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A “digital plaster” that is stuck to a patient’s body to track vital signs such as heart rate and breathing and then send alerts to doctors is being tested in a British hospital. The groundbreaking technology, which is lightweight, low-powered and portable, is designed to provide round-the-clock monitoring of patients. (snip) Sir Richard Sykes, the chairman of NHS London, said collaboration between scientists — from mathematicians and computer scientists to engineers and clinicians — was vital to developing transformative healthcare technology. “Technology has to be used. otherwise the whole healthcare system is going to go bust,” he said. He said...

'A BOY aged just TWELVE fought as a British Tommy in the First World War, The Sun can reveal today. The lad - said to have been so tiny he could not even see over the edge of a trench - is the youngest known soldier to have served in the horrific 1914-18 conflict. He was recalled by another under-age squaddie, runaway George Maher, who was only 13 when he was sent to the notorious Somme battlefield.'.

British film icon Sir Michael Caine has abandoned his support of the Labour party and announced he will vote Conservative at the next general election. The actor, 76, a former Labour supporter, condemned the “terrible state” that has been allowed to develop in Britain and said he planned to change his allegiance at the next election. For his latest film, Harry Brown, about violence on Britain’s streets, Sir Michael spent time with a gang from a tough inner London estate, who were hired as extras.

PLASTIC surgeon has told how he chose a dowdy girl as his bride - so he could sculpt her into his ideal wife. Reza Vossough hated 33-year-old Cany's body, but they tied the knot anyway after he spotted her "potential". He performed EIGHT operations to change her chest, thighs, eyes and face. Vossough spent five years pumping 1,600g of silicone into her body, boosting her size A chest to a giant F cup. He also enhanced her lips, lifted her eyelids and de-creased her forehead. The former waitress also had nip-and-tuck ops to her bum, tummy and thighs and countless...

They warn that thousands of pensioners paying their fees in full – because their assets are worth more than £23,000 – are being charged over the odds in order to cover for the far lower rates paid for state-funded places. The care home owners have instructed Cherie Booth, QC, the wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, to mount a legal challenge to force England's local authorities to increase the rates they pay. In some parts of the country, care homes are charging "self-funders" more than £200 a week on top of the rates paid by local authorities, research shows....

Alistair Darling is preparing to plough billions more of taxpayers’ money into Royal Bank of Scotland to take the government stake in the bank from 70% to as high as 84%. A Treasury announcement this week will confirm RBS is signing up to a controversial deal to pump £270 billion of problematic loans into a state-backed insurance scheme. As part of the deal, the government will pour up to £19 billion of additional capital into RBS by taking up an issue of “B” shares. The subsequent increase in the taxpayers’ stake will leave the bank virtually nationalised, with a small...

The youngest soldier to win the George Cross has criticised Gordon Brown for ‘betraying’ the Armed Forces and revealed he now works in a call centre, selling insurance. ‘My medal says I am a hero of the Iraqi conflict, a man of extraordinary valour and strength of character,’ says Chris Finney. ‘But now I work in a call centre. My life has gone from one extreme to the other.’ At 18, he won Britain’s highest civil accolade for rescuing a wounded comrade from a burning Scimitar armoured vehicle. If his courage had been in response to an attack by the...

Doctors want to take the one-year-old, born with a rare neuromuscular condition, off the ventilator which allows him to breathe. Their application is supported by the child's mother, who is separated from his father. On Monday, the hospital will take its application to take the boy off life support to the High Court, where lawyers for the father will fight the case. The one-year-old, known only as Baby RB, was born with congenital myasthenic syndrome, a muscle weakness which severely limits the movement of his limbs and the ability to breathe independently. Lawyers for the father say the baby's brain...

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will confirm over the next few days that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group, both of which are majority-owned by the taxpayer, will be split up. (snip) Under the deal, the new institutions will not be allowed to be taken over by any purchaser which currently owns a British retail bank. Ministers will stop this happening using their powers as controlling shareholders in Lloyds, RBS and Northern Rock, rather than by new regulations. Instead, likely purchasers will come in from the US, Australia or the Middle East. The Daily Telegraph revealed that nearly...

THE government has been forced to rewrite its advice on breast cancer screening after research showed that thousands of women have been misled into having unnecessary surgery. Women invited for screening by the National Health Service will be told that some of the cancers detected will be dormant and may never spread to other tissue. Research published this year showed that for every 2,000 women screened regularly for a decade, one life would be saved but 10 healthy women would be treated unnecessarily. The information now given to women has been criticised for advertising only the benefits and not the...

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, declared that a "key battleground" for the next election will be a Labour pledge to offer patients the legal right to free private care if they do not get the treatment they need from the NHS within 18 weeks. Cancer patients will receive funding for private treatment if they have not seen a specialist within two weeks of a GP referral. The maximum waiting times will be placed on the statute book for the first time and the measure rushed through Parliament before the next election. The move...

A U.S. plane that featured in a European Parliament report into the 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects was met by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain's biggest airports. The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft. Records show that the jet is owned by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a multi-billion-dollar defence corporation based in New York, whose clients include several American government departments, among them...

A British nuclear expert who fell from the 17th floor of a United Nations building did not commit suicide and may have been hurled to his death, says a doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination. Timothy Hampton, 47, a scientist involved in monitoring nuclear activity, was found dead last week at the bottom of a stairwell in Vienna. An initial autopsy concluded that there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’. But it is understood that Mr Hampton’s widow Olena Gryshcuk and her family were deeply unhappy with that verdict. Now a doctor who undertook a second post-mortem examination on behalf...

'How a Cambridge-educated botanist fought a three-year war against 4,000 Japanese troops'

The most senior British soldier to die in Afghanistan foreshadowed his own death by warning that a shortage of helicopters was endangering troops. Less than a month before he was killed by a roadside bomb, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe told his superiors that soldiers would die because they were being forced to take more trips by road. The officer, who was commander of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, said in a memo to the Ministry of Defence, classified "Nato secret", that the system for managing helicopter movements in Afghanistan was "very clearly not fit for purpose" and there were not...

Demonstrators calling for sharia law to be imposed in Britain have cancelled a march in central London amid security fears. Anjem Choudary, leader of the radical Islamic sect Al Muhajiroun, said organisers Islam4UK had been forced to cancel the planned march from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square because of security concerns. The Islamic Society of Britain, which was planning to join other organisations in staging a "dignified, non-violent" counter-demonstration, hailed the cancellation as a "great success". A spokesman said: "Pressure from all sections of the community, including Muslims, has resulted in the Muhajiroun and the hot-heads rethinking their...

(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

Note: The following text is a quote: Beware of bogus websites! (30/10/2009) The UK Border Agency is the official UK Government authority providing information and guidance for visa applicants and for making decisions on visa applications for the United Kingdom. We operate through the following official websites: UK Border Agency corporate website: www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk UK Border Agency Visa Services website: www.ukvisas.gov.uk UK Border Agency Online Application Service (Visa4UK): www.visa4uk.fco.gov.uk Local websites operated by our commercial partners, CSC Worldbridge and VFS Global, and British Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates around the world. We would advise you to avoid all other websites claiming...

The Queen forced to wear a burkha and Buckingham Palace turned into a mosque - that was the vision of Britain under Sharia law proposed by a Muslim firebrand today. Preacher of hate Anjem Choudary even showed mocked-up photographs of the palace sporting a golden dome and Nelson's Column as a minaret. He was speaking ahead of a demonstration calling for Sharia law planned for Central London tomorrow, which it is feared could descend into violence. Police are working to avoid a clash between moderate Muslim groups and far-right mobs who have organised rival demonstrations.

Cambridge University will allow female Muslim students to wear burkas at graduation ceremonies, it emerged yesterday. By tradition, students are required to wear dark suits and white shirts under their graduation gowns. Cambridge has clamped down on breaches of the rules after officials complained students were increasingly wearing casual clothes to ceremonies. They warned the code 'is strictly enforced at ceremonies, and if you do not observe it, you may not be permitted to graduate on a particular occasion'. Yesterday it clarified that clothing linked to religious observance, such as burkas, would still be allowed. Scottish students who want to...

Cambridge University Allows Muslim Students To Wear Burkhas Under Their Mortar Boards At Graduation By DAILY MAIL REPORTER 30th October 2009 Strict dress code: How a Muslim Cambridge University student might look at their graduation ceremony. Cambridge University is to allow female Muslim students to wear burkhas under their mortar boards at graduation ceremonies, it emerged today. The university has a strict dress code for the prestigious events at the city's Senate House, to which all students must adhere in order to graduate. The university website warns students that the code 'is strictly enforced at ceremonies, and if you do...

Poppy was transferred to the leading children's hospital in London for specialist care after she was born three months early on Christmas Eve last year, in Basildon, Essex. But she died after a "domino effect" of mistakes, an inquest was told. Rebecca Tite, a trainee nurse, who had spent just three weeks in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, set up a machine supplying her with glucose incorrectly, flooding her body with the solution. The levels of glucose in Poppy's blood rose to 20 times the maximum level they should have been, causing ''devastating effects'' to her body, St Pancras...

Oct 28, 2009 — Two articles announced solutions to the evidential problem that most troubled Darwin – the sudden appearance of complex animals at the base of the Cambrian fossil record.  Both of them involve chemical elements.  The only difference is which element. Science Daily announced a “Novel Evolutionary Theory For The Explosion Of Life.”  The article acknowledged that “The Cambrian Explosion is widely regarded as one of the most relevant episodes in the history of life on Earth, when the vast majority of animal phyla first appear in the fossil record.”  The article also acknowledged it to be a...

It may not surprise parents that the head-banging, string-shredding world of heavy metal can seriously damage your health. But now Tony Iommi, the British guitarist who helped to invent the genre, has revealed that he is undergoing stem-cell treatment to save the hand that inspired a generation. The number of rockers suffering from repetitive strain injuries is on the increase, and medical specialists have warned that their careers will come to an end unless they seek professional help. As a founder member of Black Sabbath, the Birmingham rockers fronted by Ozzy Osbourne, Iommi, 61, hit on the distortion-heavy riffs that...

THE Queen's youngest son, Prince Edward, chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme that encourages participation in outdoor activities, believes that one reason young people are attracted to the program is the possibility that they could die in pursuit of the award. In an interview with The Australian yesterday, the Earl of Wessex, who is seventh in line to the British throne, said the program, established in Britain in 1956 and open to people aged between 14 and 25 in more than 120 countries - remains popular with so many because it offers the promise of adventure and the...

Parents have been banned from supervising their children in public playgrounds, because they have not undergone criminal record checks. Only council-vetted "play rangers" are now allowed to monitor youngsters in two adventure areas in Watford while parents must watch from outside a perimeter fence. The Watford Borough Council policy has been attacked as insulting and a disgrace by furious relatives who say they are being labelled as potential paedophiles.

The British Government's chief drug adviser has sparked controversy by claiming ecstasy, LSD and cannabis are less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, attacked the decision to make cannabis a class B drug. He accused former home secretary Jacqui Smith, who reclassified the drug, of "distorting and devaluing" scientific research. Prof Nutt said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness. And he claimed advocates of moving ecstasy into class B from class A had "won the intellectual argument". All drugs, including alcohol and tobacco,...

Anti-psychotic drugs, which are recommended in the short-term to calm down people who are agitated or violent, are known to be overprescribed, particularly in care homes. A survey of 62 primary care trusts (PCTs) for GP newspaper found 57 per cnt were failing to offer alternatives to the drugs risperidone and olanzapine. GPs have said they are forced to prescribe the drugs owing to a lack of replacement services for patients. In January, a three-year study published in The Lancet Neurology found people taking the drugs for long periods were twice as likely to die early as those not on...

A wealthy woman who poisoned her neighbour's Abyssinian cats with tuna laced with anti-freeze has been ordered to pay £1,500 in compensation to the distraught owner. Katherine Hall, 57, put the deadly tins of tuna in her garden to stop Nush and Mr Baz urinating on her strawberries. The court heard that the five-and-a-half year old cats died in agony a few days later. When police searched Hall's garden they found remnants of the deadly meal, and a cat-scaring machine. Owner Andrew Boyd said it was a 'disgrace' that Hall did not receive a harsher punishment. 'I don't want to...

The Business, Innovation and Skills minister is expected to say that internet pirates pose a threat to Britain's creative industries and it was vital for such industries to be allowed to flourish. He is expected to outline plans to tackle unlawful downloads, including plans in the most extreme cases, to temporarily suspend individual internet accounts, block access to download sites and reduce broadband speeds. In what will be his first keynote speech on the topic, Lord Mandelson will tell the Government’s C&binet Forum Conference, that persistent filesharers could have their Internet connections cut off for short periods, but only as...

Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood. It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own. But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies. Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place...

Shotgun and rifle crime has more than doubled in Scotland because police have been so effective in cracking down on handgun smugglers, it emerged yesterday. Gangs finding it harder to access the smaller weapons are instead arming themselves with shotguns and rifles stolen from licensed holders. The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency says that a recent rise in illegal handgun trade led officers to crack down on smugglers. In response, many criminals have been robbing legitimate shotgun owners, in particular focusing their attention on country estates. New figures show that shotgun and rifle offences are at a ten-year high....

The More They Know Darwin, The Less They Want Darwin-Only Indoctrination According to an international poll released by the British Council, the majority of Americans — 60% — support teaching alternatives to evolution in the science classroom. The percentage is the same for Britons, despite the fact that both countries have been inundated with pro-Darwin media coverage in this super-mega Darwin Year. Of course, the British media reporting this are chagrined. Britain is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and the official-sounding British Council, the UK group behind the “Darwin Now” campaign that commissioned the Ipsos...

England is a strange place these days. A sort of political volcano has exploded, and the significance of it is not clear. According to pretty well everyone with access to free speech, fascism has erupted. The British National party has been making surreptitious headway for some time now, but restricted to winning a seat on some local council here or there. Suddenly in elections for the European parliament in Brussels, the BNP got about 900,000 votes, entitling it under proportional representation to two seats. One of those seats goes to Nick Griffin, the BNP leader. [....] Griffin has only one...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali pirates holding two Britons captive aboard a yacht off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation warned Britain not to try to rescue the couple. The pirates seized the vessel on Friday morning hundreds of miles out to sea near the Seychelles archipelago. They have taken it to the Somali coast with a view to demanding a ransom for their captives. "If warships surround us, we shall point our guns at the British tourists. They are old and we will take care of them -- that is if we are not attacked," said a pirate...

Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of “slow euthanasia”, research suggests. A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time. In appropriate doses, sedatives and strong painkillers are considered a valuable way of easing the pain and anxiety of patients who are dying with conditions such as cancer. But 18.7 per cent of British doctors polled said they used drugs to invoke “continuous deep sedation” in a dying patient, a practice...

A man who stabbed a burglar to death after catching him in the act was charged with murder yesterday. Omari Roberts, 23, was remanded in custody. Roberts had found two teenage burglars in his mother's house when he arrived to visit her. After chasing one of the youths, aged 14, from the property, he returned to find 17-year-old Tyler Juett still there. There was a struggle and Juett was fatally stabbed in the chest, Nottingham Magistrates Court was told. The Crown Prosecution Service said the decision to charge Roberts months after the incident in March had been taken after 'careful...

'A British officer who trained French Resistance fighters during World War II was told to "go home" by Charles de Gaulle, newly released files show. Peter Lake was awarded the Military Cross and France's Croix de Guerre for his actions in the run-up to D-Day. But just three months after the Allied landings, the leader of Free France told him he had "no business" there. Mr Lake died in June aged 94, but his account of the meeting has been released by the National Archives.'

Prominent antitheist and self-styled “atheist” Richard Dawkins has written a new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Ironically, he admits about all his previous pro-evolution books: “Looking back on these books, I realized that the evidence for evolution is nowhere explicitly set out, and that it seemed like a good gap to close.”. Naturally, CMI is preparing a book to answer Dawkins’ latest. In a chapter about alleged bad design, Dawkins had a section about the loss of wings and evolution of features like halteres, the little drumstick-like stabilizers behind the one pair of wings on...

.... seems FR is slow today.......

Scotland Yard has abandoned plans for armed foot patrols and marksmen on motorbikes in gun crime hotspots in the face of mounting political criticism. Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was forced to withdraw the proposal before a meeting of his police authority on Thursday, where he would have faced fierce criticism. The plan to deploy armed officers on the beat as a response to rising gun crime in the capital was announced last week when Sir Paul was out of the country. A team from CO19, the unit that shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005,...

There must be some sort of global competition at the moment to see who can come up with the most ridiculous dire warning about the effects of climate change. Up until today Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Ban Ki-Moon and Gordon Brown were all leading contenders. Former Secretary General Annan claims that 300,000 people a year are being killed by climate change. Ban and Brown think we have just months to secure the future of our planet, and Gore believes in torturing us with disaster movies dressed up as documentaries. They’re all blown away however by the latest apocalyptic vision from...

Doctors who support the legalisation of assisted suicide are more likely to withdraw or withhold treatment from dying patients, a study has found. Actively helping someone to die remains illegal in Britain but more than a third of GPs and hospital doctors report making decisions which they expected would accelerate the death of a terminally-ill patient. A significant minority — 7 per cent — said that they had taken steps such as withdrawing medications, foods or fluid, with the intention of hastening a patient’s death. But doctors who actively support a change in the law to allow assisted suicide are...

A longstanding ban that prevents gay and bisexual men from giving blood is being reviewed and could be overturned as early as next year, the Government has said. Men who have had sex with other men are currently banned for life from donating blood, under measures designed to reduce the risk of passing on infections such as HIV. But gay rights campaigners have condemned the policy as being irrational. The Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (Sabto) meets today to discuss evidence for and against exclusion of high-risk donors as part of an official review of...

Almost one in five girls (19 per cent) also think a boyfriend may expect them to take sexual risks because they have had the jab. One in four girls having the cervical cancer jab would not tell a boyfriend they had been vaccinated while one in five think the vaccine is embarrassing because it is for a sexually-transmitted infection. However, 79 per cent of girls said having the vaccination reminds them of the possible risks of sexual contact and 93 per cent think it shows they are serious about their own health. The survey of more than 500 12 and...

The rate at which foreigners are swelling the population has increased by 50 per cent since a secret Government immigration policy document was written. Critics said it was clear evidence that ministers had implemented the controversial Cabinet Office report. This allegedly claimed mass immigration would make Britain more multicultural and allow Labour to portray the Tories as racists. Speaking in the Commons yesterday, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said it would be 'utterly disgraceful' for ministers to base immigration policy on party politics. He asked Immigration Minister Phil Woolas: 'Can I invite you to put the record straight - what...

October 27, 2009 Climate Chief Lord Stern: Give Up Meat To Save The Planet Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor People will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and...

Three Babies Aborted Every Day Due To Down's Syndrome Three babies are being aborted every day due to Down's syndrome, according to a study which shows the number of terminations has more than trebled in the last 20 years. By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor and Chris Irvine 26 Oct 2009 An increasing number of pregnant women are being told their babies have the condition because of a growing number of women putting off having children until their 30s and 40s and improvements in screening, doctors say. And around nine in ten women who are told they are going to have...

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on...

Police are gathering the personal details of thousands of activist who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases. The hidden apparatus has been constructed to monitor "domestic extremists", the Guardian can reveal in the first of a three-day series into the policing of protests. Detailed information about the political activities of campaigners is being stored on a number of overlapping IT systems, even if they have not committed a crime. Senior officers say domestic extremism, a term coined by police that has no legal basis, can include activists suspected of minor...