A good week for ...
James Doohan
After at least two previous unsuccessful attempts, the ashes of the actor who played 'Scotty' in the Star Trek series were blasted into space, on board the Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that fired the first commercial space capsule towards the International Space Station. The ashes of Canadian-born Doohan, who died of Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia in July 2005, aged 85, were among those of around 300 people who each paid US$3,000 for the privilege. The previous attempt was from a base in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
Dr Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun
Hong Kong's former health chief was appointed to a second five-year term as director general of the World Health Organisation. Chan was the sole candidate nominated for the post but had faced pressure from some member states last year over controversies - including her handling of the swine flu outbreak in 2009, when she was accused of overreaction by raising the WHO's pandemic alert level to phase five for the first time in the organisation's history.
Ling Yifan
The 29-year-old Beijing cartoonist struck a chord with her plea on the internet, posted via the Sina Weibo microblogging site, for people to take pictures of her portrait of her dying grandfather in places around the world. Her post was forwarded more than 80,000 times within a few days, with tens of thousands of microbloggers taking photos of the portrait in a variety of locations, from the River Thames to the Tibetan Plateau to a zoo in the Seychelles.
