A three-man delegation representing Pakistan's highest law enforcement agency has been sent to London to investigate spot-betting allegations, as calls grow for the country's entire cricket team to be banned from international competition.

Leading the calls today was Malcolm Speed, an Australian who was the chief executive of the International Cricket Council (ICC) from 2001-08.

Speed said he was concerned by what "looks a fairly compelling case" of rigged betting after Scotland Yard officers investigated claims that reporters paid a middleman £150,000 in return for exact details relating to play during the final Test of the four-match series at Lord's.

Researchers have long thought that Ötzi, the 5000-year-old Iceman found in the Alps in 1991, died wounded and alone, perhaps the victim of a raging blizzard. But a provocative new paper tells a radically different story. The first comprehensive map of Ötzi's body and belongings suggests he was ceremoniously buried by his fellows in the warm summer months.

Previous studies of Ötzi focused on his corpse rather than the entire death scene. His body, found on the Austrian-Italian border by two German hikers, had been pierced by an arrowhead in the shoulder. And the goods he carried--a copper axe, dagger, quiver, backpack, birch-bark container, and an unfinished bow--lay scattered around him. Previous analyses assumed that he discarded these as he succumbed to death from his wounds and the harsh winter.

But the new study--published today in Antiquity Journal--comes to a different conclusion. Led by archaeologist Alessandro Vanzetti of the University of Rome, La Sapienza, the researchers say that Ötzi's body and artifacts were in fact carefully placed on a stone platform 5 meters away from where the body was later found. Among the larger artifacts, only the backpack frame, trapped against the rock, remained in place. Human and animal hair on the platform--which is uphill from the body's final resting place--are "inconsistent with the disaster theory that the Iceman died where he was found," the authors write. If Ötzi had lain down on the rock with his goods close about him, his possessions would not have been so widely scattered, they say. And an unfinished bow is an odd thing for a lone man to carry over a mountain pass.

The Library of Congress has just opened up 222 boxes' worth of files and papers on Fredric Wertham, the scaremonger whose book Seduction of the Innocent led to widespread bans, burnings and censorship of American comic books. Wertham wasn't just a nutcase pro-censorship crusader: he was also (paradoxically), a civil rights pioneer who worked for racially integrated education in America (he also appeared in defense of Edith Rosenberg, later executed for spying for the USSR).

PULLMAN, Wash. -- You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with?

That's right: Other people really can't stand them.

Four separate studies led by a Washington State University social psychologist have found that unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island.

"It's not hard to find examples but we were the first to show this happens and have explanations for why," said Craig Parks, lead author of "The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members from the Group" in the current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The phenomenon has implications for business work groups, volunteer organizations, non-profit projects, military units, and environmental efforts, an interest of Parks' coauthor and former PhD student, Asako Stone.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2010) -- A new study from North Carolina State University shows that genetics play a key factor in whether someone is willing to take a survey.
"We wanted to know whether people are genetically predisposed to ignore requests for survey participation," says Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. "We found that there is a pretty strong genetic predisposition to not reply to surveys."

It was reported on Sunday 29 August 2010 that Mr Justice Kenneth Parker - the duty vacation judge (pictured right) - had, the previous day, granted a privacy injunction to an England footballer.  This appears to be the third such injunction granted during August (see our earlier post on the two previous injunctions).  The story of this "third injunction" was first reported in the Sunday Telegraph and has since appeared, on similar lines, in the "Daily Mail", the "Guardian", the "Independent" and the "Metro".

As kids head back to school, conservative Christian media ministry Focus on the Family perceives a bully on the playground: national gay-advocacy groups.

School officials allow these outside groups to introduce policies, curriculum and library books under the guise of diversity, safety or bullying-prevention initiatives, said Focus on the Family education expert Candi Cushman.

"We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled," Cushman said.

Public schools increasingly convey that homosexuality is normal and should be accepted, Cushman said, while opposing viewpoints by conservative Christians are portrayed as bigotry.