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NOAH’S Ark would have floated — even with two of every animal on board, physicists have determined based on the weight of the beasts and the buoyancy of the boat. The students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester who came to this conclusion used the dimensions for the boat that were given in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, Noah is commanded to build an ark which is 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high to house himself, his family and two of every species of animal. For the study,...

David Cameron and Ed Miliband have been hurling insults at each other in a return of the "Punch and Judy" politics both men said they wanted to abolish. In exchanges on the price of Royal Mail shares, Mr Miliband said the PM was "not so much the 'Wolf of Wall Street' as the 'dunce of Downing Street'". The PM said he would not take lectures from the Labour leader and Ed Balls. He branded the pair "the two Muppets" who had advised former PM Gordon Brown on the sale of the UK's gold.

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested over the disappearance of a terror suspect, who absconded after changing into a burka at a London mosque. Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, who is still missing, escaped from government minders in November while subject to an order restricting his movements. Mr Mohamed had been linked to Somali militant group al-Shabab. The 17-year-old was arrested on on suspicion of conspiring with another to breach a so-called TPim order. Scotland Yard said he had been taken to a south London police station where he remained in custody.

After 8 years of front line operations, the UK's military headquarters in Helmand was disbanded yesterday. In the latest stage of the ongoing drawdown of UK operations in Afghanistan, the functions of Headquarters Task Force Helmand have been subsumed into the wider US-led Regional Command (South West). This milestone marks the end of the 16th Task Force Helmand operation for the British-led coalition task force, which has comprised soldiers from the Danish, Estonian, Tongan, Jordanian and Bosnian armed forces.

Nick Clegg accused Nigel Farage of peddling "dangerous fantasies" in an ill-tempered BBC TV debate on Britain's future in Europe. Mr. Farage accused the Lib Dem leader of "willfully lying to the British people about Brussels' grip on UK laws. He also claimed EU immigration had hit the "white working class" the hardest. Instant polls said Mr. Farage had won by a bigger margin than he did in their debate last week.... The UKIP leader accused the Lib Den leader of being "hell bent on getting Britain involved in a war.... He said he did not want Britain to be...

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

A student who went to visit family in Iran has been locked up for five months over comments she made to friends on Facebook, her family say. Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, from Stockport, was arrested as she stepped off a plane in the provincial city of Shiraz and accused of being a spy, husband Daryoush Taghipoor told the M.E.N. Daryoush said his 47-year-old wife has been detained at Evin, an infamous prison in Iranian capital Tehran, on suspicion of plotting to commit crimes against security and insulting Islam. He claimed her arrest was over comments she made on an internet...

The good news is that they’re only overrepresented 200% in London prisons. An investigation into British prisons has revealed that over a quarter of prisoners in the London are Muslims, more than double their population proportion in the UK capital.Data collected by lawyer and shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan revealed that even though Muslims made up just 12% of the population of London, they made up for 27% of the city’s prison population.Furthermore, it was noted that while Muslims in the UK constitute 4.8% of the population according to a 2011 census, 14% of inmates in the country are Muslims....

Black and Asian families are significantly healthier than white people, official figures suggest. A study found that one in three people from white families had long-standing illnesses, compared to only one in five of those from non-white ethnic groups. White people were almost twice as likely as black and Asian people to have long-term illnesses which limit their lifestyle, the research suggests. The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show that 36 percent of people from white ethnic groups had long-standing illnesses, while among non-white groups the proportion was 21 percent. …

Why Poland Loves Ukraine ... For Now MARCH 28, 2014 Slawomir Sierakowski Eastern Europe, which beginning with Poland is celebrating its 25th anniversary of freedom from Communism, has suddenly awakened from a beautiful dream about the end of history. No less an authority than Adam Michnik, the legendary Polish anti-Communist dissident, recently announced that 2014 marks the end of the best period in Poland’s history in three centuries. We are entering uncertain times: In contrast to Eastern Europe’s foray into independence after World War I, no close intraregional alliances were formed in the aftermath of 1989; rather, each country placed...

NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia on Tuesday and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. The 28-member alliance, the keystone of U.S. and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the U.S. and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the other ministers, meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels...

The boom in American natural-gas production during the past several years, and the consequent crash of domestic natural-gas prices, has caused many to call for the liberation of U.S. natural-gas exports. The ongoing Russian invasion of the Crimea and threat to the rest of Ukraine has added still greater urgency to these calls, as the need take action to weaken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s natural-gas stranglehold over Europe has become vital. Despite these economic and national security imperatives, there are still those who maintain that allowing American natural-gas producers to export their product would damage the national interest. According to...

David Cameron has ordered an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood....to examine allegations that the M/B was behind the murder of three British tourists in Egypt in and that it planned extremist activities from Britain. Sir John Jenkins, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia is to draw up a report on the group's "philosophy and values and alleged connections with extremism and violence". Cameron faces pressure to follow the example of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which claim that London is the M/B's crucial centre for its activities. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi played a leading role in the overthrow of Pres Morsi,...

Sajeel Sahid ran a camp where he taught bomb-making and combat skills. Now he’s opened a primary school in Great Britain. Ad-Deen school founder Sajeel Sahid, 38, called for violence against British troops and ran a training camp in Pakistan where known terrorists learned how to make bombs and fire rocket- propelled grenades. ... One of his ‘graduates’ was Mohammed Siddique Khan, who led the gang of four suicide bombers on the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed in Britain, killing 52 people on the London Underground and a bus on July 7, 2005. Shahid also allegedly trained four convicted terrorists...

LONDON — Britain is adding new headquarters and engineering buildings in Bahrain to better support its growing Arabian Gulf operations. Tucked away on the large US base that houses the 5th Fleet, the British facilities have failed to keep up with the UK’s burgeoning maritime footprint in the region. As of the start of March, gulf operations account for nearly one-third of all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels deployed around the globe. Now a construction firm is preparing to build a larger headquarters for the British UK Maritime Component Command (UKMCC), as well as facilities to provide engineering...

Imagine if a former Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator had called a current Republican president a delusional liar whose programs are wasteful. Would the mainstream media not be all over the story? Such a person would be interviewed at length by Wolf Blitzer on CNN as well as made the rounds of the morning talk shows and the Sunday news programs as well. The media buzz would be red hot on this topic for days extending into weeks. Well, there is such a person but because he is a Democrat saying these things about President Obama, we can expect...

Lawmakers in Washington are debating whether to export more natural gas to combat Russian threats to cut off its gas supplies to Europe. Our D-C reporter Matt Laslo has a look at what that could mean for Wyoming’s economy – and environment… MATT LASLO: Wyoming's junior senator, John Barrasso, made waves when her first came to Washington. And while he's now in the Republican leadership team in the U-S Senate, he's starting to get brushed aside by many reporters and politicians because of his near singular focus on dismantling what he terms Obamacare. But this week lawmakers of all stripes...

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

LONDON — Partners for nearly a decade, Sarah Keith and Emma Powell are moving next month from their native England to New York. But first, they have an important piece of business to take care of: their wedding. “We’re quite calm about it,” Powell said Friday as she strolled the coastal streets of Brighton with 24 hours to go before “I do” time. “We’re not bridezillas.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury has signalled that the Church of England will mount no more resistance to gay marriage among churchgoers. Gay marriage will be legalised from Saturday with dozens of ceremonies planned around the country for one minute past midnight. This passing of the legislation caused deep rifts within the church. "I think the church has reacted by fully accepting that it's the law, and should react on Saturday by continuing to demonstrate in word and action, the love of Christ for every human being." Justin Welby told the Guardian. His comments mark a shift in tone, if not...