflies, moths, beetles, flies (example pictured), wasps, and ants?
... that the political scientist Siobhan O'Sullivan argues that animal activists should focus on the inconsistent treatment of animals relative to other animals, not relative to humans?
... that the 12-gun
brig HMS Constant
captured at least seven French and Dutch vessels while at sea between 1806 and 1813?

... that the first original novel in the Gujarati language, Karan Ghelo, was published in 1866 by Nandshankar Mehta?
... that
the death of Kurt Cobain at 1994's Yoyo A Go Go
punk rock festival?

... that Wu Qing won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 2001, the first Chinese woman to receive the honour?
... that upon its 1641 premiere in Venice, the opera La finta pazza was performed twelve times in seventeen days?
... that the ancient Maya lightning god Yopaat helped with the rebirth of the maize god by breaking the shell of a turtle with his thunderbolt?

In the news

EgyptAir Airbus A320-200 involved in hijack

The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.
In cricket, the West Indies win both the ICC World Twenty20 and ICC Women's World Twenty20.
Clashes in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region, disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, result in at least 30 deaths.

An overpass
collapses in Kolkata
, India, killing at least 25 people.

EgyptAir Flight 181 (aircraft pictured) is hijacked shortly after takeoff and forced to land at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus.

Ongoing events:
- Zika virus outbreak
Recent deaths
:

On this day...

April 5: Feast Day of Vincent Ferrer

Birkenhead Park

1081 – The Komnenian dynasty came to full power when Alexios I Komnenos was crowned Byzantine Emperor.
1566 – A covenant of nobles in the Habsburg Netherlands presented Governor Margaret of Parma a petition to suspend the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands.
1847 – Britain's first civic public park, Birkenhead Park (pictured) in Birkenhead, Merseyside, opened.
1936 – Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hit Tupelo, Mississippi, killing about 436 people.
2009 – The North Korean satellite Kwangmyŏngsŏng-2 was launched from the Tonghae Satellite Launching Ground and passed over Japan, sparking concerns by other nations that it may have been a trial run of technology that could be used to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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Today's featured picture

A view of the

Muscat, Oman, is the best-known of the Sharqiyah

region. Its stream maintains a constant flow of water throughout the year, and large pools of water and boulders are scattered along the course of the wadi.

Photograph: Richard Bartz

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