Etc...

As a token of our esteem..

In London, the Royal Society of Chemistry has announced the winners of this year's prestigious honorary fellowships. So what, you ask? Well, the crop happens to include one especially significant character. Wait a minute: Shouldn't that be ... person? No. This honoree is Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective was cited for being "way beyond his time in using chemistry as a means of cracking crime." In fact, the society says, what Holmes did 120-odd years ago in Victorian England is known today as forensic science.

Further north, in Ashton, England, Richard Swailes and Liz Gibson are winners, too – of the 38th annual Conker World Championships. They outlasted hundreds of rivals to take home the titles in the men's and women's divisions, respectively. What's a conker, and how does one compete? It's a horse chestnut, which, threaded onto a shoelace, is smashed against an opponent's until one disintegrates.

Dubai has cut the jail terms of 12 inmates by up to five years after they memorized parts of the Koran, prison authorities said on Wednesday.

Head of prisons Mohammed al-Suweidi told reporters the inmates, some of them facing 25-year terms, took advantage of a drive launched by Dubai to raise religious awareness.

Under the initiative, prisoners who memorize five of the 30 sections of the Muslim holy book get their term cut by one year while those memorizing 10 sections get five years shaved off. Inmates memorizing the whole Koran get 15 years off.

"Since the initiative was only introduced in March, nobody has yet memorized the whole book," Suweidi said.

The 12 prisoners were from the United Arab Emirates and other countries including Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Which is the best in the business when it comes to business schools? According to Business Week, the answer is Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. The magazine surveyed more than 200 corporate recruiters and 11,500 students for its biannual ranking. Business Week's top 10 MBA programs in the US:

1. Kellogg School, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
2. University of Chicago
3. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
4. Stanford University, Calif.
5. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
6. Sloan School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
7. Columbia University, N.Y.
8. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
9. Fuqua School, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
10. Tuck School, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.