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Fast food vendors will be told to offer low-fat fish and chips and "diet" kebabs in a Government healthy-eating campaign. Takeaway restaurants are to receive guidelines as part of the campaign to improve the nutritional value of meals eaten outside of the home, following a report for the Government's food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency. Kebabs, Chinese and Indian meals will be among those foods targeted. A spokesman for the FSA said: "The average person eats one in every six meals out of the home so the choices we make can go a long way to help us maintain a...

The taxpayer is having to fund millions of pounds a year to "bribe" foreign murderers, rapists and other prisoners to go home after a 60 per cent jump in cases. One in four of the foreign criminals who were deported last year only went home after being offered a voluntary return package worth up to £5,000. It means ministers spent £3.4 million of public money encouraging offenders who have no right to be in Britain to leave. It emerged earlier this week that one of those was a Malaysian migrant who killed a 17-month-old baby. Some foreign prisoners can already...

The deep hostility of Britain’s senior military commanders in Iraq towards their American allies has been revealed in classified Government documents leaked to the Daily Telegraph. In the papers, the British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J.K.Tanner, described his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” for whom “dialogue is alien,” saying: “Despite our so-called ‘special relationship,’ I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.” Col Tanner’s boss, the top British commander in the country, Major General Andrew Stewart, told how he spent “a significant amount of my time” “evading” and “refusing” orders from his US...

Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates Bitter Feud over Global Warming The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center -- that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.The correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates bitter feelings among those who believe human activities cause global warming toward rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists...

Could England Be Headed For A Sudden Stop? Rolfe Winkler November 21, 2009 Britain may finally be emerging from recession, but many analysts warn that it is a false dawn. In fact, they argue, the economy here is so ravaged by growing debts and ruined banks that it could well be following in the steps of Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s. I still don’t understand why we refer to Japan’s “lost decade,” as singular. The country is now moving into its third consecutive lost decade.The Nikkei is still at 1984 levels. But back to the UK: the NYT piece...

British Army officer, Lieutenant Paddy Rice, has been described as "the luckiest soldier in Afghanistan" after surviving being shot by a Taliban sniper. video at link

The leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit indicate an astonishing conspiracy of the world’s leading warmist scientists, involving collusion, rigged evidence, suppression of dissent, the possibly illegal destruction of evidence under FOI request, and the smearing of sceptical scientists. now there’s also an Australian link which shows just how closely activists and these scientists, as well as possibly the CSIRO, worked together to present the most alarmist scenarios. In private, the consensus within this “team” of warmist scientists seemed to be tearing apart as the world refused to warm. Money, money, money. Global warming is...

LONDON – An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" found in a family's guest lavatory in southern England. Christie's auction house said Sunday the book — one of around 1,250 copies first printed in 1859 — had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family's home in Oxford. The book will be auctioned on Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie's said the book is likely to sell for 60,000 pounds ($99,000).

Two smiling child models featured on an atheist billboard are actually Evangelical Christians, it has been claimed. The boy and girl can currently be seen next to the slogan "Don't Label Me" on adverts funded by the British Humanist Association (BHA) and endorsed by Prof Richard Dawkins, the scientist and prominent atheist. The posters form part of a campaign urging parents not to define their children by their own faith, which some secularists claim amounts to an abuse of their human rights. But the campaign appears to have backfired after a Christian community leader said that the models pictured in...

VATICAN CITY - THE archbishop of Canterbury held his first talks on Saturday with Pope Benedict XVI since the Roman Catholic church's unprecedented invitation to disaffected Anglicans, with the Vatican saying the two sides still want to press ahead for closer relations. Archbishop Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict met privately for 20 minutes in what the Vatican called 'cordial discussions', as part of what has clearly been a difficult visit by the Anglican leader. The Vatican said in a brief statement that the two leaders 'turned to the challenges facing all Christian communities' and the need 'to promote forms...

Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11, says Con Coughlin It says much about Britain’s rapidly disappearing ‘special relationship’ with America that when I happened to mention to some of our senior military officers that I was visiting Washington, they begged me to find out what the Obama administration was thinking about Afghanistan. It is not just that the transatlantic lines of communication, so strong just a few years ago, have fallen into disuse. There is now a feeling that, even...

Couples are to be offered marriage guidance counselling for free on the NHS, in a move which has drawn strong condemnation from patients and doctors' groups. Couples with relationship problems will be offered free sessions for up to six months, as part of a £270 million programme to increase the provision of "talking therapies" for the public, Andy Burnham, the health secretary, will announce this week. Doctors and patients' groups said they were "horrified" by the use of NHS resources for relationship advice when patients with cancer and dementia were being denied treatment they desperately needed. Mr Burnham will say...

Last week it was revealed that 54 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen. But that is not the only scandal in the shipping world. Today award-winning science writer Fred Pearce – environmental consultant to New Scientist and author of Confessions Of An Eco Sinner – reveals that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use. We've all noticed it. The filthy black smoke kicked out by funnels...

At 92, Dame Vera Lynn might not be the most obvious role model for today’s teenagers. But the original Forces sweetheart has inspired 13-year-old singer Olivia Aaron to do her bit for Britain’s troops. The youngster, who starred in the West End musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, has recorded a charity single for the Army Benevolent Fund.

Gordon Brown has banned television cameras from the unveiling of a portrait of Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street amid suspicions he is terrified of unflattering comparisons of their records. Baroness Thatcher will effectively stage her own No 10 reunion when the painting by distinguished Royal artist Richard Stone is displayed in public for the first time. Most of the guests served with her in her Downing Street heyday - with Mr Brown the only Labour politician present. No10 could not explain why the ceremony would take place behind closed doors. Friends of Lady Thatcher said she had no objection to...

Even his allies feel let down by the president’s lack of progress both in Asia and at home. even one previously friendly newspaper noted dismissively: “Obama goes to China, brings home a T-shirt.” Nor was the steady decline in the president’s approval ratings ... The real problem may be Obama’s friends — or rather, those among his formerly most enthusiastic supporters who are now having second thoughts. The doubters are suddenly stretching across a broad section of the Democratic party’s natural constituency. ... anti-war liberals depressed by the debate over troops for Afghanistan; and growing numbers of blue-collar workers who...

LONDON — Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change. The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are...

The picture that emerges of prominent climate-change scientists from the more than 3,000 documents and emails accessed by hackers and put on the Internet this week is one of professional backbiting and questionable scientific practices. It could undermine the idea that the science of man-made global warming is entirely settled just weeks before a crucial climate-change summit. Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England, were victims of a cyberattack by hackers sometime Thursday. A collection of emails dating back to the mid-1990s as well as scientific documents were splashed across the Internet. University officials...

: Sceptics claim that leaked emails reveal research centre massaged temperature dataOne of the world’s leading climate change research centres has been accused of manipulating data on global warming after thousands of private emails and documents were leaked. Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published the files, including some personal messages, on the internet. Among the most damaging is one which appears to suggest using a ‘trick’ to massage years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’.

Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...

UK troops could be withdrawn from Germany if the Tories win power, the shadow defence secretary has said. Liam Fox said maintaining the current presence of more than 20,000 was "no longer necessary". Other Nato member states should take up the UK's responsibilities in Germany, allowing British troops to deploy elsewhere, he told the Daily Telegraph. The Ministry of Defence says the number of forces personnel in Germany has fallen and is under constant review. "Following the Cold War, we've drawn down our troops in Germany to reflect the changed strategic context. The UK always looks to share responsibility proportionally...

Gordon Brown was told last night that he must seek the immediate return of the Lockerbie bomber to Britain. A senior senator in the United States has written to the Prime Minister to protest that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's early release on compassionate grounds on August 20 was granted on the assumption he had only three months to live. Charles Schumer said that period had now elapsed and there was speculation that the severity of the Libyan's condition had been exaggerated. There is growing pressure for all of Megrahi's medical papers to be published, as well as monthly updates...

A Sikh who claims that Islam is based on “deception, fraud and surprise attack” is set to become the first non-white member of the British National Party. Rajinder Singh, 78, who emigrated from the Punjab region of India in 1967, said yesterday that he would be honoured to become a member of the BNP because it is the “only party who has the guts to say the word Muslim”. “It’s a natural process in the Muslim psyche, to take over. The fear of Islam is well founded, well justified,” he told The Times. “I don’t hate Muslims. By definition a...

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...