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"Comedy actress Mollie Sugden, best known for her role as Betty Slocombe in the hit TV series Are You Being Served?, has died in hospital at the age of 86 after a long illness. The popular television star shot to fame in the 1970s comedy show packed with double-entendres, as the panto-like character of Mrs Slocombe"

SYDNEY -- Tennis great Chris Evert has joined the chorus of complaints about the noise level in women's tennis, saying the "grunting" was getting out of hand. Evert stopped short of joining former rival Martina Navratilova in labelling the practice as cheating, but agreed it had reached unacceptable levels. Evert: "Grunting is one thing but the shrill sound that you hear with players nowadays, and especially they get louder when they hit a winner, that's the thing that I observe as a player," the former world No. 1 told reporters in Sydney on Monday. "It comes before they hit the...

Delinquency rates on prime mortgages, the least risky category, more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to statistics released yesterday by the government. Prime mortgages 60 days or more past due climbed to 2.9 percent of such loans through March 31. At the same point last year, 60 day deliquencies were just 1.1 percent of all prime loans. Two thirds of all mortgages in the US are prime mortgages, so any percentage increase in deliquencies represents a huge absolute number of deliquent mortgages. So here are the absolute numbers: 661,914 prime mortgages were at least...

Examiner Columnist | 6/30/09 5:55 AM News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher. President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, announced today she may sue her potential future colleagues for racial bias over yesterday's 5-4 ruling that overturned her own decision in the New Haven fire fighters discrimination lawsuit. The Supreme Court ruled in Ricci v. DeStefano Monday that an employer could not throw out the results of a promotion exam simply for fear of a lawsuit from racial minorities who fared poorly on the test. Sotomayor accused the high court's "Constitutional literalists" of bias and an "abject lack...

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) -- the third-ranking member of the House -- is the latest Republican with (possible) national ambitions to head off to Iowa for a political event. Pence, who is due to make an as-yet unspecified appearance in Cedar Rapids on July 24th, isn't on the short list of 2012 GOP candidates, but MSNBC and other outlets have predicted he'll be in the mix. Nevada Sen. John Ensign was in northwest Iowa in early June - shortly before his career imploded -- followed by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who was in Des Moines on Thursday.

URGENT PRAYERS NEEDED - DAUGHTER ON RESPIRATOR, NOW HAS MRSA. My daughter, Stephanie, is on a respirator and nasal feeding tube in the ICU at our local hospital. She was admitted to the hospital on 06/07/2009, after having a seizure that lasted over an hour. She had several shorter ones back-to-back after admission. We were told today that she now has MRSA. I have written about her before. She is a severely mentally and physically disabled 24 year old, who does not walk, talk, or feed herself. She wears diapers and has a very rare type of dwarfism, so she...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is pushing ahead with plans to shore up dwindling federal reserves for highway construction and establish a government-run bank to pay for future transportation projects.

t's simply amazing that a VP candidate who ran on a losing ticket could be the center of attention, eight months after her party's defeat. This is unprecedented. Such losing VP candidates have never been in the national spotlight again, such as Lloyd Bentsen, and Dan Quayle. Others only became newsworthy again when they themselves decided to run for President. Among this group are Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, and Joe Lieberman. Which us brings us to the question of why the constant and vicious attacks on Governor Palin and even more insidious the attacks on her family. After much thought,...

An utter lack of remorse last night condemned Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs to an almost certain death behind bars. Jack Straw ruled that - despite the Parole Board saying the frail 79-year-old was safe to be released - he must stay in jail. The Justice Secretary, whose shock decision divided MPs and legal experts, said Biggs had been 'wholly unrepentant' and did not deserve to be granted parole. Insiders admitted it was rare if not unprecedented for a minister to reject the advice of the Parole Board in such circumstances. It prompted immediate accusations that Mr Straw was chasing...

July 2, 2009 Vicar charged over 'sham marriages for illegal migrants plot' Father Alex Brown had worked in the parish in Sussex for almost 20 years Fran Yeoman A 60-year-old vicar was charged yesterday with involvement in an alleged criminal conspiracy to organise “sham marriages” for illegal immigrants. The Rev Alex Brown was one of four people arrested after a series of dawn raids in the Hastings area of East Sussex on Tuesday, which came after an 18-month investigation by Sussex Police and the UK Border Agency’s immigration crime team. Police searched the offices of St Peter and St Paul...

I don’t know what Mike Allen thought he was getting himself into here, but after this he’d be well advised not to go throwing stones at anyone else for coming off badly in interviews. The clip’s long but the first 3:45 is intro and can be safely skipped if you watched the MSNBC vid this morning. Enjoy. CLICK ON ABOVE LINK AND LISTEN TO THE AUDIO ( start at the 3:45 mark) FOR THE CONFRONTATION ( Mike Allen was SCHOOLED here ).

FEMA has approved Governor Palin’s total request for additional communities to receive disaster relief funds for the spring flooding event.

Durban - KwaZulu-Natal health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo has issued an ultimatum to striking doctors, calling on them to return to work on Friday or face the music. Addressing the media in Durban on Friday, Dhlomo said notices had been sent to all hospitals calling on all striking doctors, dentists and pharmacists to resume their duties no later than 08:00. The department was also preparing a court interdict to force the striking health professionals to end the strike, he said. “We as the department of health are designated as an essential service provider and therefore find the action of these...

TEL AVIV – Not a single Jewish home will be built in the strategic West Bank without approval of the Obama administration and the Palestinians, Nimer Hamad, senior political adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told WND. In spite of recent reports Israel will build 50 new homes in a northern West Bank Jewish community, Hamad said U.S. guarantees make him "confident" such housing will not actually be constructed. "The guarantees we received from the U.S. make us confident all the talks about the 50 houses in Adam are only a piece of meat (Defense Minister Ehud) Barak threw...

CoE school bans girl from wearing crucifix - but allows Sikh pupils to wear bangles A school told a child to remove a Christian cross she was wearing even though it lets Sikh children wear bangles as part of their religion. Lauren Grimshaw-Brown was told to take off a necklace with a cross on it because of health and safety fears. But the eight-year-old's furious mother has accused the school of double standards because they allow children following other faiths to wear jewellery on religious grounds. The mother-of-two says Lauren and brother Callan, five, have always worn crosses at St...

HICAGO – Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest. "It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, California, who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take — 'am I going down?'"

New York, July 1 (ANI): Senator John McCain's daughter Meghan wants Hillary Duff to play her in a movie version of her first book - still to be released. The blonde blogger, who began to receive media attention in 2007 for her blog, McCain Blogette, has already drawn her top choices for the role. "I want Hilary Duff to play me. I think she's really hot - hotter than me - but I'd still want her to play me," the New York Daily News quoted her as saying at the recent Trevor Project's summer gala at Capitale. But the 24-year-old...

A small Jewish toddler was orphaned in Mumbai last November amid a reign of terror carried out for the "prestige of Islam," according to a transcript of phone calls between the terrorists and their handlers published this week in an Indian newspaper. The terrorists murdered six Jews during the multi-pronged attack which began November 26, 2008 and ended in a river of blood at the Nariman Chabad House and additional locales. The three-day slaughter, which took the lives of dozens of others elsewhere in Mumbai, India as well, also carried the additional goal of damaging relations between Israel and India,...

Hi Everyone, My name is Brad Strittmatter and we have a new TV show on Fox Sports called Hunts for Heroes' Veteran Outdoors. The sole purpose of Veteran Outdoors Television is to honor our service members that have been wounded in combat by giving them a platform to tell their story in their own words. We also give them a little something back by surprising them with their dream adventure as our way of saying “Thank You!” for all they’ve done for us. Taking our wounded heroes on these trips has changed our lives. We are just a small group...

Cameron Apologises To Gays For Section 28: Law To Ban Promotion Of Homosexuality In Schools Was Wrong, Says Tory Leader By JAMES CHAPMAN 02nd July 2009 David Cameron has issued an extraordinary apology on behalf of the Conservative Party for legislation banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools. He said the party had 'got it wrong' when it introduced Section 28 in the late 1980s. It is one of a series of apologies Mr Cameron has made for his party's actions in government. The Scots received one in 2006 for having the poll tax imposed on them a year before...