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Five patients on a unit for people with severe underlying health conditions at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, were diagnosed with swine flu that is resistant to the drug. Three appear to have acquired the infection in hospital, the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) said. Two of the five have recovered and have been discharged from hospital, one is in critical care and two are being treated on the ward. The service said the resistant strain does not appear to be more severe than the swine flu virus circulating since the spring. All patients on the...

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out. She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand. Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her. As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort. Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice. Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally....

He died a hero, doing the job he loved. PC Bill Barker became the tragic face of the 'Biblical' floods yesterday after the heaviest 24-hour downpour in British history. Without regard for his own safety, the police motorcyclist stood in pitch darkness at 4.40am desperately trying to direct traffic away from a stone bridge above a perilously swollen river. Then the bridge collapsed and the torrent surged through - sweeping him away to a Cumbrian beach where his body was found yesterday afternoon. His assistant chief constable, Jerry Graham, said: 'We must pay tribute to the emergency services who run...

A UKIP petition demanding a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU has been launched in the biggest-ever call to arms on the right to have a say over Europe. People will be given the chance to sign up to the petition online, by post or in the street at UKIP stalls run by party supporters. UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said: "This is a real chance for the people of Great Britain to show whoever forms the next Government that they are sick of being lied to and that they want a say over our continuing membership of the European...

November 20, 2009 Public faces of Richard Dawkins' Atheism Campaign Were ... Devout Christian Children [Pics in URL] Exclusive: Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent The two children chosen to front Richard Dawkins’ latest assault on God could not look more free of the misery with which he associates religious baggage. With the slogan “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself”, the two children, their hair flying and with broad grins, seem to be the perfect advertisement for the new atheism being promoted by Professor Dawkins and the British Humanist Association. Except that they are about as...

November 21, 2009 Rabbi Baruch Chalomish: I Snorted Cocaine To Forget Wife's Death Russell Jenkins Rabbi Baruch Chalomish [Pic in URL] A rabbi who was arrested after a five-day binge of cocaine and prostitutes said that he took drugs to alleviate the loneliness he felt after his wife died. Baruch Chalomish, 55, told a court that he began snorting the drug because he felt lonely after his wife died, insisting: “I wanted to stop feeling depressed, to feel normal.” The Israeli-born father of three, who was once an eminent Jewish academic, has in recent years built a £7 million fortune...

Britain was embroiled in a diplomatic row today after the Royal Navy was accused of using a Spanish flag as a machine-gun target. Giles Paxman, the UK's new ambassador in Madrid, was forced to apologise after sailors fired at a red-and-yellow flag affixed to a buoy while patrolling off Gibraltar.

More than 50 oil tankers are anchored off Britain - pieces in a game in which the only winners are market speculators. The losers are the millions of British motorists paying over the odds for their petrol and diesel. After yesterday's report in the Daily Mail on how several so-called 'oil shark' tankers were moored near the Devon coast, dozens more vessels were revealed to be loitering off-shore. Some are carrying aircraft fuel or fuel for homes. Others are empty, waiting to be restocked before setting off around the globe. But according to industry experts, a significant number are 'oil...

Amateur fossil hunters Jamie and Jonathan Hiscocks were looking for dinosaur remains in East Sussex, UK, when they instead found tiny spider webs trapped inside a piece of ancient amber. Oxford University paleobiologist Martin Brasier inspected the amber, which was assigned an age of over 100 million years. He concluded that spiders back then were able to spin webs just like today’s garden spiders.The amber-encased webbing formed concentric circles like those that contemporary orb-weaver spiders manufacture. Also evident were “little sticky droplets along the web threads to trap prey,� Brasier told the Daily Mail. He added, “You can match the...

The Arts Council has given a epileptic dancer £14,000 to stop taking her medication and have a seizure on stage. Rita Marcalo’s 24-hour performance, involving strobe lights and sleep deprivation, is billed as a study of the “conceptual and physical interfaces between dance, movement and epilepsy”. Epilepsy charities said that the event turned a much misunderstood condition into a freak show and warned of the potentially severe dangers of coming off epilepsy drugs. Marcalo said that she wanted to raise awareness of epilepsy as “an invisible disability” and would use next month’s adults-only show at Bradford Playhouse to explore “my...

The statistics showing when accident and emergency departments discharge or admit patients should worry everyone. What they clearly illustrate is the extent to which healthcare professional’s clinical decision making is tied into the 4 hour A&E target looming over them. This can lead to the complete and utter distortion of clinical care decisions. Often, diagnosis and decision making in medicine is a waiting game. You order tests, you record vital signs. For some patients the decision to be kept in or sent home might be the same regardless of when you were seen. But the huge spike in decision making...

London, England (CNN) -- A British man who strangled his wife in his sleep while dreaming that she was an intruder walked free from court Friday after the case against him was withdrawn, prosecutors said. The UK's Crown Prosecution Service requested that the case against Brian Thomas, who killed wife Christine while they were on vacation in 2008, be dropped due to a "unique set of circumstances."

A muslim who threatened to kill his wife and cut out her tongue after she blocked an arranged marriage for their daughter has been banned from seeing his family. In the first prosecution of its kind, Aurang Zeb has been convicted of breaching a Forced Marriage Protection Order taken out to stop him taking Rozina Akhtar out of Britain to marry. But despite his chilling threats he escaped imprisonment and was given community service. Last night campaigners condemned the sentence, saying it sent out the wrong message. 'There's clear evidence that this man threatened to kill his wife, so how...

A 13-year-old schoolgirl was gang-raped at knifepoint by three teenage boys who filmed the attack on a mobile phone, a jury heard today. The girl, who had walked out of school after being bullied, was led to the eighth floor of a block of flats for the ordeal which was filmed by her 14 and 15-year-old attackers, it is claimed. The alleged attack on an estate in Peckham, South-East London, on February 24 this year, was interrupted by teachers who came to the scene after a friend raised the alarm at school, Inner London Crown Court heard. The four-minute video...

A pilot is being hailed a hero after performing a landing in shark-infested waters and saving a critically-ill woman and four others on board his plane. Dominic James' dramatic landing took place in the waters off Norfolk Island, 1,000 miles north-east of Sydney in the Pacific Ocean. It is being likened to the 'Miracle of the Hudson' when Captain Chesley Sullenberger carried out an emergency ditching of his jet on New York's Hudson River earlier this year. But the landing of the Westwind jet performed by Dominic was in the dark and into a rough sea prowled by man-eating sharks....

Creationists are ‘liars' (?): Geologist Donald Prothero doesn’t like the fact that we don’t agree with his ideas on evolution. I love the attitude some evolutionists have toward professional, scientific debate. Because creationist scientists do not agree with their biased, subjective and unsubstantiated ideas they spit the dummy and call us liars. The latest tirade from geologist Donald Prothero is in an opinion piece in NewScientist entitled ‘Evolution: What missing link?’1 I like that title. His article was picked up by the Telegraph newspaper in the UK which reported, ‘Creationists “peddle lies about the fossil record�.’2 Lies? Are creationists really...

Student's Flagellator Was Not An Offensive Weapon, Court Rules [Pic in URL] A Muslim student caught with a bladed flagellator used by Shias to ritually scourge themselves was cleared of possessing it as an offensive weapon. 19 Nov 2009 Shia Muslims whip themselves during Muharram, the month of mourning Photo: GETTY Mohsin Khan, 21, who said he had been beating himself regularly with them since the age of six, had been driving to a West End nightclub with a friend when he was pulled over as part of a routine police check in London's Charing Cross Road. His car was...

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman faces prosecution for her involvement in a car smash in which she allegedly used her mobile phone, the Crown Prosecution Service said tonight. A court summons will be served on the MP for Camberwell and Peckham after a police investigation into the crash in Dulwich, south-east London on the afternoon of July 3.

Tony Blair was out of the running as Europe's first president on Thursday after Gordon Brown dropped the former Prime Minister as his candidate. The Prime Minister made the decision after accepting that Mr Blair had no chance of winning the new post. Instead, he was backing another Briton - Baroness Cathy Ashton, the EU trade commissioner - to become the EU's foreign affairs chief, his spokesman said. She had earlier won support from European Socialist parties for the foreign policy job, making her front-runner for the post, the second top job being allocated by EU leaders at a summit...

Schoolgirl, 13, 'Gang-Raped By Boys Who Filmed Ordeal On Mobile Phone' Daily Mail Reporter 19th November 2009 Alleged attack: Three teenagers are on trial for the rape of a 13-year-old girl A 13-year-old schoolgirl was gang-raped at knifepoint by three teenage boys who filmed the attack on a mobile phone, a jury heard today. The girl, who had walked out of school after being bullied, was led to the eighth floor of a block of flats for the ordeal which was filmed by her 14 and 15-year-old attackers, it is claimed. The alleged attack on an estate in Peckham, South-East...

Prince Charles was at odds with ministers today over plans to abolish history and geography lessons in schools. The Prince of Wales is said to be 'passionate' about protecting traditional lessons in British history and English literature in the classroom. Bernice McCabe, a leading headteacher and one of the Prince's closest advisers, has criticised education reforms which she says will leave schools as 'globalised theme

If we are to escape from dilemmas such as Nice's fateful decision on Nexavar, it can only be by permitting additional revenue streams into the NHS, argues Janet Daley. Nice has made another of its fateful (or "fatal") decisions: the drug, Nexavor, which significantly prolongs the life of liver cancer patients, and is widely available in other countries, is not be used by the NHS because it is too expensive. So all those who might have benefited from it have effectively been told that, on accounting principles, they are not worth keeping alive. Nice is functioning as what the US...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

As American Thinker's self-appointed "correspondent" in the outpost that is the United Kingdom, I am filing a report on what the man in the street here really thinks of your President. The description most often used by those of us when gathered in the local pub is: "a dangerous wanker." For my American cousins, the definition of that most English of insults is: "a highly offensive term for somebody considered unpleasant, self indulgent, pretentious or arrogant" Admittedly many of us Brits fell for the same "hope and change" mantra that ensnared so many of you. God knows we have ample...

David Beckham has apparently agreed to spend four days with the US Army over Thanksgiving. The football star, who plays for LA Galaxy, has arranged to visit the American troops at their barracks in Germany with his teammates next week.

As the new hunting season begins today, animal rights activists are threatening to disrupt meets as "observers", as well as joining hunts undercover. The saboteurs will film constantly using new telescopic lenses so hunts can be monitored from a distance. They will also use hidden cameras in clothing and time-delay devices dotted around the countryside. (edit) Hunting was banned in 2005 but since then the number of people taking part in the sport has continued to increase, with 50,000 mounted followers expected this year compared to 40,000 in 2004. This year there are expected to be a further 50,000...

Dr Otto Chan told a hearing in East London that some doctors at the Royal London Hospital were ''exposed'' to procedures that they were not trained for. He said: ''The department was going rapidly backwards, I had real serious concerns about patient care in relation to the training programme. ''The junior staff in our department were doing too much unsupervised work.'' Dr Chan added: ''The juniors were being exposed to procedures that they were clearly not trained to do.'' The radiologist said junior doctors were sometimes given notes on how to do a procedure and ''being told to go and...

Six men have been arrested over the killing of a woman who was found dying in a London street with one of her hands cut off. The victim's estranged husband is among those arrested. Mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, 28, was attacked in Greenford, northwest London, on Tuesday as she made her way to her childminder's home. She was found with head injuries and a severed hand, according to witnesses. Aulakh was taken to hospital but died a few hours later. A post-mortem has since revealed that she died of a severe head injury. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Chalmers, who is leading...

When Rupert Dickinson, the chief executive of one of Britain's biggest property firms, left his BlackBerry behind in London while on a business trip to Ireland, he simply ordered one of his staff to get on a plane and deliver the device to him. For Dickinson's then head of sustainability, Tim Nicholson, the errand was much more than an executive indulgence: it embodied the contempt with which his boss treated his deep philosophical beliefs about climate change. In a significant decision today , a judge found Nicholson's views on the environment were so deeply held that they were entitled to...

Russian crime gangs are making millions by selling counterfeit Tamiflu online to Britons woried about swine flu, an internet security firm has claimed. Anxious residents who fear they may not be able to obtain the drug through the NHS could be funding organised crime abroad as well as putting themselves at risk of identity fraud when they buy the potentially useless drugs.

Almost half of UK women could be suffering from a lack of vitamin A due to a previously undiscovered genetic variation, scientists at Newcastle University have found. The team, led by Dr Georg Lietz, has shown that almost 50 per cent of women have a genetic variation which reduces their ability to produce sufficient amounts of vitamin A from beta-carotene. Vitamin A – also known as retinol – plays a vital role in strengthening our immune system, protecting us against common infections such as flu and winter vomiting. Vitamin A also helps to maintain healthy skin and mucus linings such...

A Nigerian Home Office worker 'married' his own daughter to get her a British visa, the Daily Mail can reveal. The extraordinary scam was apparently executed by Jelili Adesanya while ministers turned a blind eye. Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived here for more than 30 years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her husband and their four sons to join him from Nigeria.

The man believed to be Britain's most notorious serial sex attacker was arrested by the Metropolitan Police last night. Known as the ‘Night Stalker’, the man is thought to be responsible for 108 offences in south and south-east London, including four rapes and 24 indecent assaults. He breaks into homes and sexually assaults his elderly victims. Yesterday morning a 52-year-old man was arrested in south London — the area where most of the attacks took place. He is being held at a police station in the capital

In less than a month President Obama will head to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — awarded to him not for what he has done, but for what the judges hope he will achieve during his first term. The US leader rarely fails to inspire when he speaks, but he will need all his rhetorical powers when he mounts the podium for this acceptance address. Mr Obama has travelled more widely than any American president in his first year in office. He has delivered stirring speeches to the Arab and Muslim worlds, extended the hand of friendship to...

Experts are recommending that the U.S. adopts the UK approach to screening for breast cancer. They say annual routine checks from the age of 40 may be doing more harm than good. Instead, a panel of doctors recommends that women should have mammograms between the ages of 50 and 69 - the programme followed in the UK. But the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force also says the best results come from screening every other year, compared with every three years offered by the NHS. At present American women are encouraged to have annual checks from the age of 40, depending...

David Miliband is "attractive" and "vibrant", Hillary Clinton had admitted. The US secretary of state made the surprise admission in next month's edition of Vogue. "I was also happy to see her [Clinton] taking delight in a favourite new colleague, David Miliband, the tall and dashing 44-year-old British foreign secretary," the article reads. "When I mentioned to her over lunch that I had spoken with him, she lit up. 'Oh, my God!' I joked that I got a crush over the phone in about five seconds partly because of his accent, and she said, 'Well, if you saw him it...

Mother Of Two Receptionist Dies After Being Dumped Nn The Street With Her Hand Chopped Off [Pic of Victim in URL] By Daily Mail Reporter 17th November 2009 Geeta Aulakh was a receptionist at Sunrise Radio in London This is the first picture of the radio station receptionist who was found mutilated and dying just yards from her childminder's front door. Mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, 28, was found by a passerby slumped on the ground in Greenford, West London, at 7pm on Monday night. Witnesses said she had serious head injuries and one of her hands had been cut off. She...

Revered British folk singer Yusuf Islam - once known as Cat Stevens - has been booed by fans at an eagerly-awaited comeback concert after he allowed another singer to perform some of his best-known songs on stage. 'Now I know what (Bob) Dylan felt like,' Stevens told his audience in Dublin at the weekend after some fans booed while others gave a standing ovation in his first concert tour in 33 years. They began walking out ... 'In London's West End, where it is due to open next year, 'Moonshadow' could go down a storm. In front of an audience...

According to Thomas Bouchard, a US psychologist famous for his research on twins raised apart,[1] even scientists with good reason to believe that the majority are wrong can be silenced. The reason is...

The latest morally monstrous proposal out of the environmentalist cult comes from Lord Smith of Finsbury. He suggests that each British citizen be given a government “carbon allowance.” For any transaction that increases a person’s “carbon footprint” such as using gasoline or taking an airline flight, they would have to “spend” part of their allowance. Once their allowance reaches zero, they would have to pay out of pocket to purchase more credits, assuming that they are available. It is “cap and trade” for the individual. Appallingly anti-humanThe appallingly anti-human nature of this proposal is only surpassed by the appalling ignorance...

Gordon Brown plans to host talks in the new year to discuss timing for handing over the campaign in Afghanistan to the Afghan government. The prime minister said he wanted the Nato meeting to "set a timetable" for transfer starting in 2010.

From The Times November 17, 2009 Going Rogue: Sarah Palin's autobiography Giles Whittell in Washington Taken at face value — as it begs the reader to do — Sarah Palin’s non-fiction debut is a love story. She is in love with Alaska, America and her husband, Todd, she says. In the process, she cannot help revealing that she is also in love with the vortex of briefers, make-up artists and media attention that spun around her for three months as a vice-presidential candidate, even though some of the principal players set out to destroy her before the election had even...

British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday. Army commanders should also talk to insurgent leaders with “blood on their hands” in order to hasten the end of the conflict in Afghanistan. The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British and Nato forces have failed to defeat the Taleban. The manual is also a recognition that the Army’s previous doctrine for success against insurgents, which was based...

Gordon Brown: London Summit To Decide End Game In Afghanistan Gordon Brown will invite world leaders to London for a summit to discuss a strategy for quitting Afghanistan. By Rosa Prince and James Kirkup 16 Nov 2009 Mr Brown wants Nato allies to agree a timetable which would see British troops restricted to a training and mentoring role. Delivering the annual Guildhall foreign policy speech, the Prime Minister is expected to step up his efforts to win the British public over to the conflict against the Taliban. He will insist that the deployment is proving successful in “disabling” al-Qaeda, saying...

Anti-war protesters and train spotters arrested under anti-terror laws could have their DNA kept for life under Home Office plans. In contrast, those innocent of any other suspected crime will be kept for a maximum of six years. The proposals have been drawn up in the wake of a European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a blanket policy of retaining profiles of innocent people indefinitely was illegal. Up to a million innocent people are currently held on the national database. As part of a climb-down, the Home Office now plans to keep the profiles of children innocent...

Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live. He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable. Dr Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church of England and a self-confessed “hairy lefty”, has said that over the past few decades, the market has been treated as an “independent authority”, creating social disruption around the world and the “extraordinary...

Nov 15, 2009 — Biomimetics is the new science of imitating nature – but why not save a step, and just copy the design directly?  That’s what Aussie and British researchers did.  They wanted a self-cleaning surface that could repel moisture and dust, so they made a template of an insect wing.  And why not?  “Insects are incredible nanotechnologists,” reported Science Daily.  Their wings are self-cleaning, frictionless and super-water-repellant. Insect wings have these properties due to their properties at the scale of billionths of a meter.  “For instance, some wings are superhydrophobic, due to a clever combination of natural chemistry...

The British warship that India wants: quantum leap on the high seas November 16th, 2009 Dipankar De Sarkar London, Nov 16 (IANS) A futuristic aircraft carrier that India is reported to be keen on buying from Britain is envisaged as a giant guardian of the high seas, capable of travelling thousands of kilometres from home and wreaking massive destruction on enemy targets, experts said Monday. India has reportedly “lodged a firm expression of interest” in buying one of two huge aircraft carriers that are currently under construction - the largest warships ever built by Britain, and designed to be the...

MORE than 100 penguin-loving tourists including dozens from Britain are trapped by ice off Antarctica aboard a Russian ice-breaker cruise ship... The Kapitan Khlebnikov is in a bay near Snow Hill island, located off the northeastern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, and cannot leave as the bay is sealed off with ice... Everything is calm aboard the ice-breaker, nothing is threatening the passengers and crew... There were 105 passengers aboard the vessel ...The ship has been at its current location for four days. "To put it plainly, the ship got stuck between an island and an ice massif.''

Equalizer Actor Edward Woodward Dies Actor Edward Woodward, famous for his roles in The Wicker Man and The Equalizer has died today. Actor 'never lost his brave spirit' The 79-year-old had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia.