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Boris Johnson will reportedly announce the return of imperial measurements to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee, in an apparent attempt to garner support among Brexiter voters in battleground seats that the Conservatives are in danger of losing. Britain currently uses a mix of imperial and metric measurements, with speed limits in miles per hour and milk and beer bought in pints. The prime minister, under increasing pressure after further damaging revelations in the Partygate scandal, is expected to announce next week that British shops will be allowed to sell products in pounds and ounces to coincide with celebrations for the...

Boris Johnson will pave the way for the return of pounds and ounces in British shops this week, in a "common sense" move heralded by Tory MPs as taking advantage of freedoms delivered by Brexit. On Friday, the Government will publish proposals to repeal EU-derived law requiring metric units to be used for all trade, with only limited exceptions. At the same time, ministers will issue guidance to firms on restoring the use of the crown symbol on pint glasses, after it was replaced by the CE marking to help the UK conform with EU rules. A government source said:...

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the most important metric to me was never cases, but hospitalizations. When dealing with an inevitable endemic respiratory virus that cannot be eradicated, the goal should be shifting disease to mild disease. In the U.S. this has not been an easy task as much of the population have not had to individually risk calculate as extolling these techniques were not a major component of official response (which was heavily “abstinence-only” focused), vulnerable populations such as nursing home residents were not protected, and too many high-risk individuals have shunned the life-saving vaccines.

British manufacturers may once again be able to sell goods in pounds and ounces after the country has left the European Union, the Environment Secretary has hinted.

A 36-year-old Egyptian woman, believed to be the fattest female in the world, has reached 500 kgs weight, according to media reports. Imran Ahmad Abdulati, who is Alexandria in northern Egypt, has not left her home for 25 years - since she was 11-years-old - because of her weight problem. After years of desperate attempts to deal with the issue, her sister Chaymaa' Ahmad Abdulati has now gone public with the problem in the hope of getting help, the media report said.

This week, former Rhode Island Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee announced he is seeking the Democratic nomination for president in the 2016 election. A key factor in his decision to enter the race is “to bring the much-needed conversion of weights and measurements in this country into line with the metric system.” “The United States is seriously out of step with the rest of the world,” Chafee contended. “When everyone else is using meters and liters it is sheer arrogance for us to be using yards and gallons. It’s like we saying ‘we’re too good to lower ourselves to your...

It was a premature delivery; Mom and baby in good healthA Saudi mother gave birth to a baby girl weighing six kg and doctors said it was one of the highest weights for a newborn to be recorded in the Gulf kingdom. The woman underwent a Caesarian operation at the hospital in the northern town of Tabuk after she went into labour in an early stage. “She had a premature delivery and the baby weighed around six kg, one of the heaviest babies to be born in the Kingdom,” the hospital’s public relations director Fahd Al Tuwaijri said, adding that...

‘Sí’ on the New SI: NIST Backs Proposal for a Revamped System of Measurement Units Taking the first steps of what would be a major historical advance in the science of measurement, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is participating in a worldwide effort to recommend major revisions to the International System of Units (SI), the modern metric system that is the basis of global measurements in commerce, science and other aspects of everyday life. The new SI, which would be based on seven constants of nature, would enable researchers around the world to express the results of...

<p>Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.</p>

For Janet Devers, a 63-yearold pensioner who still runs the fruit and veg stall on an East London market started by her mother at the height of the Blitz in 1940, Christmas 2007 was the most frightening she can ever remember. On Friday, Janet will step into the dock of a courtroom to face 13 criminal charges - putting her at the centre of one of the most shameful farces of recent British politics. She has become Britain's latest "Metric Martyr" - under EU directives compelling Britain to use only the metric system of weights and measures. She faces financial...

The original prototype for the kilogram, stored under lock and key near Paris, appears to be losing weight. The cylinder, which dates back from 1889, seems to have lost 50 micrograms, compared with the average of dozens of copies of the original. Richard Davis, of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, said: "The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart." The one in Sevres is the original that the...

Victory for Britain's metric martyrs as Eurocrats give up the fightBy BENEDICT BROGAN and PAUL SIMS - More by this author » Last updated at 00:05am on 11th September 2007  Brussels will today give up the fight to make Britain drop pints, pounds and miles. The right of Britons to use imperial weights and measures will be enshrined in EU law under plans being announced by the European Commission. Traditional measures will remain legal "until Kingdom come", the Commissioner responsible for the move told the Daily Mail last night. Scroll down for more...Vindicated: The 'Metric Martyr' Steve Thoburn, who...

In Belgium, you can buy jam in returnable jars, and once I finished my jar, and was cleaning it, and in the glass at the bottom was "3/8 L". And this sort of threw me, because I was a big metric fan, and the great advantage of the metric system was that it got rid of all those silly fractions. So why were they using them here in metric-land? Then I figured the jar was only so big, so it took up less space to print 3/8 L rather than 0.375 L. But there was another possibility. That being that...