National fund-raising committees for the Democratic and Republican parties, President Barack Obama, and other major politicians have declined to return campaign donations totalling $1.8 million from Houston financier R Allen Stanford, now on trial for allegedly masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

The ancient Egyptians believed that God in the form of the sun in his fiery chariot rode across the celestial dome of the sky every morning, disappeared over the edge at sunset and rose again in all of its glory after it had traversed the back of the globe during the night.