October 31st

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1991: Bush opens historic Mid East peace conference US President George Bush encourages Arabs and Israelis to "lay down the past" in his opening speech to the Middle East peace conference in Spain.
	1984: Pro-Solidarity priest is murdered Father Jerzy Popieluszko, an outspoken supporter of Poland's banned trade union, is found dead 11 days after he was kidnapped.
	1981: Euthanasia chief jailed over suicides The secretary of the UK's pro-euthanasia group Exit is sentenced to two and a half years for aiding and abetting suicide.

First RAF Eurofighters completed

Fifty three aircraft are being built for the RAF

The first batch of 53 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft built for the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been completed at BAE Systems in Lancashire.

The last aircraft in the order has been rolled out of production and will be tested at the company's site in Warton.

In total the company has 148 Typhoon aircraft on its order books - this has been valued at about £4.9bn.

Manufacturing director Ian Wood said the Typhoon is a tribute to the Lancashire workforce.

"I am proud of all the staff across the whole of the programme for their outstanding efforts over the recent years in delivering this initial tranche of aircraft."

Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK are all involved in the manufacture of the Typhoon as part of the Eurofighter consortium.

The Typhoon Eurofighters, based at RAF Coningsby, were brought in to replace the Tornado F3.

They measure about 52ft (16m), can reach Mach 2 speed and with the aircraft's power to weight ratio it can climb from runway height to 45,000 feet in just 30 seconds.

EUROFIGHTER IN DETAIL - LINK

South Africa whips up world's largest pumpkin pie

I've never given much thought as to whether South Africans celebrate Thanksgiving. However, when I read that a team of bakers created what they're calling the the world's largest pumpkin pie last weekend, I'm beginning to think folks in Pretoria might just have their own version Thanksgiving.

The 1.15 ton treat took two days to make and bake and measured some 3 feet deep. It's worth noting that the pie's other dimensions were 28 feet long and 7 feet wide. While I'm all for the South Africans trying to break a record set by a group of U.S. farmers two years ago (pictured), someone needs to tell the South Africans that pies are round. If the dimensions I read are not a typo, the mammoth pumpkin pastry qualifies as a loaf with a crust, but not a pie. A ton of the orange gourd was used to make the "pie." As of press time, there's been no reports of how many pounds of Cool Whip were used to top the purported pie.

NOTES
Q. Where were the first pumpkins grown?
A. Pumpkins are believed to have been first cultivated in Central America. Spanish and Portuguese explorers carried pumpkin seeds back to Europe in the 14th century. In North America, Native Americans grew pumpkins for food long before the first Europeans arrived on the continent in the 1600s.

Q. Why are pumpkins associated with Halloween?
A. Using pumpkins as lanterns at Halloween is based on an ancient Celtic custom brought to America by Irish immigrants. All Hallows Eve on October 31st marked the end of the old Celtic calendar year. On that night hollowed-out turnips, beets and rutabagas with a candle inside were placed on windowsills and porches to welcome home spirits of deceased ancestors and ward off evil spirits and a restless soul called “Stingy Jack.”

Q. Why is pumpkin pie eaten at Thanksgiving?
A. In 1621, at the first Thanksgiving celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to give thanks for their first successful harvest, they ate a pumpkin custard flavored with maple syrup and spices baked in pumpkin shells. The beloved Thanksgiving pumpkin pie evolved from this treat.

Q. Is the pumpkin a vegetable or a fruit?
A. Surprise! The pumpkin is actually a fruit, a member of the Cucurbitaceae family of plants with trailing vines.

THE PREVIOUS PUMPKIN PIE RECORD -
But records are meant to be broken! As of February 2006, The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes a 2020-pound pie as biggest pumpkin pie on record. It was made by the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers from New Bremen, Ohio.

Ingredients
Pumpkin	900 Pounds
Evap. Milk	62 Gallons
Eggs	155 Dozen
Sugar	300 Pounds
Salt	3.5 Pounds
Cinnamon	7 Pounds
Pumpkin Spice	2 Pounds
Crust	250 Pounds

So if you happen to have more than 900 pounds of pumpkin lying around, you could try to set your own record! Be warned, they had help from a very supportive community. It’s not easy to come by an oven that can handle a pie that’s over twelve feet wide, much less a pan to bake it in!

Waterways 'have the golden touch'

The organisers of the 2012 Olympic Games need to use London's waterways if they are to meet their promise of staging the greenest games in history, says Amy Reed. In this week's Green Room, she sets out the arguments for why moving freight by water is the most environmentally friendly mode of transport.

Moving material by water will help London 2012 meet its green goals

Every four years, the world focuses its gaze on one city for two weeks, as it plays host to the planet's largest peace-time event - the Olympic Games.

Competitors at the first games, held in 776 BC, would not recognise the modern day equivalent. They would marvel at the Herculean effort needed to stage the global event, for which preparations begin seven years before.

In July 2005, the International Olympic Committee judged London to be the winners in the race to state the 2012 Games.

One of the central planks of the London organising committee's bid was to stage the greenest Olympics ever held, and to leave a sporting legacy for future generations.

If they are to deliver that promise, the first discipline that has to be mastered is freight transportation, but it will not be easy.

The initial building phase of the 2012 London Games will require hauling to and from the Olympics site no less than one million cubic metres of spoil, along with between 3,000 and 6,000 tonnes of aggregate each day.

It's a fact: shipping emits less carbon than other transport modes

We'll also have to move steel and other cargoes, together with large, pre-formed structures to the site in East London.

Though these figures are nothing unusual - at least not for a project of this size - there are still some question marks about whether the largest possible volume of Olympics goods are going to be brought to the Games site on the most environmentally friendly mode of transportation available - the water.

It's a fact: shipping emits less carbon than other transport modes and this has been demonstrated by one study after another.

Sea and Water's report, The Case for Water, showed that increased water freight transportation can cut the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere by 80%.

Statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) show that for each tonne-km, inland shipping emits only 22 grams of carbon. Rail freight is ranked a close second-best, at 28 grams.

Road kill

The most environmentally damaging form of freight transport, which also happens often to be the default way of hauling cargo, is by road. Lorries, on average, emit 59 grams of carbon per tonne-kilometre.

Just one kilometre of motorway consumes more than 100,000 tonnes of finite and precious aggregate

Emissions from transport also pollute the air. The Department of Health estimates that between 12,000 and 24,000 deaths each year in the UK result from poor air quality.

Increased water freight transportation should be part of the solution to this problem. By moving freight by water, the amount of nitrogen oxide sent into the atmosphere is reduced by 35%, compared with road deliveries.

Shipping is, undoubtedly, the most sustainable mode of transportation. Across the globe, coastal waters and inland waterways are natural, and so their long and short-term maintenance is practically effortless. Yet just one kilometre of motorway consumes more than 100,000 tonnes of finite and precious aggregate.

By reducing our reliance upon roads for long distance movement of freight, we also diminish demand to widen existing motorways and build new, lorry-inviting roads.

Since waterways are best suited to freight traffic, they will not be clogged up by the unregulated growth of passenger traffic.

The Environment Agency has shown that the widening of roads in congested areas often only leads to short-term environmental gains, which is quickly lost as road-usage quickly increases to match the extra road capacity provided.

Unlocking the floodgates

So what is the principal barrier to increased water freight transportation? Attitude. Too many businesses opine, often incorrectly, that water freight transportation is too slow to meet their needs.

Too many environmental organisations do not even mention freight transportation in their transport or carbon-cutting agendas, despite the fact that this modal shift to water is a clear-cut solution to a pressing environmental problem.

All of this is the result a problem of perception, or a lack of any perception at all, about shipping.

A number of supermarkets are using canals to transport goods

Last February, the food retail giant Sainsbury's conducted a trial on the Thames, carrying food cargoes as it did regularly back in 1869.

On almost every occasion during the trial, the goods were transported more quickly on water than on their regular, heavily congested road journey.

Very recently, Tesco became the first major UK retailer to transport freight by canal, when it began moving wine by barge from Liverpool to Manchester via the Manchester Ship Canal. This will take 50 lorries off the roads each week.

But waterways are also useful when there is not as much of a hurry. Waste firm Cory Environmental transports 700,000 tonnes of rubbish each year down the Thames to Essex, avoiding 100,000 lorry journeys annually.

As businesses and environmental activists begin to become aware of the case for water freight, national and local governments can also do more to stimulate increased use of waterways and coastal routes.

They can ensure that the planning system is reformed to enable access to waterside and freight handling facilities, and allow ports to expand. They can strive to create a level playing-field between road transport and other modes, and maintain the inland waterway network.

On this front, there is some good news. Recent infrastructure investments in London by national and local authorities have made it possible to transport 1.75 million tonnes of material to the Games site by water.

If we move this much freight on the water, we can bring about C02 savings of 4,000 tonnes during construction of the Olympics sites, and an additional 440 tonnes per year thereafter.

The building period at the Olympic Park has only just begun, and there is still time to change our attitudes toward water freight transportation, and prepare to host a green games.

It is certainly a weightier task than it was back in 776 BC. But this does not mean that we cannot learn from our Olympic past, by relying once again upon that timeless, most environmentally friendly, and most sustainable mode of transportation on Earth: our coastal shipping routes and inland waterways.

Amy Reed is communications manager for Sea and Water, a UK government-funded organisation to promote the role of freight transportation by water

The Green Room is a series of opinion pieces on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

October 30th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1999: Super-cyclone wreaks havoc in India A massive cyclone sweeps through the state of Orissa in eastern India, killing an unknown number of people and leaving thousands homeless.
	1998: Apartheid report accuses SA leaders The long-awaited report by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has accused leading figures from across the political spectrum of human rights violations.
	1975: Franco's 36-year reign ends General Franco's dictatorship is effectively ended with the announcement heir designate Prince Carlos will take over as provisional head of state.

Tiny spider 'digitally dissected'

The spider gives us a snapshot of ancient times More details

A 53-million-year-old spider has been revealed in exquisite detail by scientists from the UK and Belgium.

The ancient creepy-crawly had been trapped in amber and preserved in a lowland area around Paris, France.

The scientists reconstructed the 1mm creature's original appearance using an X-ray-based medical imaging technique.

The pictures, published in the journal Zootaxa, "digitally dissect" the tiny spider to expose amazing details such as the preservation of internal organs.

"This is definitely the way forward for the study of amber fossils," said David Penney, from Manchester University and lead author on the study.

"Amber provides a unique window into past forest ecosystems. It retains an incredible amount of information, not just about the spiders themselves, but also about the environment in which they lived."

David Penney is well known for his work on amber-locked spiders

This is the first time that the medical imaging technique, known as Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography, has been used to investigate a fossil in amber - and Dr Penney said it had the potential to "revolutionise" the way fossils were studied.

The spider is a male and a species new to science. It has been formally classified as Cenotextricella simoni. The scientists say that it would have inhabited a wooded area and lived in a warm climate.

Dr Penney is renowned for his expertise on arachnids, especially amber-trapped ones. He is currently studying spiders in a "living laboratory" in the African jungle.

The Belgian co-authors on the study are based at Ghent University.

Frog killer fungus 'breakthrough'

The disease has had a devastating impact on frog populations (Conservation Int/D.Church)

New Zealand scientists have found what appears to be a cure for the disease that is responsible for wiping out many of the world's frog populations.

Chloramphenicol, currently used as an eye ointment for humans, may be a lifesaver for the amphibians, they say.

The researchers found frogs bathed in the solution became resistant to the killer disease, chytridiomycosis.

The fungal disease has been blamed for the extinction of one-third of the 120 species lost since 1980.

Fearful that chytridiomycosis might wipe out New Zealand's critically endangered Archey's frog (Leiopelma archeyi), the researchers have been hunting for a compound that would kill off the disease's trigger, the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

We are losing an awful lot of these creatures now and if we don't do something intelligent, then we're going to lose an awful lot more Professor Russell Poulter, Researcher

They tested the chloramphenicol candidate on two species introduced to New Zealand from Australia: the brown tree frog (Litoria ewingii) and the southern bell frog (L. raniformis).

"We found that we could cure them completely of chytrids," said Phil Bishop from the University of Otago.

"And even when they were really sick in the control group, we managed to bring them back almost from the dead."

"You could put them on their back and they just wouldn't right themselves, they would just lie there. You could then treat them with chloramphenicol and they would come right," Dr Bishop explained.

But the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) expressed caution at the news. Wildlife epidemiologist Dr Trent Garner said there would be reluctance to take up chloramphenicol as a solution, certainly in Europe and North America, because of the chemical's link to harmful side-effects in humans.

Captive solution

The NZ researchers tried using chloramphenicol as both an ointment, applied to the frogs' backs, and as a solution.

They found that placing the animals in the solution delivered the best results. The team has admitted it was surprised by the outcome.

"You don't usually expect antibiotics to do anything to fungi at all. And it does. We don't understand why it does, but it does," said Russell Poulter.

WHAT ARE AMPHIBIANS? Group includes frogs, toads, salamanders and caecilians First true amphibians evolved about 250m years ago Adapted to many different aquatic and terrestrial habitats Present today on every continent except Antarctica Undergo metamorphosis, from larvae to adults

Professor Poulter, the molecular biologist who hunted down chloramphenicol, added: "It's also got the great advantage that it's incredibly cheap."

The scientists are now making their research widely known ahead of formal publication in a science journal because of the pressing need for a safe and effective treatment for the chytrid disease.

The blow that chytrid has dealt to the frog population is already immense.

The disease has probably accounted for one-third of all the losses in amphibian species to date, says Professor Rick Speare, an expert in amphibian diseases who works with the University of Otago's frog research group.

These losses are huge - and this is in addition to other threats such as habitat destruction, climate change, pollution and hunting.

Since 1980, more than 120 amphibian species have disappeared; and according to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, in the near future many more species are in danger of vanishing.

AMPHIBIANS: THE ASSESSMENT Conservation Int/D.Church Amphibians in deep trouble

"We are losing an awful lot of these creatures now and if we don't do something intelligent, then we're going to lose an awful lot more," said Professor Poulter.

But a hopeful finding is that the introduced frogs that have been infected with chytrids are now more resistant to further infections.

"We haven't quite understood how that could happen," said Dr Bishop. "It might be a natural thing; if a frog survives a chytrid infection then it is resistant when it gets attacked again."

The researchers believe that zoos now will have more options, either to be able to control an outbreak or to rescue infected frogs from the wild, knowing that they can be cured.

The next challenge the research team has set itself is to find a treatment that will work in the wild.

"I would really feel quite satisfied if we could say, 10 years from now, that you have to be careful walking around [Australia's] Kosiuszko National Park or you might tread on a corroboree frog because they're all over the place," said Professor Poulter. "I would take real satisfaction from that."

However, just how widely chloramphenicol might be adopted is open to debate. EU and US authorities are concerned the drug may cause aplastic anaemia in humans. "It is a banned substance; in particular, it is controlled where it comes into contact with food sources," commented Dr Garner from ZSL.

"There are other antifungals that are being piloted and some are looking promising. Treating infection in amphibians is possible, but determining if there are any side-effects takes time. Also, how you apply an antifungal at the individual, the population and the species level is a whole set of questions which needs to be addressed."

Rubbish charging given go-ahead

The UK has traditionally 'poured its rubbish into holes in the ground'

Councils in England are to be given the power to introduce pilot schemes to charge households according to the amount of rubbish they throw away.

It comes as MPs warn the UK could face fines of up to £180m a year from the European Commission if it does not cut the amount of waste dumped in landfill.

Last week, plans for a pay-as-you-throw rubbish charge were apparently shelved.

Conservatives accused the government of a U-turn over plans and said such schemes will lead to more fly-tipping.

The shadow communities secretary Eric Pickles said: "What we should be doing is increasing recycling. We can do that without doing it through a bin tax." The scheme would lead to a surge in fly-tipping, people dumping their waste in neighbours' gardens and more back garden bonfires, he said.

New solutions

Last week, it was reported that the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had been all set to announce the scheme could go ahead, but Downing Street intervened and Prime Minister Gordon Brown was reported to have been unenthusiastic.

Waste minister Joan Ruddock dismissed Conservative accusations that the government was confused.

"We all know we can't go on putting rubbish in holes in the ground. We need to find new ways and these sorts of schemes and incentives may be part of that."

Meanwhile, the Commons public accounts committee has claimed ministers have been too slow to react to a 1999 EU directive on waste.

It says there is a "significant risk" that new composting plants and rubbish incinerators will not be up and running in time to meet its targets.

PAC chairman Edward Leigh urged ministers to promote large-scale recycling.

Under the EU directive, the UK must reduce the amount of biodegradable waste going into landfill from the 18.1m tonnes dumped in 2003/4 to 13.7m tonnes in 2010, 9.2m in 2013 and 6.3m in 2020.

The committee said this meant not only encouraging householders to recycle and compost more of their rubbish, but also there was a need for new energy from waste power plants capable of processing up to 15m tonnes each year.

However, MPs conceded the development of waste plants tended to be "unpopular" with the public and entail construction delays because of large scale protests from locals opposed to schemes.

Mr Leigh said it was time for Defra to "take the tough decisions and practical steps" needed to get more people recycling.

How UK is faring against EU targets

Defra knew about the EU targets long before 1999 but has been slow to react, taking no effective action before 2003, the committee's report said.

The amount of biodegradable waste dumped in English landfill sites was cut by 2.3m tonnes to 12.4m tonnes between 2003/4 and 2005/6, requiring a further reduction of 4.9m tonnes to comply with the 2013 maximum allowance set by the EU.

But Defra defended its action, saying: "England is making good progress on reducing the waste we send to landfill.

"We are close to meeting our 2010 targets and working hard to ensure we meet the 2013 and 2020 targets too.

"These are challenging and we are not complacent, but we should not knock the progress we have made."

Biodegradable materials dumped in landfill sites, such as food, vegetation and paper, generate methane and other emissions to the soil that can be harmful to health.

If the UK misses these targets, taxpayers will have to stump up the money to pay a huge fine to the European Commission Edward Leigh Chairman Public Accounts Committee

Some 3% of the UK's climate change emissions come from methane in landfill.

The MPs noted that 57% of the public "are already committed recyclers but householders can find it confusing to determine what items should be put in each bin".

Mr Leigh said: "The UK has traditionally got rid of its rubbish by pouring large quantities of it into holes in the ground.

"Faced with the 1999 EU Directive limiting the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill, Defra issued no fewer than four vaguely-worded consultation papers and strategies on waste management - but did little else.

"If the UK misses these targets, taxpayers will have to stump up the money to pay a huge fine to the European Commission.

Alternative?

"The department must now take the tough decisions and practical steps needed to promote large-scale recycling.

"This will involve making it clear who is going to pay for the initiatives outlined in its latest strategy in May 2007.

"It will involve giving members of the public clear guidance on what they can and cannot put into their recycling bins.

"Waste treatment centres around the country will be a critical factor in reducing the UK's reliance on landfill."

UK WASTE TARGETS

EU biodegradable municipal waste maximums

Country	2003-4 actual amount (m tonnes)	Landfill max 2010	Landfill max 2013	Landfill max2020
England	14.7	11.2	7.5	5.2
Scotland	1.8	1.3	0.9	0.6
Wales	0.9	0.7	0.5	0.3
N Ireland	0.7	0.5	0.3	0.2
Total	18.1	13.7	9.2	6.3
Source: National Audit Office

Brazil set to host 2014 World Cup

Fifa delegates look round a re-vamped Maracanã in August 2007

Brazil are set to be unveiled as the 2014 World Cup hosts on Tuesday.

The South American country is the only nation bidding to host the tournament which is due to be staged on the continent under Fifa's rotation system.

The other South American nations agreed to back Brazil, who have won the World Cup a record five times, as their only candidate in 2003.

Two-time winner and former Brazil coach Mario Zagallo said: "I've no doubt the 2014 World Cup will be in Brazil."

606: DEBATE Will Brazil be good hosts?

And Zagallo, who won the World Cup as a player in 1958 and 1962, as a coach in 1970 and as an assistant coach in 1994, believes the country has enough time to get ready.

"In seven years Brazil will have new stadiums and we will fix those that need to be fixed," he added.

"Fifa has been here and have seen it is possible to be done."

Brazil have hosted the World Cup once before, in 1950.

They reached the final but were beaten 2-1 by South American rivals Uruguay in front of an official record crowd of 173,830 at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, although the actual attendance was estimated to be over 200,000.

Breaking the ice

Seeking a way through the Northwest Passage in 1970

For centuries solid ice defeated attempts by global traders to find a way through the Northwest Passage. Now global warming has done just that.

Amid the arguments to and fro about the true extent of global warming, and the degree to which responsible people ought to be alarmed, I find one recent piece of news of the consequences of climate change particularly arresting.

Warming temperatures are melting the Arctic sea ice, making hitherto inaccessible stretches of the Arctic Ocean fully navigable. This September, satellite images showed the Northwest Passage to be ice free for the first time since records began, allowing shipping to travel comparatively unhindered from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The search in the 16th Century for a corridor between the frozen northern wastes was driven by intense international competition Hear Radio 4's A Point of View

For more than 500 years, since Columbus first encountered the continent of America, European mariners have dreamed of finding and navigating a Northwest Passage - a direct shipping route from Europe to Asia across the Arctic Ocean. It ought surely to be possible, they argued, to sail from European ports northwards along the coast of Greenland, then westwards along an Arctic parallel, round Baffin Island off the northern coast of Canada, entering the Pacific between Alaska and Russia?

The search in the 16th Century for a corridor between the frozen northern wastes and the treacherous ice floes was driven by intense international competition and commercial pressures. Indeed, without the promise of financial gain riding on the outcome of these costly expeditions, there would have been no financial backers.

The existing sea route eastwards round the Cape of Good Hope, to India, China and the Spice Islands with their rich resources of pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg, was long and dangerous. If a way could be found from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific which stayed close to the North Pole, the new class of entrepreneurial merchants would be able to undercut their rivals by having their sea captains bring their exotic cargoes home faster and more economically.

Icy wasteland

In 1566, in his Discourse of a Discoverie for a new Passage to Cataia, or China, the English mariner Sir Humphrey Gilbert urged Queen Elizabeth I to support the search for the Northwest passage in terms which still resonate today: "It were the only way for our princes to possess the wealth of all the east parts of the world, which is infinite.

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record...

"For, through the shortness of the voyage, we should be able to sell all manner of merchandise brought from thence far better cheap than either the Portuguese or Spaniard doth or may do."

Eye-witness accounts survive of several of the early failed attempts to find a navigable way round or through the new continent. The sailors who limped home on their battered and broken ships convey with shocking vividness the punishing effects of the extreme cold and the treacherously mobile ice floes, the relentlessly destructive effects of hunger and exhaustion.

These early explorers never succeeded in finding their shortcut. But in the process of failing to reach their Eldorado, they stumbled upon other, hitherto unknown territories, which turned out to be of equivalent, if not greater importance for success in a newly global economy.

The English mariner Henry Hudson made four attempts at finding a passage through Arctic waters between 1607 and 1611. His determination to prove that such a route existed bordered on the obsessive. On the final attempt, both he and his son John perished, set adrift in an open boat by their mutinous crew, who balked at the prospect of another prolonged period of fruitlessly negotiating the never-ending frozen wastes in the region subsequently named Hudson Bay.

For his first two attempts, Hudson sailed due north from England, then turned eastwards to try to skirt the northern coast of Russia. Almost locked into a frozen sea off the island of Nova Zembla, he was forced to turn back, and his backers abandoned him. Undeterred, Hudson found a new investor in the form of the Dutch East India Company, and set off again in the summer of 1609 on his ship, the Half Moon.

Paradise found

It was this third voyage that accidentally proved his most successful.

... with an ice-free passage opening last month

Hudson had determined views on routes and agendas. Although his Dutch contract committed him to pursuing the eastwards route around the Pole he had attempted before, faced once more with extreme cold and floating ice, Hudson impetuously decided to abandon this shortly after embarkation. Instead he headed westwards towards North America, to take up a suggestion of Captain John Smith's - the first Governor of Virginia - that a northerly navigable river might lead across the continent, and out the other side to the Spice Islands.

On 12 September 1609, the Half Moon entered the mouth of what is now called the Hudson River - "as fine a river as can be found, wide and deep, with good anchoring ground on both sides" and "a very good harbour for all winds", according to a contemporary account.

They were in the outer reaches of what today is New York harbour, riding along the coast of Staten Island. Fish swam around them in shoals. When they anchored and went ashore, they found "friendly and polite people, who had an abundance of provisions, skins, and furs, of martens and foxes, and many other commodities, as birds and fruit, even white and red grapes, and they traded amicably with the people."

But sailing up the broad river as far as what is today Albany, the water became "sweet" (not salty) and too shallow for a seagoing ship to pass. So this was not the route Hudson was looking for.

But on Hudson's return, his Dutch backers quickly recognised that the area of the New World he had explored was worth further exploration and exploitation. The history of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, famously acquired in 1626 from the Indian tribe that lived there for goods to the value of 60 guilders, is a rich one in its own right. Had that pivotal North American colony not been seized by the British 38 years later, the entire Western world might today be speaking Dutch.

Who owns it?

The search for the Northwest Passage continued down to the 19th Century. In 1845, Sir John Franklin with two ships and a crew of more than 120 men disappeared without trace in the Arctic wastes. By that time the commercial world was beginning to direct its efforts to improve long distance trade routes elsewhere, leading eventually to the building of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the Panama Canal in 1914.

Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition

Today our relentless search for essential natural resources - given added urgency by our profligate consumption of gas and oil - has reopened international interest in accessing that elusive Northwest passage. For now the research scientists exploring the region, the last areas on earth to be fully explored, insist that their endeavours are concentrated on understanding climate change and global warming for the good of humankind.

But already governments have their eye on long-term possibilities for control of our ever-depleting stocks of oil and gas. In the Arctic, Canada and the US are at loggerheads over who controls the freezing waters of the Northwest Passage, while Russia claims to be entitled to exploit the natural resources underneath the North Pole.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, the tenacious hold Britain has maintained on the islands of South Georgia and the Falklands, which resulted 20 years ago in our going to war with Argentina over the sovereignty of those two remote and windswept pieces of land, finally begins to make sense to me. The pursuit of British polar interests in the 21st Century may owe more to Margaret Thatcher than we realise.

Canada exerting its sovereignty

That sovereignty supports Britain's claim to territorial rights over a sweeping arc of the Antarctic Ocean under which may lie those priceless natural resources - resources also claimed vociferously by Argentina and Chile. Twelve other nations, including Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and by historical adventure, Norway and Japan, make more measured claims, through peaceful cooperation, enshrined in the 1961 Antarctic treaty.

Is it too late to find a way to preserve the altruistic tone of scientific collaboration that these inhospitable and remote regions have up to now enjoyed? Might we indeed go further - could the nations of the world combine in their battle against global warming and succeed in reversing its tide, so that the Northwest Passage may once again become frozen and impassable?

Roman tombstone found at Inveresk

The tombstone was found near the line of a Roman road

The first Roman tombstone found in Scotland for 170 years has been unearthed at Carberry, near Inveresk.

The red sandstone artefact was for a man called Crescens, a bodyguard for the governor who ran the province of Britain for the Roman Emperor.

The National Museum of Scotland said the stone provided the strongest evidence yet that Inveresk was a pivotal Roman site in northern Britain.

It was found by amateur enthusiast Larney Cavanagh at the edge of a field.

It had been ploughed up and cleared from the field without anyone noticing its inscription.

Dating between 140 and 180 AD, it features the image of a naked barbarian, apparently dead.

Most of the upper part of the stone is lost, but a surviving hoof and foot show that it would have featured a cavalryman attacking the barbarian.

This tombstone is the first Scottish example ever found Dr Fraser Hunter National Museums Scotland

The presence of the stone near Inveresk strongly suggests that Crescens died while accompanying the governor on a visit to the fort there.

The tombstone has been described as the most important Roman discovery in Scotland since the Cramond Lioness.

The white sandstone lioness statue was found in the mud of the River Almond 10 years ago.

Dr Fraser Hunter, principal curator of Roman Archaeology at the National Museums Scotland, said: 'It is very rare to find Roman tombstones, and this is the first time we have found evidence of the governor's bodyguard in Scotland.

"This stone is an unexpected window onto our Roman past, and we can tell from it that Crescens was a well-respected and important man.

"The cavalryman riding down a barbarian - who represents our unfortunate Scottish ancestors - is a typical image seen on tombstones all around the frontiers of the Roman Empire, but this is the first Scottish example ever found."

'Very nervous'

Larney Cavanagh said: 'I was stunned when I laid eyes on the stone, and very nervous as I awaited confirmation of my initial suspicions.

"Some finds are difficult to recognise at first as being significant, and I usually turn stones over looking for inscriptions and patterns, but this one was instantly recognisable from the style of the carving."

The tombstone measures over a metre high and nearly a metre wide.

It was found near the line of a Roman road, but is likely to have been moved from its original position as it shows signs of damage and attempts at reuse.

Romans were often buried near roads, so that travellers could see their memorials and remember them.

The stone is currently at the National Museums Collection Centre in Edinburgh for further examination.

Space rocks go under the hammer

This piece of a meteorite found in the Gobi Desert near Fukang, China, is a pallasite, studded with space gems. Enlarge Image

Some of the world's most famous meteorites have gone under the hammer at a New York auction house in what is said to be the first sale of its kind.

The pieces were drawn from collections across the world and many examples are richly coloured and intricately patterned, some bearing gemstones.

A piece priced at $1.1m (£0.53m) did not sell but an iron meteorite from Siberia fetched $123,000 (£60,000).

And a US mailbox hit by a meteorite in 1984 sold for $83,000 (£40,000).

"The results were stronger than anticipated with a near-perfect result," Bonhams meteorite specialist Claudia Florian said after the sale.

Bonhams, she added, hoped to sell the unsold lots "in the next several days".

Precious mailbox

Some of the 54 lots of "fine meteorites" for sale at Bonhams fell to Earth thousands of years ago.

SPARKLING STONES In pictures: Meteorite auction

Only one is documented as having made a fatal impact.

The fatality, in the case of the Valera Meteorite which hit a field in Venezuela in 1972, was a cow.

"It's very rare to have a meteorite actually impact a living being... so now that particular meteorite is considered to be collectible," Ms Florian told the BBC's Radio Five Live before the sale.

It was sold for $1,300.

A sliver of the meteorite which damaged Carutha Barnard's private mailbox in Claxton, Georgia, in 1984 sold for nearly $8,000 (£3,900).

Crown jewel

Some of the lots originated in the UK's Natural History Museum or the US Smithsonian Institution but many come from the Macovich collection in New York, built up by enthusiasts whose interest in the stones was as much aesthetic as scientific.

With a price estimate of $1.1m, the piece de resistance for Sunday's sale appeared to be the "Crown Section" of America's famous Willamette Meteorite, discovered in Oregon in 1902.

The 13-kilo (29-pound) piece was cut from the rock as part of a meteorite exchange between the museum and collectors.

But that still leaves the American Museum of Natural History with about 15.5 tons (32,000 pounds) of the original.

In the event, the Crown Section did not sell, nor did the Brenham meteorite found in 2005 near Greensburg, Kansas, which had an estimate price of up to $700,000.

The Brenham features naturally occurring olivine gemstones.

Another non-seller was an historic piece from the l'Aigle Shower of 1803 in Normandy, France - a find which helped convince European scientists that rocks could, indeed, fall out of the sky.

An altogether more humble offering was four tiny stones - the smallest of them weighs just a gram - from a shower which hit Holbrook, Arizona, in 1912. That lot sold for $325.

Kylie to receive top music honour

Kylie's new album, X, will be released in November

Pop star Kylie Minogue is to be honoured with a prestigious music industry award at a London ceremony.

The 39-year-old Australian singer will be presented with the Music Industry Trust prize later in honour of her 20-year career.

Past winners of the award, which raises money for music charities, include Sir Elton John and Peter Gabriel.

Minogue called it an "incredible honour". "I am truly thrilled to be recognised in this way," she added.

The singer, who beat breast cancer after being diagnosed in 2005, is to receive the award in "recognition of her universally acclaimed status as an icon of pop and style achieved over a 20 year career which has seen her reinvent, experiment and inspire".

'Glamorous'

Award committee chairman David Munn said: "There is no doubt that of our 15 award recipients to date, Kylie is by far the most glamorous.

"She deserves this award for her success over 20 years, staying at the top in one of the toughest professions and inspiring millions with her grace, dignity and humanity." he said.

Minogue, who releases a new album next month, will soon be seen in an hour-long special on ITV1 as well as the Doctor Who Christmas special.

Earlier this month she picked up the Idol accolade at the Q Awards for a career spanning three decades and more than 40 million global album sales.

Country star Wagoner dies at 80

Porter Wagoner enjoyed a revival towards the end of his career

Country musician Porter Wagoner, who helped launch the career of Dolly Parton, has died in Nashville aged 80 after suffering lung cancer.

The singer, famed for his rhinestone suits, had his own US TV show which ran for 21 years until 1981.

From 1967-74, Parton performed duets with Wagoner until finding worldwide fame as a solo singer.

In 2002 he was inducted into the the Country Hall of Fame and marked his 50th year at the Grand Ole Opry in May.

Pete Fisher, general manager of the famous Nashville concert hall, said: "His passion for the Opry and all of country music was truly immeasurable."

'Creative differences'

Country singer and fellow Opry member Dierks Bentley, who visited Wagoner at the weekend, said: "The loss of Porter is a great loss for the Grand Ole Opry and for country music, and personally it is a great loss of a friend I was really just getting to know."

Wagoner signed his first record deal in 1955, and had hits including Carroll County Accident and Green Green Grass of Home.

His TV show, which became one of the first syndicated programmes from Nashville, gained him a reputation for showmanship and his trademark bouffant hairstyle.

Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner were a famous country pairing

He invited Dolly Parton to perform with him on the programme, and their partnership earned them the Country Music Association's title of duo of the year in 1970-1.

After the partnership dissolved and Parton found solo fame, Wagoner sued her for $3m (£1.45m). The dispute was settled out of court in 1980.

In 1982 Wagoner said that his show had been a "training ground" for Parton, in which she "learned a great deal and I exposed her to very important people and the country music fans".

Speaking in 1995, Parton said they split due to creative differences, saying: "I was creative and Porter was different."

Earlier this year, Wagoner called Parton "one of my best friends today", while she visited him in hospital.

After years without a recording deal in the latter part of his career, Wagoner signed to Los Angeles label Anti Records, the home of acts including Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

Earlier this year, he was a support act for The White Stripes at New York's Madison Square Gardens.

October 29th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1962: World relief as Cuban missile crisis ends US President John F Kennedy welcomes Russia's announcement that it will dismantle its missiles based in Cuba.
	2001: Christians killed in Pakistan massacre Masked gunmen burst into a church in eastern Pakistan killing 18 people including children who were at prayer.
	1974: Minister's wife survives bomb attack Sports Minister Denis Howell's wife and young son survive a bomb attack on their car.

Sunday postal collections ended

Mail has been collected on Sundays for 17 years

The Royal Mail has ended Sunday postal collections after 17 years in what it calls an effort to improve efficiency.

It said mail had been collected from a sixth of its 118,000 post boxes and 50 business customers on Sundays.

Accounting for 1% of all mail posted, items collected on Sundays cost four times as much to process as those collected on other days, it said.

The Communication Workers Union says the move will erode postal services and cut the earning potential of staff.

The move comes as thousands of postal workers are set to start voting on a new deal on pay and conditions after a series of strikes.

Royal Mail reintroduced a Sunday collection in 1990.

The firm says it is now operating in a competitive postal market and stopping the Sunday collection was a way of reducing costs "with the minimum of disruption".

"Given the disproportionate cost of providing Sunday collections, and the low importance many consumers attach to such collections, ceasing this service makes commercial sense," it said.

How to build your own Sputnik

THE SPUTNIK CHALLENGE Do you fancy having a go at building your own Sputnik? This article explains how it could be done If you fancy having a go, sign up to the Magazine's Sputnik Challenge using the form at the bottom of this page We could even pop along to film your efforts And we'll investigate how to get your DIY Sputniks launched What a DIY Sputnik might look like

In 1957 the Sputnik 1 satellite was seen as a technological marvel, the result of many years work by some of the Soviet Union's most talented engineers and scientists. But by today's standards, was it really such a big deal? In 2007, how hard would it be to build a fully working Sputnik in the comfort of your own living room?

In simple terms, the Sputnik satellite was a metal sphere almost 2ft (61cm) in diameter, containing a radio transmitter. It also had a battery; equipment to measure temperature; barometric and temperature activated switches; and a fan to stop it getting too hot.

It sent its famous "beep beep" radio signals to earth, altering the transmission to indicate changes in temperature or a sudden drop in pressure caused by a puncture in the satellite's case. And that's about it.

You could probably find most of these components lying around your home. There are transmitters in mobile or cordless phones, wireless internet routers and baby monitors, and you may well have a thermometer in the medicine cabinet.

A party balloon can act as a simple pressure switch of sorts - a partially inflated one would certainly expand and burst if the pressure outside dropped to zero. And temperature switches can be found all over the house, including in the thermostat for the central heating system, or in the electric oven or washing machine.

Electronic gadgets contain batteries, and fans can be found in home computers or the kitchen extractor. The only thing you may have trouble laying your hands on is a large metal sphere with whiplash aerials poking out.

While finding all the components may be easy in 2007, actually getting them to work together would require a little expertise. There's also the small matter of all those wrecked domestic gadgets and appliances left in your wake.

SPUTNIK IN A BISCUIT TIN 1. Tomy baby monitor - transmitter and aerial 2. Wireless router - backup transmitter and aerial 3. Mercury thermometer - temperature sensor 4. x4 large batteries - power supply 5. Balloon - pressure sensor (expands and pops if case punctured) 6. Power-pack - backup power supply 7. Domestic thermostat - activates fan and changes radio signal 8. Battery powered fan - moves heat to casing (once tin lid is on) 9. Biscuit tin with foil - houses components and reflects solar radiation

In practice it would probably be better to buy the parts you need from an electronics supply shop. But how hard would it be to get them all to work together?

"Technology now is way ahead of what was available in 1957, and making your own fully functional Sputnik would now be very simple indeed," says Jan Buiting, editor of Elektor Electronics, a hobbyist magazine.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you could build one in a container smaller than a matchbox, weighing about as much as a wristwatch. The components, including a transmitter, battery and the sensors you'd need would probably cost less than £50," he says.

Day's work

In principle, you'd need temperature and pressure sensors connected to an off-the-shelf microprocessor. This, in turn, would be connected to the transmitter, and you could get away with one with as little power as half a watt, according to Buiting.

Taking the Magazine at their word... do you fancy building a Sputnik?

Then you'd need to connect the microprocessor to your home computer and write a little program that takes the pressure and temperature information and encodes it in whatever way you like into the signal sent from the transmitters.

Add a battery and perhaps a fan programmed to come on when the temperature rises above a certain level, and you'd have yourself a Sputnik, he says. "It really shouldn't be a problem to build and program the whole thing in under a day," he adds.

Once you've assembled your Sputnik box, there's a few finishing touches you'll need to carry out before it's ready to send into orbit. You'll need to put it in a strong airtight shell, because otherwise the pressure sensor would be in a vacuum, with no pressure to measure.

Dr Ralph Cordey, a satellite expert at EADS Astrium, Europe's largest satellite builder, says you'll also need to take steps to prevent the electronic components getting damaged by radiation.

"You are not looking at the most difficult of environments but I'd recommend some level of shielding," he says.

Space debris

"Essentially you'd need to pack the satellite in a metal box of some sort to protect it."

The colour you choose to paint it could be crucial

Further cooling measures would also be prudent, he advises.

"The fan will help get heat out of the middle of the satellite to its surfaces, so it can radiate away. But you also need to think about the colour of your space craft, because dark surfaces will heat up if they are facing the sun or a planet."

The original Sputnik was powered by over 50Kg of batteries, which kept the satellite transmitting for 22 days. Even though advances in technology mean that batteries - like those found in mobile phones - are now quite light, they will run out eventually, so if you want your Sputnik to transmit for more than a few weeks then the addition of a few solar panels would be sensible.

But none of these measures will guarantee its longevity, however. That's because many of the common low-earth orbits are now littered with debris, testament to the many satellites and delivery systems which have followed Sputnik 1 into space over the last 50 years.

Without the ability to manoeuvre around these space hazards, it's very likely that sooner or later your home-made satellite will hurtle into a piece of this rubbish and be obliterated.

Last Supper gets 16bn pixel boost

The image is 1,600 times stronger than a typical digital camera image

A 16 billion pixel image of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper has been posted on the internet, giving art lovers a detailed view of the 15th Century work.

The image is 1,600 times more detailed than those taken with a typical 10 million pixel digital camera.

Experts will be able to see segments as though just centimetres away and examine otherwise unavailable details.

The posting comes amid claims a new system aimed at protecting the piece from Milan's pollution is not working.

The work is displayed in the Italian city's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Peeled off

Art curator Alberto Artioli told Associated Press news agency the new resolution avoided the graininess when zooming in to regular photographs.

It is visible at www.haltadefinizione.com.

"You can see how Leonardo made the cups transparent, something you can't ordinarily see," he said. "You can also note the state of degradation the painting is in."

That degradation has been the subject of controversy this week.

An Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported that a sophisticated monitoring and filtration system introduced during a restoration of the chapel in the late 1990s was not preventing particles or substances that could damage the work being brought in by visitors.

The Last Supper was painted by Leonardo da Vinci at the end of the 15th Century and, because of the experimental techniques he used, parts of the masterpiece subsequently peeled off and were badly damaged.

The BBC's Frances Kennedy says the paper reported that equipment monitoring air quality inside the refectory showed that levels of fine particle pollution had tripled in the past two years.

It quoted experts suggesting these particles could settle on the work, eventually creating a dark misty layer.

However, Milan's cultural commissioner said the threat was non-existent.

More than 350,000 people visit the painting each year.

Time

Just to remind you all in the UK that clock go back an hour this weekend - make sure you don't oversleep and miss ANYTHING!

10 things we didn't know last week

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

1. An ai is a three-toed sloth from South America (and the word that clinched Paul Allan the title of national Scrabble champion).
More details

2. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows and eyelashes
More details

3. Dumbledore is gay.
More details

4. A £500,000 note is not technically a counterfeit, because that word refers to legal tender - and the Bank of England has never issued £500,000 notes.
More details

5. But £1,000 notes were in circulation until being withdrawn in 1943.
More details

6. UN population projections go as far as 2300.
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7. Forty percent of household packaging can’t be recycled.
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8. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club.
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9. One percent of organic food on sale in the UK is air-freighted in from abroad.
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10. Obesity rates in England were by 2005 the highest of the 15 member states who then formed the European Union.
More details

October 27th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1978: Gunman runs amok in West Midlands Four people are killed and four others seriously wounded after a gunman goes on a shooting spree in the Midlands.
	1982: RUC officers killed by IRA bomb Three RUC officers investigating reports of a robbery in Lurgan die after a bomb explodes beneath their armoured police car.
	1968: Police clash with anti-war protesters An estimated 6,000 marchers demonstrating against the Vietnam War face up to police outside the US Embassy in London.

Tongue tied

Extreme reaction: How one dissenter was treated

Wales has been enjoying a revival of its native tongue, driven chiefly by those in rural areas. Now a new awareness is growing in the industrialised south, but some - including native Welsh speakers themselves - fear it could foster division and resentment.

On a crisp Welsh morning, I followed a man into a quiet country lane before he felt it safe to start our anonymous interview. We weren't discussing mafia activity or official secrets. He was a public sector worker in Wales. The subject was language policy in the workplace. His opinion was that policies to promote the Welsh language had gone too far.

"To be seen as being the Welsh speaker in a particular environment will give you career bonuses," he says. "I object to this, I really don't like it at all."

This, from a Welsh speaker himself. But in Wales, such antipathy to the native tongue can be seen as tantamount to heresy.

There's a real mood of national pride among the Welsh, crystallised in the renewed vigour behind efforts to revive their ancient language. The devolved Welsh Assembly Government now wants to extend its control over language policies - a move that could see parts of the private sector being regulated.

Dissent taboo?

But does the fact he sees his dissent as taboo point to a wider unease about the forces driving the Welsh revival?

People start to feel they are starting to disappear into a faceless mob Aran Jones

The south Wales valleys where I grew up are predominantly English speaking, with a working class culture shaped by migrants from across Europe who came to work in the coal mines. It's here that many are now discovering a sense of national identity by learning the Welsh language.

"It is our right to speak our own language," says one learner at an adult education centre in Caerphilly.

"It's our identity, it's who we are," says another.

Their passion for Welsh isn't driven by state policies or the allure of public sector jobs. They've come to see learning the language as a fundamental part of being Welsh.

This increasing sense of national confidence is in many ways heartening. These areas took a particular hit after coal mining collapsed during the 1980s when Britain embraced global markets. The misery is fresh in people's minds.

What is new is how the Welsh language has increasingly become the focus of this sense of identity. But does it bear any relation to the language politics of rural Wales?

Heartland indifference

In Ysgubor Goch, a council estate in Caernarfon in the far north-west of Wales, the townsfolk are 88% Welsh speaking and there's a history of militancy around the Welsh language. Yet what's surprising is how removed some of the locals are from the current language revival.

Since legislation in the 90s, Welsh has become highly visible

"There's a bit of a resurgence in the language," says one man. "Especially down in the south, where it's becoming more fashionable."

The twinkle in his eye shows he's pleased about this. But he also seems bemused. After all, in his view it hadn't made much difference in Ysgubor Goch. "It's always been strong in this area," he says.

Identity politics

It seems the Welsh learners of the south are leading the linguistic revival, rather than those in areas that naturally speak Welsh. This made sense when set against the other recurring theme in my travels - the search for identity and roots.

"People start to feel they are starting to disappear into a faceless mob," says Aran Jones, of Welsh language rights group Cymuned, which argues that the flow of English incomers should be discouraged.

"You get some people saying that's not who I want to be." And so to stand out from the crowd, they learn Welsh.

His politics is at the extreme end of Welsh language preservation. Yet he has spent most of his life abroad and only learnt Welsh in his 30s.

Some have compared what's happening in Wales to the identity politics of other stateless European nations, like Catalonia and the Basque region in Spain. The argument is that globalisation and the fragmentation of traditional nation states - like Britain - means people are now rediscovering their local histories and languages as a way to give their lives meaning.

Career advantage?

There's much to commend this positive take on what's happening. But why are some critics of the Welsh revival afraid to speak out?

Mukul Devichand and Aran Jones discuss the future of Welsh

The state is a huge employer in Wales and there are varying levels of Welsh language compliance for workers - from fluency down to not speaking the tongue at all. I spoke to several public sector workers who are upset about the way language policies work, but who are afraid to speak publicly.

"You tend to find that there's always a them and us of some kind," says the public sector worker, quoted above. "To be seen as a Welsh speaker within a particular environment will give you career biases. There are cases where you will find that someone who can speak Welsh but isn't as qualified to do a role will get a role that a better qualified person without the Welsh speaking facility doesn't get."

As a Welsh speaker himself, does he not stand to gain?

"I want to be known for the fact the quality of my work is good, not because the quality of my work is alright but I speak Welsh."

One English-speaking civil servant, who asked to remain anonymous, says dissenting from such policies doesn't necessarily mean being anti-Welsh language. Nevertheless, he sensed there is a growing divide between those who do and don't speak Welsh, with an inference that Welsh speakers are at a career advantage.

"Welsh people who live in Wales, regardless what language they speak, would like Welsh to be promoted," he says.

What worries him and others is that in the public sector, workers feel they have been shut out of the debate about the linguistic revival.

"Because it's a legal issue, because it's an issue that people have to comply with, it becomes a difficult issue to engage with and to empathise with," he says.

Two languages

What's at stake is what bilingualism will mean in future. Will it:

• ensure a place for the Welsh language, or
• eventually mean everyone speaking Welsh alongside English?

"What we will see, and what the evidence shows us we will see, is a wholesale transformation," says Meri Huws, chair of the publicly funded Welsh Language Board.

"The young people are going through the bilingual schools of South East Wales, a very traditional non-Welsh speaking area. They will become, over time, users. Over the next 30 years we will see a transformation in the nature of Welsh society."

It's an ambitious plan, in a country where 70% still don't speak, read or write Welsh. But her vision for Wales does enjoy a democratic legitimacy which her anonymous opponents lack . Her critics' counter argument is that what they feel is an atmosphere of self-censorship - and even fear - does not make for a healthy debate on national values.

Analysis is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 25 October at 2030 BST.

Gay worms get down and dirty with their mates

The sexual preferences of microscopic worms have been manipulated in the laboratory so that they are attracted to the same sex, offering new evidence that sexuality may be hard-wired in the brain.

By activating a single gene in the brains of hermaphrodite nematode worms, scientists have induced them to attempt to mate with other hermaphrodites, instead of being attracted exclusively to males.

The findings, from a team in the United States, provide a fresh indication that homosexual or heterosexual preferences are not purely a matter of choice, but are deeply influenced by underlying biology.

While nematode worms are extremely simple organisms, and details of their behaviour are difficult to apply to people with any accuracy, the researchers said that the existence of a biological pathway to same-sex attraction offered a possible insight into human sexuality.

Erik Jorgensen, Professor of Biology at the University of Utah, who led the study, said: “Our conclusions are narrow in that they are about worms and how attraction behaviours are derived from the same brain circuit.

But an evolutionary biologist will consider this to be a potentially common mechanism for sexual attraction.

“We cannot say what this means for human sexual orientation, but it raises the possibility that sexual preference is wired in the brain. Humans are subject to evolutionary forces just like worms. It seems possible that if sexual orientation is genetically wired in worms, it would be in people too. Humans have free will, so the picture is more complicated in people.”

Nematode worms, of the species Caenorhabditis elegans, are one millimetre long and live in soil, where they feed on bacteria. The overwhelming majority – more than 99.9 per cent – are hermaphrodites, which produce both sperm and eggs and generally fertilise themselves before laying eggs.

About 0.05 per cent of nematodes are male, however, and these worms must seek out hermaphrodites to reproduce. Hermaphrodites will mate with an available male rather than fertilise themselves, and though they produce sperm they will not impregnate other hermaphrodites as they lack the required copulatory structure.

There are no true females and hermaphrodites were treated as female for the purposes of the study. C. elegans shares many of its genes with human beings and other animals, and is a standard organism used for early laboratory studies of genetics.

“A hermaphrodite makes both eggs and sperm,” Professor Jorgensen said. “She doesn’t need to mate [with a male] to have progeny. Most of the time, the hermaphrodites do not mate. But if they mate, instead of having 200 progeny, they can have 1,200 progeny.”

As the worms have no eyes – hermaphrodites have only 959 cells and males 1,031 cells – they detect one another’s sex using scent cues.

In the study, published in the journal Current Biology, the scientists activated a gene called fem-3 in hermaphrodites. This gene makes the nematode body develop as male, with neurons that appear only in male brains and copulatory structures such as tails.

In the experiment, fem-3 was activated only in the brain, so the worms developed male nerve cells but not other male body characteristics. Despite this, they behaved like males, attempting to seek out and fertilise other hermaphrodites.

“They look like girls, but act and think like boys,” said Jamie White, who conducted the key experiments. “The [same-sex attraction] behaviour is part of the nervous system.”

Professor Jorgensen said: “The conclusion is that sexual attraction is wired into brain circuits common to both sexes of worms, and is not caused solely by extra nerve cells added to the male or female brain. The reason males and females behave differently is that the same nerve cells have been rewired to alter sexual preference.”

In a second phase of the study, the scientists manipulated different kinds of nerve cell in the male brain to determine which were responsible for switching on male attraction to hermaphrodites. They found that, although switching off one of the eight sensory neurons impaired attraction in adults, young males developed normally if just one such nerve cell was intact.

This finding suggests that there is considerable redundancy built into the sexual development of males. Dr White said: “It must be that the behaviour is very important.”

Biological puzzle

–– In 1993, Dean Hamer, of the US National Cancer Institute, found a region of the X chromosome that was linked to male homosexuality
–– Simon LeVay, a biologist who is gay, found evidence that the brain structure of homosexual and heterosexual men is different
–– Research suggests that for each older brother a man has the chances that he will be homosexual increase 33 per cent Men who have shorter ring fingers are relatively more likely to be gay
–– A biological enigma of “gay genes” is that homosexuals should have fewer children, and should thus not pass them on

Source: The Biology of Homosexuality Genes

For sale: secret Vatican papers that cleared heretic Templars

The Vatican began a scheme to market treasures from its Secret Archives yesterday, beginning with luxury reproductions of a 14th-century papal parchment absolving the Knights Templar of heresy.

The reproduction of Processus Contra Templariosor Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars is being sold at €5,900 (£4,000) a copy. It comes in a soft leather case with translations into English and Italian, a scholarly commentary and replicas of the wax seals used by the Inquisition. Pope Benedict has been given the first set free.

Barbara Frale, the Secret Archives medieval specialist who came across the document, which is also known as the Chinon Parchment, in 2003 after realising that it had been wrongly catalogued, said that it shed new light on the fate of the Templars.

Dr Frale said that the parchment showed that Pope Clement V had accepted the Templars were guilty of “grave sins”, such as corruption and sexual immorality, but not of heresy. Their initiation ceremony involved spitting on the Cross, but this was to brace them for having to do so if captured by Muslim forces, she said.

“This is a milestone because it is the first time these documents have been released by the Vatican,” she said. The Templars were founded in 1119 by knights protecting Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. They amassed fortunes through property and banking but declined after the Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land at the end of the 13th century.

The knights were accused of heresy by the French King Philip IV, who hoped to seize their wealth and free himself of his debts to the order. They were rounded up and many knights were tortured and murdered. Their Grand Master, Jacques De Molay, was burnt at the stake in 1314.

Legends of the Templars’ secret rituals and lost treasures have long fascinated conspiracy theorists, and figure in The Da Vinci Code, which repeated the theory that the knights were entrusted with the Holy Grail.

Pope Clement disbanded the Templars, but did so only for the greater good of saving the Church in France from further persecution by the aggressively secular Philip IV, Dr Frale said.

The Vatican is selling 800 copies of the document. “This is a commercial operation to satisfy the demands of a global market keen to acquire works of historic value and of universally recognised scientific rigour, permeated with intrinsic beauty, artistic value and destined to last,” said Ferdinando Santoro, head of Scrinium, a publisher linked to the Vatican.

However, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, Prefect of the Secret Archives, appeared uncomfortable with the sales pitch. He said that the Vatican archivists carried out “humble work”, and books and documents were meant to be “studied and read, not presented with fanfare. That is not our style”. He emphasised that the document was “in no way a scoop or discovery”, since it had been listed in the Vatican inventories since the 17th century. Reports saying it “rehabilitated” the Templars were also mistaken, he said.

Treasures in the Secret Archive include letters from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, stolen by a Vatican spy to prove the King’s disloyalty to the Pope.

Medieval enigma

- The Knights Templar were a powerful and secretive medieval order formed to protect Christian pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem

- Founded by Hugues de Payns, a French Knight, after first Crusade

- Its headquarters were the Al Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount

- Officially disbanded in 1300s

- Latter day orders such as the Grand Priory of Knight Templars hold no direct descendence to the ancient order but claim to carry on the legacy in spirit

Source: Times archives

State of the planet, in graphics

READ THE REPORT IN FULL Global Environment Outlook [21.9MB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here

Globally human populations are growing, trade is increasing, and living standards are rising for many. But, according to the UN's latest Global Environment Outlook report, long-term problems including climate change, pollution, access to clean water, and the threat of mass extinctions are being met with "a remarkable lack of urgency".

CHANGING WORLD

Over the last 20 years, the human population has increased by a third, global trade has tripled, and per capita income has gone up by 40%. Annual emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, have also increased by one third.

SHRINKING RESOURCES

As the human population grows it has reached the point, the UN says, "where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available".

BIODIVERSITY

Sixteen thousand species are threatened with extinction. Habitat loss is a major factor as many forests are cleared for agriculture. The UN estimates the global annual loss of primary forest is 50,000 km2.

WATER

The availability of fresh water will decline, according to the UN, who project that by 2025 1.8bn people will be affected by water scarcity. Sanitation is also a major issue, as contaminated water is the greatest single cause of human disease and death. The state of the world's fisheries is also touched on by the report which says many fish stocks are overexploited, while the demand for fish is expected to rise alongside growing populations.

URBAN GROWTH

By the end of 2007 it is estimated that more people will live in cities than rural areas for the first time in history. The satellite image of the US city of Las Vegas (left) shows how rapidly metropolitan areas can grow. The city was home to 557,000 people in 1985, by 2004 this had risen to nearly 1.7 million. This rapid growth can put pressure on water resources and infrastructure.

October 26th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1994: Israel and Jordan make peace At a ceremony in the desert witnessed by US President Clinton, Jordan and Israel sign a peace agreement ending 46 years of war.
	1979: South Korean President killed The President of South Korea, Park Chung Hee, is "accidentally" shot dead by the chief of his intelligence service, Kim Jea Kyu.
	1956: Fighting spreads in Hungary revolution The Hungarian Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, appeals for calm as demonstrators battle with Soviet troops.

New motorway speed limit will be 40mph during the rush hour

Speed cameras are to be installed on large sections of the motorway network under a government plan to reduce congestion and vehicle emissions by cutting and strictly enforcing the speed limit at peak times.

The plan was announced as the Department for Transport published forecasts that congestion will rise by at least 28 per cent by 2025. It believes that “active traffic management” — in which the speed limit varies according to the conditions — will be a cheaper way of accommodating rising traffic levels than widening motorways.

Proposals to widen the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester and sections of the M1 may now be dropped. The department will instead build gantries at intervals across congested sections of the motorway network. The gantries will carry cameras and digital signs displaying the limit, which will be reduced to between 40mph and 60mph depending on the volume of traffic.

A trial of the variable-speed-limit system on the M42, southeast of Birmingham, has shown that more than 95 per cent of drivers comply. The limit on the 11-mile stretch of motorway is enforced by eight cameras rotated among 96 locations.

Police have tended to carry out very little speed-limit enforcement on motorways and a government survey found that more than half of cars on the motorway network exceeded the 70mph limit last year.

The M42 trial, and a similar scheme on the southwest section of the M25, found that reducing the limit resulted in faster average journeys because vehicles were less likely to brake sharply, which causes tailbacks. Overall fuel consumption fell by 4 per cent and vehicle emissions by 10 per cent.

The trial included use of the hard shoulder as a running lane in peak times and found that this reduced average journey times on the northbound carriageway by more than a quarter.

Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, confirmed yesterday that the hard shoulder would be used as an extra lane on two short sections of the M6. She also said that variable speed limits would be introduced on other parts of the motorway around Birmingham and that a feasibility study would take place into introducing them across much of the motorway network.

In an interview with The Times, she said: “The trial shows there is a real culture change. People are focusing on the way they are driving and there is almost complete compliance with the limit. It’s about trying to encourage a regular flow of traffic rather than stop-start conditions. It reduces emissions and many people would prefer it to taking land to widen a road.”

She said that the study would consider introducing different speed limits for different lanes. On a four-lane motorway, the limit on the two outside lanes could be 60mph while on the two inside lanes, where traffic joins and exits, the limit could be reduced to 40mph or 50mph.

The Transport Department forecasts show that, even assuming improvements to traffic flow on motorways, journeys on roads in England will take 4 per cent, or three seconds, longer per kilometre by 2025.

Theresa Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said that Mrs Kelly was seeking to distract attention from cuts in the roadbuilding programme. “Conservatives welcome more hard-shoulder driving and we have repeatedly called for more active traffic management and efficient use of existing road space,” Ms Villiers said. “However, such schemes should not be used as an excuse to put the brakes on the much-needed improvement to the worst road bottlenecks.”

The scale of the challenge is huge

The environmental problems faced by the world are so extensive that they must be treated as a top priority if they are to be solved, scientists have told the United Nations.

A team of 400 researchers involved in putting together the fourth Global Environment Outlook: Environment for development (GEO4) said that the “scale of the challenge is huge”.

They assessed a range of environmental factors and concluded that the condition of the land, sea, air and rivers have all deteriorated in the past 20 years.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said that the international community’s response to environmental issues was at times “courageous and inspiring”, but all too often was inadequate.

“The systematic destruction of the Earth’s natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay,” he said.

The report was critical of the lack of action by governments across the world in protecting the environment from being degraded. The response to climate change was described as “woefully inadequate” but it was only one of several major problems that needed to be addressed effectively.

“We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses,” the report said. “To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences, we need new policy approaches to change the direction and magnitude of drivers of environmental change.”

Mike Childs, of the environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth, said: “The steady degradation of the world’s environment threatens the wellbeing of everybody on the planet.”

John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said the report illustrated the importance of living sustainably. He said: “It is the only way to improve global life expectancy and income inequality, beat climate change, reduce deforestation and protect biodiversity.”

Population

Increases in world population, which has risen almost 34 per cent from 5 billion in 1987 to 6.7 billion today, were blamed for many of the pressures on the Earth’s resources.

Consumption, heightened by a threefold increase in trade since 1987, means that more is now being produced than can be sustained, especially as average incomes have increased 40 per cent per person since 1987. Each person needs 21.9 hectares of the Earth’s surface to supply his or her needs whereas, it was calculated, the Earth’s biological capacity is 15.7 hectares per person.

Atmosphere

Developed nations were found to have made significant achievements in cleaning up air pollution but the problem has intensified in many poorer nations.

Changes in policy and legislation coupled with improvements in technology reduced air pollution in some cities but was negated in other places because of increased economic activity and a growth in the use of cars.

Richer countries were, the report said, responsible in some cases for shifting their pollution to developing countries that were producing goods for export.

Climate change was regarded by the report as “visible and unequivocal” and likely to have enormous impacts on the environment. Combating it should be treated as “a global priority”, it said.

Researchers, in line with warnings from the UN International Panel on Climate Change, said drastic steps were required by policymakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy, transport and land use. “Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved,” the report said.

Land

The output of an average farmer increased 40 per cent since 1987 as land use intensified to keep up with the growth of the global economy and population.

Each person in the world was said, on average, to require a third more land to supply individual needs than the biological capacity of the landscape. “Unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change and biodiversity loss,” the scientists concluded.

“It affects human wellbeing, through pollution, soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, salinity and disruption of biological cycles.”

Of particular concern to the researchers was the increase in fertilisers required to meet demands for food because of the contamination the chemicals can cause.

Irrigation was said to be reducing the quantity and quality of water in rivers. One in ten of the world’s main rivers now runs dry at some point each year before it can reach the sea.

Genetically modified crops were regarded by the scientists as essential if food demands are to be met because they can protect against disease and pests. Insects were said to destroy 14 per cent of all crops. Rising desertification and droughts were feared to be destroying soil quality.

Water

Overfishing was singled out as an issue that needed to be tackled as a priority or else billions of people could face food shortages in the coming decades.

“Marine fish catches are being maintained only by fishing ever further offshore and at deeper levels, devastating some species very quickly, and increasingly further down the food chain,” the authors said.

It was pointed out that 60 per cent of the world population live within 65 miles of the coast and that many are likely to be forced to move because of sea level rises from global warming over the coming century.

Availability of fresh water was high-lighted as a rising problem. By 2025 1.8 billion people were forecast to be suffering from severe shortages.

Biodiversity

Measures to protect biodiversity, with species being forced into extinction at a rate 100 times faster than any in fossil records, were regarded as urgent.

The rate of loss was considered so serious that it was described as the sixth major extinction event in the Earth’s history.

“Human life and all other species depend on healthy ecosystems. But current biodiversity changes, the fastest in human history, mean losses are restricting future development options,” the report said.

About 60 per cent of ecosystems were described as degraded or used unsustainably, with land-use change, habitat loss, overexploitation and pollution all factors. Introductions of alien species were blamed for widespread damage to habitat.

“Reducing the rate of loss and ensuring that decision-makers acknowledge biodiversity’s full value to human wellbeing will go far towards achieving sustainable development,” the authors said.

The researchers said agriculture depended on biodiversity but was the biggest cause of reduced genetic diversity, species loss and habitat loss. Scientists expressed concern for the future security of the supply of food because of the narrow genetic base for agriculture. “Just 14 animal species account for 90 per cent of all livestock production, and 30 crops dominate global agriculture, providing an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s calories,” they said.

Concern about diversity extended to human cultures. More than half the world’s 6,000 languages are under threat and some estimates put the likely loss this century at 90 per cent.

“Increased understanding of how people relate to biodiversity and how to move towards greater stewardship of biodiversity may be the biggest question the world must still answer,” they said.

Scribbles

Look away now if you are Australian. Or perhaps not, given that
200,000 people have visited Youtube to see a clip of Kevin Rudd, the
man tipped to be the country's next prime minister, eating his ear
wax in parliament. The clip, thought to be from before 2003, still
doesn't compare to former PM Bob Hawke who once held the world record
for drinking a yard of beer - 11 seconds

October 25th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1983: US troops invade Grenada American forces seize control of the Caribbean island of Grenada less than a week after a left-wing coup in which the prime minister, Maurice Bishop, was killed.
	1964: President Kaunda takes power in Zambia Zambia is the ninth African state to gain independence from the British crown.
	1984: Europe grants emergency aid for Ethiopia The EEC is donating £1.8 million to help combat the famine in Ethiopia.

'Bird-friendly' call for gardens

The number of house sparrows is in decline, the RSBP says

UK householders can halt the decline of many birds by making their gardens more wildlife-friendly, a charity says.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said simple measures can help preserve populations of house sparrows, starlings and song thrushes.

It has recommended allowing patches of long grass to grow, so that insects which act as food can thrive.

Dr Darren Moorcroft from the RSPB said the British garden was part of a larger wildlife community.

Wildlife community

The charity's Homes for Wildlife scheme, which is launched on Saturday, will call for gardeners to plant deciduous trees, native shrubs and climbers like as honeysuckle or roses - all of which provide food and shelter for birds.

We will make a real difference for many of our birds and other wildlife Dr Darren Moorcroft RSPB

The RSPB has also suggested plants which are rich in nectar and seeds such as sunflowers and alyssum.

It said it hoped that more than 200,000 people will support the scheme.

Leaving pot plants on balconies can also encourage insects which provide food for birds, it added.

Dr Moorcroft, RSPB head of conservation management advice, said "gardens are the richest wildlife habitat on earth".

He added: "By taking simple wildlife-friendly steps in our gardens, collectively we will make a real difference for many of our birds and other wildlife," he said.

Pop group Simply Red to split up

Hucknall said he hoped to "invent a new form of music" as a solo star

Simply Red are to split up in 2009, a quarter of a century after they formed, lead singer Mick Hucknall has revealed.

The 47-year-old said Stay, released last March, would be the group's final studio album, and they would disband after their tour in two years' time.

"I've kind of decided that the 25 years is going to be enough," Hucknall told the Gold radio network.

The star said he wanted to concentrate more on his solo career, having just completed an album of his own.

"I've just recorded an album that is a tribute to Bobby Bland, a blues and R&B artist," he explained.

"It's a solo project and I've really enjoyed it - so much that I feel the time has come now to just put a book-end to the [Simply Red] story."

He said he wanted to "invent a new form of music", influenced by R&B tracks from the 1960s.

"It's a big challenge but I can't do it under the name of Simply Red," Hucknall added.

Inspiration

Stay was the third album to be released under the group's own label, simplyred.com, and reached number four in the UK charts.

Simply Red's first hit was Money's Too Tight (To Mention) in 1985

One of the tracks on it, The World and You Tonight, was released as a single last month and will be Simply Red's final single, he added.

The band's name was inspired by Hucknall's love of Manchester United, his left-leaning political affiliations and the colour of his hair.

They topped the album charts with releases including A New Flame, Stars and Life, selling more than 50 million copies worldwide.

These spawned singles such as It's Only Love, Something Got Me Started and Fairground.

A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney

Superjumbo takes off

The world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has landed in Sydney on its first commercial flight, after a seven-hour journey from Singapore.

Singapore Airlines took delivery of the huge plane, dubbed the Superjumbo, just over a week ago. Passengers bought seats in a charity online auction.

It can carry some 850 passengers, but took about 450 to Sydney.

The superjumbo's advent ends a reign of nearly four decades by the Boeing 747 as the world's biggest airliner.

'Phenomenal'

The new aircraft suffered almost two years of delays because of a number of construction problems, but took off on time.

I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life Passenger Tony Elwood

One of the passengers on board, Laurence Watts, told the BBC during the flight that it was a "phenomenal" plane.

"I'm actually sitting in the economy class on the lower deck of the plane," he said.

"The most amazing thing is here you have two classes of economy, split over two decks, with stairs in between the two, which I think is a huge novelty for everyone.

"The plane itself - the space is bigger than anything you can imagine. I can look out the window to my right at the moment and I can see a wing that looks bigger than most ordinary planes."

Hundreds of staff and passengers at Singapore's Changi Airport watched it lift into the sky, snapping the moment with pocket cameras and camera phones.

Passengers paid between $560 and $100,380 to be on the inaugural flight.

"I have never been in anything like this in the air before in my life," said a fellow passenger, Australian Tony Elwood, who travelled in a private first-class suite with his wife Julie.

"It is going to make everything else after this simply awful."

Australian welcome

With the superjumbo's wing span almost the size of a football pitch, Sydney Airport has spent millions to accommodate the new plane.

To cope with the two decks of seating, it has had to construct new aero bridges.

It has also had to realign one of the taxi ways and strengthen a tunnel which runs underneath the main runway.

Singapore Airlines is now set to take delivery of a further five A380s in 2008, out of its order of 19.

In total, Airbus now has 165 firm orders for the A380, and 20 "commitments" from 15 airlines.

However, some analysts remain unconvinced that the plane will be a success.

Standard & Poor's Equity Research analyst Shukor Yusof points to the fact Airbus' US rival Boeing already has more than 700 orders for its forthcoming 787 Dreamliner.

While Airbus sees the future grow of air travel being focused on larger plans such as the A380 flying between major hubs, Boeing is aiming the mid-sized 787 at more flights between airports of all sizes.

"I see there's some demand for the A380, but it's an expensive way to address a small market," said Mr Yusof.

Boeing's 787 has also been hit by production delays, with the first deliveries now not due until the end of next year, six months behind schedule.

'Extra lane' plan to be extended

Drivers move across to use the hard shoulder of the M42

Motorists will be allowed to drive on the hard shoulder of motorways during busy times, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has said.

The "extra lane" scheme will be rolled out on the M6 near Birmingham following a successful trial on the nearby M42.

It aims to ease rush-hour bottlenecks, and could be extended to other motorways in the future.

Sensors detect traffic build-up, which trigger signs asking drivers to slow down and spread out.

During the trial, a 50mph speed limit was imposed while the "extra lanes" were in operation.

The report on the M42 trial has shown a reduction in journey times north by up to 25% and a drop in the average accident rate from 5.2 per month to 1.5.

HAVE YOUR SAY I drive that stretch of M42 everyday and it works very well Spilsbup, Birmingham Send us your comments How system works

The report also found there had been a drop in pollution around the M42, with fuel consumption down by 4% and vehicle emissions down by 10%.

But Tony Bosworth, from Friends of the Earth (FoE), disagreed there were environmental benefits: "It's effectively motorway widening on the cheap.

"We believe it's simply going to encourage more drivers and cause an increase in carbon dioxide."

Nowhere to stop

Ms Kelly said "extra lanes" would be introduced on the M6 between junctions 4 and 5 near the Birmingham NEC arena, and junctions 8 and 10A between the M5 link and the M54 motorway junction.

The expansion will cost £150m and is due to be completed by 2011.

The government is also launching a feasibility study to consider including the M1, M25, M4 and M20 in the future.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) said it had reservations about the changes when they were first introduced on the M42, near Birmingham.

Kevin Clinton, from RoSPA, said: "We were concerned that if the hard shoulder is used as a running lane, if there was a major crash it may take the emergency services longer to get there.

There are emergency refuges approximately every 500 metres along this section of motorway and that's where people can park safely if they break down Graham Bowskill Highways Agency

"Or when someone breaks down, they may not be able to get their vehicle out of the running lane."

But Graham Bowskill, from the Highways Agency, told the BBC that the hard shoulder would not be opened to traffic if there was a broken down vehicle on it.

"We do actually have cameras that are constantly monitoring to see whether there are any parked vehicles," Mr Bowskill said.

"At the same time, we've built additional safety features into the scheme.

"There are emergency refuges approximately every 500 metres along this section of motorway and that's where people can park safely if they break down."

Ms Kelly said the M42 trial had been "really impressive", adding: "People get from their front door to their place of work in a much more reliable time frame.

"The safety fears that some people have haven't materialised at all and, not only that, it's good for the economy and the environment too."

'More comfortable'

Paul Watters, head of roads policy at the AA, said the M42 trial appeared to be working well although it had so far not been tested by a major incident.

There is a risk that rolling it out nationally there could be skimping which would be counter-productive and even dangerous Paul Watters Head of roads policy at the AA

"It's a much more comfortable experience [for drivers]. They travel slower, but get to their journey destination quicker," he said.

Mr Watters said his organisation backed the expansion if it was done "for the right reasons and in the right manner".

"We wouldn't support just taking the hard shoulder away."

And he added: "There is a risk that rolling it out nationally there could be skimping which would be counter-productive and even dangerous."

The use of variable speed limits will be introduced on the M40 between junctions 16 and 3A and where it joins the M42 south of Birmingham.

Variable speed limits currently in operation on the M42 will be extended north to junction 9.

ACTIVE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 1 Computer-controlled sensors in road detect increased traffic and feed data back to control centre 2 Mandatory speed limit imposed to protect queuing traffic and smooth flows 3 Information signs warn or advise drivers of hazards/lane use 4 Overhead signal indicates when hard shoulder is open to traffic 5 Hard shoulder to be used for travel between consecutive junctions 6 Broken-down vehicles use emergency refuge areas to ensure hard shoulder remains clear 7 Controllers use cctv and sensors to monitor hard shoulder for obstructions/debris and can manually override ATM system Other safety improvements include highly visible roadside emergency phones (8) located behind safety barriers, and lighting (9) at more frequent intervals along entire stretch of motorway

Quiztime Picture Quiz CD - v1.0

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1960's Picture Quiz.pdf
2006 Grand Prix PicQuiz.pdf
A Host Of Female Stars.pdf
A Host Of Male Stars.pdf
A to Z of Actors 1.pdf
A to Z of Actors 2.pdf
Action Movie Posters 1.pdf
Action Movie Posters 2.pdf
Airline Logos Quiz.pdf
Album Covers.pdf
An Actors Life 1.pdf
An Actors Life 2.pdf
An Actors Life 3.pdf
An Actors Life 4.pdf
An Actors Life 5.pdf
An Actors Life 6.pdf
Anyone For Tennis Picture Quiz.pdf
Art or Crap Quiz.pdf
Bank Logos.pdf
Blue Peter Picture Quiz.pdf
Bond Girls.pdf
Bond Movie Posters Quiz.pdf
Bonnie Scotland Picquiz.pdf
Britains_Best_20_Sitcoms.pdf
Britains_Best_20_Sitcoms_2.pdf
Britains_Best_20_Sitcoms_3.pdf
Britains_Best_20_Sitcoms_4.pdf
Britains_Best_20_Sitcoms_5.pdf
British Born Actors and Actresses 1.pdf
British Born Actors and Actresses 2.pdf
Car Makes and Models Quiz 1.pdf
Car Makes and Models Quiz 2.pdf
Car Manufacturers.pdf
Caricature Entertainment Quiz 1.pdf
Cartoon Characters.pdf
Cartoon Characters Picture Quiz.pdf
Celbrity Cyborgs PicQuiz.pdf
Celebrity Beauties 1 PicQuiz.pdf
Celebrity Beauties 2 PicQuiz.pdf
Celebrity Couples PicQuiz.pdf
Celebrity Impersonators PicQuiz.pdf
Celebrity Mugshots.pdf
Celebrity Pets PicQuiz.pdf
Childrens TV PicQuiz.pdf
Childrens TV Quiz.pdf
Classic Photos PicQuiz.pdf
Clowning Around PicQuiz.pdf
Come on you reds.pdf
Comedians Picture Quiz.pdf
Comedy Stars PicQuiz 1.pdf
Comedy Stars PicQuiz 2.pdf
Coronation_Street_PicQuiz 1.pdf
Coronation_Street_PicQuiz 2.pdf
Crisp Flavours PicQuiz.pdf
Daytime TV Picture Quiz.pdf
Disney Characters PicQuiz.pdf
Disney Films Quiz.pdf
DJ Heaven.pdf
English Landmarks.pdf
Evil Twins PicQuiz.pdf
F1Drivers MotorRacing 2004.pdf
Famous Athletes PicQuiz.pdf
Famous Cats PicQuiz.pdf
Famous Dogs PicQuiz.pdf
Famous Paintings.pdf
Famous Scots Picquiz.pdf
Famous Sketches PicQuiz.pdf
Fantasy Movie Posters.pdf
Female Stars.pdf
Film Stars.pdf
Films_Quiz.pdf
Films_Quiz_2.pdf
Flying Objects.pdf
Football Caricatures PicQuiz.pdf
Football_Museum_PicQuiz.pdf
Footballers PicQuiz.pdf
Footy Emblems Quiz.pdf
Formula One Racing PicQuiz.pdf
Formula One Quiz.pdf
Get Your Kit Off.pdf
Girls On Top - Of The Pops.pdf
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Glamrus PicQuiz.pdf
Glory Glory ManUtd.pdf
Gone But Not Forgotten PicQuiz.pdf
Gone In 2005 Pt1 PicQuiz.pdf
Gone In 2005 Pt2 PicQuiz.pdf
Gone In 2006 1 PicQuiz.pdf
Halloween Picture Quiz.pdf
Help The Aged PicQuiz.pdf
Heroes And Villains PicQuiz.pdf
Horror Actors.pdf
Icons Of England PicQuiz.pdf
Ilove70s_Picquiz.pdf
Irish_Music_Quiz.pdf
Irish_Sports_Quiz.pdf
I-Spy PicQuiz.pdf
Jackpot PicQuiz 310705.pdf
Keep It In The Family.pdf
Manchester Music PicQuiz.pdf
Mens Tennis 2005 PicQuiz.pdf
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Movie Monsters PicQuiz.pdf
Movie Posters 2004.pdf
Muppet Show Quiz.pdf
Musical Pictures 1.pdf
Musical Pictures 2.pdf
Musical Pictures 3.pdf
Musical Talents PicQuiz.pdf
Mystery Objects Picture Quiz.pdf
Name The Logo Picture Quiz.pdf
Name the Personality 1.pdf
Name the Personality 3.pdf
Name the Personality 4.pdf
New Balls Please.pdf
Newspapers Quiz.pdf
NW Presenters PicQuiz.pdf
Olympic Mascots PicQuiz.pdf
Paparazzi Snaps PicQuiz.pdf
Past and Present Pop Picture Quiz.pdf
PicQuiz 201105.pdf
Political Scandal PicQuiz.pdf
Pop Caricatures PicQuiz.pdf
Pop Trans-Mutations PicQuiz.pdf
Pops The Question 1.pdf
Pops The Question 2.pdf
Pops The Question 3.pdf
Pops The Question 4.pdf
Posers XXX Picture Quiz.pdf
Pub Signs PicQuiz.pdf
Quiz In Need Picture Quiz.pdf

Quizerama Series Picture Quizzes 1 to 114

Quiztime 2012 Olympics Quiz.pdf
Quiztime Birdwatch 1 PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Birdwatch 2 PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime ChefsnCooks PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Dr Who PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Garden Wildlife 1 PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Kids TV PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Logos Quiz 1.pdf
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Quiztime NewYear FunQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Open Golf PicQuiz 2005.pdf
Quiztime Santas Quiz 1.pdf
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Quiztime Santas Quiz 3.pdf
Quiztime Shapeshifters PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztime Telly Addicts PicQuiz 1.pdf
Quiztime Telly Addicts PicQuiz 2.pdf
Quiztime TV Presenters PicQuiz 1.pdf
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Quiztime TV Shows PicQuiz.pdf
Quiztimes Snookered.pdf
Racially Abused PicQuiz.pdf
Radio Stations.pdf
ScrumDown.pdf
Seventies PicQuiz.pdf
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Simpsons Guest List PicQuiz.pdf
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Sitcoms PicQuiz.pdf
Snack Time Picture Quiz.pdf
Snooker Stars PicQuiz.pdf
Soap Awards 2005.pdf
Soap Stars.pdf
Soccer Stars PicQuiz 1.pdf
Sporting Legends PicQuiz.pdf
Sporting Venues.pdf
Sports Bag PicQuiz.pdf
Sports Personalities 1.pdf
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Sports Stars.pdf
Spot The Dog Picture Quiz.pdf
Stars Bad Day 1 PicQuiz.pdf
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Stars In Their Hats.pdf
Stars Of The Sixties.pdf
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Swingin Chicks of 60s part 1.pdf
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Taffy Or Not PicQuiz.pdf
Telly Addicts Quiz 1.pdf
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Test Match Special.pdf
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The Models PicQuiz.pdf
Trains and Railways.pdf
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World Athletics.pdf
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World Cup 2006 Team Strips.pdf
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Healthy?

In the beginning God covered the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, with green, yellow and red vegetables of all kinds so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's bountiful gifts, Satan created Dairy Ice Cream and Magnums.
And Satan said "You want hot fudge with that?
And Man said: "Yes!"
And Woman said: "I'll have one too with chocolate chips". And lo they gained 10 pounds.

And God created the healthy yoghurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair.
And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat and sugar from the cane and combined them.
And Woman went from size 12 to size 14.

So God said: "Try my fresh green salad".
And Satan presented Blue Cheese dressing and garlic croutons on the side.
And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said: "I have sent you healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them".
And Satan brought forth deep fried coconut king prawns, butter-dipped lobster chunks and chicken fried steak, so big it needed its
own platter.
And Man's cholesterol went through the roof.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with potassium and good nutrition.
Then Satan peeled off the healthy skin and sliced the starchy centre into chips and deep fried them in animal fats adding copious quantities of salt.
And Man put on more pounds.

God then brought forth running shoes so that his Children might lose those extra pounds.
And Satan came forth with a cable TV with remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels.
And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering light and started wearing stretch jogging suits.


Then God gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite.
And Satan created McDonalds and the 99p double cheeseburger. Then Satan said: "You want fries with that?" and Man replied: "Yes, and super size 'em".
And Satan said: "It is good."
And Man and Woman went into cardiac arrest.


God sighed. And created quadruple by-pass surgery.

And then Satan chuckled and created the National Health Service...

October 24th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1945: United Nations Organisation is born Allies of World War II ratify the UN Charter at a ceremony in Washington DC.
	2001: Swiss tunnel ablaze after head-on crash At least 10 people die after two lorries crash head-on and catch fire inside the Gotthard road tunnel in Switzerland.
	1983: Nilsen 'strangled and mutilated' victims Civil servant Dennis Nilsen goes on trial accused of six murders and two attempted murders.

In millions of Windows, the perfect Storm is gathering

A spectre is haunting the net but, outside of techie circles, nobody seems to be talking about it. The threat it represents to our security and wellbeing may be less dramatic than anything posed by global terrorism, but it has the potential to wreak much more havoc. And so far, nobody has come up with a good idea on how to counter it.

It's called the Storm worm. It first appeared at the beginning of the year, hidden in email attachments with the subject line: '230 dead as storm batters Europe'. The PC of anyone who opened the attachment became infected and was secretly enrolled in an ever-growing network of compromised machines called a 'botnet'. The term 'bot' is a derivation of 'software robot', which is another way of saying that an infected machine effectively becomes the obedient slave of its - illicit - owner. If your PC is compromised in this way then, while you may own the machine, someone else controls it. And they can use it to send spam, to participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on banks, e-commerce or government websites, or for other even more sinister purposes.

Storm has been spreading steadily since last January, gradually constructing a huge botnet. It affects only computers running Microsoft Windows, but that means that more than 90 per cent of the world's PCs are vulnerable. Nobody knows how big the Storm botnet has become, but reputable security professionals cite estimates of between one million and 50 million computers worldwide. To date, the botnet has been used only intermittently, which is disquieting: what it means is that someone, somewhere, is quietly building a doomsday machine that can be rented out to the highest bidder, or used for purposes that we cannot yet predict.

Of course, computer worms are an old story, which may explain why the mainstream media has paid relatively little attention to what's been happening. Old-style worms - the ones with names like Sasser and Slammer - were written by vandals or hackers and designed to spread as quickly as possible. Slammer, for example, infected 75,000 computers in 10 minutes, and therefore attracted a lot of attention. The vigour of the onslaught made it easier for anti-virus firms to detect the attack and come up with countermeasures. In that sense, old-style worms were like measles - an infectious disease that shows immediate symptoms.

Storm is different. It spreads quietly, without drawing attention to itself. Symptoms don't appear immediately, and an infected computer can lie dormant for a long time. 'If it were a disease,' says one expert, Bruce Schneier, 'it would be more like syphilis, whose symptoms may be mild or disappear altogether, but which will come back years later and eat your brain.'

Schneier thinks Storm represents 'the future of malware' because of the technical virtuosity of its design. For example, it works rather like an ant colony, with separation of duties. Only a small fraction of infected hosts spread the worm. A much smaller fraction are command-and-control servers; the rest stand by to receive orders. By only allowing a small number of hosts to propagate the virus and act as command-and-control servers, Storm is resilient against attack because even if those hosts shut down, the network remains largely intact and other hosts can take over their duties.

More fiendishly, Storm doesn't have any noticeable performance impact on its hosts. Like a parasite, it needs the host to be intact and healthy for its own survival. This makes it harder to detect, because users and network administrators won't notice any abnormal behaviour most of the time.

And instead of having all hosts communicate with a central server or set of servers, Storm uses a peer-to-peer networking protocol for its command-and-control servers. This makes the botnet much harder to disable because there's no centralised control point to be identified and shut down.

It gets worse. Storm's delivery mechanism changes regularly. It began as PDF spam, then morphed into e-cards and YouTube invites. It then started posting blog-comment spam, again trying to trick viewers into clicking infected links. Similarly, the Storm email changes all the time, with new, topical subject lines and text. And last month Storm began attacking anti-spam sites focused on identifying it. It has also attacked the personal website of a malware expert who published an analysis of how it worked.

At the moment, nobody knows who's behind this. Is it a Russian mafia operation? An al-Qaeda scheme? The really creepy thing is that, to date, the controllers of Storm have used it for such relatively trivial purposes. The suspicion has to be that they are biding their time, waiting for the moment when, say, 100 million naive Windows users have clicked on an infected link and unwittingly added their machines to the botnet.

Only then will we know what a perfect storm in cyberspace is like.

Major pirate website shut down

One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows.

The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site was also accompanied by raids and an arrest, the anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said today.

A 26-year-old man from Cheltenham was arrested on Thursday in connection with offences relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the internet, Fact said.

The arrest and the closure of the site - www.tv-links.co.uk - came during an operation by officers from Gloucestershire County Council trading standards in conjunction with investigators from Fact and Gloucestershire Police.

Fact claims that tv-links.co.uk was providing links to illegal film content that had been camcorder recorded from cinemas and then uploaded to the internet. The site also provided links to TV shows that were being illegally distributed.

Visitors to the site could get access to major feature films, sometimes within days of their initial cinema release. Recent links took users to illegal versions of the Disney/Pixar animation sensation Ratatouille as well as to most of this summer's blockbusters.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organising, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for Fact.

The group's director general Kieron Sharp said TV Links was the first major target in a campaign to crackdown on web piracy.

"The theft and distribution of films harms the livelihoods of those working in the UK film industry and in ancillary industries, as well as damaging the economy," he said.

Roger Marles, from Trading Standards said sites such as TV Links allowed people to break UK copyright law.

"The 'users' are potentially evading licence fees, subscription fees to digital services or the cost of purchase or admittance to cinemas to view the films," he added.

The British Video Association estimates that at least £459m was lost to the video, film and TV industries due to piracy in 2006.

October 23rd

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1956: Hungarians rise up against Soviet rule Tens of thousands of people take to the streets in Hungary to demand an end to Soviet rule.
	1983: Beirut blasts kill US and French troops At least 146 American marines and 27 French servicemen have been killed after two separate bomb attacks on military headquarters in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
	2001: IRA begins decommissioning weapons The Northern Ireland peace process reaches an historic breakthrough as the IRA announce they are decommissioning their weapons.

Only In Britain

Makes You proud to be British because.....

Only in Britain.... can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance

Only in Britain....do supermarkets make sick people walk to the back of the store to get their prescription while healthy people buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in Britain.... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET Coke

Only in Britain....do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counter

Only in Britain....do we leave cars worth thousands of pounds on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage.

Only in Britain....do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place


Not to mention:

3 Brits died last year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue.

59 Brits were injured by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.

18 Brits had serious burns trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.

36 Brits have died since 1996 while watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.

9 Brits have died since 1996 believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate.

179 Brits since 1996 have had broken parts of plastic toys pulled out of the soles of their feet.

This year British hospitals reported 7 broken arms after cracker pulling accidents at Christmas.

8 Brits cracked their skull while throwing up into the toilet.

And a massive 536 Brits were admitted to A & E in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth

…. and finally.... 5 Brits were injured last year in accidents involving out of control Scalextric cars

October 22nd

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1966: Double-agent breaks out of jail One of Britain's most notorious double-agents, George Blake, escapes from prison in a daring break-out believed to have been masterminded by the Soviet Union.
	1990: Aral Sea is 'world's worst disaster' Scientists tell the Royal Geographical Society how irrigation has destroyed what was once the world's fourth largest fresh water sea.
	1974: Bomb blast in London club A bomb explodes in a restaurant near to where opposition leader Edward Heath is dining in London.

Station sculpture to be unveiled

Enlarge Image

A 27ft-high (9m) sculpture designed to become an iconic feature of St Pancras International is due to be unveiled.

The Meeting Place by Paul Day will take pride of place on a plinth beneath the central London station's new clock.

Depicting a couple in a "timeless embrace", the sculpture "reflects the romance that train travel used to have," Mr Day said.

Eurostar services will begin operating from St Pancras from 14 November following a massive redevelopment.

'Romance and glamour'

Mr Day, whose other works include the Battle of Britain monument on the Embankment, said he was inspired among other things by the 2003 British film Love Actually, starring Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley.

"At the airport scene, when you get all the characters together and suddenly the doors open and out come the people that have been away and you get all sorts of meetings and people being reunited," he said.

"I think that is an interesting slice of life and in a way the relief around the base has to be a rich tapestry about people getting together again after being apart."

Mike Luddy, of station developers London & Continental, said The Meeting Place will capture "the true ethos of what we want St Pancras International to be".

"By reviving some of the romance and glamour of stations and rail travel, we have the opportunity to breathe new life into this spectacular landmark building."

Sugababes beat Britney in charts

Last week the Sugababes had the number one single and album

Girl group Sugababes have fought off competition from Britney Spears in the UK singles charts and held onto the top spot with their song, About You Now.

Spears' single, Gimme More, went straight into the top 10 but only made it to number three.

The track is the first to be released from her fifth album, Blackout, which is being released on 29 October.

In the album charts Welsh band Stereophonics went straight to number one with their record, Pull the Pin.

It is the band's first release in two years and knocked the Sugababes' album, Change, into second place after just one week at number one.

Jools Holland's new release, Best Of Friends, which is a collection of his collaborations with other artists, made it to number nine.

Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse are at number two in the singles chart with their version of the Zutons track, Valerie.

Joey Bishop

Joey Bishop [far right] with his fellow Rat Packers at the Sands Hotel

Joey Bishop, who died on Wednesday aged 89, was a comedian and the last surviving member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack" of the early 1960s.

The Rat Packers of this era - Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and Bishop - became famous for their appearances at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy, and Bishop wrote much of their material. The group had a reputation for hard drinking and womanising, but the mournful-looking Bishop - whose principal vice was golf - never subscribed to that aspect of Rat Pack life.

Having begun his career as a comic in burlesque in the cities of the East Coast, he managed to combine a deadpan delivery with a fine sense of timing and was a brilliant ad-libber who was said never to memorise his gags ("The kick is to think quickly," he once remarked).

In 1954 he was opening for Sinatra at the Copacabana in New York when, in the middle of his act, Marilyn Monroe walked in wearing a flowing white ermine coat. Bishop waited for her to sit down before saying: "Marilyn, I told you to wait in the truck." And perhaps no other comic could have got away with the line: "Mr Sinatra will now speak of some of the good things the Mafia has done."

Joey Bishop was born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb on February 3 1918 in the Bronx, the youngest of five children of immigrants from central Europe. At birth he weighed only 3lbs. When he was still an infant the family moved to Philadelphia, where his father ran a bicycle shop, played the ocarina and taught his son Yiddish songs; from his earliest years, Joey was determined to be an entertainer, and he quickly learned to tap dance and to play the banjo and mandolin.

After dropping out of Furness Junior High School in 1936 he took various odd jobs before, in 1938, forming a music and comedy act with two other boys. They called themselves the Bishop Brothers, taking the surname from a friend who allowed them the use of his car to travel to and from engagements.

After America entered the war Joey was drafted into the US Army, serving for more than three years with Special Services and reaching the rank of sergeant. In 1945 he began to hone his skills as a comic at the Greenwich Village Inn in New York, and by 1952 was earning the considerable sum of $1,000 a week. In that year Frank Sinatra saw him performing in New York's Latin Quarter and hired him as his opening act. It was the beginning of Bishop's association with the Rat Pack.

Bishop first tried his hand on the television screen in 1958 (giving up $200,000 worth of nightclub fees to do so) in a show called Keep Talking, and this led to successful appearances on The Jack Paar Show and then to The Joey Bishop Show (1961-65), a sitcom in which he was cast as a PR man who becomes the host of a television talk show. An actual talk show hosted by Bishop was launched by ABC in 1967 in an attempt to compete with Johnny Carson's immensely popular Tonight Show. It ran for two and a half years, and Bishop went on to become a popular substitute host for Carson, filling in for him on more than 200 occasions. He then returned to nightclub work and variety shows, and in 1981 stood in for Mickey Rooney for a month in the Broadway production of Sugar Babes.

Bishop appeared in two of Sinatra's films, Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Sergeants 3 (1962). He also played character roles in such movies as The Naked and the Dead ("I played both parts," he once joked); Onion-head; Johnny Cool; Texas Across the River; Who's Minding the Mint?; Valley of the Dolls; and The Delta Force.

In January 1961 he was master of ceremonies at President Kennedy's inaugural gala, at which the Rat Pack performed. A year earlier Bishop had turned down a request from Richard Nixon to entertain the Republican National Convention.

Of the other members of the Rat Pack, Peter Lawford died in 1984; Sammy Davis Jr in 1990; Dean Martin in 1995; and Sinatra in 1998.

Joey Bishop married, in 1941, Sylvia Ruzga. She died in 1999 and he is survived by their son and by his longtime companion Nora Garabotti.

October 21st

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1966: Coal tip buries children in Aberfan Tragedy hits the Welsh village of Aberfan as a coal slag tip engulfs a school burying at least 130 people and injuring many more.
	1952: Kenyatta arrested in security raid The President of the Kenya African Union, Jomo Kenyatta, is arrested following the declaration of a state of emergency in the British colony of Kenya.
	2001: Anthrax claims third victim in US A post office worker in Washington becomes the third person to be diagnosed with anthrax.

England's World Cup dream dies

At a Stade de France so cold the claps froze on your fingers, the Springboks did exactly what Brian Ashton’s boys had done for the last four weeks – held firm, made no mistakes, poured on the pressure and picked the enemy off with penalties.

Don’t hurt yourself with thoughts of Mark Cueto’s disallowed try. Don’t torture yourself with what might have happened had Mathew Tait slipped through one more tackle on that slicing run, or Jonny landed that close-in drop-goal at 3-6 or the long-distance drifter with 10 minutes to go.

It’s hard to admit that it’s over, that we can’t wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.

But it's time to shake a Springbok hand, give thanks for the extraordinary events of the past two months and salute an England team that went further than anyone in their right mind could expect them to.

Sometimes you just know when a match will be yours, and when it will slip away from you.

It didn’t matter how hard England pushed, how many choruses of Swing Low Sweet Chariot swung round the stadium or how many roofs were ripped off by the roaring millions back home.

Tonight, their everything was not enough.

This was stone-cold, hands-up reality after a day when giddy madness had reigned in Paris.

Men had thrown crazy amounts of money at mere rumours of tickets, shipped beers in such vast quantities that you feared the end for some would come before the beginning.

Seeing the passion on the players’ faces at the start – roaring out the anthems, holding on to one another like sailors lashed together in a storm – part of you was crippled with anxiety, while another part wanted to be out there, to be at the heart of such a marvellous maelstrom.

Expectation was hanging so heavy in the air you could almost taste it, belief and doubt mixing together to form an atmosphere so tense you could slice it.

But, when the moment finally arrived, the magic was never quite there. The breaks England needed to win never came.

With 20 minutes to go, even the most banjaxed of England fans around me knew the game was up.

Not tonight the leg-clenching tension of the previous two weeks, nor the ear-splitting noise at the same stadium seven days before.

This was South Africa’s final from a long way out, and everyone in the Stade de France, deep down, knew it.

The Springboks may not have sparkled. They didn’t have to. This was professional rugby for a professional era, a production high on practice and proficiency.

As I write, the fireworks have faded away, the stands emptied, the last celebrating South African skipped off the field. All that’s left on the pitch is a giant slick of golden glitter.

It’s time to go, head back into the bars of Paris and wash all those hopes and disappointments away.

South Africa – I take my hat off to you. England – thanks for the ride.

Tom Fordyce is a BBC Sport journalist

World Cup final 2007

South Africa captain John Smit lifts the World Cup in Paris

England (3) 6
Pens: Wilkinson 2

South Africa (9) 15
Pens: Montgomery 4, Steyn

South Africa ended England's reign as world champions as they claimed the World Cup for the second time.

Three Percy Montgomery penalties to one from Jonny Wilkinson saw South Africa, who had hammered England in the group stages, lead 9-3 at the break in Paris.

England went desperately close to a try through Mark Cueto soon after half-time before a penalty apiece made it 12-6.

Francois Steyn extended the lead with a long-range penalty and South Africa held out to match their 1995 triumph.

Interview: England coach Brian Ashton

Interview: South Africa coach Jake White

Interview: England's Mark Cueto

It had been a remarkable run to the final for England, who went into the tournament woefully short of form.

They were humiliated in the group game against the Boks just over five weeks ago and although they finally found some form to reach the final, it was a bridge too far against a superior South Africa side.

The Springboks ruled the line-out through Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha and Juan Smith, stealing seven of England's throws, and their defence was all but impeccable throughout the 80 minutes.

606: DEBATE England are back in the ascendancy but South Africa were too good for us on the day and were the best team in the tournament Flabby Alonso

After Wilkinson kicked off England enjoyed the early territorial advantage but they could not make it count as they struggled to win their own throw at the line-out.

South Africa's line-out operation had been praised to the skies going into the match and they made their mark immediately, stealing England's first two throws and preventing the champions from building an early head of steam.

When England did manage to win a line-out it was deep in their own half and led to them conceding the lead after Mathew Tait slipped as he tried to run from inside his own 22.

Montgomery, the tournament's leading points scorer, knocked over the easy kick to get the scoreboard ticking over.

England hit back after 13 minutes when South Africa failed to gather a hanging kick.

Massive second row Simon Shaw secured possession and although Bryan Habana halted a sweeping England attack with a thumping tackle on Paul Sackey, South Africa infringed at the ruck.

The penalty was wide out on the right but Wilkinson guided it between the posts to level the scores.

The peerless Matfield ruled the skies in Paris on Saturday night

Both sides were not afraid to use the boot to try and get field position and when Butch James kicked ahead and chased, Lewis Moody, who has struggled at times with his discipline, could not resist tripping the South Africa fly-half.

Montgomery bisected the uprights to edge the Boks back into the lead.

England upped their game and the forwards battered away to create a platform for Wilkinson to drop at goal, but his effort drifted wide.

The champions enjoyed a good spell in the middle of the half but as the break approached South Africa started to assume the upper hand.

They could have extended their lead through a penalty from Steyn, but his long-range effort drifted wide.

The inside centre is only 20 but he did not let it affect his confidence and with five minutes to go to the break he stepped past Mike Catt and beat Wilkinson and Phil Vickery to take the Boks deep into England territory.

The champions managed to halt Springbok captain John Smit a yard from the line but the Boks kept the pressure on and when England desperately infringed Montgomery stepped up to make it 9-3 at the break.

It looked as though South Africa were set to pull away but two minutes after the re-start Tait picked up a bouncing pass from scrum-half Andy Gomarsall in midfield.

The Newcastle man stepped past the on-rushing South Africa midfield and raced deep into South Africa territory before being halted just short of the line.

England went desperately close through winger Mark Cueto

Gomarsall fed the ball wide and Cueto dived over in the corner, but the Television Match Official correctly ruled he had just put a foot in touch as Danie Rossouw got across to make the tackle.

Referee Alain Rolland had been playing advantage and Wilkinson, via the woodwork, brought the gap back to three points from the resulting penalty.

A fourth Montgomery penalty took South Africa back into a six-point lead and England's chances suffered a blow as veteran full-back Jason Robinson was forced off injured.

As the half progressed England, boosted by a host of replacements, looked like they might gain the upper hand but they fell further behind when they were penalised for obstruction as Cueto ran the ball out of defence.

Steyn drilled the ball between the posts from long range and suddenly South Africa led by more than a converted try.

England were never going to give up the fight and they attacked with increasing abandon, but their inability to control their own ball at the line-out and the breakdown ultimately cost them dear.

Every time a white shirt hurled itself at South Africa it was enveloped by a tide of green as the Springboks joined Australia as two-time world champions.

---

England: Robinson; Sackey, Tait, Catt, Cueto; Wilkinson, Gomarsall, Sheridan, Regan, Vickery, Shaw, Kay, Corry, Moody, Easter.
Replacements: Chuter, Stevens, Dallaglio, Worsley, Richards, Flood, Hipkiss.

South Africa: Montgomery; Pietersen, Fourie, Steyn, Habana; James, Du Preez; Du Randt, Smit, Van der Linde, B Botha, Matfield, Burger, Smith, Rossouw.
Replacements: B du Plessis, J du Plessis, Muller, Van Heerden, Pienaar, Pretorius, Olivier.

Referee: Alain Rolland (Ireland)

Turn off e-mail and do some work

With inboxes bulging with messages and many workers dreading the daily deluge of e-mail, some companies are taking drastic action.

Paul Otellini urged his engineers to talk more

Intel has become the latest in an increasingly long line of companies to launch a so-called 'no e-mail day'.

On Fridays, 150 of its engineers revert to more old-fashioned means of communication.

In actual fact e-mail isn't strictly forbidden but engineers are encouraged to talk to each other face to face or pick up the phone rather than rely on e-mail.

In Intel's case the push to look again at the culture of e-mail followed a comment from chief executive Paul Otellini criticising engineers "who sit two cubicles apart sending an e-mail rather than get up and talk".

US experiments

The idea of a no e-mail day is not a new one in the US, where companies have been reaping the benefits of shutting down their inboxes for one day of the week.

Firms such as US Cellular and Deloitte and Touche have been experimenting with e-mail for some time.

Last year, fulfilment firm PBD launched a no e-mail Friday, when chief executive Scott Dockter suspected that over-dependence on e-mail was damaging productivity.

Four months later the company felt the trial had been a resounding success, with better teamwork, happier customers and quicker problem solving.

Email stress

Some people get stressed by e-mails

According to US research firm The Radicati Group, individual workers sent an average of 37 e-mails a day in 2006 with predictions this will rise to 47 by the end of this year.

Another study conducted by researchers at the Universities of Glasgow and Paisley found that one third of users felt stressed by the heavy volume of e-mail they had to deal with.

When e-mail behaviour was tracked it is was found that many were checking their inbox as often as 30 to 40 times per hour.

"There was a mismatch between how often people thought they looked at their inbox and how often they actually did it," said Mario Hare, a lecturer at the University of Paisley.

He also found that people were setting their own rules when it came to dealing with e-mail.

"Some people had a very relaxed attitude to it while others felt they had to respond immediately to every e-mail," he said.

He believes that no e-mail days can be useful particularly among workers who need to concentrate for long periods of time.

With colleagues, he is working on some add-ons to e-mail clients that could give power back to recipients. It includes providing a time for when a reply is expected as well as introducing a ranking system for different messages.

Resource-draining monster

Not everyone is convinced that switching e-mail off is the answer to stress and lack of productivity in the office.

"Instead of bringing e-mail to a grinding halt at the end of the week - which of course just means that most of Monday is wasted catching up - companies need to educate their staff on the appropriate use and management of e-mail," said Alan Elliot, director of business development of e-mail specialists Mirapoint.

"Depicting e-mail as some kind of resource-draining monster that we'd all be better off without wilfully ignores the realities of the modern business world," he said.

Intel however seems determined to investigate new ways of working. Borrowing an idea more traditionally associated with pre-school, the chip giant has also introduced Quiet Time.

Unfortunately this doesn't mean a daily nap is on the agenda but it does offer half a day a week to devote to uninterrupted work in offline mode.

It seems a backlash against the always-on workplace has truly begun.

10 things we didn't know last week

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

1. The brain responds to facial expressions at a speed of less than 40 milliseconds.
More details

2. Having sex daily can improve a man's sperm quality - increasing their partner's chance of getting pregnant.
More details

3. CO2 emissions from shipping are twice the level of aviation.
More details

4. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan have had Bell's Palsy - a nerve condition that can result in paralysis on one side of the face.
More details

5. Middlesbrough's first professional football club, established in the late Victorian era, was called Middlesbrough Ironopolis.
More details

6. Four people died in France in the Great Storm of 1987.

7. Migrants earned on average £424 per week last year, compared with £395 for UK-born workers.

8. Discrimination against atheists is allowed in employment in Texas, according to the state's constitution.
More details

9. Leeches are used as treatment for cauliflower ears.
More details

10. Asterix was so-called so he would appear at the start of an encyclopaedia of comics.
More details

Sources: 6 - BBC News 24, 15 Oct; 7 - Independent 17 Oct.

All you need to know about rugby

By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine

Rugby union fever is sweeping England ahead of the World Cup final in Paris on Saturday. But many who have been caught up in the fervour remain clueless about the game itself and the culture surrounding it.

Traditionally dismissed by footballers as egg-chasers, it's the rugby players who will have all eyes on them this weekend. An estimated 15 million on this side of the Channel are expected to watch England play South Africa in the World Cup final in Paris.

Every so often a sport reaches out far beyond its normal fan base. But for many, rugby union is perplexing - arcane and, to some, elitist. The truth is it's not. So, from line-outs to player etiquette; fans' fashion to cauliflower ears, here the Magazine offers a crash course.

BEHAVIOUR OF PLAYERS

ETIQUETTE OF SUPPORTERS

SONGS & JOKES

CAULIFLOWER EARS

KEY RULES

The story goes that rugby was born in 1823 at Rugby School when William Webb Ellis disregarded the rules of football, took the ball in his arms and ran with it. It has evolved a long way since, into a very technical sport, but you only need to know the basics to enjoy a match.

The BBC's Sarah Campbell, a delicately-built rugby innocent, ventured on to the battlefield at a school in west London to find out.

There she bravely interrogated the hulking Craig Dowd, a former New Zealand All Black, 6ft 3ins (1.91m) tall and 18 stones (114kg), for answers, as revealed in the videos on the right.

BEHAVIOUR OF PLAYERS

Despite the physical, even brutal, exchanges on the pitch, the aggression is largely within the laws of the game.

Violence over, let's have a drink

There is the odd scuffle and rugby had its own "Eric Cantona" moment when former Ireland international Trevor Brennan assaulted a fan and received a five-year ban.

But veteran footballer Jimmy Greaves says he is so impressed by rugby's spirit it has replaced football as his main sporting passion.

Others have detected a cultural shift from football to rugby but some believe that has been overplayed.

Key aspects to look out for in rugby include:

• Low-key celebrations - no robotic dancing or going to the crowd
• Any back-chat to the referee is punished by moving the penalty forward 10 yards
• Players rarely fake injury
• Gracious in defeat - handshakes, as in football, and "tunnels" of applause at pitch-side followed by socialising in the bar

Jeff Probyn, who played in the 1991 final loss to Australia, says rugby "teeters on the edge of violence and the self-control is part of that".

"Because it's such a physical game if you carried it on, you would end up fighting all the time and not playing, so within the individual players there's a self-control button."

There are probably more thugs in rugby than in soccer, the only difference is they're on the pitch Jeff Probyn Former England player Rugby v football: 606 debate

Shaking hands at the end draws a line under the game, he says.

"Whatever goes on on the pitch stays there. Your opposite number may have spent the match kicking you but you shake his hand."

Probyn says it would be simplistic to think football is played by oiks and rugby by gentlemen.

"It's a bit unfair on soccer, which isn't generally a violent game. There's a lot of pressure on players and the authorities have allowed players to question referees.

"There are probably more thugs in rugby than in soccer, the only difference is they're on the pitch and that's a controlled area."

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ETIQUETTE AMONG SUPPORTERS

For those people new to following the oval-shaped balls, there's a number of key questions that need to be answered, such as what do I wear, what do I drink and how should I behave?

TYPICAL RUGBY FAN OUTFIT 1: Rugby shirt is a must (up-turned collar optional) 2: Lager, preferably bitter but never white wine 3: Stonewashed jeans, not shellsuit bottoms 4: Comfortable shoes such as deck shoes - no trainers Talking rugby - quick guide Send in your pictures What do fans wear? What do fans drink?

The outfit of the typical fan (pictured right) has long been rugby shirt, jeans and comfortable shoes. Unlike at Twickenham, where Barbour jackets and green wellies are also evident, England supporters in France have followed football's lead and dressed in anything from St George outfits to funny wigs.

While purists have always favoured bitter or Guinness as their bevvie of choice, the continental spirit that has imbued the current World Cup means newcomers will not be frowned on for drinking lager. However, white wine spritzers might be a cultural shift too far.

When in the stadium, there's no segregation - rival supporters sit side-by-side. Fans are expected to respect the anthems and allow players to prepare to kick penalties without being whistled.

And club allegiances are left at home. Whether fans support Wasps, Leicester or Sale simply doesn't matter following England.

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RUGBY SONGS & JOKES

Unlike in football, the repertoire of songs for England supporters is quite small, with Swing Low, Sweet Chariot the main anthem:

SWING LOW... Full lyrics [14KB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here What do fans sing?

Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home

(Print out the full lyrics using the link, right.)

And if you really want to rub it in, here's the Afrikaans translation:

Hang laag liewe strydwa
Want jy moet my huis toe vat
Hang laag liewe strydwa
Want jy moet my huis toe vat

DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT? Why don't rugby players have mid-life crises? They stay stuck in adolescence Why do rugby players like smart women? Opposites attract How to greet a fan

The spiritual slave-song was written 150 years ago and adopted by the Twickenham faithful in 1988 when England beat Ireland.

According to rugby legend, it was first sung that day by a section of supporters from the Douai School in Woolhampton, who were inspired by three tries scored by the Nigerian-born Chris Oti in front of where they sat, in the lower east stand.

But Swing Low is not to the taste of all England supporters and some prefer Jerusalem.

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CAULIFLOWER EARS

Rugby's defining scar of battle, hematoma auris, or cauliflower ears, can afflict any sportsman that risks a head injury.

After a sharp blow, a large blood clot develops under the skin and blocks the flow of blood to the cartilage, that gives the ear its shape. If the cartilage dies, the ear shrivels and becomes lumpy.

Graham Rowntree played without a scrum hat

Some players, like former England lock forward Alex Codling, managed to keep their ears fully-formed throughout their careers.

"I've worn a scrum hat for many, many years and that's the easiest way to avoid it," he says. "Before becoming professional, at school, I wore tape. Some players are uncomfortable wearing it but I didn't mind."

He says one common remedy for team mates was the use of leeches to suck out the fluid.

More conventional treatment involves draining the blood and reconnecting the skin to the cartilage, but going back on a rugby pitch to do battle once more disrupts this recovery.

Jeff Probyn has one cauliflower ear, his right, from a blow he received from the boot of a Wasps team mate in 1986.

"I drained it three or four times and my wife stuck a pin in it but I got fed up with it and never bothered. If a player is that bothered he can get it operated on, unless he wants to wear it as a badge of honour."

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Obituary: Alan Coren

Coren was a founding member of BBC Radio 4's News Quiz Wit of Alan Coren

Widely regarded as one of the wittiest men in Britain, Alan Coren, who has died aged 69, was one of BBC Radio 4's best-loved voices, while his journalism won him a legion of fans.

Born in London in 1938, the builder's son won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, and went on to study in the US, at Yale and the University of California.

He originally planned to become an academic, but what he saw as the melodrama of life in the US led him into comic writing.

After selling a number of articles to long-running satirical magazine Punch, he was offered a full-time job there.

He made his name in the early 1970s with a column purporting to be by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

The Bulletins of Idi Amin were a huge success, although he later admitted that he was not sure he found it very funny.

Coren joined The News Quiz when it began in 1977 as a contest between the staff of Punch and its rival magazine, Private Eye.

For two decades, Coren, who went on to edit Punch from 1978 to 1987, battled with Eye counterpart Richard Ingrams to lampoon the week's topical issues.

The show's success inspired the 1990 launch of TV's Have I Got News For You.

Inspirations

In the 1990s, Coren became a regular in the revival of TV quiz Call My Bluff, while children Victoria and Giles also went on to be successful journalists in their own right.

Coren also wrote for the Times and the Daily Mail. His final Times column appeared earlier this year.

He was known for creating columns or jokes out of any situation.

"My car was nicked last week," he told one interviewer.

"Even as the police very kindly picked me up, I thought... there's a thousand words in this!

"And at four o'clock, they called to say it'd turned up two streets away. Bugger! I'd lost an article! But can I do a thing about it being taken away and brought back?"

October 20th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1967: Thousands join anti-war movement Thousands of demonstrators in Oakland, California, hold the biggest protest yet against the Vietnam War.
	1983: Grenada's prime minister 'assassinated' Eyewitnesses say the prime minister and seven of his colleagues have been killed during a hardline military coup.
	2000: British activist freed from Burma Human rights activist James Mawdsley is released from prison in Burma where he has been held since 1999.

What are the Knights Templar up to now?

Pssst. Wanna know a secret?

The Vatican's recent decision to release documents on the persecution of the Knights Templar in the 14th Century has piqued interest in the mysterious order. But what are the latter-day Templars up to?

This is a story. In the Middle Ages there was a secretive organisation called the Knights Templar. They were disbanded with many killed on the orders of the Pope because they knew the secret that Jesus had had a child with Mary Magdalene. Despite the killing of the order's members, societies carry on its legacy of hidden knowledge today.

There's a problem with this version of events, inspired by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown.

It's cobblers.

There are lots of organisations today that bear the Templar name, but for the most part they are in the business of charitable works inspired by the original order. Secret documents about Mary Magdalene are not the order of the day.

TEMPLAR HISTORY 1099: Jerusalem captured by Crusaders 1118: Order formed 1129: Endorsed by church 1307: Members arrested in France 1312: Pope dissolves order 1314: Last Grand Master burned at stake

The original Templars were founded in the 12th Century to guard pilgrims on their way along the dangerous roads that led to Jerusalem. Its members were effectively armed monk-like knights who were granted certain legal privileges and whose status was backed by the church.

But the latter-day Templars are rather like a version of the Rotary Club, with a vague religious tinge, author and broadcaster on religious history Martin Palmer says.

"It's a sort of version of the Rotarians with long cloaks and swords." The overall effect is "clubby with a slight mystical element".

The major non-Masonic, non-Catholic Templar organisation is the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani. Tracing its ancestry back to 1804, the group stresses that "it reclaims the spirit of, but does not assert any direct descent from the ancient Order". Full members are Christians, but non-Christians are welcomed as "friends and supporters".

Chivalric side

Its branch in England and Wales, the Grand Priory of Knights Templar, has about 140 members. Geoff Beck has the rather non-12th Century title of Webmaster of the Grand Priory and explains that it is far from a secret cult.

"We have taken the chivalric side of it. It is a good standard to live up to. We get one or two cranks trying to join particularly after the Da Vinci Code.

"Put it this way, the keys of some vault containing the wealth of Jerusalem have never been given to me. We don't have any secret ceremonies, our initiation ceremonies are in public church services. Any member of the public is free to walk in."

One of the Templar's legacies is their churches

Perhaps the strongest link to the 12th Century Templars is the modern version's interest in the Middle East. The Grand Priory of England and Wales sponsors Medical Aid for Iraqi Children and the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East.

The Middle Ages Templars had a reputation, used occasionally to their detriment, for being prepared to negotiate with Muslims and Jews, and the modern Templars like to see themselves in the same vein.

The other major strand of latter-day Templarism in the UK is within the Freemason fraternity. The organisation says it has 30,000 Knights Templar members among its 250,000 Freemasons in England and Wales. The Knights Templar, dating back to the 18th Century, are very much like other Freemasons but with a Christian ethic. Again, the (Dan) Brownites are going to be disappointed.

"We don't claim any descent. They originated as a means of commemorating the original Templars and of exemplifying certain Masonic principles," says John Hamill, communications director of the United Grand Lodge of England.

Again charity work is the order of the day, with an eye hospital in Jerusalem being the recipient of much of the fundraising.

The third main strand of modern Templars is the lay organisation of the Catholic Church, the Militia Templi, formed in 1979. Again, it claims no descent.

There are various other esoteric or semi-esoteric organisations that claim some kind of link, including a man in Hertford who says he is a direct descendant of a Templar.

All of them will be pleased at the Vatican's recent revelation that it plans to release documents from the 14th Century which will confirm that commonly held view that the Templars were not guilty of heresy and in fact succumbed to the predations of a heavily-indebted king of France who was able to bully the pope.

Their modern legacy in England, where the 14th Century persecution was at its lightest, includes the Inner and Middle Temple of the legal profession, once the English Templars' HQ, and their part, along with other religious organisations in the birth of Europe's banking system.

But the conspiracy theorists will continue looking for those elusive secret descendants, and a smattering of ambiguity will always fuel them.

"We have our own archive that will prove our own heritage but we don't need to put that in the public arena," Mr Beck mysteriously explains.

Elephants sense 'danger' clothes

Elephants associated the colour red with the Maasai Sensing danger

Elephants can tell whether a human is a friend or foe by their scent and colour of clothing, according to Fife experts.

St Andrews University researchers found that elephants could recognise the degree of danger posed by different groups of individuals.

The study found African elephants reacted with fear when they detected the scent of garments previously worn by men of the Maasai tribe.

Maasai men are known to demonstrate their virility by spearing elephants.

Level of risk

The elephants also responded aggressively to red clothing, which is characteristic of traditional Maasai dress.

However, the elephants showed much milder reaction to clothing previously worn by the Kamba people, agriculturalists who pose little threat.

The psychologists said they had expected to find elephants might be able to distinguish among different human groups according to the level of risk they posed.

They said: "We were not disappointed. In fact, we think that this is the first time that it has been experimentally shown that any animal can categorise a single species of potential predator into subclasses based on such subtle cues."

A young Maasai man, dressed in traditional garments

The researchers, Dr Lucy Bates and Professor Richard Byrne, first presented elephants with clean, red clothing and with red clothing that had been worn for five days by either a Maasai or a Kamba man.

They found that Maasai-scented clothing motivated elephants to travel significantly faster in the first minute after they moved away.

The elephants also travelled further in the first five minutes, and took significantly longer to relax after they stopped running away.

They then investigated whether elephants could also use garment colour as a cue to classify potential threat and found the elephants reacted with aggression towards red but not to white cloth. This suggested that they associated the colour red with the Maasai.

It may be that their abilities will turn out to equal or exceed those of our closer relatives, the monkeys and apes Professor Richard Byrne St Andrews University

The researchers believe the difference in the elephants' emotional reaction to odour versus colour might relate to the amount of risk they sense in the two situations, encouraged by a particularly keen sense of smell.

"With any scent of Maasai present, fear and escape reactions seem to dominate anything else," said Dr Bates.

Professor Byrne added: "While elephants can undoubtedly be dangerous when they come into conflict with humans, our data show that, given the opportunity, they would far rather run away, even before they encounter the humans in person.

"We see this experiment as just a start to investigating precisely how elephants 'see the world', and it may be that their abilities will turn out to equal or exceed those of our closer relatives, the monkeys and apes," he added.

The study is published online by Current Biology and will appear in the 20 November print issue.

October 19th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1989: Guildford Four released after 15 years The Guildford Four are released after the Court of Appeal quashes their convictions.
	2004: British aid worker kidnapped in Iraq A senior aid worker for Care International, Margaret Hassan, is kidnapped on her way to work in Iraq.
	1987: Shares plunge after Wall Street crash The UK stock market bottoms out after shares on Wall Street plummet following a wave of panic selling.

Farm bird numbers 'hit new low'

Birds, like the skylark, are seen as an indication of healthy habitats

The number of wild farmland bird species breeding in England is at the lowest level since records began, a key government wildlife "indicator" shows.

The RSPB called the UK government's Wild Bird Populations 2006 indicator "extremely depressing".

The data showed that these species had declined by about 60% since 1970.

The charity warned that cuts in "set-aside" payments, which take land out of food production, could hit bird numbers even harder in the future.

Sue Armstrong-Brown, the RSPB's head of countryside policy, said: "Farmland birds are the barometer by which the government measures the health of the countryside.

"We wish there was a better story to tell, but the farmland bird index reaching its lowest point is extremely depressing news," she added.

"Specialist" species, such as the skylark, which are dependent on farmland habitats for breeding and feeding, have suffered the greatest decline.

See a comparison of different bird groups

The farmland bird population index, which measures 19 species, showed a decline of more than 50% in bird numbers between 1977 and 1999, but then stabilised at this level.

The yellowhammer is one of the birds that has seen its numbers fall

"However, the indicator has fallen slightly in recent years," the document published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) stated.

"[But] it is too early to say whether this is the start of a further period of decline."

Defra suggested that the decline of species included in the index was a result of changes to agricultural processes, "including the loss of mixed farming, the switch to autumn sowing of cereals... and the loss of field margins and hedges".

Since the 1990s, farmers have received payments under the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap) to set aside some of their land and take it out of food production.

Dr Armstrong-Brown feared that EU plans to phase out these payments would have a "devastating effect", despite the introduction of other agri-environmental plans.

Wildlife strategy

"The decision to reduce set-aside to zero this year throws a spotlight on the importance of individual farmer decisions in caring for birds on their land," she said.

"We want to work with the farming community to make sure that the trend from here is upwards."

Gareth Morgan, head of the RSPB's agricultural policy team, said the UK had developed some of world's best examples of agri-environment schemes.

"More resources for these schemes are urgently required if we are to stand any chance of halting and eventually reversing the decline of some of our best-loved birds," he warned.

Other bird populations covered by the indicator are: woodland birds, which have seen a 20% decline since 1970; and seabird species, which have risen by 30% over the same period.

The indicator forms part of the UK government's sustainable development strategy, as bird populations are considered to give a good indication of the health of the nation's wildlife and habitats.

Pub News

Top stories:

S&N blasts "unwelcome move"

The UK's biggest brewer defends itself as Carlsberg and Heineken unite in bid to take over

Licensed Trade Charity attacks pubcos

Charity says pubcos' support for its fundraising is "laughable"

Pubs accused of food rip-off

Good Pub Guide editor slams rising costs

Pub quiz tax claims dismissed

Valuation Office Agency says pubs with entertainment have always paid more

Trade groups question "hazardous" drinking stats

BBPA and WSTA attack definition of terms "hazardous" and "harmful"

U-turn on vertical drinking clampdown

Possible laws slammed as "nonsensical"

more news

Other news this week:

• Call for official review of live music licensing
• Pubfolio to sell 100 pubs
• Drinks companies take action over supermarket promotions
• Mixed message on measures for Scots
• Pubs face new rules on waste
• Riverside pubs set for boost
• Support grows for lowering drinking age
• Pubs back X-Factor finalist
• Week of alcohol awareness for Scotland
• Village pub wins Calor award
• IFBB campaigns for the future
• Search for World's Biggest Liar
• Spirit salutes its "stars"
• International gold award for Hall & Woodhouse
• Hull pub takes responsibility
• A very sunny way to grow bigger flowers

more news

VISIT THE PUBLICAN ONLINE

The changing shape of the British

Obese and overweight people cost Britain nearly £7bn in 2002

We are getting fatter - and apparently it's society's fault.

A report has concluded that obesity is an inevitable consequence of our busy modern lives, which consist of convenience foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work practices.

Essentially, 21st Century Britons are spending longer sitting in front of computer and TV screens, doing little exercise and eating the wrong kinds of food.

As a result, nearly a quarter of adults are now judged to be obese and if current trends continue, 60% of men, 50% of women, and 26% of children and young people will be obese by 2050.

Waist sizes

But, just 50 years ago, the picture of Britain's health was very different. Obesity statistics did not even exist - but research suggests we were significantly thinner and more active.

According to a 2004 study, women's average waist size was 27.5in (70cm) in 1951 compared with the current 34in.

We were sold that message that labour-saving was the way to go Professor Ken Fox Obesity 'not individuals' fault'

Another suggested that 1950s women burned up three times as many calories as their modern counterparts, with many putting this down to the labour-intensive traditional female tasks of washing, ironing and walking to the shops.

These active lives partly explain why, when calorie intake was generally higher 50 years ago than today, people were slimmer.

But while the 1950s appear to many as healthy, it was in this post-war era that the seeds of today's obesity epidemic were sown, says Ken Fox, professor of exercise and health science at the University of Bristol.

Domestic work was much harder before labour-saving appliances

"It was in this period that active lifestyles began to decline," he says.

"This was a result of increasing technology and the introduction of lighter industries which started to take the place of heavy industries and agriculture. With that went hard labour."

Also, most people either cycled or walked to work.

"But then, in the 1950s, car ownership started to increase," says Professor Fox. "It became normal for households to consider having a car. This led to a decline in activity."

Easy life

Technology was also creeping into home life. Appliances such as washing machines and electric irons were making domestic tasks less labour intensive, and people were consequently burning off fewer calories.

"We were sold that message that labour-saving was the way to go," Professor Fox says.

"Around the house there was less energy expended. Also there were more attractive sedentary activities - especially when TV came along. We were seduced into taking life easier."

Mothers don't stay at home and do the shopping - people just grab what they can on the way home from the office Tam Fry National Obesity Forum A success story

Changing diets have also played a part in changing the physical shape of the average Briton.

According to the British Nutrition Foundation, rationing during the war years meant many actually had a more balanced diet than they had had before.

Then, in the post-war period, because of the lack of refrigerators and freezers, people tended to shop every day, buying fresh produce.

"In those days, we ate healthily. Now we have fast foods and convenience foods. Mothers don't stay at home and do the shopping - people just grab what they can on the way home from the office. It is very different," says Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum.

"We were consuming more calories, but burning them off quicker. Now we are eating fewer calories, but doing less exercise."

Daily clean

Life before washing machines and electric vacuum cleaners demanded much more work, says 84-year-old Margaret Severn, from Wheldrake, near York.

"I remember doing the nappies - it was hard work. I washed twice a week and it would take me half a day. I would clean the house every day, doing the floor with brushes and carpet sweepers."

As a young girl in Derbyshire, Mrs Severn would walk half-an-hour to school, and when she became a nurse and then ward sister, she took the bus and walked to work.

"We did a lot more walking then than people do now," she says.

But, what of the future? Will we remain in our sedentary ways?

The government wants children and adults to exercise more

Professor Fox believes we will always be reluctant to give up our comparatively easy lives.

"I cannot see that we will turn our backs on technology. We still have Victorian values - we reward ourselves after a working day with a sit down and a beer. I do that after a day in front of the computer.

"We have not adjusted to the notion that we have more sedentary lives."

However, Mr Fry says that although there may always be a level of obesity, it can be reduced with great effort from all parts of society.

"Every single government department in this country has to look to see what it can do to make this society in which we live a place where the family always takes responsibility for A: Keeping themselves in trim, and B: Keeping their children in trim."

Encouraging more people to participate in sport and recreation would be a major start, says Brigid Simmonds, chairman of the Central Council for Physical Recreation.

"It means helping to put in place an environment where being active is easier and more commonplace, and where taking exercise is the norm rather than the exception."

Cave clue to 'first beachcombers'

The cave at Pinnacle Point is about 50m above current sea level

The waste from shellfish dinners discarded in a South African cave is said to be the earliest evidence of humans living and thriving by the sea.

The material was found by scientists working in a sandstone opening at Pinnacle Point on the Cape.

Researchers tell the journal Nature the remains were buried in sediments that are 164,000 years old.

The exploitation of coastal resources is thought to have been key in allowing early humans to move across the globe.

"All we find is the trash that was left behind, so we have to interpret what they were doing from the remains," said team member Erin Thompson from Arizona State University (ASU), US.

"[The layer of material] is about half-a-metre deep. It's cemented up against the side of the cave. That would be tens of thousands of years of garbage," she told the BBC.

The team excavated from the cave the cooked remains of some 15 types of marine invertebrate, mainly brown mussels, as well as other animal bones.

Colourful thoughts

The researchers also found pieces of ochre, a soft stone that can be scraped to produce powders with rich pigments.

Ochres are viewed as important indicators of advanced behaviour - the use of colour for symbolism. And although the powders can have a functional use, as an ingredient in glue, the persistent choice of the brightest hues suggests some abstract activity is being undertaken, such as body painting.

Ochre specimens with scrape marks (Scale bars: 1cm)

Being able to conceptualise - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution. It was the mental activity that would eventually permit the development of sophisticated language and maths.

To unearth worked ochres at Pinnacle Point at this time, near the base of the time period when modern humans (Homo sapiens) are thought to have first evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago, is in itself a remarkable finding.

"There is some potential ochre use earlier than this but Pinnacle Point is much the best context. There is a lot of red ochre and the colour is very striking," commented Professor Chris Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum, who was not connected with the research team.

"Even if some of it might be having a functional purpose, with that amount and the fact they are selecting this particular colour must have symbolic significance, we think."

ASU palaeoanthropologist Professor Curtis Marean said: "We also found what archaeologists call 'bladelets' - little blades less than 10mm in width, about the size of your little finger.

"These could be attached to the end of a stick to form a point for a spear, or lined up like barbs on a dart - which shows they were already using complex compound tools."

Washed clean

The very earliest human species would have been restricted to a diet of plants, such as berries and tubers, and the meat of animals they could catch.

The expansion to shellfish is one of the last additions of a new class of food to the human diet before the introduction of domesticated livestock meat just a few thousand years ago, the researchers tell Nature.

"Coastlines have few resources to attract hunter-gatherers if their diets do not include shellfish and/or fish. Once they do, coastlines become attractive for settlement and movement," they write.

When did modern humans evolve sophisticated behaviour?

"It has been argued that shellfish exploitation was crucial to a potential early coastal route of modern humans out of Africa via the Red Sea coast."

One of the great challenges for scientists has been to assemble the data to back up this theory. The difficulty is that rising and falling sea levels over millennia have almost certainly washed away key evidence.

The Pinnacle Point cave, although it stands directly on the coast today some 15m above the waves, would actually have been a few km from the shoreline when its inhabitants were eating their shellfish meals.

Settlements directly on or near the beach 164,000 years ago would now be under water.

As well as ASU workers, the research team included members from Israel, Australia, UK, Greece, and South Africa itself.

One tantalising find was a whale barnacle. "It suggests they might have used whale blubber. They probably weren't hunting the whale but if it washed up on shore they probably thought it was good to eat," said Ms Thompson.

October 18th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1989: East Germany leader ousted The Communist leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, is forced to step down as leader of the country after a series of health problems.
	1963: Aristocrat is new prime minister A Scottish Earl, Lord Home, wins a bitter contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party to become Britain's new prime minister.
	1967: Soviets glimpse beneath clouds of Venus The Soviet Union sends a space probe beneath the cloud cover around Venus for the first time.

'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away

The Earth-like Gliese 581C circles a star in the constellation of Libra that is cooler than our sun. Photograph: European Southern Observatory/AP

Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.

The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and is thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth's nearest stars, a cool red dwarf called Gliese 581, 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra.

Measurements of the planet's celestial path suggest it is 1½ times the size of our home planet, and orbits close to its sun, with a year of just 13 days. The planet's orbit brings it 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. But Gliese 581 burns at only 3,000C, half the temperature of our own sun, making conditions on the planet comfortable for life, with average ground temperatures estimated at 0 to 40C. Researchers claim the planet is likely to have an atmosphere. The discovery follows a three-year search for habitable planets by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla in Chile.

"We wouldn't be surprised if there is life on this planet," said Stephane Udry, an astronomer on the project at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

Two years ago, the same team discovered a giant Neptune-sized planet orbiting Gliese 581. A closer look revealed the latest planetary discovery, along with a third, larger planet that orbits the star every 84 days. The planets have been named after their star, with the most earthlike called Gliese 581c. The team spotted the planet by searching the "habitable zone".

Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night

Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night

Hallowe'en & Bonfire Night Focus

Hallowe'en is becoming big business and pubs shouldn't be afraid to take advantage

Hallowe'en Focus: Autumn essentials

A selection of products to help Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night go with a bang

Hallowe'en Focus: Ideas for food

For Hallowe'en or Bonfire Night it's easy to provide an imaginative menu

Hallowe'en Focus: Pumpkin carving

Follow these tips to create a lantern of terrible beauty. Then enter it into our carving competition, run in association with Wychwood Brewery

more features

Britain to claim more than 1m sq km of Antarctica

Britain is planning to claim vast areas of seabed in Antarctica. Photograph: Corbis

The United Kingdom is planning to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of the remote seabed off Antarctica, the Guardian has learned. The submission to the United Nations covers more than 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) of seabed, and is likely to signal a quickening of the race for territory around the south pole in the world's least explored continent.

The claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, to which the UK is a signatory. It specifically states that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent. The treaty was drawn up to prevent territorial disputes.

The Foreign Office, however, has told the Guardian that data is being gathered and processed for a submission to the UN which could extend British oil, gas and mineral exploitation rights up to 350 miles offshore into the Southern Ocean.

Much of the seabed there is at such a depth that extraction of gas, oil or minerals is not yet technically feasible, but the claim may still anger neighbouring South American countries who believe they have more entitlement to the potentially valuable territory.

The Antarctic submission reflects the UK's efforts to secure resources for the future as oil and natural gas reserves dwindle over the coming decades.

Last month the Guardian revealed the UK is working on three other sub-sea claims in the Atlantic: around South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, surrounding Ascension Island and in the Hatton/Rockall basin, west of Scotland. Britain has already lodged a joint claim at the UN - with France, Ireland and Spain - for a large area of seabed in the Bay of Biscay.

The Foreign Office confirmed yesterday that the UK was working to extend sovereign territory into new areas. "There are five claims in total that the UK is hoping to put forward," a statement said. "They are in the Bay of Biscay, around Ascension, off the British Antarctic Territory, around the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and in the Hatton/Rockall basin.

"We believe these five meet the geological conditions required. The claims are based on article 76 of the UN convention of the law of the sea."

Karen Sack, head of oceans for Greenpeace International, said little was known about the environmental impact on marine life of drilling and exploration at great depths. "What we don't know is what kind of impact these [prospecting] activities are having right now. We have more maps of the moon than we do of the deep sea. Whenever there's deep-sea fishing there's always new species identified. We would hope [states] would leave the [Antarctic] wilderness as it is."

The British Antarctic Territory, first claimed in 1908, forms a triangular wedge, with its apex at the south pole. It covers 666,000 sq miles and has two permanently-manned scientific stations. It is due to celebrate its centenary next year by issuing its first ever legal tender coin.

A British submersible recently dived to depths of more than two miles in the waters around the edge of the continental shelf. The seas are swarming with krill, shrimp-like crustaceans, brittle stars - which are similar to starfish - and sea cucumbers.

International interest in exploiting the new frontier on the oceans' floors comes as global warming is opening up previously frozen seas at the icecaps and the world's major economies are competing for fresh energy sources. During the summer Russia was subject to criticism for making claims beneath the Arctic Ocean, while France registered a claim to thousands of square miles around New Caledonia, in the Pacific.

The UK claim on Antarctica will be its most controversial because it depends on proximity to the British Antarctic Territory which overlaps rival land claims by Chile and Argentina. The environmental protocol to the Antarctic treaty, agreed in 1991, currently prohibits all mineral related activity, other than for scientific research.

Ministers will have to decide under what terms the application to the UN would be made. One possibility might be for the UK government to lodge a legal claim with the UN's commission on the limits of the continental shelf and effectively park it for consideration at a future date. The UN process allows states to extend their territorial rights over the ocean floor on an adjacent continental shelf up to 350 miles from shore. These applications may be limited by rival claims from neighbouring states. Submitting countries must demonstrate, with detailed geological and depth soundings, precisely the outer limits of the shelf.

Not that naughty but still nice

Cake maker Mr Kipling's at it, and so is a growing section of the food industry.

Mushrooms have a protein which tastes just like oil

Transforming the constitution of food, or "reformulating" as it is known, is increasingly seen as a key plank in the campaign against obesity. If we can't give up the cakes, the cakes will have to change, the thinking goes.

Industry is starting to move relatively quickly on this front: keen to respond to changing consumer demands for "healthier" products and to protect itself from allegations of fuelling fatness.

At one end of the spectrum, companies are quite simply cutting the amount of unhealthy saturated fats in their food: Walker's Crisps for instance was lauded for starting to cook its crisps in sunseed oil instead of standard cooking fat, slashing the saturated content.

But at the other end, researchers are formulating products which the body processes in quite different ways, taking longer to digest and so keeping you full for longer.

Plus and minus

Taking fat or sugar out of food is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds.

The product may simply not sit together properly - it is hard for instance to make ice cream bind without sugar, or pastry and chocolate without certain quantities of fat.

REFORMULATED PRODUCTS INCLUDE: Cakes Chips Butter Crisps Soft drinks Cheeses Obesity 'not individuals' fault'

And rather than making it healthy, you could actually make it positively dangerous, the Food Standards Agency warns.

Taking too much saturated fat out of meat pies for example can affect the way the water reacts with the meat, and increase the risk of food poisoning. The same is true of cake mixture.

Take too much fat out of cheese and it won't do the things that consumers like it to do, such as bubble, melt and go brown.

Worst of all, it may end up not tasting like cheese, and researchers are agreed that if these products are to work, and genuinely reduce the nation's waistlines, they must be virtually indistinguishable from that which they are supposed to emulate.

Tastes like butter

Premier Foods, which makes Mr Kipling new reduced fat cakes, has its own laboratory working out the science behind reformatting foods.

But the public sector is also heavily involved. The Formulation Engineering Research Centre at the University of Birmingham has been looking at how you replicate the taste and texture of fats.

One particularly promising avenue is the mushroom. It produces hydrophobins, air cells which protect the fungus from water, but which appear to have the same material properties as oil. And yet they have no calories.

Because there are no legal constraints around using mushroom extract in food - it is already widely available - this is an ingredient which could be "applied across the whole board very soon", said Professor Ian Norton.

"It would be suited to anything that is fabricated - mayonnaises, sauces, ice-creams, anything which has a fat content - the texture and taste would be the same and the calorie content dramatically reduced."

Little by little

But one of the long recognised problems of low-fat foods is how they are used: the fewer the calories, the more you can eat, the mantra goes for some. Others add so much sugar that the calorie content is ultimately not far off that which they were meant to replace.

Scientists are therefore looking into creating foods that actually change the way the stomach empties.

Adding components used in some acid reflux remedies is one option, as these appear to provide a barrier which slows the rate of digestion down.

But there may be limits to how much the consumer will stomach.

Alongside the increasing demand for healthier options is a renewed emphasis on the "natural". This is thought to explain a rise in butter sales in recent years over those of margarine, seen by many as a "chemical" product.

Reformulated food is in any case not the only answer to Britain's obesity woes.

"There's also a very important psychological issue too," says Professor Norton.

"Changing the food is only one part of it, you've got to change the whole range of attitudes towards food too."

October 17th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1989: Earthquake hits San Francisco A powerful earthquake rocks San Francisco killing nine people and injuring hundreds.
	2000: Four dead in Hatfield rail crash Four people are killed when a high speed passenger train derails in Hatfield, just north of London.
	1980: Pope welcomes Queen to the Vatican The Queen makes the first state visit to the Vatican by a British monarch and is received by the Pope.

Pros and cons of DIY dentistry

Periodontitis sufferers have teeth which would be easier to pull

Problems with getting an NHS dentist are leading some people to pull their own teeth out. If that's not enough to make you wince, then the potential pitfalls will be.

It's the most gruesome image accompanying the allegations that there's a crisis in dentistry provision in the UK.

There are people out there pulling their own teeth out with pliers.

Mark Cowley is a furniture restorer from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. After travelling long distances to get temporary procedures done, and having suffered the cracking of his tooth, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

He picked up a pair of mole grips, plier-like tools, and pulled the offending tooth out.

It is a very foolish thing to do Prof Liz Kay On using household glue on crowns

"I just got a bit desperate and this tooth was waggling. There's no pain in it now."

His friends and family do "get a bit squeamish" when they hear about his DIY dentistry. But what do the experts advise about tackling your own gnashers?

Professor Liz Kay, dean of the Peninsula Dental School in Plymouth, stresses that anybody who is able to pull out their own teeth probably has extremely advanced periodontitis, a collection of diseases that cause the loss of the bone supporting the teeth.

"Normally a person would just not be able to move their own teeth."

Tooth fragments

Robert Jagger, senior lecturer in restorative dentistry at Bristol Dental School, says cases of people with periodontitis removing their own teeth are not unusual.

"It can sound absolutely horrendous, but in the case of periodontitis, one of the things is that they become very, very loose. It has been reported very frequently over the years. You could get some pain but I don't know if there's a greater risk of infection [than in a dentist's surgery]."

Of course, if you mess it up, leave a fragment of a broken tooth remaining, and you risk abscess and infection. And, as Prof Kay, points out, the complex anatomy of the head means one doesn't want to be messing around in there for fear of doing something exceedingly bad.

However, while pulling out a waggly tooth is one thing, the reports of people who have used powerful household glue to put a crown back in place are not good.

It's like making custard - as long as you read the instructions you are fine Rose Matthews Dental patient

"It is a very foolish thing to do," Prof Kay suggests. "If you superglue it and there's any problem you are going to lose the tooth."

And if you've done a procedure in a permanent fashion and put your crown or filling in the wrong place, you are not likely to notice until it's too late to get help.

"There are more insidious dangers. Things may appear to be OK but the filling is still leaking," Mr Jagger adds.

At the other end of the DIY spectrum are the dental first aid kits, provided mainly for tourists and recognised as an option for emergencies by dentists, which contain the tools to deal with a dislodged filling or crown until you get back to civilisation.

A kit might contain zinc oxide powder and eugenol, effectively clove oil. Mix it together and you can improvise glue for a crown, or a filling. It can hold for a few days at least with the dentist removing the material and doing a proper job.

As a "very, very temporary measure" such kits are "useful" for people on holiday, says Prof Liz Kay.

'Obey the law'

Jenny Lees, managing director of Dentanurse, says her firm has doubled the sale of kits over the last five years, and suggests they are being used domestically as people cope with long waits for NHS dentists.

Sticking a crown back in place is safe and simple as long as people read the instructions. But they should do it themselves.

"Legally you shouldn't get someone else to do it. If someone else does it for you they are breaking the law by practising dentistry."

"It's like making custard, as long as you read the instructions you are fine," she says.

Rose Matthews, 24, found herself left in the lurch and needing the kits when her dentist stopped a procedure midway and told her it could not be completed on the NHS. Being unable to afford the fee, she endured an 18-month wait for NHS treatment. The hole in her drilled-out tooth was tackled using a kit once a month.

"It was quite difficult and quite painful and because I couldn't do it properly the walls of the tooth were starting to break away."

But despite the less than ideal solution, it was a lot better than plan A.

"Before I discovered the kits I was using chewing gum."

Desperate fans look to World Cup lottery for extra tickets as prices soar to £8,500

Pressure was mounting on the Rugby World Cup organisers last night to release the last remaining tickets to the final.

England fans will discover this afternoon if they are among the lucky few who succeeded in the ballot for one of the 1,000 seats allocated to the Rugby Football Union after England’s semi-final victory over France. But with demand hugely outstripping supply, and tickets selling unofficially on the internet for more than £4,000 each, the focus will today turn to the World Cup organising committee.

Last night, the committee was still assessing how many tickets had been returned by rugby unions and media representatives from countries eliminated from the competition. It is expected to make an announcement today on the sale of these seats, which could number several hundred.

Their expected release to fans through the RWC’s official site later this week will undoubtedly spark an international battle between English and South African supporters.

The 2,000 semi-final tickets the committee put up on its site last week were sold in 25 minutes, with the site receiving 3 million hits. This record is likely to be broken for the Saturday’s final. Hitwise, the web traffic monitors, said that following the semi-final victory internet searches for rugby exceeded football for the first time in two years.

Paul Vaughan, the RFU’s director of business operations, said that although the ticket allocation for the final was the same as for 2003, demand was far higher. “With France being so much more accessible to fans than Australia, the demand for tickets this time around has been phenomenal,” he said.

Some of the 1,000 tickets have gone to corporate partners and people working in rugby union. Others will be issued in a ballot of England Rugby Supporters’ Club members, with the winners to be informed this afternoon.

While the RFU said that it was still hopeful of receiving some extra tickets later this week, thousands of fans have already resorted to paying enormous prices for unofficially-traded seats. One package, which includes lunch with Martin Johnson, the wining England captain from 2003, was priced online at £8,500.

Travel options are also extremely limited. Two minutes after the final whistle last Saturday, London Executive Aviation, the UK’s largest private jet charter operator, received its first inquiry for bookings flights to Paris for the final. There have been hundreds of calls since, with five private jets now booked, each costing up to £19,200 each or about £1,500 per person.

One man who does not have to battle for a ticket is Gordon Brown. Downing Street confirmed that the Prime Minister would attend the Stade de France as a guest of the RFU. Mr Brown, who was a keen player until an on-pitch accident cost him the sight in one eye, has said that he has been happy to cheer for England since Scotland were eliminated in the quarter-finals.

ITV is set to pocket millions of pounds in advertising fees for slots during the final, which is expected to attract an audience of more than 15 million. Companies could be charged as much as £10,000 a second to advertise during the game – equivalent to roughly £300,000 for a typical advert and £1.8 million for a three-minute break. ITV paid £40 million for exclusive broadcast rights to the 2003 and the 2007 tournaments and has been blessed with England’s performance in both.

— Join me on my quest to reach final

It is the question that every newly minted England rugby fan must have begun asking at 10pm on Saturday (Will Pavia writes). How do I get a ticket for the World Cup Final in Paris?

The chances of England reaching another World Cup final, in any sport, in this lifetime, seem slim. In years to come as we watch our side beaten by a succession of South American sides, we will look back on this period as a brief golden era when English rugby players were world-beaters, and reached the final in a tournament that was located conveniently close to London. If we do not go to this match, our grandchildren will ask why not.

I have now begun my quest to find a ticket and a way to the Stade de France. It will not be easy. Acquaintances who are proper rugby fans tell me that they obtained their tickets via a ballot that took place some time in the period before England reached the final, a period in which their motives for wanting a World Cup final ticket seem not a little mysterious.

On eBay they are going for at least £1,000 and up to £4,000, which is a price beyond my meagre budget. Still, it is only the beginning of the week. A lot can happen before Saturday. A rugby fan would probably say it was all to play for, so long as I have the belief and am ready to battle for every metaphorical loose ball. Still, any advice would be appreciated. Please e-mail me, will.pavia@thetimes.co.uk, with your suggestions which I will share in the spirit of helping all the other new rugby fans, and by Saturday we will toast victory in Paris.

Rugby ... for beginners (Australians take note)

Rugby union is played by two teams of 15 men. The hulking big brutes with cauliflower ears are called forwards (No1-No8); the pretty boys who try to avoid getting their shorts muddy are called backs (No9-No15).

Jonny - everyone knows Jonny - plays in a position called “fly half” (No10). He is the fulcrum of the team. The fly half does not have to do all the kicking, but Jonny usually does.

The winners are the team who score more points. Touch the ball down behind the line at your opponents' end of the pitch and you score a “try” (worth five points). That enables you to try to add a further two points with a conversion kick from a point in line with where the try was scored. So it is much easier to get the conversion if the ball is touched down under the posts

You score three points with penalty goals (the referee will raise his hand after an offence and give the innocent team a kick at goal) or with dropped goals (when you kick the ball between the posts on the half-volley).

Players can gain territory by running with the ball in their hands, passing it backwards to their team-mates or kicking it forwards. If the ball goes forwards and has not been kicked (ie, when it is passed forwards or “knocked on” in a fumble), the other team are given a scrum. This is when the eight forwards on each side hug each other and use their strength to try to push their rivals off the ball.

When you kick the ball off the side of the pitch, the opposition throw it back in a “lineout”, when the forwards stand side by side and jump to catch it. You only gain territory if you kick the ball out from within 22 metres of your own line, otherwise the ball has to bounce before going out.

When a player is tackled, he must release the ball immediately or be penalised. To regain possession, his team-mates bundle over the top of him to create a “ruck”.

If a player is badly behaved he can be sent to the “sin-bin” (yellow card) by the referee for ten minutes, or even be sent off for good (red card).

If in doubt, cheer for the team wearing white.

BBC online to go free over wi-fi

PC users will be able download shows in wi-fi hotspots

The BBC's online services will be made available free of charge at thousands of wi-fi hotspots around the UK.

The corporation has agreed a deal with wi-fi firm The Cloud, which operates 7,500 hotspots around the country.

The news website, programme sites and downloads of TV shows via the iPlayer can be accessed freely.

The BBC has also confirmed that users of Apple Mac and Linux machines will be able to use its TV catch-up service from the end of the year.

The broadcaster has signed a deal with Adobe to provide Flash video for the whole of the BBC's video services, including a streaming version of its iPlayer.

Currently only Windows XP users can use iPlayer, downloading programmes on to their PC and keeping them for up to 30 days.

BBC ambition

The deal with The Cloud was about widening the reach of BBC content, said Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of Future Media and Technology.

It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day Ashley Highfield on a download service for Mac and Linux users

Any wi-fi enabled device will be able to surf the BBC's website in one of The Cloud's hotspots without paying a log-in or subscription fee. Users wanting to download a BBC programme - or stream a video - will have to use a laptop initially.

But the BBC said the ambition was to let users download programmes over wi-fi on to portable devices, such as the Sony PSP and Nokia 95.

Mr Highfield said: "This is the first of what I hope will be a number of relationships with wi-fi operators.

"For us the killer is - there is no subscription required. You will be able to consume any of the content on bbc.co.uk; watch an episode of Strictly Come Dancing with your coffee, or if you are pressed for time, download it and watch it later."

At the end of the year users of Windows, Mac or Linux machines will be able to watch streamed versions of their favourite TV programmes inside a web browser, as well as share the video with friends and embed programmes on their own websites, sites such as Facebook and blogs.

Driving forces

Flash is one of the driving forces of online video, with millions of programmes and clips using the format every day to deliver content over the web.

Wi-fi has become increasingly popular

"This is a major step into the Web 2.0 world," Mr Highfield.

Erik Huggers, the BBC's Future Media and Technology Group controller, said the corporation had partnered with Adobe because it was "leading the charge in making sure content is available across a variety of platforms".

But Mr Highfield said the BBC had not committed to offering the iPlayer to Mac and Linux users who want to download and keep content on their machines for a limited period.

He said: "We need to get the streaming service up and look at the ratio of consumption between the services and then we need to look long and hard at whether we build a download service for Mac and Linux

"It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day."

Regular users

He added: "We are not ruling it out. But we are not committing to it at this stage."

More than 250,000 people are using the iPlayer regularly each week, said Mr Highfield. The corporation is hoping to have more than 500,000 regular users by April 2008.

The BBC has said it hopes to offer high definition (HD) downloads in the not too distant future.

"With spectrum capacity severely limited on Freeview at least until 2012 we believe quite strongly that IP (internet protocol) is a great route to getting HD out to wider audience."

Mr Highfield said the corporation had already started talking to internet service providers (ISPs) about any potential impact of offering HD video content. Earlier this year ISPs expressed concern that the BBC's plans for the iPlayer could hit bandwidth.

Mr Highfield said the BBC was looking into scheduling HD downloads in the night when demands on the net were at their lowest.

He added: "We do not believe there will be an impact on the infrastructure of the UK internet. It is more than capable of dealing with this level of demand."

Town prepares for digital switch

The UK should be fully converted to digital TV by 2012

The town of Whitehaven in Cumbria is gearing up to spearhead the digital era as it becomes the first place in the UK to lose the analogue TV signal.

BBC Two will be first to go in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The remaining analogue channels will be switched off on 14 November.

Around 25,000 households will then need Freeview, satellite, cable or broadband in order to watch television.

Analogue TV will be switched off in the rest of the UK by the end of 2012.

About 84% of British households have already installed digital equipment, according to media watchdog Ofcom.

'Visual evidence'

The people of Whitehaven, and the surrounding borough of Copeland, have been the subject of a major campaign in recent months to make sure they are clear about what equipment they will need.

HOW SWITCHOVER WILL WORK 17 October - Whitehaven BBC Two's analogue signal switched off First group of Freeview channels become available (all BBC channels) 14 November - Whitehaven Remaining analogue channels switched off Every home will be able to receive at least 18 Freeview channels 2008-2012 - Rest of UK Analogue signal turned off one transmitter at a time Q&A: Digital switchover

Local resident David Day, 61, who has bought a new television, described the publicity surrounding the event as immense.

"We've been very much aware through the local press that this was going to come to us," he told the BBC News website.

"There have been posters and billboards everywhere, so there's a lot of visual evidence that something is happening.

"There's been swarms of Sky people selling their special packages," he said.

But not everyone has been as organised as Mr Day.

A report published in July showed that, with just 100 days to go, 6,000 households in Whitehaven had not upgraded their television equipment.

The research, by Digital UK, also showed that about 2,000 households in the west Cumbrian town intended to wait until the 17 October deadline before making the switch.

On Monday, the firm - which is overseeing the move to digital TV - said that "probably nine out of 10 households" in Whitehaven were now ready.

"That does leave around 10% of households who have yet to do anything, although we are told the stores have been busy this weekend," said spokesman Jon Steele.

It's actually going to give Whitehaven a name now and I think people are quite happy that it will be the first for something Craig Carruthers, manager of local electrical store

"The information is there in people's heads. People understand what they need to do and the next stage is for them to go and do it."

'Cautious anticipation'

Craig Carruthers has worked at the local branch of Currys.Digital electrical store for 13 years. He said he had not experienced such a rush outside the Christmas period.

"We have been seeing an unprecedented amount of sales of set-top boxes and the hard disc recorders. People are aware that now they have to do something rather than be left with a blank TV screen," he said.

The analogue signal for BBC Two is being switched off

As a resident, he is proud that his home town has been chosen to test the switchover.

"It's actually going to give Whitehaven a name now and I think people are quite happy that it will be the first for something rather than it going to London or places like that. It's quite an important time for us," he added.

With the switchover hour approaching, local councillor Tim Knowles said residents were waiting for it with "cautious anticipation".

"I think people are looking forward to what the future might bring in terms of digital access but I think a lot of the older generation are rather concerned about what the next few weeks might bring," he said.

Across the UK, new equipment, installation and support will be given to people over 75, those with significant disabilities and the blind.

The assistance will cost £40, or will be free for eligible people who are also on pension credit, job seeker's allowance or income support.

And in Whitehaven, Age Concern has set up an information centre to help older residents.

However, Mr Knowles thought most people would leave it to the last minute.

"People will not realise that such a substantial change is coming until it actually happens and I think we'll find out on the day quite what the extent of that is," he said

October 16th

ON THIS DAY NEWS FROM THE BBC ARCHIVES
	1996: Handguns to be banned in the UK The British Government announces plans to outlaw almost all handguns following Dunblane massacre in March.
	1987: Hurricane winds batter southern England Southern Britain begins a massive clear-up operation after the worst night of storms in living memory.
	1974: Maze prison goes up in flames Three prison staff are in hospital and dozens of prisoners injured after rioting and fires at the Long Kesh Maze prison.

Kew: Razed, reborn and rejuvenated

Kew lost 700 mature trees - some very old and rare - in one night

The human cost of the Great Storm of 1987 was enormous, both in terms of lives and livelihoods.

But the environmental impact was also terrible and there was no bigger victim than the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in Surrey.

The morning after the hurricane Ian Beyer, deputy director of Kew, said it was the worst day in its entire history.

He and many others feared it would take a century for the gardens to recover.

How then can Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at Kew, now say the storm was "one of the best things that ever happened"?

Utter devastation

On one cataclysmic night, Kew lost a third of its mature trees - about 700 in all.

Many were at least 200 years old and more than 100ft tall.

Countless smaller shrubs were also destroyed and about 300 more big trees had to be pulled down by heartbroken staff because they were unsafe.

Kew's "country garden", Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, suffered even more. There at least 15,000 trees were reduced to kindling.

In 1987, the arboretum was old and decrepit and it needed regeneration and rejuvenation. The storm did that Tony Kirkham Arboretum manager at Kew In Pictures: Carnage at Kew

Tony remembers that day vividly: "When I got here, I went for a walk but I got lost. There were so many trees down that I couldn't get my bearings."

Given this picture of devastation, it is hard to imagine how Tony could even find any sort of silver lining, let alone be positively upbeat.

"It was all doom and gloom at the time, but now we can see how much we've benefited," he says.

'Big holes'

The storm wiped the slate clean and in Tony's eyes provided a great opportunity.

Lessons could be learned, plans could be redrawn and bold decisions taken.

For the first few weeks, the shell-shocked team at Kew audited everything to see what they had lost and what was left.

"We took a good look at our strengths and weaknesses in terms of species and found there were big holes," Tony says.

"Geographically too, a lot of countries were missing, places like South Korea, Taiwan - places hardly anyone goes collecting."

Tony Kirkham says the storm was hugely beneficial to Kew

Since then Tony and his colleagues have undertaken numerous expeditions, travelling all over the world to collect new specimens.

His favourite tree - and proudest collector's item - is the rare Chinese tulip which takes pride of place in the new scheme.

"We now have a very young arboretum," he says.

"In 1987, the arboretum was old and decrepit and it needed regeneration and rejuvenation. The storm did that."

Root management

Thanks to the storm, an unprecedented variety of roots were above ground and available to study.

Looking at them, it was clear that lack of understanding had greatly increased the vulnerability of the trees.

"We were amazed to find how shallow the roots were - even the biggest trees in Kew have roots no deeper than one metre. Instead, they reach a long way sideways," Tony says.

"Realising that made us see how we could plant them better to help them establish."

It also became clear that many of the trees had been suffering because their roots were badly compacted - hardly surprising with 1.5million visitors walking over them every year.

"There was one tree that had been looking sickly before the storm. That night it was lifted clear out of the ground and dropped back down again," Tony says.

"A year later it was the picture of health, much better than before. That was because it had been badly compacted and the storm freed it.

Walking through the gardens is like walking through a story book Tony Kirkham

"From that one tree we found a problem that affected many more and set about changing it."

Root management is now a major part of the arboretum's work.

Every tree has a circle of bark chippings and mulch around it, which helps to recreate a natural forest floor.

Staff also encourage fungi and other micro-organisms which turn over the soil, keep water draining efficiently and reduce compaction.

"We used to be reactive in the way we managed trees. The storm made us proactive," Tony says.

"We're also more cautious. We distribute specimens better in other gardens around the country so if it happens again we've got something to fall back on."

'Living things'

Tony adores trees. He has worked at Kew for almost 30 years and is clearly a man in the right job.

"Trees are living things and they're always changing. Each one has a different story to tell.

"Walking through the gardens is like walking through a story book."

Kew's staff had to rip out trees that were unstable and unsafe

The oldest part of the gardens, near the main gate, was one of the areas worst hit and today, there are no old trees there.

Tony thinks that's OK.

"An arboretum should be like a family. There should be generations of trees, young and old and the hurricane helped create that.

"You see, in 1987 there were a lot of trees that were probably due to come out. They were getting to the end of their life.

"But it's a terrible thing to take out a tree - you're ending a life. The hurricane did that for us, in one night."

Kew's main thoroughfare, the Broad Walk, has also been transformed since 1987.

When it was first planted in 1846, the route was lined with huge cedars, but these choked to death in the pollution of 19th Century London and were replaced by an avenue of tulip trees.

These in turn were mown down by the Great Storm, giving Tony the chance to return the Broad Walk to how the original designer wanted.

"After the hurricane a lot of people were forced into rebuilding very quickly. They often replaced like with like without thinking whether it was really the best thing.

"We didn't do that, we took our time."

Today, a beautiful wood carving in Kew's visitor centre pays testament to the storm's might. It is made up of 1,000 individual pieces of wood - all from trees lost.

Tony says: "Having said all that about how positive the storm was, it would be heartbreaking if it happened again because these trees are like my children."

Sugababes achieve UK chart double

The Sugababes have scored a total of six number one singles

Female trio the Sugababes have claimed the number one spots on both the singles and album charts in the UK.

The group's new album Change debuted at the top of the chart, while single About You Now remained at number one for a third successive week.

The Hoosiers' Goodbye Mr A entered at five, while Big Brother twins Sam and Amanda went in at 26 with their cover of Aqua's Barbie Girl.

Elvis Presley scored further reissue success with Big Hunk O'Love at 12.

Outsold

The song is the 10th to be re-released to mark 30 years since the music legend's death, but none of them have made the top 10.

UK TOP FIVE SINGLES 1 About You Now - Sugababes 2 Let Me Think About It - Ida Corr vs Fedde Le Grand 3 Valerie - Mark Ronson feat Amy Winehouse 4 No U Hang Up - Shayne Ward 5 Goodbye Mr A - Hoosiers (pictured) Source: Official UK Charts Company

Other entries which climbed the singles rundown this week include Phil Collins' In The Air Tonight, Mika's Happy Ending and Freemasons track Uninvited, now at 21.

Roisin Murphy and Biffy Clyro have landed new entries inside the top 30.

The Sugababes outsold a compilation from Eric Clapton to make number one in the album chart.

The band, whose line-up has changed during their seven-year career, have only scored one chart-topping collection previously, with 2005's Taller In More Ways.

Other artists to debut with new albums this week include Jack Penate with Matinee at number seven, and Running Free by UB40 frontman Ali Campbell at nine.