Celebrity Kids

Guess the celebrity from their photograph before the fame, drugs and plastic surgery.
http://gerport.com/celebQuiz/

August 31st

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1997: Princess Diana dies in Paris crash Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed after her car crashes in a Paris underpass - the driver and her friend Dodi Fayed are also dead.
	1994: IRA declares 'complete' ceasefire The IRA announces a "complete cessation of military operations" after 25 years of bombing and killing.
	1959: Anglo-US TV debate makes history British prime minister Harold Macmillan and American president Dwight Eisenhower give an historic live television broadcast from Downing Street.

UK plan to track asteroid threat

Apex would spend three years studying the space rock More details

UK space scientists and engineers have designed a mission to investigate a potentially hazardous asteroid.

The 300m-wide (984ft) rock, known as Apophis, will fly past Earth in April 2029 at a distance that is closer than many communications satellites.

Astrium, based in Stevenage, Herts, wants a probe to track the asteroid so its orbit can be better understood.

The concept will compete for a $50,000 (£25,000) Planetary Society prize, but a full mission would cost millions.

The British design calls for a small, remote-sensing spacecraft, dubbed Apex, which could rendezvous with Apophis in January 2014.

It would spend three years tracking the rock, sending data back to Earth about the object's size, spin, composition and temperature.

From this information, orbit modelling would enable a more accurate prediction of the risk of any future collision.

Early warning

Astrium says that if its concept won the prize, it would donate the money to charity.

"The real prize for us would be if the European or US space agencies thought there was merit in our proposal and asked us to carry the feasibility study forward," said Dr Mike Healy, the company's space science director.

A full mission would be expected to cost several hundred million dollars to develop and launch.

Apophis could become a testbed for future defence strategies

Apophis caused some consternation in 2004 when initial observations suggested it might hit Earth in 2029.

Further study by ground-based telescopes indicated there was virtually no chance of this happening, and the expectation is that the object will whiz past the Earth at a close but comfortable distance of just under 36,000km (22,370 miles).

Talk of a possible strike on the next visit in 2036 has also been dampened by astronomers who have kept a careful watch over the rock's progress through space.

Nonetheless, Apophis is considered a good target on which to practise Earth-protection measures.

Were such an object to hit the Earth, it could cause devastation on a country scale, leading possibly to the deaths of many millions of people.

Scientists say, however, that given sufficient warning, a potential impactor could be deflected out of Earth's path.

Some have suggested such a rock might be nudged on to a safe trajectory by hitting it with a small mass. Others have proposed flying a spacecraft next to the object, to use gravity to tug the asteroid clear of the planet.

Political support

The issue of asteroid or comet strikes is a topical one as researchers continue to gather more information about their frequency during Earth history.

At least one of the planet's mass extinction events - which included the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago - has been attributed to the impact of a large space object.

Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik has campaigned for the research area to be given more funding. His grandfather, renowned Estonian astronomer Ernst Opik, did much to raise science's understanding of Earth-crossing comets and asteroids.

The politician told the BBC News website: "The question isn't whether Earth is hit by an asteroid - it is when.

"Good luck to Astrium; they are showing that if we have the political will, we certainly have the technical know-how to do something about threatening objects."

The US-based Planetary Society has organised its competition in co-operation with the European Space Agency (Esa), the US space agency (Nasa), the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA).

The winning entry will be submitted to space agencies to see if they want to carry the ideas through.

2007 'probably wettest UK summer'

Homeowners and businesses are still recovering from the floods

Torrential rain across the UK is likely to mean the summer of 2007 becomes the wettest since rainfall records began in 1914, Met Office figures suggest.

Provisional tallies show a total of 358.5mm (14.114in) of rain fell on the UK, narrowly beating the previous 1956 record of 358.4mm (14.110in).

However, more data has to be collected, which may push 2007 into second place.

The weather has been attributed to an unusually southerly jet stream, which brought depressions across the country.

'Very disappointing'

Keith Groves, head of forecasting at the Met Office, said: "These figures confirm what most people have already been thinking - this summer has been very wet and very disappointing for most."

See graph of UK rainfall

The jet stream is a band of high-powered winds that determine weather systems across the UK. For much of the summer it was further south and stronger than in previous years.

Heavy rain in June saw severe flooding in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands.

About 7,000 homes in Hull and more than 1,200 in Sheffield were affected.

In July swathes of England and Wales were left inundated after intense rainfall led to rivers bursting their banks.

WETTEST UK SUMMERS 2007 - 358.5mm* 1956 - 358.4mm 1985 - 342.7mm 1927 - 336.3mm 1931 - 327.0mm * Provisional Source: Met Office

Seven people died when the River Severn burst its banks in Gloucestershire, and more than 350,000 people were left without running water after a treatment works was submerged.

Flood damage

In Hereford and Worcestershire, local authorities called in the RAF after thousands of motorists became stranded on the M5.

The operation to airlift people from cars, boats and their homes was one of the RAF's biggest peace-time manoeuvres.

The scale of the damage led to the government lodging an application for support under the European Union Solidarity Fund (EUSF) for coping with natural disasters.

Flood Recovery Minister John Healey said the total cost of the flood damage was now estimated at £2.7bn.

The Association of British Insurers has claimed the cost of the flooding may be as high £3bn.

Bloggers battered by viral storm

Some blogs have been found hosting booby-trapped links

Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.

The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC.

Infected computers are being hijacked by the gang behind the attacks and either mined for saleable data or used for other attacks.

The Blogger attack is the latest in a series by a gang that has managed to hijack hundreds of thousands of PCs.

Attack pattern

Security researcher Alex Eckelberry from Sunbelt Software first noticed the booby-trapped links turning up on Blogger on 27 August.

Now many hundreds of blogs on the site have been updated with a short entry containing the link.

Mr Eckelberry said it was not yet clear how the links were posted to blogs. The bogus entries could have exploited a Blogger feature that lets users e-mail entries to their journal.

The blogs themselves could also be fake and set up solely to act as hosts for spam.

STORM WORM SUBJECT LINES are you kidding me? lol Dude dont send that stuff to my home email... Dude your gonna get caught, lol HAHAHAHAHAHA, man your insane! I cant belive you did this LMAO, your crazy man LOL, dude what are you doing man, who filmed this thing? oh man your nutz OMG, what are you thinking

Google has yet to comment on the attack and how it might have been carried out.

The entries on the blogs have the same text as some of the spam distributed by the group behind the attacks. These attempt to trick people into clicking on links and downloading booby-trapped files using cleverly crafted messages.

Some pose as YouTube links others claim to be looking for testers of software packages or digital greetings cards.

The group behind the attack on Blogger is thought to have mounted a huge series of attacks since January.

The first attack used a spam that purported to give recipients more information about the severe storms seen in Europe in January. This led to the virus used by the gang being dubbed the "Storm Trojan".

Since January the group has been sending out huge numbers of different spam messages in a bid to trick people.

"The criminals responsible for this spam campaign are experts at exploiting social engineering to propagate their botnets," said Bradley Anstis from security firm Marshal.

The spam messages have been changed to capitalise on news events and the viral payload has been updated many times to fool anti-virus programs.

Mr Anstis said the sheer number of messages being sent by the group was staggering. On some days, he said, 4-6% of all the junk messages seen by Marshal were sent by the group.

Security experts estimate that the group can send out so much junk mail because they have hijacked so many Windows PCs via successive campaigns. Some suspect that the group has infected more than one million PCs over the last eight months.

Scribbles

Poor old Jeremy Paxman. He blundered twice on a recording of
University Challenge after getting photos of Warwick and Arundel
castles muddled up. The quizshow host didn't spot a team from Oxford
University's Worcester College had wrongly identified Arundel as
Warwick and vice versa, telling them they were right both times. They
still won by 30 points, but strictly speaking should have been docked
five. As someone recently said: 'We need to be open. We need to admit
it when we make mistakes. We need treat our viewers with respect, to
be frank with them about how and why programmes were made, to be
transparent.' And that was...er, Jeremy Paxman. The Sun P15

August 30th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1976: Notting Hill Carnival ends in riot More than 100 police officers are taken to hospital after clashes at the Notting Hill Carnival in west London.
	1980: Polish workers win trade union rights Striking Polish workers win a sweeping victory in a battle with their Communist rulers for the right to independent trade unions and the right to strike.
	1982: PLO leader forced from Beirut The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leaves his Beirut headquarters after more than a decade.

August 29th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1965: Gemini V returns to Earth Two American astronauts splash down safely in the Atlantic after setting a space endurance record.
	1950: British troops arrive in Korea British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.
	2005: Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans Hurricane Katrina lashes New Orleans with high winds and hard rain, cutting power and flooding homes.

Smokers to face picture warnings

A consultation has been held on the pictures that will be used

Images highlighting the dangers of smoking will be printed on all tobacco products sold in the UK by the end of 2009, under regulations being set out.

Manufacturers will have to start complying from October next year.

After a public consultation 15 images, including ones of diseased lungs, have been chosen to accompany text warnings about lung cancer and heart disease.

Anti-smoking campaigners welcomed the move but smokers' lobby group Forest said they were being "victimised".

Health Secretary Alan Johnson told BBC News there was evidence from other countries that the new images would help people quit.

"We do think it will help the number of people, who want to give up to smoking - the vast majority of smokers want to give up - and this will give them an extra push," he said.

EC keen

The graphic adverts come just over a month before the minimum age for buying tobacco in England and Wales increases from 16 to 18, bringing it in line with alcohol.

As well as publishing the legislation on Wednesday, the Department of Health will unveil the 15 images - chosen from an original list of 40 - that are to be used.

There's a hardcore of smokers who say 'yes, yes but I'm going to put my head in the sand' Adam Kirby, of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi Send us your comments

The government promised it would introduce picture warnings on cigarette packets in its public health white paper in 2004 and in recent years the European Commission has been urging member countries to do so as well.

The UK is the first EU country to publish the pictures on all tobacco products.

Under the new rules, it is expected that cigarette packs with written warnings only will not be allowed on sale past September 30 next year.

For other tobacco packets, the deadline will be September 30 2009.

Ministers have said the current system of written warnings has become less effective.

'Smokers deterred'

Other countries such as Canada and Brazil have already introduced picture warnings and research shows it has been effective in raising awareness about the risks associated with smoking.

A study by Canada's University of Waterloo earlier this year found that 15% of Canadian smokers had been deterred from having a cigarette - more than double the rate in Australia and the US which had text warnings at the time of the research.

The government are bullying smokers simply because they can get away with it Neil Rafferty Smokers' lobby group Forest

Amanda Sandford, from anti-smoking campaigners Ash, said she hoped the chosen images would be as graphic as possible.

"Evidence from international studies is that the stronger warnings are better," she said.

But Neil Rafferty, a spokesman for smokers' lobby group Forest, described the initiative as the "victimisation" of smokers.

"You could construct exactly the same argument for placing graphic images on bottles of alcohol, but because most people like to drink alcohol, the government doesn't want to offend the majority.

"The government are bullying smokers simply because they can get away with it."

Smuggled tobacco

Adam Kirby of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi told BBC Radio 4's Today that he was particularly "revolted" by the images of rotten teeth, which looked like "broken gravestones".

"I think it works with some people some of the time," he said. "But there's a hardcore of smokers who say 'yes, yes but I'm going to put my head in the sand'."

Professor Robert West of Cancer Research UK estimated between 5,000 - 10,000 people would stop smoking as a result of the adverts, saving around 2,500 lives a year.

But he said increasing the cost of smoking would make the biggest difference, particularly to the poorest sections of society.

"The government is facing a huge smuggling problem," he said. "Smuggled tobacco is half the price of a regular pack and 40% of tobacco is smuggled, mostly rolled tobacco.

"We need to bear down on that as much as we can."

The legislation comes weeks after England came into line with the rest of the UK by banning smoking in enclosed public places, including pubs and restaurants.

'Spider-man' suit secret revealed

A hi-tech suit could give humans spider-like abilities

A "Spider-man" suit that enables its wearer to scale vertical walls like the comic and movie superhero could one day be a reality, according to a study.

Natural technology used by spiders and geckos could help a human climb the side of a building or hang upside down from a roof, the analysis suggests.

The findings are published in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter.

Both spiders and geckos possess tiny "hairs" that allow them to stick to surfaces.

Some studies suggest that geckos can hold hundreds of times their own body weight.

Geckos and spiders provide a natural demonstration that this can be done Nicola Pugno, Polytechnic of Turin

In 2002, US research suggested this adhesion in geckos was due to very weak intermolecular forces.

These are produced by billions of hair-like structures of different sizes that are arranged in a hierarchical structure on each gecko foot.

The intermolecular "van der Waals" forces arise when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract one another.

The cumulative attractive force of billions of gecko hairs allows the reptiles to scurry up walls and even hang upside down on polished glass.

Size effect

Professor Nicola Pugno, from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, has calculated how sufficient stickiness could be generated in the same way to support an adult human's body weight.

But the bigger the surface that needs to stick, the lower its adhesion strength. So a glove able to fit a man's hand, and covered with artificial gecko hairs, should not be as sticky as a gecko's foot.

Geckos can support hundreds of times their own body weight

Luckily, the gecko only uses a fraction of the theoretical adhesion strength available through van der Waals forces.

"Some researchers were able to measure a [theoretical] adhesion strength 200 times higher than the adhesion strength in the gecko. But between theory and practical applications there is a large gap," said Professor Pugno.

"If we are able to make a surface a little bit stronger, so that the size effect vanishes, we might be able to make a suit with the same adhesion as a gecko."

The Turin-based researcher proposes that carbon nanotubes could be used as an artificial alternative to the gecko's hairs.

Carbon nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon that measure just a few billionths of a metre across. They are ultra-strong and can be organised into larger fibres.

Cleaning windows

Professor Pugno also outlined three properties which a real Spider-man suit must demonstrate.

Firstly, and most obviously, it must be able to demonstrate strong adhesive properties. Secondly, the suit must be able to detach easily from a surface after it has stuck. Thirdly, the suit must, to some degree, be able to clean itself.

The latter requirement is considered important because dirt particles could get in the way, interfering with the adhesive properties of the suit.

One way to do it is to make the suit "superhydrophobic", so that it strongly repels water. As water droplets are forced away from the contact areas of the outfit, they should wash away particles of dirt.

This property could be achieved simply by altering the geometrical properties, or topology, of the surface.

"To have all these mechanisms working together is difficult, because they are in competition with one another," Professor Pugno told the BBC News website.

"But geckos and spiders provide a natural demonstration that this can be done."

He added that there were many interesting applications for adhesive suits, in areas ranging from space exploration to defence. The work could also aid the design of gloves and shoes for window cleaners working on tall skyscrapers.

But human muscles are very different to those of geckos, so people would probably suffer from muscle fatigue if they tried to stick to a wall for many hours.

Jupiter shield's mixed blessing

Impacts have been a major feature of Solar System evolution

It is a commonly held belief that Jupiter shields Earth from comets or asteroids that might otherwise hit us.

This idea is based on a 1994 study that looked at comets originating from outside our Solar System.

New research, presented at the European Planetary Science Congress, has looked at the effect of Jupiter on comets already within our Solar System.

It seems that, whilst Jupiter does deflect some comets away from us, it sends almost as many comets towards us.

The recent Open University study has focussed on a population of comets called Centaurs that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune.

The majority of objects that threaten the Earth, termed Near Earth Objects, come from these Centaurs or from the asteroid belt found between Mars and Jupiter.

Different sizes

Dr Jonathan Horner, with Professor Barrie Jones, has designed a computer model that tracked the paths of 100,000 Centaurs, over 10 million years, and recorded the number of objects that would impact the Earth.

Five scenarios were run, the first with our Solar System, then replacing Jupiter with a planet that was three-quarters, a half and a quarter of the mass of the gas giant; and finally with no Jupiter at all.

The results showed that the numbers of Earth impact events were the same for the cases with the real Jupiter and with no planet at all.

Although the data shows that Jupiter does deflect some objects that would otherwise threaten the Earth, its large mass also redirects bodies towards the Earth.

"Rather than it being a clear cut case that Jupiter acts as a shield, it seems that Jupiter almost gives with one hand and takes away with the other," said Dr Horner.

Mixed bag

One unexpected outcome of the work showed that if we had a planet the size of Saturn in Jupiter's place, the number of Earth impacts would be significantly increased. A smaller planet would still divert comets towards the Earth, but would not have the bulk to send dangerous objects out of the Solar System.

"There was some degree of surprise in the results," said Dr Horner. "We had a feeling it wouldn't be as clear cut as everybody believed, as not having a Jupiter should be quite a stable situation because you've got nothing stirring things up.

"We didn't expect to see this big peak of impact rates if Jupiter were the size of Saturn."

This preliminary data has been presented to the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany. The team is currently running five additional simulations to learn more about the effects of a Saturn-sized planet.

The next phase of the project for the group is to assess the impact risk posed to the Earth by objects in the asteroid belt and the team will go on to study comets that venture into the Solar System from deeper out in space.

Russian music site to 'relaunch'

US firms had sought damages from the Russian-based site

The contentious Russian music download site allofmp3.com looks set to resume business after a Moscow court ruled it was legal under the country's law.

A statement on the website, shut down in July, said the service would resume "in the foreseeable future".

Before it closed, the cut-price music site claimed to be the second biggest seller of downloads after iTunes.

It was the subject of countless lawsuits from UK and US record labels that claimed it violated copyright law.

A representative of the music industry said if it started trading again it would still be in "clear violation of copyright laws".

No response

The most recent case involving the service was a criminal prosecution against Denis Kvasov, head of Mediaservices, the owner of the website.

He was tried for intellectual property infringement after record labels put pressure on Russian prosecutors to bring the case to court.

If it were to resume trading as it was before, it would be in clear violation of copyright laws both within and outside Russia Tim Smith, IFPI Net piracy case thrown out

But the court ruled that Mr Kvasov operated within Russian law.

"The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law," said District Judge Yekaterina Sharapova.

During the trial, Mr Kvasov successfully argued that although the site had paid no music industry royalties, it had paid 15% of its profit to a local organisation, the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (Roms) in accordance with Russian law.

"We pay royalties to those who sign up with us and ask for them. But none of the majors, among them I mean labels like EMI and Universal, want their money," Oleg Nezus of Roms told Reuters.

"I've been sending them letters since November of 2005, stating there's a dividend. The labels don't respond."

Questionable status

Although, the prosecutors in the case are expected to make an appeal against Mr Kvasov, the site looks set to relaunch.

Mediaservices launched mp3sparks.com after the closure

A statement on the site, dated 31 August, said: "The service will be resumed in the foreseeable future. We are doing our best at the moment to ensure that all our users can use their accounts, top up balance and order music."

But Tim Smith legal expert at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said "The failure of the court to convict Denis Kvasov yet has no impact whatsoever on the legality of Allofmp3 itself.

"If it were to resume trading as it was before, it would be in clear violation of copyright laws both within and outside Russia by reproducing and making available music it has no right to sell."

Members of the IFPI are currently suing the site in both the UK and the US.

Stark warning

Allofmp3.com was closed in early July ahead of a summit between the Russian and American presidents.

The closure was the result of increasing pressure from both industry and governments.

During talks on Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2006, Susan Schwab, the US Trade Representative, said that the site must be closed before entry.

However, within days of the site being shut down MediaServices opened a new service called mp3Sparks.com where allofmp3 credit could be used to purchase music.

A warning on Mp3Sparks.com reads: "You should not download audio files from Mp3Sparks.com if the terms are in conflict with the laws of your country of residence.

"Mp3Sparks.com does not attempt to control the actions of its users, who bear sole responsibility for any illegal use."

Allofmp3.com is not currently selling music.

Hedgehogs join 'protection' list

Tidier gardens and urbanisation are blamed for hedgehogs' decline

Hedgehogs and house sparrows have been included on an updated list of species and habitats which need protection.

The new Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) has identified 1,149 species and 65 habitats in the UK as being in need of conservation and greater protection.

When the action plan was launched in 1997, it listed 577 species - half the number included in the updated version.

Wildlife experts said this was a result of wider research and not necessarily down to more habitat being destroyed.

Other animals added to the list for the first time include the grass snake and the garden tiger moth; while otters, bottlenose dolphins and red squirrels are deemed to remain in need of habitat protection.

BAP PRIORITY SPECIES Birds - 59 species Fish (freshwater) - 14 species Reptiles/amphibians (herptiles) - 10 species Lower plants and fungi - 337 species Marine fauna and flora - 88 species Invertebrates - 411 species Terrestrial mammals - 18 species Vascular plants - 212 species (Source: UK Biodiversity Action Plan 2007) 'Tidy gardens' are hog threat

But the latest BAP shows that a number of species have benefited from being featured on the original list 10 years ago. The numbers of ladybird spiders and lady's slipper orchids are at a 50-year high.

The BAP is considered to be one of the most authoritative reference sources for the state of the UK's wildlife.

The result of more than two years of research by more than 500 wildlife experts and a large number of volunteers, it brings together key scientific data on all the listed species in one document.

As well as outlining the state of British species, it also contributes to global conservation commitments, outlined in the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Biodiversity Minister Joan Ruddock said the updated action plan would help shape the government's conservation policy.

"Conserving biodiversity is essential if we are to pass on a healthy environment to the next generation," Ms Ruddock said.

"The new list will help us target our resources and efforts where they are needed, and demonstrates our commitment to publish new priorities, targets and plans for halting biodiversity loss by 2010."

'Cause for alarm'

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said that as well as the house sparrow, the starling was another familiar garden bird to feature on the BAP list of 59 bird species.

House sparrows are one of the new additions to the action plan

"The fact that the bird list now includes more than a fifth of all the UK's regularly occurring birds is a cause for alarm, " said Mark Avery, the RSPB's conservation director.

"We will have to act fast if we are to meet obligations of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010."

But Dr Avery added that the BAP had focused efforts on stemming the decline in a number of vulnerable species.

"To its credit, we have seen dramatic increases in key species, like bittern, stone-curlew, corncrake, nightjar, cirl bunting and woodlark."

A separate study, also published on Tuesday, also highlighted the decline in the UK's hedgehog population.

The study by the University of London for the People's Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society listed tidier gardens and urbanisation as key factors affecting the fall in the number of the small mammals.

Nigel Bourne, chairman of the Wildlife and Countryside Link's biodiversity working group, welcomed the updated list and called it a "major boost".

"The list will focus efforts on the real, shared conservation priorities in the UK.

"The conservation charities that make up Link... look forward to continuing to work in partnership with the government," Dr Bourne added.

"Together we can turn the list into targeted action to deliver the conservation of our very special habitats and species."

Silly Season Quiz

Silly season quiz
Sharks, Lucan and pets in engines. Test your news nous.

August 28th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1963: King's dream for racial harmony The fight for racial equality moves a step closer to victory as Dr Martin Luther King tells thousands of Americans his dream for freedom.
	2003: Blair gives evidence to Hutton The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, appears before the Hutton inquiry and speaks of the "raging storm" which followed a controversial BBC report.
	2004: Second gold for Kelly Holmes British athlete Kelly Holmes secures a place in Olympic history by winning the 1500m gold in Athens.

A digital game of cat and mouse

Will the game of cat and mouse continue?

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is a technology that divides opinion.

For some campaigners, it is "defective" software that cripples products and should be abolished immediately.

To the record and film industry it is a "crucial" tool that allows them to protect and sell their goods online.

As a result, the software locks have become the focus of a game of digital cat and mouse. As each new or updated DRM system is released an army of hackers pores over the code and often releases a workaround within hours or days.

For example, in August 2006 a hacker managed to circumvent the Microsoft Windows DRM system within three days of the software giant releasing an update intended to block previous workarounds.

In July this year, updates intended to protect tracks sold through Microsoft's Zune Marketplace were also cracked, whilst Apple's Fairplay DRM system has come under similar scrutiny

"DRM is seen as fair game in the same way as firewalls are for hackers," said analyst Mark Mulligan of JupiterResearch.

Free trials

However, not all DRMs are equal. Music was more likely to be targeted by hackers and critics because of people's expectations, said Mr Mulligan.

People have expectations based on physical formats

"One of the big failings of DRM [on music downloads] is the complete contradiction in ideology behind selling music in CD format versus selling music in digital format," he explained.

Most CDs do not have any form of DRM and so almost all of the content is already available DRM-free, he said. Therefore any hacks of music DRM systems were done "just for fun".

Some music retailers have started to test the waters by selling downloads DRM-free.

In April this year, music giant EMI announced that it would sell "premium" music downloads through Apple's iTunes without the locks, whilst earlier this month Vivendi's Universal Music announced a similar deal as part of a six month trial.

But the vast majority of music downloads are still sold with DRM. The record industry says this is for two reasons.

"One is to enable different business models at different price points," said Richard Gooch, director of technology at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) "The other is to protect against piracy."

The music and video markets are not parallel. The video industry does not deliver 90% of its content DRM-free Steve Jobs Quick guide: Cracked DRMs Picking locks

Mr Gooch pointed to services such as Napster that offer a subscription service with access to more than 4 million tunes.

"Those services which give you access to everything for a fixed period of time - it's difficult to see how that type of a service could be offered if it wasn't operated with DRM," he said.

"You can't send a user an e-mail saying - 'by the way, those 4 million tracks I gave you, you wouldn't mind deleting them would you?'."

DRM does the job for Napster by making tracks unplayable at the end of the subscription period.

Cracked disc

Similar technology is used to control movie downloads as part of services such as CinemaNow and Amazon's Unbox service.

Mr Mulligan says that DRM on DVDs does not attract the same level of mirth from the digital community as it does for music downloads.

The DRM used in the iPlayer has been cracked

"There isn't a contradiction of approach between the physical and digital products," said Mr Mulligan.

"Video content and DVD has always been very protected - people do not expect to copy DVDs easily," he said.

Apple boss Steve Jobs made a similar observation earlier this year in an open letter posted on the company's website.

"The music and video markets are not parallel. The video industry does not deliver 90% of its content DRM-free," he wrote, referring to CDs. Other groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) also agree.

However, DRM for movies does still attract attention from the hacking community.

For example, the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) used on next-generation HD DVD and Blu-ray discs was cracked six months after it hit shelves. Other cracks appeared soon after.

Although this had led to some people sharing movie files illegally on the web it is not at the same level as for music.

"There is some demand for it but it is a very different scenario than for CDs," he said.

Endless game

Another potential target for hackers is the burgeoning sector of on-demand television.

The bottom line is there will never be a watertight digital rights management solution Mark Mulligan iPlayer to launch

But like with film, Mr Mulligan believes it will not be hit as hard as the DRM used for music.

"DRM is better suited to television content because it fits with demand as well as expectations," said Mr Mulligan.

In particular, he said, people were unlikely to want to keep much of the ephemeral content available on television such as news or soap operas.

Some TV companies also seem sanguine.

The Microsoft DRM system used by the BBC's iPlayer has already been cracked and people using the trial version of the player have already been able to strip programmes of their DRM.

At its launch, Ashley Highfield, director of future media and technology at the BBC admitted: "Piracy is always going to happen."

It is a view shared by Mr Mulligan

"The bottom line is there will never be a watertight digital rights management solution" he said.

The view is disputed by people within the movie and music industry.

"DRM is not going away," said Mr Gooch.

And so until one side wins out, the game of cat and mouse will continue.

Budget flights of faith

The chartered flight service being launched by a Vatican-linked travel organisation along with an Italian airline has both lofty and more mundane goals. It aims to provide a journey of faith for pilgrims as well as turning a profit.

The first flight will shuttle pilgrims to Lourdes, in southern France

You can forget the complimentary bag of salted peanuts and plastic pot of orange juice because each plane ticket will come with unlimited spiritual refreshment, Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi (ORP) suggests.

Flights are planned from Rome to many of the sites which draw hundreds of thousands of Catholic pilgrims seeking solace and or doing penance each year.

Monday's inaugural passengers are due to travel from the Italian capital to an airport just 10 minutes from the shrine of Lourdes in France.

But from December, planes emblazoned inside and out with the logo "Seeking your face, Lord" will be dropping off energetic faithful near Spain's Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route, as well as at Poland's Czestochowa sanctuary and at the shrine to Fatima, in Portugal.

Increasing demand

There will also be flights to Jerusalem in Israel and Sinai in Egypt, and special plans are even under way to jet thousands of young people to Sydney for the World Youth Congress next year.

See a map of the pilgrimage flight routes

Father Cesare, director of ORP which already shuttles some 400,000 Catholics to sites in Europe and beyond each year, says that the decision is motivated by the sheer demand for spirituality.

This is not a money-making operation. It is a service that we believe in Father Cesare Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi

"More and more people come to us wanting to go the Holy Land, to go to Fatima, Lourdes and other places and sometimes it is difficult to find enough places on the scheduled flights on the airline to take these people there," he told the news website from Rome.

When going on a pilgrimage, he says, the journey itself is part of the experience.

But, for the Catholic Church, managing the flight itself as well as what follows enables it to be infused with messages from the start.

The hostesses will be specially trained, Father Cesare says, and even the headrest will carry the quotation from the psalm that will be the airline's motto.

POPULAR PILGRIMAGES Kumbha Mela, India: 75m Lourdes, France: 6m Mecca, Saudi Arabia: 2.5m Figures per year. Source: UN World Tourism Organisation

"Then, during the flight, we have recorded and made some presentations in DVD and in compact disc to be able to transmit images or audio so people can listen to messages regarding the places they are going to visit... and there are also some moments of prayer. At the end of the day that is really what we do," he says.

Faith tourism is big business but it is impossible to know how much of the $735bn (540bn euros; £367bn) that the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) estimates is generated annually by international tourism belongs to this sector, which overlaps with cultural tourism.

No ordinary holiday

It is a competitive field, with one of the Vatican-linked routes in direct competition with that run by low-cost airline Ryanair.

Father Cesare says one of the aims of the new flights is to make pilgrimage more affordable.

"We need to make pilgrimage more accessible, this operation will allow us to beat down costs... We should be beating down the normal cost by 10-15%," he says.

But the Dublin-based carrier says it does not feel threatened.

"Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope's boss can't rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for a heavenly price," the airline told the BBC in a statement.

Ryanair and Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi cannot really be compared, insists Father Cesare, because they have such different aims.

"This is not a money-making operation. It is a service that we believe in. We want to make people take part in a religious experience that will help them grow in faith," he says.

"It is true that we do make a profit but that is not the main goal."

He estimates that at least 150,000 pilgrims will take the new flights each year, bringing the OPR's annual number of clients to almost half a million.

The average package includes food, flights, accommodation and "technical-religious assistance".

From foot to flight

The Vatican-approved decision to increase faith tourism reflects a broader change in what people are demanding from their holidays, according to the UNWTO.

"Tourism is increasingly seen as more of an experience and the spiritual element is an important component of this experience," Luigi Cabrini, director of the organisation's sustainable development department, told the BBC news website.

But, he says, many of those who journey along the Santiago de Compostela route in Spain, for example, are not strictly religious pilgrims.

Rome is a site of pilgrimage itself

"There may be a core group of Catholics who are undertaking the route as religious pilgrims but many others simply want to travel and meet others."

He says part of religious tourism's value is that it can contribute to increasing comprehension between different cultures.

"It has a value to the overall issue of dialogue between civilisations, it can promote a better understanding between people visiting the shrine or monument of religious value," he says.

Of course Christian pilgrimages form just a portion of those who travel to religious sites worldwide.

Some of the most important pilgrimages include an estimated 2.5 million Muslims taking part in the annual Hajj, travelling to Mecca and - perhaps the largest - the estimated 75 million Hindus taking part in the Kumbha Mela, which takes place in India four times every 12 years.

Though the methods of arriving at your destination may vary - from foot to flight - the meaning and motivation remains essentially the same, Father Cesare says.

"It is not only an intellectual experience it is something that you live through because your body moves, your senses are touched and the whole human being is involved."

August 27th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1979: IRA bomb kills Lord Mountbatten The Queen's cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, is killed by a bomb blast on his boat in Ireland.
	1979: Soldiers die in Warrenpoint massacre At least 18 British soldiers are killed in two booby-trap bomb attacks at Warrenpoint, South Down, close to the border with the Irish Republic.
	1990: 'Guinness Four' guilty All four defendants in the marathon Guinness trial are found guilty.

BBC One wins channel of the year

The next series of Dr Who sees the return of Catherine Tate

BBC One has scooped two awards at the Edinburgh TV Festival, being named terrestrial channel of the year and taking best programme for Doctor Who.

ITV2 received the prize for top digital-only channel, beating five nominated rivals.

BBC One's success was described as "the best thing that's happened to me all month" by controller Peter Fincham.

He has had to apologise for recent scandals including the misleading editing of a film clip of the Queen.

Mr Fincham has also had to face criticism over rigged competitions on shows such as Blue Peter, but said he was "very lucky to be running BBC One" and said it was a job he "loved".

"I hope I'll be doing it for a good while yet," he told delegates at the annual festival, which attracts about 2,000 industry figures.

Next generation

The shortlists for the three categories were compiled from public votes by polling company YouGov.

Jordan and Peter Andre's documentary has been a hit for ITV2

The festival's executive committee - made up of 33 senior figures from TV and journalism - then decided the terrestrial and non-terrestrial channels of the year.

The winner of the best programme prize was chosen from a shortlist by almost 200 young people, who were invited to attend the festival as a way of showcasing the next generation of TV talent.

Doctor Who producer Phil Collinson paid tribute to those delegates, saying that to receive the award "from young people coming into this industry is a particular honour".

He also praised the BBC, saying that without it, "Doctor Who would never be made, would never be so good and would never be so well supported".

The other nominees for the terrestrial channel award were BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five.

On the shortlist for best non-terrestrial network were BBC Three, BBC Four, More4, Sky One and UKTV Gold.

Doctor Who beat E4's drama Skins as well as fellow BBC One series Life on Mars and Planet Earth to win best drama.

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

The result comes from a sky survey by the VLA in New Mexico 'It's hard to picture'

Astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across.

It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes.

The "hole" is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.

The discovery will be reported in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

Previous sky surveys that have traced the large-scale structure of the nearby Universe have long shown, for example, how the clustering of galaxies is strung into vast filaments and sheets that are separated by great gaps.

But the void discovered by a University of Minnesota team is about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.

"It's hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are," conceded Minnesota's Professor Lawrence Rudnick.

"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.

The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction.

Dark evidence

The team used data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to make its discovery. The VLA - which stands for Very Large Array - is a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico.

The finding is said to fit neatly with observations of the Universe's "oldest light" - the famous Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the study of which has earned several scientists the Nobel Prize.

This is the radiation that comes from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the Universe had cooled to such a degree that hydrogen atoms could exist. Before that time, scientists say, the Universe would have been so hot that matter and light would have been "coupled" - the cosmos would have been opaque.

THE CMB - OLD AND COLD Nasa Probes have mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background which is all around us in space This radiation from the infant Universe shines at weak radio (microwave) wavelengths The maps show up tiny temperature fluctuations - the mottled colours above These fluctuations correspond to the early distribution of matter in the fledgling cosmos Nasa's WMap satellite sees a cold spot lying in the path of the newly found void 'Ancient light' takes Nobel

Today, this light shines at microwave wavelengths at a frigid -270C; and observations of the CMB made by Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe show a particular "cold spot" in the direction of the newly identified void.

The explanation for this may lie in the enigmatic "dark energy" that scientists know so little about but which is said to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

Light particles passing through the void would be expected to lose a little more energy than those passing through space cluttered with matter - if dark energy is stretching the Universe apart at a faster and faster rate.

Scientists refer to this as the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect and a corresponding "warm spot" in the CMB associated with an area of space dominated by a supercluster of galaxies was identified some years ago.

"In essence, this latest study gives us a very elegant demonstration of the existence of dark energy in a way which is very convincing," commented Professor Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK.

"We keep getting evidence for dark energy, this component of the Universe which is so dominant, and yet we still have only a tiny glimmer of what it could be."

The reason the void exists is not known. "That's going to be a challenge for people that work on the development of structure in the Universe. It's a very hot topic in the cosmology right now," said Professor Rudnick.

Teenage hacker unlocks the iPhone

George Hotz says he wishes his hack could be a bit simpler Hacker interview

A New Jersey teenager has unlocked the iPhone, opening the way to Apple's iconic mobile telephone being used by non-US networks.

The Associated Press news agency confirmed George Hotz, 17, had unlocked the iPhone and used it on T-Mobile, a rival to its sole US operator, AT&T.

The hacker says the unlocking takes about two hours and involves some soldering and skill with software.

AT&T and Apple have not yet commented on the news.

Some of my friends think I wasted my summer but I think it was worth it George Hotz

Hackers and security researchers have been poring over Apple's much-coveted phone since its launch in the US in June in an effort to discover vulnerabilities in the handset.

Top of their list has been cracking the code that ties the phone to AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive network.

Before George Hotz's announcement on his blog, the iPhone was made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the Sim (Subscriber Identity Module) card.

However, special equipment was needed and the actual phone was not unlocked, with each Sim card having to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone.

Analysts believe Apple may still have time to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable to the hacks before the iPhone's expected European launch later this year.

Collaboration

The young hacker says he hopes phone-owners can eventually unlock their phones by themselves, and that he hopes his discovery will not be exploited for commercial gain.

The iPhone is currently sold only within the US

"That's exactly, like, what I don't want... people making money off this," he told AP.

The next step, he said, would be a non-solder solution: a way to unlock the phone using software alone.

Technology blog Engadget said on Friday that it had successfully unlocked an iPhone using a different method that required no tinkering with the hardware. The software was supplied by an anonymous group of hackers that apparently plans to charge for it, AP reports.

The agency notes that both the Hotz and Sim techniques leave the iPhone's many functions intact apart from its "visual voicemail" feature, which shows voice messages as if they are incoming e-mail.

The New Jersey hacker says he collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process.

He spent about 500 hours on the project since the launch on 29 June.

"Some of my friends think I wasted my summer but I think it was worth it," he told US newspaper The Record of Bergen County.

August 26th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1959: US to 'stand by' West Germans America will stand by West Germans in their efforts to remain strong and free, the US President pledges.
	1975: Rhodesia peace talks fail Talks between the Rhodesian Government and the African National Council collapse acrimoniously.
	1985: Budd smashes 5,000m record Controversial athlete Zola Budd breaks the world 5,000m record.

The genre that just won't die

Comics are to be Hercule Poirot's latest incarnation. It's the latest twist to crime fiction, a genre constantly reinvented in its 170-year history.

When a story has been told and retold many times, it can wear a little threadbare. So it is with the murder mysteries penned by the original queen of crime, Agatha Christie, now associated with the genteel, sepia-tinged glow of a cosy Sunday in front of the telly.

AGATHA CHRISTIE 15 Sept 1890 - 12 Jan 1976 First novel - featuring Poirot - published in 1920 66 novels, 154 short stories and 20 plays in 50-year career Outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare Translated into 70+ languages In pictures: Christie comics

Cosies - that is what such tales are known as in the crime-writing trade. But to her fans, Christie wrote about far more than murder most horrid in the drawing room. Hers are timeless stories filled with tension and deceit, not to mention richly-detailed portraits of a bygone age.

And these make her tales perfect comic book fodder, which is why her publishers of 70 years, HarperCollins, hope that Hercule Poirot et al will appeal to the same young readers who for generations have lapped up the exploits of TinTin, Asterix and more recent heroes of graphic novels - readers who might otherwise be put off the Christie cannon by dated TV repeats.

For those who prefer to use their imagination, 12 Christie novels are being given a facelift with new jackets, just six years after the last revamp. For unlike many of her contemporaries, Christie has never been out of print.

"She's an incredibly important author for us," says Julia Wisdom, HarperFiction's publishing director in charge of crime titles. "They are still very good stories and very clever. And she translates beautifully into any language - the stories are just there, they are not difficult to put across."

IN THE PAPERBACK CHARTS * indicates crime title *1. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills *2. Next, Michael Crichton 3. The House at Riverton, Kate Morton 4. The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards *5. The Naming of the Dead, Ian Rankin 6. Getting Rid of Matthew, Jane Fallon *7. Relentless, Simon Kernick *8. The Last Testament, Sam Bourne 9. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon 10. Whitethorn Woods, Maeve Binchy

Crime fiction in general is a strong source of sales - five of the top 10 selling paperbacks are thriller titles; two are literary chillers on the Richard and Judy reading list, two are by perennial best-selling authors (Michael Crichton and Ian Rankin) and The Last Testament is a chase mystery, a genre made popular again by The da Vinci Code.

"We've also got Val McDermid in the hardback chart with a psychological thriller - quite violent, a lot of forensic detail and she's been televised with Wire in the Blood, which always lifts sales," says Ms Wisdom. McDermid's latest, Beneath the Bleeding, is one of six thrillers in the hardback top 10.

"These are very different books, and that's the key to why crime has endured - it's so adaptable, it will never go stale."

Locked room

While Sherlock Holmes remains one of the world's most famous fictional detectives 120 years after his first appearance, he was by no means the first. In 1841, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a short story titled The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Elementary appeal

Mystery and suspense had been a staple of fiction long before this - Lynda "Prime Suspect" LaPlante is among those to credit novelists such as the Brontes and Jane Austen as skilled thriller writers - but this was the first "tale of rationation", as Poe described it, in which a fictional detective solved a crime.

What Arthur Conan Doyle did some 45 years later was to capture the public's imagination with a flawed central character using the latest techniques to puzzle out a mystery. It is a template that remains popular today, with Holmes's "deductive reasoning" replaced by psychological profiling and forensic technology.

And like Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple and Poe's detective, C Auguste Dupin, reappeared in story after a story. "Best-sellers are always those in a series," says Ms Wisdom. "It's perfect reading for a lot of people - they just love to see a familiar character develop a personal life, happy or unhappy."

Ian Rankin says women write blood-thirsty crime fiction

In the 1980s crime writing began to splinter in all directions. Umberto Eco produced The Name of the Rose, single-handedly creating a new genre of literary historical thriller - and crime writing in translation - and Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, invented the one-off psychological thriller with A Dark-Adapted Eye in 1986.

Then came books which shifted the action to the forensics lab, largely due to Patricia Cornwall, whose insider knowledge of forensic science provides the visceral veracity popular with crime readers.

Gone are the days when women provided virtually gore-free chillers, while men penned the darker stuff. Today women write more than half of all crime novels, a genre read by a predominantly female audience.

New direction

Among those seeking to reinterpret crime fiction is Welsh author Matt Rees. The Middle East correspondent for the Scotsman and Time magazine has turned novelist with stories of an aging Palestinian teacher turned amateur sleuth in The Bethlehem Murders. The book has just been published in the UK and United States, where it's a Quill Award nominee.

People always think there are a lot of problems with their society, and there's a desire to have a character that can put that right Matt Rees

"By far the majority of e-mails I receive about my book are from women, and on a US mystery-reader chatroom where my book was discussed, eight out of 10 contributors were women."

Rees hopes to tap into the new interest in exotic crime fiction, popularised by Alexander McCall Smith's folksy Number One Ladies' Detective Agency and the acclaimed Swedish writer Henning Mankell.

Detective stories can provide insight into an alien society, Rees says from his home in Jerusalem. "I wanted to put across the reality of Palestinians' lives in a genre that would reach a lot of people, and not be based all around politics. Crime fiction is perfect to focus on the reality of life inside someone's head, which journalism can't show."

Rees sees parallels between Palestinian society with the times Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett wrote about in their early detective stories set in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"The cops are corrupt and the villains have a great deal of confidence, which means that the detective has to overcome his own flaws. That's what makes detective fiction so attractive - people always think there are a lot of problems with their society, and there's a desire to have a character that can put that right.

Murder's about if Miss Marple's around

"Crime fiction can show you something about a society and a character that's incredibly deep, whereas so-called literary fiction is about linguistic pyrotechnics. That's why I've always been a fan of this type of writing."

Publishers, too, believe there is a lot more mileage in the genre. "Like a Greek myth, there's an awful lot writers can do with good crime stories," says Ms Wisdom.

"We like harmony and shape, and that's what a good crime novel gives you - a lovely story arc with a beginning, middle and end - and a morally acceptable outcome, which a lot of post-modern literature will not give you. It can also give you humour, absolute horror, romance, a puzzle. Crime fiction is only going to get bigger."

Is the UK facing a slug plague?

Slugs can lay 500 eggs a year

If all the rain this summer wasn't bad enough, the weather conditions have resulted in record numbers of slugs. Are the slimy critters set for a population boom?

At least it's been a good summer for someone. Plentiful rain, warm temperatures and a shortage of sun have provided perfect munching conditions for slugs.

As a result the slimy, plant-munching gastropod have reached record numbers, with almost 15 billion estimated to be thriving in the UK.

Gardens and crops are said to be facing devastation as the current numbers are certainly unprecedented. Much now depends on weather conditions in the next few months, says Bill Lankford, who is involved in a slug-watch programme for Bayer CropScience.

THE ANSWER Potentially, if the wet but warm weather conditions continue as forecast

If it continues to be wet and warm - as long-range forecasts suggest - the infestation could develop into a plague.

"If these conditions continue the slugs will not stop breeding and they are prolific breeders," says Geoff Philpott, a farmer from Broadstairs in Kent.

"I'm trying to deal with four times the number of slugs and snails I usually have and that's hard enough."

Devastating

Normally a dry, hot period over summer kills off large numbers of slugs, says Dr Lankford. But this year they have enjoyed perfect moist conditions and as a result an average of 61 have been found per square metre of land in counts done by Bayer CropScience.

This is an increase of more than 50% on previous years and the total slug population would be nearly 15 billion if this is replicated across the UK. Some areas have been particularly badly hit - in parts of Gloucestershire there are 100 slugs per square foot.

WHO, WHAT, WHY? A regular part of the BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer some of the questions behind the headlines

What also makes an increase in numbers such a concern is the fact they eat twice their body weight every day. High numbers of slugs have the potential to destroy entire fields of crops, say experts.

"We are entering the planting season for wheat and the number of slugs we are seeing have the potential to devastate such crops," says Dr Lankford.

The slug boom has already resulted in farmers' costs rising and if they increase even further it could result in everyone being hit in the pocket.

"I usually put down two lots of slug pellets - already this year I have put down four and am about to do another," says Mr Philpott. "It all pushes up costs, which someone has to pay."

10 things we didn't know this time last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. The number of pound notes in circulation doubles every 15 years due to economic growth and inflation.
More details

2. Each slug eats twice its body weight a day.
More details

3. Performers cannot even smoke herbal cigarettes on stage in Scotland, which has no dispensation for "artistic integrity" in its smoking ban, unlike other parts of the UK.
More details

4. Voyagers 1 and 2, launched in 1977 and still beaming back data from billions of miles from the solar system's edge, run on generators that produce 300 watts - which would power several standard light bulbs.
More details

5. Chickens can be diagnosed with depression.
More details

6. There are almost four times more knife-related killings as firearms killings.
More details

7. You can be arrested for using someone's wi-fi network without permission.
More details

8. One in 10 people claim to have had out-of-body experiences.
More details

9. More than half the books on the fiction charts are crime titles - a genre predominately read and written by women.More details

10. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were among the celebrities to endorse charities.
More details

Flower power

Flowers In The Rain started as an accidental hippy anthem and ended as an accidental charity fundraiser after a fraught libel case in the High Court.

As all pop fact fans know, The Move's Flowers In The Rain was the first track to be played on Radio One, chosen to symbolise the era of flower power and guaranteeing an ongoing stream of income for the band.

The only problem is that none of those pop facts is true.

The first track played was in fact Johnny Dankworth's Beefeaters, which Tony Blackburn used as his theme tune for Daily Disc Delivery [you can listen for yourself via the link on the right]. And before that, listeners heard the specially commissioned Theme One by George Martin.

As to why Flowers In The Rain ("Number Three in the Fun Thirty") followed, songwriter Roy Wood recalls Blackburn telling him "it was just mad that morning and he just went for the first record he could lay his hands on and it was ours. Pure luck.''

And while the song reappears on countless compilations, is currently re-released and faces an imminent cover from Kaiser Chiefs, the only financial beneficiary is a collection of charities chosen by former prime minister Harold Wilson.

So what is Flowers In The Rain all about, and why did it end up in the High Courts?

Chucking it down

Like The Move's previous hit, I Can Hear The Grass Grow, Flowers In The Rain looks at first glance like standard hippy fare - flowers talking to trees, mind-mangling grammar ("believed to leave reality behind me") and seeing things that aren't really there.

FIRST SONGS ON RADIO ONE Beefeater (Johnny Dankworth) Flowers In The Rain (The Move) Massachusetts (Bee Gees) Even The Bad Times Are Good (The Tremeloes) Fakin' It (Simon & Garfunkel) The Day I Met Marie (Cliff Richard)

But the trip the song takes you on is more mundane than those in the same year's Whiter Shade Of Pale and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. It would be more of a challenge to make a psychedelic cartoon of this narrative, summarised in a review of the time as "a chap lying in bed and philosophically watching the rain chucking it down outside". There's more to it than that - the chap takes his bed into the garden - but not a lot more.

With its daffy jaunty rhythm, and the bridge where Wood takes over the vocal from Carl Wayne to sing in double-speed received pronunciation, you'd be forgiven for wondering whether The Move is taking the whole flower power thing seriously.

The band certainly didn't start out this way. Bassist Trevor Burton recalls them as a hard-gigging live outfit, "more serious before the records".

As a kind of beat group supergroup (the members had all "moved" from other Birmingham bands - hence the name), The Move had started out playing loud R&B before a change of direction which resembles that taken by fake band Spinal Tap between 1965's Gimme Some Money and 1967's (Listen To The) Flower People. Wayne calls the earlier, harder Move "the original anarchist band, the first punks".

Tony Blackburn: What was number one?

This move is usually attributed to their resourceful, opportunistic manager Tony Secunda, who had experimented with a bad boy image, dressing the band as Chicago mobsters and sending them to Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester to detonate an "H-bomb" - not a million miles from the stunts used by punk bands a decade later.

When Secunda sensed the wind was blowing the way of the hippies, Wood was happy so long as "the music didn't suffer". Wood, listed in most rock biographies as having been born "Ulysses Adrian Wood" due to a prank played by some roadies on a teenage magazine, says he "never got involved" in the drugs associated with the Summer of Love, but was able to provide the kind of pastoral fantasy imagery required by digging into "a book of fairy stories for adults" he'd put together at school.

Even so, Flowers... was plodding a little until the intervention of assistant producer Tony Visconti, whose studio nous would later be demanded by acts including David Bowie and Morrissey. Fresh in London from New York, Visconti said "I've got an idea for this song, and it won't cost you much" and knocked together oboe, clarinet, cor anglais and French horn, partly to match Wood's lyrics and partly to keep up with another band, one you might have expected to kick off Radio One: "every time the Beatles brought out a new single, you'd hear some new instrument on it like a sitar, a cello or a French horn".

So it was that "five thickos from Birmingham" (Wayne's words) with little day-to-day interest in flowers became hippy poster children. The live Move were the same, though, scaring the hippies at the UFO Club when they took to smashing banks of TVs with axes; as far as the record was concerned, Secunda's job was done.

Rather, it was almost done.

"It was very heavy"

Tony Secunda had one more trick up his sleeve. He'd ticked the boxes of auto-destructive shock tactics and of lysergic reverie - but there was still political satire to experiment with.

Roy Wood in later days

A friend of Secunda's had drawn a scurrilous image depicting PM Harold Wilson in flagrante delicto with his political secretary Marcia Williams. Williams, now Lady Falkender, has been portrayed as a mixture of Alastair Campbell and Sir Humphrey Appleby, and may have encouraged Wilson to legislate for Radio One as a replacement for the pirate radio stations.

Secunda saw the cartoon not as a libel suit in waiting, but as the perfect material for a postcard to promote Flowers In The Rain. When a copy reportedly dropped through the door at Number Ten, Harold Wilson saw it as a libel suit in waiting. And he didn't wait long. Eleven days after Radio One launched, The Move found themselves in the High Court, facing Quentin Hogg and defending a charge of a "violent and malicious personal attack" on the prime minister.

BENEFICIARIES OF THE SONG'S ROYALTIES Friends of D'Oyly Carte University of Huddersfield A Soviet poster exhibition Liverpool Tate Variety Club Jewish National Fund for Israel British Film Institute British Screen Advisory Council Attlee Foundation Oxford University Joyce Butler Memorial Trust 33 Signals Unit Central Lads Club Ratlingate Scout Appeal Whitehall Choir Victor Brusa Memorial Appeal St Mary's Ladies' Lifeboat Guild Oxford Operatic Society Lloyd George Parliamentary Centenary Appeal Bolton Lads Club Tring Lane Workshops Source: Observer, 1995

Ms Williams' name was not mentioned in court, an excited but deferential tabloid press preferring to refer to "a woman who is not [the PM's] wife".

Drummer Bev Bevan recalls the headlines: "I spilled my cuppa all over the breakfast table." He told the Birmingham Post & Mail: "We were trying to look blasé about the whole thing, but deep down we were scared stiff," adding: "it was very heavy."

Secunda was undaunted and hired a red Rolls Royce to take the band to court. They arrived late and told reporters: "We've no faith in any political sides at all. We'd vote for people like Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, you know."

The manager made a somewhat unconvincing denial that the postcard was a publicity stunt, retorting: "Wilson started legal proceedings. We did it as a cartoon, remember that. It wasn't intended to be anything but that."

Harold Wilson: Charities still benefit

The judge, however, was unmoved by this and by the band's "profound regret", and the settlement for libel involved all the royalties for Flowers In The Rain being forfeited to charities of the prime minister's choice.

During the single's chart run, most of the money went to the Spastics Society and Stoke Mandeville Hospital, but repeated airplay, due partly to the initial Radio One airing, have given the single a long life, its legacy an accidental fundraiser as much as an accidental hippy anthem.

In the 1990s, the Observer newspaper reported the royalties so far as exceeding £200,000 and found that The Harold Wilson Charitable Trust had extended the range of beneficiaries to reflect the ex-PM's wide-ranging interests - including, among others, the Oxford Operatic Society, Bolton Lads Club and the Jewish National Fund for Israel [see box on right].

Songwriter Wood was the most affected. "The cartoon was nothing to do with the band," he said in 1995. "We're now suggesting that royalties in future go to the Birmingham Children's Hospital." Lord Wilson's solicitors replied that they could not change the terms.

What happened next

Understandably, the ruling put a rift between Secunda and The Move, and they shortly parted company, Secunda going to manage T. Rex and The Moody Blues, moving into music publishing before his death in 1995.

The Move ultimately became the Electric Light Orchestra, with Wood leaving that band to form Wizzard and Bev Bevan moving on to Black Sabbath. Carl Wayne spent the nineties as the narrator of the musical Blood Brothers, then toured with The Hollies and died in 2004, leaving a reported £1.4m to his wife Sue Hanson, best known as Crossroads' Miss Diane.

The story of Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams was retold in a 2006 BBC Four drama, The Lavender List, which proved equally provocative; Williams, now known as Lady Falkender, successfully sued the BBC for £75,000 plus costs.

Radio One has gone from five hours a day to 24, and the pirate stations it killed off were last week back collaborating with the Beeb for "Pirate BBC Essex". And Flowers In The Rain is back on the airwaves in various different forms, raising more monies for the charities.

Wood reflected on the song in Radio 4's Villa Park Incident nearly three decades after its release. "As the years have gone on," he said, "we've had a longer sentence than the great train robbers."

August 25th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1944: Paris is liberated as Germans surrender General Charles de Gaulle enters the capital of France after French and US troops force a German surrender.
	2003: Bombay rocked by twin car bombs Two powerful bomb blasts hit the Indian city of Bombay within minutes of each other, killing at least 44 and injuring nearly 150.
	1997: East German leader guilty of Berlin Wall deaths A court in Berlin sentences the former East German leader, Egon Krenz, to six-and-a-half years in prison.

Cool advertising!

£5000 in £10 and £20 notes were individually dropped around the streets of London with a removable sticker that read, Carlsberg don’t do litter. But if they did it would probably be the best litter in the world’.

Windows Desktop Search 3.01

Find files quickly in Windows XP

Platform Windows XP
Type freeware
Manufacturer Microsoft
Size 4.65MB
Free download

It’s taken ages to get to the point where you can instantly search for a file or folder on your hard drive. You would have thought that it would be a given cert in any modern operating system, but it has taken Vista to get to the stage where we can find our files, quickly. There have been alternatives from third-party developers, such as the fantastic Copernic Desktop Search, but quite frankly who wants to have to install additional software to perform a basic search on our PC?

Vista now includes instant desktop search from within the operating system. Mac OS X does too. Once you’ve got used to finding files quickly, going back to the old search tool within Windows XP is like watching paint dry. Search through a large hard drive and you’ll wait a fair while before you find the data you require.

Luckily for Windows XP SP2 users, Microsoft have released a version of the Vista search tool called ‘Windows Desktop Search’. Although it’s a tool that resides on top of your operating system – much like Copernic Desktop Search – some users may feel happier installing a search tool from the company that produced their OS.

Windows Desktop Search not only enables you to find files, quickly, you can also search through Office 2007 files, including emails through Outlook 2007. One thing it doesn’t do, however, is search through your private and personal data collected through your web browser. It won’t show browsing history information or other similar data.

August 24th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1993: Michael Jackson accused of child abuse Police in Los Angeles are investigating allegations of child abuse made against singer Michael Jackson.
	1985: Sleeping boy killed in police raid A five-year-old boy is shot dead in a police raid on his home in Birmingham.
	1990: Irish hostage released in Lebanon The Irish hostage, Brian Keenan, is released in Beirut after more than four years in captivity.

Pub News

Top stories:

Foreign satellite case faces delay

High Court appeal process held up in Murphy case

Bulmers Original goes on draught over ice

Scottish & Newcastle brand comes up with innovative dispense and over-size pint glasses

Second licensee hit with summons over smoking ban

Council takes action against Bolton publican Nick Hogan

Police push plastics

Force spends thousands on providing polycarbonates for pubs and clubs

Crackdown on noisy and foul-mouthed smokers

Pubs in tussle with authorities over smoke ban issues

Council set to make drinkers sit down

Licensees may be forced to designate a quarter of the pub as seating-only

more news

Other news this week:

• Government investigating impact of cheap supermarket deals
• Radioactive material found at Hey Jo
• Lib Dems speak out over underage sales
• Westminster licensees accuse council of "demonising" premises
• Pubs urged to raise standards on real ale
• Horse racing channel benefits from smoking ban
• Pub company aims to beat supermarkets with Christmas promotion
• Pub steaks probed by new ITV programme
• Welsh doctors call for booze tax increase
• New site for National Pubwatch
• Clubscan meets with ICO
• Punch completes Spirit conversion
• Fuller's gears up for Rugby World Cup
• Brewer backs CAMRA campaign for greener drinking
• Pub stumped over ban
• Licensee finds novel way round smoking ban
• Local pubs to the rescue

more news

Get all the latest news and advice from the UK's leading pub trade information resource – www.thepublican.com

August 23rd

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1990: Outrage at Iraqi TV hostage show Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appears on state television with western hostages, provoking a storm of outrage.
	1991: Gorbachev punishes coup plotters Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev begins his purge of cabinet members and officials involved in the failed coup four days ago.
	1961: Couple found shot in A6 lay-by Police launch a murder hunt after a man is found shot dead and his companion seriously wounded in a lay-by in Bedfordshire.

Quiztime QuizPod 008 - Telly Addicts Special

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How Ryanair's plane fails to beat the train

It was a promise bound to appeal to travellers: Ryanair will get you from London to Brussels faster and cheaper than the Eurostar.

The only problem, the advertising watchdog ruled yesterday, was that it was not true.

The budget airline has been banned from claiming that it was quicker and better value to take a plane rather than the train to the Belgian capital, after the Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints that the promotion was misleading.

The decision prompted an angry response from Ryanair. It branded the ASA “Absolutely Stupid Asses” who “can’t add and, worse still, can’t subtract”.

As part of a press campaign, Ryanair compared its flight, taking one hour and ten minutes, to the train trip lasting two hours and 11 minutes. The airline claimed to offer a better deal than its competitor: “Ryanair one way — from £15 — taxes and charges included. Eurostar one way — from £27 — taxes and charges included”.

Its flights were 44 per cent cheaper and also more punctual, it said, with 89 per cent of flights on time compared with 83 per cent of Eurostar trips. However, the ASA found that the claims misled customers because they failed to take into account that travelling from London and Brussels city centres to the two airports used by Ryanair would add one hour and 45 minutes to the journey time.

Stansted airport is about 25 miles (40km) from London, while Charleroi is about 28.5 miles (46km) from Brussels. The watchdog upheld complaints by the Eurostar Group and the public, ruling that the advert breached advertising rules relating to substantiation, truthfulness and comparisons with identified competitors.

It also emerged that the airline had taken Eurostar’s punctuality figure from an article on the BBC website that was more than two years old.

A statement from the airline said: “Passengers booking Ryanair today to travel from London to Brussels enjoy fares of just £10 one way including taxes. Eurostar is charging 15 times more (£154 one way). No amount of stupid rulings from the ASA quango will hide the fact that 50 million passengers will save over £5 billion by flying with Ryanair this year. Only the very rich or the very slow waste their time and money on Eurostar.”

When The Times visited the Ryanair and Eurostar websites yesterday to book a return journey to Brussels this weekend the most expensive non-flexible fare on Ryanair was £157.89. The most expensive Eurostar ticket was £144. The cheapest Ryanair flight, leaving at 6.40am on Friday, was £54.89. The cheapest Eurostar journey was £125.19.

The airline had argued that its advert made clear that its flights went from Stansted. It also said that travellers would have to pay to get to Eurostar railway stations, just as they would have to pay to get to airports.

Copies of Nazi files transferred

The files contain personal data on millions of the Nazis' victims

The keepers of a vast archive of Nazi documents on the Holocaust have transferred copies of millions of files to museums in Israel and the US.

The electronic transfer is part of an agreement to open up the Bad Arolsen archive, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The files, kept in Germany, were found in concentration camps and other Nazi prisons at the end of World War II.

Several countries have not yet ratified the agreement, delaying full access.

The archive will only be fully opened to the public when the 2006 protocol is ratified by Italy, France and Greece. That is expected later this year.

The ICRC says the archive has now transferred many documents from the archive to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US and to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre in Israel.

Chilling details

The 47 million files stored in the spa town of Bad Arolsen hold meticulously recorded information on forced labourers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners. They take up 26km (16 miles) of shelving.

Historians believe many more details about the Nazis' murder and brutal exploitation of millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and other victims will be revealed.

"After a long political process, we can now give researchers and the public access to the files," said Reto Meister, director of the ICRC's International Tracing Service (ITS).

So far, 12 million documents have been digitised for electronic transfer, the ICRC says.

In grey, bureaucratic language the Nazis kept records on the smallest details - from the number of lice on a prisoner's head to the exact moment of their execution.

The archive has been used to help people trace their relatives. But access has been restricted to protect victims' privacy.

The archive is controlled by an 11-nation treaty signed in 1955 and amended by the 2006 protocol. The countries are: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and the US.

Google Earth given celestial view

Imagery for the system came from six research institutions

The constellations of Andromeda, Hydra and Vulpecula are now just a mouse click away for amateur star-gazers, following the launch of Google Sky.

The tool is an add-on to Google Earth, a program that allows users to search a 3D rendition of our planet's surface.

Sky will allow astronomers a chance to glide through images of more than one million stars and 200 million galaxies.

Optional layers allow users to explore images from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles.

"The basic idea is to take Google Earth and turn it on its head," Ed Parsons, Geospatial technologist at Google told the BBC News website.

"So rather than using it to view imagery of the Earth, use it to view imagery of space."

Dr John Mason of the British Astronomical Association, Britain's largest body for amateur astronomers said: "Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars.

"If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing."

Clear view

To use the new system, users will need to have Google Earth installed on their computer.

Digital astronomers can then zoom into an area from which they want to view the night sky.

SKY LAYERS Constellations: Connects stars and labels with name Backyard astronomy: Information on objects visible to the eye and small telescopes Hubble Space Telescope Imagery: 129 high-resolution pictures from Hubble Moon: Two months of lunar positions and moon phases Planets: Positions of seven planets two months ahead Users Guide to Galaxies: Virtual tours through different types of galaxies Life of a star: The different stages of a star's life cycle

"Click a button and the world flips round and you see the sky from that particular location," explained Mr Parsons. "[The view] would be the constellations that you would see oriented in the sky on that particular day at that particular time."

Users can overlay the night sky with other information such as galaxies, constellations and detailed images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Imagery for the system came from six research institutions including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observatory in California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre.

Much of the imagery can be found through searches on the internet but Google hope the add-on will be simpler and more fun.

Mr Parsons said: "The sky you will be seeing will be a completely clear and you will be able to see objects which are very faint indeed - that you can only see with very large telescopes."

Virtual tour

Sky is not the first time Google has ventured into space.

In March 2006, the company launched Google Mars which allows users to explore the surface of the Red Planet.

Nasa' and Google signed an agreement in December 2006

Another service, Google Moon, lets users view the sites of the Apollo moon landings.

Both services use data from the US Space Agency Nasa, with which Google signed an agreement in December 2006.

The Space Agreement Act was intended to put "the most useful of Nasa's information on the internet".

At the time, Nasa administrator Michael Griffin said the agreement would soon allow "every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars".

The two organisations also said they would collaborate in a variety of areas including adding data collected by Nasa to Google Earth.

However, Mr Parsons said the latest tool was not a product of the partnership.

Mass market

Google Sky is not the only tool that allows astronomers to explore the night sky from their computer.

Stellarium shows the night sky in 3D

For example, Stellarium is a free open source tool that gives people a chance to access more than 210 million stars, in addition to planets and moons.

The software is the brainchild of Fabien Chereau, a Research Engineer at the Paris Astronomical Observatory, and is used in many planetariums.

Like the suite of Google applications, it allows people to explore places of interest on Earth, as well as mission sites on the Moon and Mars.

Commercial alternatives also exist, such as Imaginova's Starry Night, that offers a range of software packages aimed at beginners to "the serious astronomer".

Apple Mac users can download a Starry Night widget that will allow them to see the night sky from any location on Earth.

"The other astronomy packages are designed for maybe the more professional amateur market," said Mr Parsons. "We are aiming this more at the mass market. If people get hooked and interested they may migrate to these other packages."

August 22nd

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1978: Kenya's founding father dies The Kenyan president, Jomo Kenyatta, dies aged 89 at his home in Mombasa.
	1972: Rhodesia out of Olympics Rhodesia is thrown out of the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in the German city of Munich.
	1986: Police chief cleared of misconduct Deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester police John Stalker is cleared of misconduct.

Rare dead star found near Earth

Neutron stars form when massive stars exhaust their fuel

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics.

The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories.

But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars.

Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.

Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind Robert Rutledge, McGill University

The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven.

"The seven previously known isolated neutron stars are known collectively as The Magnificent Seven within the community," said co-author Derek Fox, of Pennsylvania State University, US.

"So the name Calvera is a bit of an inside joke on our part."

The authors estimate that the object is 250 to 1,000 light-years away. This would make Calvera one of the closest neutron stars to Earth - and possibly the closest.

Neutron stars are one of the possible end points for a star. They are created when stars with masses greater than four to eight times those of our Sun exhaust their nuclear fuel, and undergo a supernova explosion.

This explosion blows off the outer layers of the star, forming a supernova remnant. The central region of the star collapses under gravity, causing protons and electrons to combine to form neutrons - hence the name "neutron star".

Data search

Robert Rutledge of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, originally noticed the object.

He compared a catalogue of 18,000 X-ray sources from the German-American Rosat satellite, which operated from 1990 to 1999, with catalogues of objects that appeared in visible light, infrared light, and radio waves.

Swift was launched to observe gamma-ray bursts

Professor Rutledge realized that a Rosat source, known as 1RXS J141256.0+792204, did not appear to have a counterpart at any other wavelength.

The group aimed Nasa's Swift satellite at the object in August 2006. Swift's X-ray telescope showed that the source was still there, and was emitting about the same amount of X-ray energy as it had during the Rosat era.

The Swift observations enabled the group to pinpoint the object's position more accurately, and showed that it was not associated with any known astronomical object.

The researchers followed up with the 8.1m Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii and a short observation by Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Unusual properties

Exactly what type of neutron star Calvera is remains a mystery. According to Dr Rutledge, there are no widely accepted alternative theories to explain objects such as this that are bright in X-rays and faint in visible light.

"Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind," said Dr Rutledge.

Calvera's location high above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy is also a mystery. The researchers believe the object is the remnant of a star that lived in our galaxy's starry disc before exploding as a supernova.

In order to reach its current position, it had to wander some distance out of the disc.

August 21st

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1968: Russia brings winter to 'Prague Spring' Dozens are killed in a massive Soviet military clampdown in Czechoslovakia.
	1973: 'Bloody Sunday' inquest accuses Army The coroner presiding over the "Bloody Sunday" inquest accuses the British army of "sheer unadulterated murder".
	1986: Hundreds gassed in Cameroon lake disaster At least 1,200 people are feared dead after volcanic gases escape from a lake in Cameroon.

Cigarette sales drop 7% in a month

Cigarette sales fell by 6.9 per cent last month after the smoking ban was introduced in England and Wales.

Smokers bought just over three billion cigarettes in Britain in the four weeks to July 28, down from the same period last year, according to the consumer research group AC Nielsen. Consumption had already been falling by about 2 per cent a year.

Anti-smoking campaigners yesterday welcomed the steep decline, which is in line with similar falls that followed the introduction of smoking bans in Ireland in 2004 and Scotland last year. In Ireland, cigarette sales fell by 16 per cent in six months.

“It’s very encouraging,” Amanda Sandford of the health campaign group ASH, said. “We hope this is indicative of people taking steps to give up smoking altogether.”

Related Links

• Imperial chokes as finance fears grow

A spokesman for Imperial Tobacco, the biggest player in the British cigarette market, said: “What tends to happen following the introduction of smoking bans is an initial sharp drop in volumes, which then ameliorates over time.”

He said that the wet weather in July may also have served to reduce volumes by discouraging smokers from using the outdoor smoking areas provided by many pubs and restaurants.

The total value of cigarettes sales in the UK last year was £11.5 billion. Many cigarette manufacturers are not unduly concerned by the drop and they are expected to ratchet up prices to keep revenues on track.

Before the ban, Imperial Tobacco, which controls more than 46 per cent of total volumes, said that it expected duty-paid market volumes to fall by 3 per cent over 12 months.

British smokers are expected to consume 48 billion cigarettes this year. Borders, the book chain, said that sales of anti-smoking books by Alan Carr and the hypnotist Paul McKenna have risen by almost 260 per cent on average across their British stores.

The AC Nielsen figures showed that the top-selling cigarette brands last month were Lambert & Butler, with 16.2 per cent of the market, followed by Richmond with 15.5 per cent and Mayfair with 13.6 per cent.

The ban on smoking has been nominated for the Vodafone Live Music Awards, competing in the live impact category against the singer Prince, Beth Ditto’s band the Gossip and the Canadian group Arcade Fire.

Stubbed out

3 billion

Sticks sold in the four weeks to July 28

700,000

People expected to quit this year

235%

Nicotine replacement patch sales last month compared with June

Source: Times database

The ban on smoking has been nominated for the Vodafone Live Music Awards, competing in the live impact category against the singer Prince, Beth Ditto’s band the Gossip and the Canadian group Arcade Fire.

A summer of rain threatens to bring the great autumn floods

The saturated ground means any more downpours could cause huge volumes of water underground to burst out...

Britain is facing a flooding timebomb this autumn and winter, with huge amounts of underground water stored up by incessant summer rain ready to burst out as floods the next time heavy rains return.

The Environment Agency is giving warning of “an enhanced flood risk” for England and Wales, although where and when any flooding strikes will depend on the weather patterns. Forecasters are predicting a wet autumn across much of Britain.

If the soil dries out this autumn the danger could subside, but time is already running out — evaporation slows down as sunshine becomes weaker and trees and plants take less water from the ground. If the seasonal forecasts are correct then continued rainfall will increase fears of further flooding, especially if the rains come in heavy bursts, as happened in June and July.

There is a fine balance between healthy water supplies and disastrous flooding. Aquifers in Britain hold at least 20 times more water than the reservoirs and provide about a third of the drinking water supplies, with a far higher proportion in South East England.

Shocking news: Britain’s a wet country

British summers weren’t always as wet as this year’s, but some were worse. 1912 was the wettest and dullest on record

Multimedia

• Pictures: the floods

• Video: UK under water

The aquifers were recharged fully during the summer, safeguarding water supplies well into next year. But the saturated ground also means that parts of the country could be on flood alert throughout autumn and winter, with no chance for the ground to dry out until the spring.

The seeds of this problem began in May with the first bouts of heavy rain. Since then the weather has been exceptional. Rainfall for May-July was the wettest on record, dating back to 1767, across England and Wales. Soils are at their wettest on record for the summer, many rivers broke records for water flow in July, many reservoirs are filled to capacity and springs that have been dry fo

Experts were amazed by the extent of flooding — drier soil usually leads to fewer floods than in winter, and those that occur tend to be localised, often after a torrential thunderstorm. This summer’s floods, caused by heavy and broad bands of rain, were widespread.

“This summer was unprecedented,” Terry Marsh, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Wallingford, in Oxfordshire, said. “The wetness of the soils and the river flows in the lowlands of England are more typical of winter than summer. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

These are exceptional weather patterns — the last time that so much rain fell in the summer half of the year was in 1912, and before that in 1879. Usually the ground dries out during the summer as trees and plants soak up huge amounts of water, and by August lawns are often turning yellow and the ground is parched, reducing the likelihood of flooding. Deep underground, water levels drop gradually in porous subterranean rocks known as aquifers.

During autumn and winter the ground begins to soak up rainfall, sometimes leading to flooding. The rainwater also percolates deep underground and recharges the aquifers.

This summer the rains have been so heavy that the ground has been supersaturated, rivers have burst their banks and aquifers have been recharged.

“The really strange thing is that the recharge happened in summer, when there is usually no recharge after April. All boreholes are at peak levels, which is incredibly unusual,” Professor Alan Jenkins, water science director at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said. “As we run into autumn, river catchments are in a much more sensitive state, and there is the possibility that more catchments will be susceptible to flooding.”

The Environment Agency said that people should be prepared for the prospect of more disruption. “We urge people to be aware of the flood risk this autumn and winter and be prepared,” Simon Hughes, flood risk manager, said.

The agency is taking out national adverts and holding flood surgeries in flooded areas to get their message across. After a fraught summer, this could be a nerve-racking autumn and winter.

Torrential rain has caused flash flooding in parts of Devon. Fire crews pumped several feet of water from the basements of businesses and homes in the Torbay area.

Torquay, Paignton, Brixham, Dawlish and Kingswear were affected by the severe weather on Monday morning. Businesses in Torquay were forced to close after about 30cm (1ft) of water rushed down Fleet Street and through shop doorways. Denise Shears, from Waycotts estate agents, said that drains were unable to cope with the volume of rain and that sandbags put out to prevent flooding were washed away.

Torquay and Paignton suffered the worst of a torrential downpour, with dozens of properties and businesses badly affected. Police said that a leat burst its banks in Paignton, sending a flow of muddy water across Dartmouth Road.

Manhole covers were reported to be moving out of position across the region.Boundary Road in Brixham was closed off after traffic was unable to negotiate the depth of water on the carriageway.

Nazi board games under the hammer

The games were aimed at German children as young as four Enlarge Image

A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are going on auction in the UK this week.

The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.

The games are thought to have come from a German collector. They will be sold at Mullock's Shropshire on Thursday.

Historian Richard Westwood-Brookes expects some to fetch up to £300.

Sinking battleships

Mr Westwood-Brookes said the games were a rare find.

"It's just like with children's books, the same reason rare children's books go for big prices - children aren't very good at taking care of things.

"And it wouldn't have done you much good after the war to have had these things lying around."

The games include Bombers Over England, a form of bagatelle or primitive pinball where players score points for "bombing " British cities, shipping or lighthouses.

Another, based on Snakes and Ladders, sees players take their U-boats from a German port to the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, sink British warships, and try and make it back home.

Another is a game where players drop weighted paratroopers onto a representation of the English countryside.

The games are all in good but used condition, Mr Westwood-Brookes said. "You can be confident kids in Germany in the early 1940s were playing these games."

He added: "They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that.

I managed to knock out London, Glasgow and Liverpool - and a ship in the North Sea Richard Westwood-Brookes

"These show how the Nazis were determined that children as young as four or five needed to get into the swing of things."

Under German law, items from the Third Reich period are unable to be sold in the country.

The games also include one possibly made in liberated Belgium in late 1944, where players throw crude darts at a board denoting German cities and representations of the Nazi regime. The bullseye is Adolf Hitler.

Mr Westwood-Brookes admitted to playing the Bombers over England game.

"And I managed to knock out London, Glasgow and Liverpool - and a ship in the North Sea," he said.

Henman signals final farewell

The career of Britain’s finest male tennis player for seven decades will come to an end at Wimbledon next month. Tim Henman has made the toughest choice of his life and is retiring from professional tennis. Henman, who will be 33 on September 6 and becomes a father for the third time later in the month, has not entered an ATP tournament after the Davis Cup tie against Croatia on Wimbledon’s No 1 Court from September 21-23, confirmation that he has decided to bring the curtain down on a period of distinction, steadfastness and brilliance, both for himself and his country.

Retirement is never easy to contemplate, especially at such a young age, but six months after Greg Rusedski realised he could not stand up to the rigours demanded and walked into the sunset – moving to a job at the Lawn Tennis Association with an input in talent identification and, at the same time, into the television analyst’s chair – his long-time friendly foe has taken the same view.

Henman, who withdrew from this week’s tournament in New Haven, Connecticut, citing further trouble with his fragile back, will compete at his thirteenth consecutive US Open, which begins in Flushing Meadows, New York, a week today. The hope then is that, in harness with Andy Murray, he can inspire Great Britain into the Davis Cup World Group for the first time since they were relegated in February 2003 – a tie in Australia that Henman missed through injury – with a victory over Croatia in what will become an occasion steeped in tears and troubled thoughts.

Not since Virginia Wade won the ladies singles at Wimbledon in 1977, will the All England Club have reverberated to such a tide of sentimentality as it is bound to do when Henman takes the stage of No 1 Court, on which Britain were beaten by Ecuador seven years ago, one of the most unexpected and embarrassing defeats the British game has suffered in recent Davis Cup history.

Related Links

• Man of honour who always gave Britain hope

• Murray doubtful for US Open

It was to Wimbledon that Jane, his mother, brought a seven-year-old Tim to watch Bjorn Borg in 1981, and the boy was smitten. The club has borne subsequent witness to his transformation to sporting manhood, though when he was beaten in the second round of this year’s tournament by Feliciano López, of Spain, in a tense five-set encounter, his hurried exit carried more resonance than we thought at the time.

The sheer despair Henman has felt in the past few weeks as his injuries multiplied and results would not come in the increasingly physical world of men’s professional tennis, meant the Oxfordshire player had lost his spark and his enthusiasm, without which he could not meaningfully compete.

As his ranking is about to tumble out of the top 100 – ignominious to say the least for a man of his talents who reached the world No 4 status in July 2002 – and the chances of it moving upwards are severely limited (Henman had won only five of his 15 matches this year and lost in seven first rounds), he has decided to say enough is enough before his life becomes one of absolute sufferance. Better this, surely, than spend more time getting beaten up – physically and spiritually – while a new child demands significant fatherly attention.

It is understood that Henman has taken advice from those nearest and dearest before choosing to step aside: Paul Annacone, his coach, whose loyalty to remain as a part-time head coach of men’s tennis at the LTA will now be severely tested; Johan de Beer, his long-time fitness coach; Jan Fel-gate, his agent; and those of his high-est-profile sponsors who have stayed loyal to him throughout his career.

The wise counsel is that Henman risks further damage to his morale and his reputation if he decides to hang around and that it is best for him to take a well-deserved rest from sport, enjoy family life and then return to tennis in some capacity, as he certainly will when the time is right.

August 20th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1989: Marchioness river crash 'kills 30' At least 30 people die after a pleasure cruiser and a barge collided on the River Thames.
	1992: Duchess of York in photos row Intimate photographs of the Duchess of York and a Texan businessman are published in a tabloid newspaper.
	1978: Two dead after El Al crew ambushed Two people die during an attack on a bus carrying Israeli airline staff in central London.

August 19th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1987: Gunman kills 14 in Hungerford rampage A man shoots 14 people dead in the Berkshire town of Hungerford.
	1991: Hardliners stage coup against Gorbachev Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is overthrown in a coup as Communist hardliners take over.
	2003: UN envoy dies in Baghdad bombing A massive bomb wrecks the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing at least 17 people including the UN's chief envoy to Iraq.

Future Of Flight!

10 things we didn't know last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Uncollected council tax totals £760m.
More details

2. Some otters don't like swimming.

3. The Rubik’s Cube can be done in 26 moves.
More details

4. Crows can use tools.
More details

5. CDs were nearly called mini-racks.
More details

6. CDs have 74 minutes' audio capacity, originally to accommodate Beethoven's 9th Symphony – before that they were just an hour.
More details

7. Attractive people are, on average, less selfish than moderately attractive people.

8. The name Hells Angels was coined by a squadron of World War I fighter pilots.

9. Seven double espressos can land you in hospital, with caffeine intoxication.
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10. Left-handed people are called sinistral.
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Sources: 2: The Times (Thursday); 7: Independent on Sunday (Sunday); 8: The Guardian (Tuesday);

August 18th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1992: Serbian prison camps condemned Conditions in two Serbian detention camps are condemned as "hell on earth" by the man leading a delegation to inspect them.
	1964: South Africa banned from Olympics South Africa are barred from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo over its refusal to condemn apartheid.
	1989: Man U sold in record takeover deal Manchester United Football Club is sold for £20m in the biggest takeover deal in the history of British football.

Elvis Quiz

Can you solve the Elvis enigma?

The rock'n'roll legend Elvis Presley died 30 years ago but his legacy lives on in his records, films and enthusiastic impersonators. But how well do you know 'the king'? Try our quiz and find out...

GO TO THE QUIZ - LINK

Nato 'tracking' Russian bombers

Russia is currently rebuilding its armed forces

Russian long-range bombers have flown over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a military drill, say Russian media.

A Russian air force spokesman said several pairs of bombers were in the air "accompanied by Nato planes," Itar-Tass news agency said.

Nato said it was aware of the flights but had no comment on whether the Russian bombers had been accompanied by Nato planes.

Last week Russian bombers flew close to the US Pacific island of Guam.

The flights, believed to be the first since the Cold War ended, came as Russia stresses a more assertive foreign policy, correspondents say.

Itar-Tass quoted Russian air force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying: "At present, several pairs of Tu-160 and Tu-95MS aircraft are in the air over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which are accompanied by Nato planes".

In last week's flight near Guam, the Russian pilots "exchanged smiles" with US fighter pilots who scrambled to track them, a Russian general said.

The US military confirmed the presence of the Russian bombers near Guam, home to a large US base.

Russian bombers have also recently flown close to US airspace over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska.

Russia is using its booming oil and gas revenues to revamp its armed forces.

How the CD was developed

The CD is unveiled to the world in March 1979

The first compact disc was produced exactly 25 years ago in a factory in Germany after years of development by Philips and Sony. We take a look at the humble disc's history and how it shaped the music landscape.

The compact disc project was launched following Philips' failure with its video disc technology in 1978.

The video disc was one of the first commercial products to take advantage of laser technology that could read information from a disc without any physical contact.

Research into the video disc began as far back as 1969, and itself was inspired by Italian Antonio Rubbiani, who had demonstrated a rudimentary video disc system 12 years earlier.

In 1970 Philips began work on what was called the ALP (audio long play) - an audio disc system to rival vinyl records, but using laser technology.

Lou Ottens, technical director of the audio division at Philips, was the first to suggest that the ALP be made smaller than the dominant vinyl format and should aim for one hour of music.

Sony and Philips announce their joint taskforce

The project initially flirted with the idea of quadraphonic sound but a disc with one hour of music had to be 20cm in diameter and so the plan was abandoned.

In 1977 Philips began to take the development of a new audio format much more seriously. A new name for the product was discussed and names considered included Mini Rack, MiniDisc, and Compact Rack.

The team settled on Compact Disc because it was felt it would remind people of the success of the Compact Cassette.

In March 1979 Philips conducted a press conference to show off the audio quality of its CD system in production and also to impress upon rivals how well it was progressing.

Philips first CD player cost more than £1,000

A week later Philips travelled to Japan after the Japanese Ministry of Industry and Technology (MITI) had decided to convene a conference to discuss how the industry could create a standard for the audio disc. The company left Japan having agreed a deal with Sony.

Philips' plan for a CD with a 11.5cm diameter had to be changed when Sony insisted that a disc must hold all of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

The longest recording of the symphony in record label Polygram's archive was 74 minutes and so the CD size was increased to 12cm diameter to accommodate the extra data.

In 1980 Philips and Sony produced their Red Book, which laid down all the standards for compact discs. From that time on the companies worked separately on their own CD equipment but in the early days agreed to share components.

In April 1982 Philips showed off a production CD player for the first time. "From now on, the conventional record player is obsolete," said Lou Ottens.

The first commercial CDs pressed were The Visitors by Abba and a recording of Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss.

US record labels were initially very sceptical about the CD. A year after launch there were 1,000 different titles available.

In 1985 Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms became the first CD to sell more than one million copies. It is still the world's most successful CD album.

In 2000 global sales of CDs peaked at 2.455 billion. In 2006 that figure was down to 1.755 billion.

Compact disc hits 25th birthday

The compact disc was jointly developed by Philips and Sony

Exactly 25 years ago the world's first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, sparking a global music revolution.

More than 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide since then and it remains the dominant format despite the growth in digital downloads.

The CD was jointly developed by Philips and Sony and the disc has also become a key storage method for computer users.

The first CD produced was The Visitors by Abba.

Piet Kramer, who was a member of the optical group at Philips during the disc's development, said: "When Philips teamed up with Sony to develop the CD, our first target was to win over the world for the CD.

"We did this by collaborating openly to agree on a new standard. For Philips, this open innovation was a new approach and it paid off."

Dire Straits' album Brothers in Arms helped popularise the CD

He said the companies had never imagined that the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the CD as a storage system for content.

The two companies began work on the format in 1979 and targetted a disc which could hold an hour of audio. The capacity was extended to 74 minutes, however, to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

The first CDs went on sale in November 1982 and were mainly classical recordings.

Classical music lovers were believed to be more affluent than pop and rock music fans, and Philips thought they would be more inclined to pay the price for the more expensive CDs and the very expensive CD-players,

The first models cost 2,000 Dutch guilders, about £1,000 at today's rate, taking into account inflation.

"When Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau recorded one of the first CDs for Polygram we discovered that he was grunting and panting while playing. Before on vinyl you didn't hear that but on CD it was crystal clear," said Frank van den Berg, a former member of the Polygram CD development task force.

In the last 10 years CD sales have been dropping worldwide while digital download sales are rising rapidly.

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), digital sales will account for a quarter of all worldwide music sales by 2010.

CD sales in the UK have dropped 10% in the first half of this year, while download purchases have increased by 50%.

August 17th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1998: Clinton admits Lewinsky affair President of the United States, Bill Clinton, admits having an inappropriate relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
	1987: Hitler's deputy found dead Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former right-hand man, is found dead in Spandau Prison.
	1999: Turkey hit by huge earthquake The most powerful earthquake to hit Turkey leaves at least 1,000 people dead.

Pub News

Top stories:

Smoking ban flouters vow to fight on

Publicans breaching the ban say they will carry on until guilty verdict is reached in Howitt case

Call for drinking age to be raised to 21

Police chief speaks out following father-of-three's murder

Tories promise red-tape cuts

John Redwood wants to cut £14bn of red tape

Gambling laws: Pubs urged to "act now"

BBPA and LACORS join forces to remind licensees of changes

LACORS issues warning over foreign satellites

Equipment could be seized, with criminal proceedings to follow, it warns

Licensees urged to check smoking shelter compliance

Officials warn licensees of their duty to ensure shelters are 50 per cent open

more news

Other news this week:

• Licensee thanks The Publican over Opus
• Pubs warned over relief staff
• Grogan calls on Tesco to take action on alcohol
• Lager drop "more than a blip"
• Supermarkets sold £112.7m worth of booze below cost during World Cup
• Pubs crack down on smoking in letting rooms
• Government urged to fast-track chefs into the UK
• Licensee defiant over foreign satellite screenings
• Devon police chief rejects media reports over violent crime
• Link between rise in violence and licensing law change dismissed
• Two Shepherd Neame pubs win garden awards
• Admiral launches "You Tube" recruitment video
• Majority of smokers prefer pubs since ban
• Pubs urged to back latest drink-drive push
• 1.5m drinking at harmful levels, says report
• Pink Elephant escapes ticking off
• Licensee fined for tipping
• SIA changes application process
• Brewer recruits regulars to mystery visit pubs
• Fullers launches charity ale
• Negative tests in new foot-and-mouth scares
• S&N UK strike action suspended
• Meet your football heroes in charity contest

more news

Features:

Find your space on thePublican.com

Discover how you can get involved in our new website area - right now

The Efficiency Factor: let battle commence

Four prudent pubs are conserving their energy in our British Gas energy-saving competition

more features

Get all the latest news and advice from the UK's leading pub trade information resource – www.thepublican.com

London's drowning

London overwhelmed by a huge tidal surge in The Flood

With this summer's torrential downpours still fresh in the memory a new £25m disaster movie, The Flood, charts the devastation of central London. It's a dramatic vision, but could it really happen?

It started out as a Hollywood-style disaster movie, but following the floods in Gloucestershire and Yorkshire this summer, Tony Mitchell's movie The Flood has the sound of something a little closer to real life.

London floods in 1928 Enlarge Image

As time passed the feel of the project began to change and, "science fiction soon became science prediction", Mitchell has said.

The experts, though, disagree. Speaking for the Environment Agency, Rachael Hill says the film has a lot more fiction than fact, especially as far as "overtopping" London's main flood defence, the Thames Barrier, is concerned.

"If you had a tsunami coming up the Thames that would overtop the barrier, then that water would have spread out along Kent and Essex, or gone round either side of the barrier," she says.

The risks

IF THE BARRIER DIDN'T EXIST Launch Animation

But that's not to say floods along the Thames Estuary aren't a very real problem.

The threat has been with us for centuries. The most recent major disaster took place in 1953 and saw over 300 people killed. It was this flooding of Canvey Island and the east coast that inspired the construction of the Thames Barrier, which was in position 30 years later.

See how the barrier works

The threat of flooding is slowly increasing as time passes. Climate change is raising sea levels on the one hand, while on the other London is feeling the effects of subsidence, and is sinking a couple of millimetres each year.

In addition, climate change also makes storm surges both more likely and increasingly unpredictable.

See the Thames' flood plain, home to over a million people Enlarge Map

But Ms Hill says this is all being planned for by the Thames Estuary 2100 project, for which she is the technical strategy manager.

The project has the job of planning the flood management of the Thames for the next 100 years. Their working estimates for sea level rises during this time period span anything from under 1m (3ft 3in) to some of the most extreme global warming predictions that would see sea levels rise by as much as 4.2m (13ft 9in).

"That 4.2m scenario is almost the sort of Al Gore scenario of the worst thing that climate change could do, including the demise of the arctic ice sheets, and everything else, so that is very much the extreme event," she says.

"But we need to make sure we are planning across those scenarios. So our plan is realistic, but it can also be adaptable through this century."

The barrier

A TIDAL SURGE Occurs when low pressure in Atlantic pushes towards the UK Sea forced above normal levels, creating hump of water Hump moves down east coast and funnels into Thames Estuary Water levels increase, and can rise further if combined with high tide Surges to become more frequent and less predictable

But what about the Thames Barrier itself? It was defeated by The Floods fictional storm but how will it fare against the real storms and tidal surges of the future?

Ms Hill predicts that the barrier will stand firm: "We certainly know that there will not need to be any major changes to the Thames Barrier.

"We don't anticipate any major engineering projects in the Thames Estuary before 2030. If we use the barrier in combination with other options - such as flood storage [see below] - we know that the barrier will be effective up until 2100."

She also believes any talk of the need for a second barrier in the river is premature. "It is still one of the things we are looking at, but it certainly isn't being fast-tracked as a result of any of the recent flooding," she says.

"If climate change did throw at us this 4.2m [rise] on top of maximum water levels then an outer estuary barrier would be the only solution that would be effective.

"Because we are planning for something more realistic, something around 1m, there are much more sustainable solutions that we will look at first."

Making space for water

FLOOD RESILIENT HOUSING Houses should have at least two storeys, so people can evade rising water Use basements as garages or utilities rooms, not bedrooms Build with brick not timber

One of these solutions is flood storage. The idea is simple. In order to stop flood waters overwhelming central London and to save the massive expense of building fresh flood walls and defences, some land could be set aside to act as a safety valve, catching flood waters and storing them until the danger has passed.

The most likely spots for flood storage are between the barrier and Tilbury, to the east. Ms Hill suggests that any land ear-marked for future flood storage could be used as farmland, playgrounds, parks or nature reserves when not called into action to take the edge off tidal surges.

These are the sort of ideas Ms Hill would like to see employed as the redevelopment of the Thames Gateway area gathers pace.

She says: "The majority of developments throughout the Thames flood plain at the moment really don't take account of the fact that they are in a flood risk area, so redevelopment is about making things better."

Turning from the real world of flood management and back to the big screen version Ms Hill has more words of re-assurance: "We are not planning for the scenario they are presenting, as it is so very unlikely, but it's going to be good popcorn viewing."

The Flood is due to be released on 24 August.

Super solution for Rubik's cube

Rubik's cube has foxed people since the early 1980s

The ultimate solution to the Rubik's cube has come closer thanks to hours of number crunching on a supercomputer.

The research has proved that a Rubik's cube can be returned to its original state in no more than 26 moves.

The supercomputer took 63 hours to crank out the proof which goes one better than the previous best solution.

The two computer scientists behind the research project believe that with more work they could push the move count even lower.

Cube crunching

It took some smart thinking by graduate student Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston to come up with the proof because cranking through the 43 billion billion possible Rubik's cube positions would take too long even for a supercomputer.

Instead, the scientists used a two-step technique in their calculations.

Initially, they programmed the supercomputer to arrive at one of 15,000 half-solved solutions. They knew they could fully solve any of these 15,000 cubes with a few extra moves.

The results showed that any disordered cube could be fully solved in a maximum of 29 moves, but that most cubes took 26 moves or fewer.

The researchers then focused on the small number of "problem" configurations that required more than 26 moves.

Because there were so few "problem" configurations, the researchers could use the supercomputer to search for the best way to fully solve these cubes.

As it turned out the supercomputer was able to fully solve all of these special cases in less than 26 moves.

The study brings scientists one step closer to finding the so-called "God's Number" which is the minimum number of moves needed to solve any disordered Rubik's cube.

It is so named because God would only need the smallest number of moves to solve a cube. Theoretical work suggests that God's Number is in the "low 20s".

Mr Dunkle and Mr Cooperman announced their findings at the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation in Waterloo, Ontario.

August 16th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1952: Flood devastates Devon village Twelve bodies are recovered and 24 people are missing feared dead in the flood which has swept through Lynmouth in north Devon.
	2004: Dozens stranded in Cornish floods Flash floods devastate a north Cornwall coastal village after the area's average August rainfall fell in just two hours.
	1977: Rock and roll 'king' Presley dies Elvis Presley, whose singing and style revolutionized popular music in the 1950s, dies after collapsing at his home.

Chaos theory

The papers are full of doom-laden predictions about the switchover to digital TV, just as they once were over decimalisation, and chip and pin technology. But will it really be a disaster? If the history of big British changes teaches us anything, says Oliver Burkeman it's that we're remarkably adaptable when push comes to shove....

The world's first seven-sided coins started appearing in Britain's purses and cash registers on October 14 1969 - strange, alien lumps of cupro-nickel alloy that were greeted with instant suspicion. Bus conductors and Tory MPs fretted that the new 50 pence piece would be mistaken for the old half-crown, causing chaos. Secret documents released years later showed that the Decimal Currency Board - the body charged with decimalising the country by February 1971 - was terrified that the Queen might die before the changeover was complete, forcing it to introduce a whole new set of coins. And according to the BBC, a retired army colonel named Essex Moorcroft founded an organisation called the Anti-Heptagonists, dedicated to eradicating the new 50p on the grounds that it was "ugly" and "an insult to our sovereign, whose image it bears."

One half-suspects Colonel Moorcroft of being the figment of some rogue BBC reporter's imagination, but only because he fits the story so perfectly. There are always Colonel Moorcrofts, just as there are always fretting MPs and newspapers predicting chaos. But of course the introduction of the 50p went fine, and when full decimalisation arrived a year and a half later, that went fine, too. The Decimal Currency Board had planned for an 18-month transition period, full of confusion and rancour. Instead, most British people adapted within weeks. A few months after "D-day", the board announced that it was winding itself up.

It all feels like distant history now. But if you're one of the people whose job involves trying to persuade the entire population of the United Kingdom to make a major change in their daily habits, decimalisation still has a kind of mythic status. The culture secretary, James Purnell, invoked it last week to describe the switchover to digital television, and like clockwork, the doom-laden predictions arrived this week.

According to market research, 48% of televisions sold between April and June this year were analogue, and will be useless without a set-top box once the government switches off the analogue signal, starting in the Cumbrian town of Whitehaven in October and culminating in London in 2012. (For smaller TVs, excluding widescreen and plasma models, four-fifths of those sold were analogue, reportedly because supermarkets are offering heavy discounts.) So far, only 33m of the nation's 64m TVs are digital or have a set-top box: we are, it seems, radically underprepared. "It's like doing decimalisation and the North Sea gas transformation at the same time," Purnell said, sounding a little awed by the scale of the challenge. "This is a massive technological and social transformation."

History, however, provides support for the following prediction: things will go fine. Sometimes, in Britain, it can seem as if we derive a large part of our national identity from the fact that large-scale projects seem destined to go wrong: major public buildings are never finished on schedule; the Millennium Experience was an embarrassment; we can't run a railway any more, and the 2012 Olympics seem doomed to come in catastrophically over-budget. Our ambitions overshoot our abilities. But with changes in our national habits - decimalisation, seatbelts in cars, unleaded petrol, chip and pin, and, based on early indications, the smoking ban - the opposite is true. We predict chaos, and it almost never arrives.

"I think, to be honest, we were all a bit surprised at how easy it was for people," says Sandra Quinn of Apacs, the UK payments association, which oversaw the transition to chip and pin on February 15 last year. "We just didn't have people phoning us up and moaning. We got lots of calls, but they were mostly from journalists, and we'd have these conversations - 'No, we can't find anything to report about, either.'" The February 15 date - the same as for decimalisation - had been chosen because it is traditionally the quietest time of year on the high street, but predictions of disaster abounded. In the event, many major retailers allowed customers a honeymoon period. Some news organisations reported that "tens of thousands of shoppers" were turned away from the tills on the 15th because they couldn't remember their pin numbers. But that seems to have been the only lesson they needed in order to change their ways. Chaos failed to ensue.

This doesn't necessarily mean that those who predict disaster in advance of a change are necessarily scaremongering: it may be that anticipatory worry is an important tool in readying people for disruption. "Any big change can lead to mayhem," says Claire Whyley, deputy director of the National Consumer Council, which called the launch of chip and pin "appalling" at the time. "It may take organisations like ours to direct some of the consumer-awareness operations." The NCC insists that its campaigning was crucial for the minority of people unable to use pin keypads, due to disability. Even Sandra Quinn accepts that all the tabloid hyperventilating probably helped in the end.

"I think we were on the front page of the Daily Mail four days running, or something, but I have to say I didn't mind, really," she says. Last year, Digital UK, the organisation handling the TV switchover, came to pick brains at Apacs. "We told them we were surprised at how much it caught the public imagination," Quinn says. "And it has. I was at my parents' golden wedding anniversary the other day, and it's all anyone in my family ever talks to me about these days."

The anticlimactic feeling of having planned for more problems than actually arose - felt by staff at Apacs and the Decimal Currency Board alike - was shared by Bob Smalley, who was the chief traffic policeman in the West Midlands in 1983, when seatbelts become compulsory in the front seats of cars. "The police decided to adopt a period of stopping people and advising them, cautioning them," says Smalley, now chief driving instructor at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. "And the Jimmy Savile 'clunk-click' campaign was so good that an awful lot of people were convinced. So by the time we got to the enforcement stage, it was all a bit of a damp squib. The majority of people had been persuaded."

Opponents of large-scale changes usually object to them on libertarian grounds: the "nanny state" must be prevented from trampling on our freedoms. (The civil liberties argument over seatbelts, now vanished from debate in Britain, is still current in the US; the state of New Hampshire has no compulsory seatbelt law at all.) A crucial component of this argument is that changes imposed from above are morally corrupting: when we rely on outside forces to alter behaviour, this theory goes, our own capacity for self-control is somehow diminished. In fact, something more complex seems to be going on. Once a change in our environment forces a change in our behaviour, we manage to convince ourselves, internally, that the change is morally right.

Smoking bans are the classic example. "The psychological change occurs after the behavioural change: if we're not smoking, or we're huddled outside in the rain smoking, then we rationalise it - we decide that smoking must be this bad thing, because I'm not doing it," says Dr Alastair Ross, principal psychologist at Human Factors Analysis in Glasgow, who has studied the (non-chaos-inducing) Scottish smoking ban. The implication is that similar measures taken to combat obesity - such as American bans on restaurants serving food containing trans fats - might actually enhance our ability to care for our own health, rather than eroding it.

In any case, the "nanny state" perception can actually speed the adoption of a new form of behaviour. "In Scotland, [the smoking ban] has gone through very smoothly, actually because it has been imposed by 'them'," says Ross. "So the landlord can say to the customers, 'Sorry, guys, it's not me,' and the customers can say, 'Aah, it's OK, it's not your fault, mate.'"

The state itself, however, often doesn't appear to appreciate its own power. "The plan was to go metric, across the board, for everything," sighs Robin Paice, chair of the UK Metric Association, looking back at the dawn of decimalisation. "Plans were quite far advanced to change the speed limit to metric in 1973. But then Harold Wilson lost the election in 1970, and the new government backtracked."

Discussions were even held on the matter of exactly how to present distances on the new, metric road signs. "Our view is that if the government had grasped the nettle, and said that road signs are going to change, and faced down the hullabaloo from the Daily Mail ... well, a few days after the change, everyone would have got used to it."

Paice, observing the transition to digital TV, seems wistful for the metric Britain in which we might already have been living for the past three decades. "They're prepared to force this one through, primarily, I think, because of the money they can make by selling off the [analogue] bandwidths," he says. "They only didn't go further with metric because they were scared of the controversy."

Of course, there's money to be made from making terrifying predictions, and not just from increased newspaper circulations. The Millennium Bug is the archetypal example: the cost of preventing it from wreaking havoc - which it may never have been going to wreak in the first place - has been estimated at $300bn. For every major change, there are consultants, campaigners, quango personnel and civil servants whose mortgage payments depend on the possibility that problems may ensue. To be sure, disasters do happen every time a change is introduced - but on a much smaller scale than we predict. We endemically mismeasure risk, says Ross: we fixate on very bad, very rare outcomes, when for most of us the real effect will be a small dose of annoyance at most. Yet the bad outcomes are there: one Norfolk woman blamed decimalisation in her suicide note.

In the harbour at Whitehaven there is now a large clock, counting down the days until October 17 when, in the early hours of the morning, BBC2 will be the first analogue channel to vanish. For the past couple of months, messages have also been appearing on analogue television screens, warning of the impending change. Yet according to research undertaken on behalf of Digital UK, barely more than half the local residents know that the switch is happening in October. When it comes, there will be some - disproportionately elderly, says the charity Help The Aged - who will be in a genuinely problematic situation. But all the precedents suggest that, even among the elderly, the digital switchover will go largely without a hitch. By Christmas, the residents of Whitehaven may have a hard time recalling the golden age of analogue.

A brief guide to the digital switchover
Even if you buy an analogue television set today, it won't become obsolete when the great switchover finally happens, so don't panic. All you need to do to get the new signal is add a digital set-top box - the sort that millions of us already own - and your telly will become magically imbued with the power to pick up digital TV.

You can get a cheap Freeview box from most high-street or internet retailers for as little as £20 and the basic ones should be adequate for most people's needs.

Of course, if you want to be a bit more flash, you might choose to buy a more expensive "personal video recorder" that not only lets you watch digital TV but also enables you to record shows.

For some people, however, there might be a little more expense involved. If the signal you currently get is a little snowy or patchy, then you might need to replace your TV aerial in order to get a good digital signal. That could cost several hundred pounds, but without it your patchy signal may well disappear completely.

That's because of the way that digital signals work. While analogue is sent out in great waves that degrade over distance, digital is lasered out in a series of zeroes and ones. In being sent out this way, the signals can reach further, but it also means that if you are in a black spot you can't rely on picking up a picture - just a few missing zeroes and your reception falls apart.

For those with a good signal, the main benefit is that many more stations can squeeze much more information into the same space on the airwaves: so where we had five analogue terrestrial stations, now we can have a cornucopia of shopping channels, reality TV shows and moronic TV quizzes.

For most people the digital switch won't be a bank-busting exercise, though if you're splurging hundreds or thousands of pounds on an immense new TV set, then it makes sense to ensure it's got built-in digital compatibility.

But there's something else to start thinking about: high definition. This is the next phase of televisual wonder and basically involves immensely huge screens that bring every image into super-sharp relief.

A high-definition display offers up to five times the resolution of your ordinary TV screen and is favoured by sports fanatics and those with expensive home cinema systems. This is the kind of technological advance where you will need to fork out eye-watering amounts of cash - but don't worry, it's not compulsory yet.

Postal worker scoops £35m jackpot

Angela Kelly earned about £21,000 at a Glasgow sorting office

Postal worker Angela Kelly said she was "flabbergasted" at becoming the UK's biggest lottery winner.

Ms Kelly, 40, from East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, landed £35.4m in Friday's EuroMillions draw, but did not realise her win until Monday.

The lucky dip ticket was in her handbag and she only checked it when she realised the cash had gone unclaimed.

Ms Kelly, who lives with her 14-year-old son, said she would quit her job at a Glasgow sorting office.

In limbo

The transport manager, who earns about £21,000 annually, would have taken about 1,500 years to earn the amount of her win.

Ms Kelly, who has been separated from husband Gerry for eight years, uses her maiden name Cunningham at the Springburn depot, where she has worked for 24 years.

She said she was still deciding how to spend her winnings.

"I feel totally in limbo. I just need to sit down to get my thoughts together," Ms Kelly said.

"My son does not want to move out of the flat and I don't want to move too far away because he is going into fourth year at school."

I couldn't even say anything, I just pushed my chair back and put my head between my knees Angela Kelly

At a media conference at Airth Castle near Falkirk, Ms Kelly described how she had bought the ticket in Sainsbury's on Thursday but forgot to check the numbers the following day.

She said she was out with girlfriends on Saturday and spent Sunday sitting in front of the TV.

It was only on a break from work on Monday that she remembered to check her ticket.

She got five colleagues to check that she had won because she could not believe it.

"I couldn't even say anything, I just pushed my chair back and put my head between my knees, I was so flabbergasted," Ms Kelly said.

Jackpot winner

In July 2005, mother-of-six Dolores McNamara, from Limerick, Ireland, won £77m, and in February 2006 three ticket holders won a share of £126m.

The UK's first EuroMillions jackpot winner was Marion Richardson from Gateshead who won £16.8m in April 2004.

Her total was exceeded by an anonymous winner in the UK who scooped £17.8m with a single ticket.

EuroMillions is played in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland.

Toy woes prompt China checks call

Mattel blames the lead paint on a Chinese subcontractor Recall statement

A senior US senator has called for all toys being imported into the country from China to be inspected after a massive recall by toymaker Mattel.

Dick Durbin accused China of having "lax safety standards" and said that toy firms should voluntarily allow third-party inspectors to check goods.

On Tuesday, Mattel recalled more than 18 million toys worldwide, the second such operation in two weeks.

This followed the discovery that paint used on some toys may contain lead.

Safety advice

Chinese-made Sarge die-cast toys from the Pixar film Cars have been recalled.

This needs to stop now before more children and more families are put at risk Dick Durbin Democrat senator

Mattel has also said that some toys, including Polly Pocket, Batman Magna, Doggie Daycare and One Piece playsets, contain small magnets that can come loose.

Concerned parents in the UK are being advised to take the recalled items away from their children.

They should then contact Mattel's helpline on 01628 500 303, e-mail HelplineUK@mattel.com or visit the company's UK website at www.service.mattel.com/uk/.

Customers elsewhere can obtain details of who to contact at http://www.mattel.com/safety.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) said it had no reports of any injuries from the recalled products.

The earlier recall of 1.5 million toys was by Mattel's Fisher Price unit.

'Time to act'

"We can't wait any longer for China to crack down on its lax safety standards," said Mr Durbin, a Democrat senator.

"This needs to stop now before more children and more families are put at risk."

He added: "This problem is serious, and I think that we should temporarily detain and inspect all shipments of children's products from China that contain paint.

"The time to talk is over. It's now time to act."

RECALLED PRODUCTS Sarge die-cast car 11 Doggie Daycare sets 44 Polly Pocket toys 4 Batman Magna toys 2 Barbie and Tanner sets 1 One Piece toy Full list of recalled products

China said that it had launched an investigation into the recall with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine saying it was watching the issue closely.

Earlier it pointed out that of the billions of goods it produces every year, only a fraction are found to be faulty.

It is unclear exactly when the latets problem was discovered, but an unnamed source from the China Toy Association told Reuters news agency that it was aware of the problem with lead in paint as long ago as March.

The BBC's Quentin Somerville said that Beijing had been quick to act after the first recall, revoking the licence to manufacture goods of a firm in Guangdong province.

"The government doesn't normally act so quickly, but it recognises that people could lose faith in the Made in China label very quickly," he said.

"The country's wealth depends on exports."

Unauthorised paint

Mattel has recalled 253,000 Sarge toy cars in the US and 183,000 from the rest of the world.

Mattel said that 49,000 of the affected vehicles were in the UK and Ireland.

The company blamed the amount of lead in the paint on a subcontracted Chinese company called Hong Li Da using paint from unauthorised suppliers.

The recall is the latest in a series of alerts about Chinese products in the US, raising fears in Beijing that the "Made in China" label is being seriously damaged.

Chinese officials have announced a series of measures to try to tackle the problems, but analysts say that China's economy has grown so rapidly over the past two decades that addressing the issue will take a long time.

Viking ship ends voyage in Dublin

The arrival marks the end of a six-week sea journey

A replica Viking ship has pulled into Dublin nearly 1,000 years after the original sank off Denmark's coast.

The arrival of the Sea Stallion in Dublin's harbour on Tuesday capped a 1,700km (1,000 mile) journey across the waters of northern Europe.

The 65 crew were overjoyed after the six-week voyage, during which they faced unfavourable sailing conditions.

The endeavour took the crew from Scandinavia, around Scotland and into the Irish Sea.

The passage was being undertaken as part of a "living archaeology" project that aims to understand better the seamanship of early Norsemen.

"You have come here on a voyage of discovery," said Dublin's Lord Mayor Paddy Bourke as the vessel and its volunteer crew of men and women docked.

Crafted from the wood of 300 oak trees, the 30m (100ft) long, 4m-wide Sea Stallion is the world's largest reconstructed Viking vessel, its builders say.

The original ship was built in Dublin in 1042 but sank 30 years later in Roskilde fjord, around 30 miles (50 km) south of Copenhagen, and lay there until excavation began in 1962.

The Sea Stallion was completed in 2004 after work started in 2000.

The ship's Danish skipper, Carsten Hvid, said the toughest moment was coming into the Irish Sea, when high winds and 5m waves battered the boat.

"We put on our survival suits and prepared the life rafts," Hvid told reporters after arriving in Dublin. But he added that no one was washed overboard.

Much of the voyage was spent braving the elements on an open deck, with just a square metre of living space for each crew member.

The vessel had to accept a tow for a small part of the trip, when it struggled to make headway on a calm sea.

Researchers plan to analyse film and computer data gathered during the voyage. The vessel itself will go on display this month at Dublin's National Museum until next year, when a crew captained by Carsten Hvid will make the return voyage home.

August 15th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1969: British troops sent into Northern Ireland The British Government sends troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.
	1980: Shipyard Poles strike for their rights Shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland, strike in protest over the dismissal of a trade union activist
	2000: Rescuers race to save stricken Kursk A rescue operation is underway to save the lives of more than 100 sailors on board a Russian submarine grounded at the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Exifpro Image Viewer

Photo utility for editing images and photo information

Platform Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Server, Windows Vista
Type freeware
Manufacturer ExifPro
Size 5.87MB
Free download

Exifpro is an application meant to display, manipulate and browse photographs.

Exifpro can display images in different view modes. Selected images may be copied, resized, cropped and adjusted using tools offered by Exifpro.

Exifpro can also present information embedded in JPEG photographs (EXIF block) describing different parameters digital camera used while taking a shot.

One can create HTML albums or slide show applications using built-in generators, print images, append descriptions and tags.

Exifpro Standalone viewer window offers zooming and panning, image color and aspect correction, magnifier tool, light table pane and a slide show mode.

Here viewer window can be seen with a preview bar and a light table visible. Preview bar provides quick access to all loaded images, while the light table may be used as a place to keep selected images.

Two images can be inspected side by side thanks to the split view feature.

You can pay for Exifpro to remove the startup splash screen. This costs £20.

ViStart: Desktop Utility

Give the Windows XP Start Menu the Vista look

Platform Windows XP
Type freeware
Manufacturer Lee Soft
Size 441KB
Free download

It seems that every time a new version of Windows appears there are lots of utilities produced that give the old versions the new look.

ViStart is a good example that makes the Windows XP Start Menu look just like that of Vista.

The good news is that it is not a purely cosmetic utility. The search feature of the Vista Start Menu is added and works for finding software installed on the computer.

The cosmetics are also very good and the ViStart menu also has the transparent effects of the Vista menu.

If you want to give Windows XP a fresh new look, this a good way to do so.

Launchy 1.25

An impressive program launcher

Platform Windows XP
Type freeware
Manufacturer Josh Karlin
Size 1.03MB
Free download

Launchy is the latest of many program launchers we've seen recently, and on first looks it seems to be the most impressive by far.

Opting for the simple approach, Launchy makes the process of launching any application (or other files, for that matter) extremely quick.

Forget browsing through Start Menu > Programs to locate the program you want. Install Launchy and it will automatically scan and index the contents of your Start Menu.

It will then run on Startup, or you can invoke Launchy whenever you want via a user-definable hotkey combination.

To launch a program simply type the first few letters of its name, and you'll be presented with a selection of possible matches (the more letters, the better the match). When the correct program is displayed, simply hit Enter to launch it.

It looks great too, with curved lines and see-through edges. Should you want to add other folders to Launchy to launch Word documents, for example, simply instruct Launchy to index these folders too.

August 14th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1969: British troops sent into Northern Ireland The British Government sends troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.
	1980: Shipyard Poles strike for their rights Shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland, strike in protest over the dismissal of a trade union activist
	2000: Rescuers race to save stricken Kursk A rescue operation is underway to save the lives of more than 100 sailors on board a Russian submarine grounded at the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Moors set for 'Glorious Twelfth'

The "Glorious Twelfth" will begin a day later this year

Enthusiasts are gearing up for the start of the UK's grouse shooting season.

The season traditionally begins on 12 August - the "Glorious Twelfth".

But with the date this year falling on a Sunday, when shoots do not take place, events will get under way a day later.

It is estimated that grouse shooting brings in some £1.6bn to the UK rural economy each year.

But it has its critics - the League Against Cruel Sports has described the Glorious Twelfth as a "slaughter of wildlife in the name of sport".

Unique species

There are 459 grouse moors across the UK, covering some 1.5m hectares.

The majority are in Scotland, northern England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The grouse shooting season runs until 10 December in Britain, and 30 November in Northern Ireland.

It is estimated that about 70,000 jobs are supported on estates and in surrounding businesses such as hotels and restaurants, which brings in some £1.6bn to the UK rural economy each year.

On the moors, beaters employed by the estates drive the grouse towards the shooters - who are screened by a turf or stone wall.

The birds are also sometimes flushed out by dogs.

The red grouse found on the moors is a unique species to the British Isles.

Infestation and population decline hit programmes in recent years

They grow up in their natural environment and are not reared.

The shot grouse are sold on as food through a game dealer or butcher.

According to the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, grouse is high in protein, low in fat and free from artificial additives.

But in order to protect numbers and other moorland birds, predators such as foxes and crows are controlled by gamekeepers.

Groups like the League Against Cruel Sports are critical of such "habitat management".

In recent years, the season has been hit by a decline in the grouse population and the spread of tick infestations.

Some estates cut down their operations or cancelled their programmes altogether.

But the Moorland Association and the Game Conservancy Trust said a warm and dry spring and rigorous pest control methods should see an increase in grouse numbers in many areas this year.

August 13th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1961: Berliners wake to divided city Troops in East Germany seal off the border between East and West Berlin, shutting off the escape route for thousands of refugees from the East.
	1966: China announces Cultural Revolution China announces plans for a "new leap forward" after the first meeting in four years of the Communist Party's Central Committee.
	1977: Violent clashes at NF march More than 200 protesters are arrested after demonstrations in Lewisham against a National Front march.

Fine threat over T-shirt slogan

A man spotted wearing a T-shirt bearing an "offensive" slogan in a city centre has been warned he risks an £80 fine if he is caught again.

Forklift driver David Pratt was told by street wardens in Peterborough he could cause offence or incite violence.

The slogan on the garment read: "Don't piss me off! I am running out of places to hide the bodies."

Peterborough City Council said using insulting or offensive language was an offence, even if it appeared in print.

Mr Pratt, from Peterborough, was approached by the wardens as he waited for a bus with his wife.

The couple are now demanding a written apology.

"I really don't see how the wording on my T-shirt could incite violence - it's humour, that's all it is," said Mr Pratt.

Mr Pratt faces an £80 fine if he wears the T-shirt again

In a statement Peterborough City Council said: "The incident is the subject of an official complaint to the council and is currently under investigation.

"However, using offensive, abusive, or insulting language is an offence under the Public Order Act, which also applies to such language appearing in print.

"In what was an amicable conversation, the street warden advised the gentleman concerned that his T-shirt could cause offence and if he was to wear it again he could run the risk of being issued an £80 on-the-spot fine from the police."

Scots 'mither tongue' goes online

The BBC's Trawlermen show was subtitled to help viewers

An archive of the Scots language is now available all over the world thanks to a comprehensive new website.

Researchers at Glasgow University have completed work on the online resource, which contains more than four million words in Scots and Scottish English.

As well as meaning and usage, the project also has audio links, allowing people to hear words being spoken.

The site, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, can be accessed at www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk.

People from the US, Australia, China, Japan and South America have already logged on to use the service, as well as people in Scotland.

It is one aspect of a long and flourishing cultural heritage Dr Wendy Anderson Project researcher

The website currently includes text from 1945 up to the present day, with researchers working on expanding it.

They are building up a new resource for older varieties of language, dating from 1700 to 1945.

Once completed this should allow people to trace the development of features of Scots and Scottish English over time.

Project researcher, Dr Wendy Anderson, said: "The Scots language is a source of interest across the world as it is one aspect of a long and flourishing cultural heritage.

"The website will be a useful language resource for academic researchers and students, language learners and teachers, dictionary writers and secondary school language teachers, not to mention for the large number of general users who just want to satisfy a curiosity about the Scots language."

August 12th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1985: Hundreds dead in Boeing crash A Japan Airlines jumbo jet crashes on a remote mountainside 70 miles from Tokyo in Japan.
	1969: Police use tear gas in Bogside The Royal Ulster Constabulary uses tear gas for the first time in its history after nine hours of rioting in the Bogside area of Londonderry.
	1964: Great Train Robber escapes from jail A massive manhunt is underway across Britain after one of the gang involved in the Great Train Robbery breaks out of a high-security prison in Birmingham.

Elvis Week marks 30th anniversary

Presley had more than 80 gold-selling albums in the US Did you meet The King?

A week of events is due to begin to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of US rock 'n' roll star Elvis Presley.

About 50,000 fans are expected to gather in Memphis on Wednesday, when a candlelight vigil will be held at the singer's Graceland mansion.

Presley's ex-wife Priscilla and members of his former band will appear at sold-out concerts in the US city.

And a competition for Presley sound-alikes is also being organised, with the backing of the star's estate.

"There have been impersonators of all shapes and sizes and nationalities for years, but the estate never recognised them," contest judge Joe Moscheo, who played in Las Vegas with Presley, told the Associated Press.

"They didn't want anything to do with the guys with the wigs with the sideburns. They thought it cheapened the image.

"Now they look at it and say: 'If they're going to be out there, let's control the thing'."

ELVIS PRESLEY FACTS Born on 8 January 1935 Died on 16 August 1977 Began singing with Sun Records in Memphsis aged 19 Had 81 gold-selling albums Entered Billboard's Hot 100 pop singles chart 149 times Made 31 films as an actor Source: Official Elvis Presley website

Wednesday's vigil at Graceland will be broadcast live by the Elvis Radio channel on Sirius Satellite in the US.

There is also plenty of merchandise to mark Thursday's anniversary of Presley's death.

The Hershey confectionary company has produced the banana-flavoured Peanut Butter Cup chocolate bar.

The product, which marks Presley's love for peanut butter and banana sandwiches, urges customers to "live like The King".

Ex-pop star Marie Osmond is selling a doll which portrays Baby Elvis, who is wearing a jump suit and comes complete with a microphone.

Ex-wife Priscilla performs at the Memphis Cook Convention Center

And a white Knabe baby grand piano which sat in the music room at Graceland from 1957 to 1969 is being auctioned online throughout the week.

It has a starting price of $250,000 (£124,000).

However Symbolic Collection, the company which is selling the instrument, told the AFP news agency it hoped to raise $2m (£990,000).

"We're gearing up for the best Elvis Week we've ever had," said Todd Morgan, spokesman for Elvis Presley Enterprises, the Memphis-based firm which oversees the late star's estate.

Presley died at Graceland in 1977 at the age of 42, his body ravaged by the drugs and fast food on which he had become reliant.

Digital home technology given OK

Ultra-wideband could connect multiple devices wirelessly

A wireless technology that could hasten the arrival of the connected digital home has been give the green light by media regulator Ofcom.

Ultra-Wideband (UWB), as it is known, can be used to connect devices such as PCs, mp3 players and digital cameras.

New legislation will mean UK users will not need a licence to use UWB devices when they hits shelves in the future.

UWB uses part of the radio spectrum to transfer large amounts of data, such as media files, over short distances.

Data can be shifted over distances of around 30m at up to 2 gigabits per second. However, its main use will be over much shorter distances for wireless USB, enabling a host of devices to connect to a PC without cables.

Market approval

Technologies that use the radio spectrum normally require a licence for their use so that Ofcom can regulate any interference between spectrum users, such as radio stations or the emergency services.

Other wireless technologies

However, UWB equipment is low powered which means that it should not interfere with other spectrum users.

Technology companies have already started to develop and sell UWB products to US and Japanese markets.

"Where possible, we want to remove restrictions on the use of spectrum to allow the market to develop new and innovative services, such as UWB, for the benefit of consumers," said Ofcom's Chief Executive Ed Richards.

The introduction of the Wireless Telegraphy (Ultra Wideband Equipment Exemption) Regulations 2007 on 13 August will allow the use of approved UWB equipment without a license.

Ofcom's decision to deregulate UWB was made in response to European negotiations for a common set of UWB technical standards.

Other EU members are expected to introduce similar legislation in coming months.

Double-nosed dog not to be sniffed at

Xingu is said to be intelligent and fond of salty biscuits Explorer's tale

Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog.

He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia.

The chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society said the dog, named Xingu, was "not terribly handsome".

He said: "This breed could be used for sniffing out mines or narcotics because they have an enhanced sense of smell."

Colonel Blashford-Snell first encountered a Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound called Bella in 2005 when he was carrying out reconnaissance for this year's expedition in the area near Ojaki.

He told Radio 4's Today programme: "While we were there, sitting by the fire one night, I saw an extraordinary-looking dog that appeared to have two noses.

"I was sober at the time, and then I remembered the story that the legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett came back with in 1913 of seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle.

"Nobody believed him, they laughed him out of court."

He's very intelligent and with a wonderful sense of smell, as you might think John Blashford-Snell

The dog seen two years ago was Bella, and on a second trip to the area, which began in May and has just ended, the explorer discovered her son Xingu in the village of Ojaki.

He had just produced a litter of puppies with a bitch that had a single nose.

Two of their offspring had double noses, and two had the normal quantity, but the double-nosed pups died after three days.

A veterinary expert with the group examined Xingu to see if he had a cleft palate, but this was not the case.

"There is a chance that these dogs came from a breed with double noses that's known in Spain as Pachon Navarro, which were hunting dogs at the time of the Conquistadors," said Colonel Blashford-Snell.

"I think it's highly likely some of these were taken to South America and they continued to breed. They're good hunting dogs."

Bella is Xingu's mother and was spotted on an expedition in 2005

He added that Xingu was "quite an aggressive little chap" who stood about 16 inches in height and loved salt biscuits but "wasn't a terribly handsome dog".

Xingu's best friend is apparently a wild pig called Gregory, and the two animals "rule the roost" in their village.

"Other dogs snarl at Xingu, because they can sense he's different. He's the smallest dog there but he sees the other dogs off," Colonel Blashford-Snell said.

"He's very intelligent and with a wonderful sense of smell, as you might think.

"The Bolivian Army came and took DNA samples because they're interested in the breed. He's not the only dog like this, there are others in the area."

The Scientific Exploration Society was in Bolivia to investigate a shallow crater about five miles in width.

According to Colonel Blashford-Snell, he has now found evidence that this was caused by a giant meteorite, which struck the Bolivian Amazon Basin up to 30,000 years ago.

He says he has found evidence of human habitation within 50 miles of the blast zone, and believes these people were wiped out as a result of the meteor's impact.

The explorers also carried with them a church organ from Dorset as a gift to local Bolivians in order to secure their help with finding the meteorite.

Down on animal pharm

Commercial cloning could be on the rise in the US

Since the birth of Dolly the sheep 11 years ago, cloning technologies for animals have been getting better and better.

But are we ready to clone our pets or eat meat or other products from cloned livestock or their offspring? Well, the BBC Radio 4 series Peas in a Pod has taken a look at the current state of animal cloning and where it might be heading.

Animals are already being cloned commercially.

It's on a small scale and mostly for producing copies of individual animals of very high value - whether emotional or commercial.

But a ruling by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the end of this year could change that.

If the ruling, as expected, allows animal products from clones and their offspring to enter the human food chain then agricultural cloning is set to take off.

Growing clientele

Finding out exactly who is doing what and where in the world of cloning is not easy.

The sensitive nature of the science and the extreme ethical views of some have made cloning, like genetic engineering, a highly controversial technology.

While Scotland, once home to Dolly the sheep, may once have been the heart of cloning science, it's now clear that the centre of activity has moved to Texas where a combination of academic and commercial laboratories are providing a service for a growing number of clients.

ViaGen, a commercial cloning company in Austin, Texas, is now charging $15,000 (£7,500) to clone a bull and $3,000 (£1,500) for a pig.

A decade on from Dolly

Its customers are the owners of elite breeding stock - not animals for slaughter - and the company believes it has now improved the cloning technology to a point that makes it commercially viable for agricultural animals.

Blake Russell, vice president of sales and business development at the company, said: "The technology is currently in a rapid state of development and will meet the needs of large agricultural numbers around the world very, very soon."

Another commercial use of cloning being pioneered at Texas A and M University is cloning endangered and domestic animals.

They created the first cloned domestic cat, Copy Cat or CC, and the first successful cloning of a white-tailed deer.

Ahead of the game

The actual cloning process involves taking the nuclear genetic material out of a skin cell of the animal you wish to clone, implanting it into an egg that has had its own genetic material removed and using an electrical impulse to start the development of a whole new genetically identical embryo.

But in the same way that genetic engineering was a technology ahead of its regulatory framework, the same is true of cloning.

There is nothing different about clones than there is any animal which is out there in the regular population Charles Long, creator of CC from Texas A and M University

The omission of cloned livestock from the food chain is voluntary, and almost definitely not being observed by everyone.

In the US, the FDA has carried out a protracted risk assessment with a public consultation to decide whether or not products from cloned animals or from the progeny of cloned animals should enter the human food chain.

They will make their decision by the end of the year. But most cloning organisations and livestock breeders are confident their decision will give the go ahead for unlabelled cloned food products to fill US supermarket shelves.

Charles Long, creator of CC from Texas A & M University, says: "There is nothing different about clones than there is any animal which is out there in the regular population.

"Therefore the FDA can really only come to one decision, which is to allow cloned animals to go into the food chain without labelling."

Case-by-case

The situation in the UK and Europe is less clear. Clones or products from clones are classed as novel foods, alongside genetically modified organisms, with each example being looked at on a case-by-case basis.

Not that there are many examples - yet.

The one case that hit the headlines in the UK last year was that of a young heifer, Dundee Paradise, who is the daughter of a cloned dairy bull.

A debate raged as to whether her milk should be allowed to enter the normal supply chain.

She's still a little way off producing milk, and the Food Standards Agency is currently in discussions with the EC and hopes to have definitive regulations and rules on clones very soon.

It looks like Europe and the UK will not follow the example of the US, Brazil and China, who are forging ahead with cloning animals for the commercial market, but will continue to class clones and the products from the offspring of cloned animals as novel foods.

How this then affects international trade remains to be seen.

Ancient forest found in Hungary

Urgent measures are being taken to preserve the ancient trees The ancient trees

An ancient forest of cypress trees, estimated to be eight million years old, has been discovered in Hungary.

Archaeologists found the 16 preserved trunks in an open cast coal mine in the north-eastern city of Bukkabrany.

The specimens were preserved intact while most of the forest turned to coal thanks to a casing of sand, which was perhaps the result of a sandstorm.

It is hoped the trees may offer experts a valuable insight into Earth's climate eight million years ago.

The massive trunks are of a species known as swamp cypresses, which grew for 200-300 years.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest says the wood of the trees is still brown in photographs taken by the archaeologists, giving the impression that it has only just been split.

The stumps, 2-3m (10ft) in diameter and 6m (19ft) high, stand uncovered on the lowest level of the mine.

However, now that the protective material around them has been stripped there is a danger that the trunks could turn to dust before the scientists' eyes.

Urgent measures are being taken to preserve them after an attempt to move one of the trunks failed.

10 Things

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Russian and American pilots exchange smiles when encroaching on each others terrirtories.
More details

2. Mahjong can trigger epileptic seizures.
More details

3. Dr Debby Reynolds, chief vet, is a vegetarian.

4. President George W Bush has fitness levels in the top 3% of the US population.

5. There are dogs with two noses.
More details

6. There have been at least two children given the name "Superman" in the UK since 1984.
More details

7. The world's tallest man is 8ft 5in Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk.
More details

8. The clock faces on Big Ben/the Palace of Westminster clock tower are cleaned every five years by abseilers.
More details

9. Bill Murray's sister Nancy is a nun who acts.

10. When bits of glaciers break off, it is know as "calving".

Sources: 1. The Guardian (Tuesday); 4. Times (Friday); 9. Independent (Friday); 10. Times (Friday)

Stargazers set sights on meteors

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual event

Shooting stars are set to grace the night sky with a spectacular light display this weekend.

The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak during the early hours of Monday, but it will be visible from Saturday night until Tuesday morning.

The celestial show will be most apparent in the north-eastern part of the sky near the Perseus constellation.

If the skies remain clear, it will offer stargazers the best opportunity for a few years to see the Perseids.

The shower this year coincides with a new Moon, providing sky watchers with the dark skies necessary for excellent observing conditions.

"If we're lucky, on Sunday night and Monday morning we might see as many