The Labour shadow cabinet has decided to vote against a bill introducing reform to the voting system, raising the prospect of a Commons defeat for one of the governing coalition's flagship policies.

The decision, taken last night, followed two lengthy shadow cabinet discussions.

It could herald a backbench Tory-Labour alliance designed to derail the bill either at its second reading or by rejecting the proposal that the referendum be held on the same day as elections in Scotland and parts of England and Wales next May.

A total of 50 Tory MPs are opposing next May as the date for the referendum, and are coming under intense pressure from Tory whips to pull back from that stance.

The coroner due to preside over the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson was tonight under pressure to step down from the hearing because he was responsible for appointing the pathologist who conducted a controversial postmortem on Tomlinson.

Professor Paul Matthews instructed Dr Freddy Patel to carry out the first postmortem on the newspaper seller. Patel, who is under investigation by the General Medical Council, concluded he died from a heart attack. Two further postmortems said the cause of death was abdominal haemorrhage.

The Police Officer who struck and pushed Mr Ian Tomlinson is to face misconduct proceedings - The Guardian 27th July.

Police Misconduct and Complaints is a complicated area of the law and a number of lawyers specialise in it.  Perhaps the principal book on the law is "Police Misconduct, Complaints and Public Regulation" by barristers John Beggs and Hugh Davies.

Such proceedings are normally held in private but there is a power under the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2008 - Reg. 32(5) - for the IPCC to require this hearing to be held in public. 

A British judge is to rule on whether Ejup Ganic, a former Bosnian leader, should be extradited to Serbia over alleged war crimes.

The 64-year-old is accused of ordering the killing of more than 40 Yugoslav army soldiers retreating from Sarajevo at the start of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, when he was president.

His defence lawyers have previously argued that two previous investigations found he had no case to answer and there was insufficient evidence to warrant a trial.

David Cameron has promised to "fight" for Turkey's membership of the European Union, saying he is "angry" at the slow pace of negotiations.

On his first visit as prime minister, he said the country could become a "great European power", helping build links with the Middle East.

He compared hostility to the membership bid in some parts of the EU with the way the UK's entry was once regarded.

After his visit to Turkey, Mr Cameron will travel on to India.

The Greek authorities should immediately review their policy of locking up irregular migrants and asylum-seekers, including many unaccompanied children, Amnesty International said in a new report on Tuesday.

Greece: Irregular migrants and asylum-seekers routinely detained in substandard conditions, documents their treatment, many of whom are held in poor conditions in borderguard stations and immigration detention centres with no or limited access to legal, social and medical aid.

Latest Ipsos MORI poll puts Labour on 38 per cent, with Tories just ahead on 40 per cent.

If more evidence were needed that Lib Dem voters are rapidly defecting to Labour, the latest Ipsos MORI political monitor should provide it. The poll puts Labour on 38 per cent, up seven points since June, with the Lib Dems falling five to 14 per cent. The Tories are up one to 40 per cent.

If repeated at an election on a uniform swing, the figures would put Labour on 310 seats, the Tories on 294 and the Lib Dems on 20.

Speculation that there will be some sort of Tory-Lib Dem pact in 2015 has been growing for several weeks, with Michael Portillo recently suggesting that the two parties should fight the next election under the banner of "the coalition".

Now, in a fascinating post on ConservativeHome, Tory MP Mark Field has said that his party is almost certain to give "most Liberal Democrat incumbents" a free run in their seats, with the Lib Dems reciprocating by not standing against the most vulnerable Conservative MPs. Field may only be one MP but his piece could be indicative of thinking elsewhere in the party.

The UN's former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said it is his "firm view" that the Iraq war was illegal.

The education secretary, Michael Gove, ignored advice to check an error-strewn list of cancelled school building projects before it was published, a quango chief claimed today.

Tim Byles, chief executive of a quango responsible for an axed £55bn initiative to rebuild the country's schools, told MPs he had warned Gove's office to check his facts before telling hundreds of schools whether their new buildings would go ahead.

But he said that Gove's staff disregarded this, and published a list earlier this month that was found to have 25 errors.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of stigmatising one of France's most marginalised communities as he prepares to hold a meeting at the Elysee Palace tomorrow to discuss tough new strategies for dealing with the Traveller, Gypsy and Roma populations.

In a sign that the right-wing president is looking for fresh ways to boost his law and order credentials, Sarkozy announced the meeting last week in a bid to evaluate the situation nationwide and to order "the expulsion of all illegal encampments".

After a group of Travellers went on the rampage in the quiet village of Saint Aignan on 18 July - burning cars, attacking the police station and hacking at trees - the president said events had underlined "the problems caused by the behaviour of some Travellers and Roma".

FRIENDS of an acclaimed Scottish writer have accused the new government's crackdown on welfare benefits of being a factor in his suicide. Paul Reekie, who, along with Irvine Welsh, was part of a wave of young Scottish authors who rose to international prominence in the 1990s, killed himself in his Edinburgh home last month.

The Leith-based writer and poet, who was 48,left no suicide note but friends say letters informing him that his welfare benefits were to be halted were found close to his body

the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, an "Iron Silk Road" that will connect the oil-rich Caspian Sea region to Turkey--and beyond to Europe.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/08/new-silk-road/forrest-text

Kettering MP Philip Hollobone has been told to focus his priorities on matters which affect the people living in his constituency, rather than pursuing a ban on the burka. Kettering Parish Priest Dominic Barrington and chairman of the Kettering Muslim Association Iman Khan have both said there are more important issues the MP should be addressing, rather than pursuing an issue which has little direct impact on any of his constituents.

In a joint letter to a national newspaper, Mr Barrington and Mr Khan said: "We were struck by the irony of our MP's plans to refuse to meet any of his constituents who wear a veil.

"Such a form of dress is not, to our knowledge, worn by anyone in the local community.

"Not a single Muslim female has visited Mr Hollobone, veiled or unveiled, since he was elected.

BP will emerge from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis a smaller and wiser company, according to the man who is due to take over the reins.

Bob Dudley, currently in charge of BP's clean-up operation, will replace Tony Hayward as chief executive in October.

Mr Dudley described the oil spill as a terrible tragedy from which the company and the industry would learn a lot.

Earlier, BP reported a record $17bn (£11bn) loss, having set aside $32bn to cover the costs of the spill.

Northern Rock's former finance director, David Jones, has been fined and banned by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for his part in the misreporting of mortgage arrears.

The FSA fined Mr Jones £320,000 and banned him from performing any function in relation to any regulated activity.

Mr Jones said the penalties were "unfair and disproportionate".

He is now the third former executive from Northern Rock to be banned and fined by the regulator.

Lloyds Banking Group has stopped selling payment protection insurance (PPI) to customers who borrow money.

It is the first bank to respond in this way to long-running criticism of the policies and the way they have sometimes been mis-sold.

PPI is supposed to help people pay loans, mortgages or credit card bills if they fall ill or lose their jobs.

Its sale is now being restricted by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Competition Commission.

NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters) - Steelmakers painted a gloomy picture for the short-term prospects of the industry on Tuesday as global prices have fallen and industrial demand is not recovering from the recession as quickly as expected. The negative outlook from Japan to North America sent steelmakers' shares tumbling.

The Times  has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show.

The huge drop matches the industry expectation before the Times instituted the paywall that traffic would fall off by 90%, which is the standard experience when a site moves to a paid-access model instead of free access.

The predilection to blame business was manifest in one of President Barack Obama's recent speeches. He was supposed to be seeking the support of the business community for a doubling of exports over the next five years. Instead he lashed out at "unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restriction on activities that might harm the environment, take advantage of middle-class families, or, as we've seen, threaten to bring down the entire financial system."

This kind of gratuitous and overstated demonisation - widely seen in the business community as a resort to economic populism on the part of Mr Obama to shore up the growing weakness in his political standing - is exactly the wrong approach.

Ma! He's Looking At Me Funny! - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

That's basically the thrust of Mort Zuckerman's op-ed accusing Obama of "demonizing" business.

The op-ed contains the usual -- false claims that Fannie and Freddie caused the financial crisis, false claims that fear of government policy -- as opposed to weak demand -- is holding back investment and hiring.

I think this is telling. This is the only actual example of Obama's alleged demonization of business that Zuckerman offers -- and it's essentially a mini-Breitbart, a quote taken out of context to make it seem as if Obama was saying something he wasn't. That's typical of the whole argument.

Oh, and one more thing: are there no copy editors at the FT? When I quote someone in my column, I supply the source material, and my copy editor checks, not just to be sure that the quote is accurate, but that it's not taken out of context. But I guess such rules don't apply if you're a conservative.

Well, we always wanted stories from data: now we've got it. In spades. With bells on. The Wikileaks' Afghanistan war logs are a fantastic victory for investigative data-based journalism, not only here at the Guardian but at the New York Times and Der Spiegel too.

It's also datajournalism in action. What we wanted to do was enable our team of specialist reporters to get great human stories from the information - and we wanted to analyse it to get the big picture, to show how the war really is going.

It's been a busy month for those of us who work with data at the Guardian; this is how we got here.

I lack the background knowledge about Afghanistan and Pakistan to put the new information in full perspective, not to mention lacking the time to read more than a little of the vast data dump. Therefore only these points about the still-emerging significance of what's now on public record:

1) "Everyone" knows this already. People who have been very close to this story say that little of the information is "new," in a fundamental sense. See the Atlantic Wire's summary here, Mother Jones here and here, and (splenetically and amusingly) Andrew Exum here. Fine.

2) But not everyone actually did. Notwithstanding #1, information that may be old news to insiders may seem a revelation to the broader public. Whether from George W. Bush or Barack Obama, presidential speeches about Afghanistan have not emphasized the mixed loyalties of the Pakistani security services, the frustrations of dealing with tribal leaders and corrupt officials, the extent of civilian casualties, and other items that, according to insiders, "everyone" already knows. At this stage it's impossible to say whether a vast, somewhat hard-to-digest compilation of raw reports, released in the middle of summer, will mean that "everyone" in a broader sense comes to share this insider perspective.

The real concern about the wikileaks has nothing to do with sources or soldier safety, but eroding public support:

The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.

The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.

David Cameron has described Gaza as a "prison camp" during an official visit to Turkey. The prime minister said it is a situation which must not be allowed to remain, writes Felicity Spector for Channel 4 News.

Posters depicting the portrait of Gamal Mubarak, son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, have emerged on Cairo streets, sparking debate on the possible launch of an unofficial election campaign. 

Campaign posters supporting the presidential candidacy of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's son are popping up across Cairo, local media is reporting. 
   
The posters, depicting the portrait of 47-year-old Gamal Mubarak, were signed by "the Popular Coalition for the Support of Gamal Mubarak," a previously unknown group, reported Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian daily.

The US Defence Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion in Iraqi oil money tapped by the U.S. for rebuilding the war ravaged nation, according to an audit.

This came in an audit report released by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction on Tuesday.

The report offers a compelling look at continued laxness in how such funds are being spent.

The audit found that shoddy record keeping by the Defence Department left the Pentagon unable to fully account for 95 per cent of a total of $9.1 billion it withdrew between 2004 and 2007 from a special fund set up by the UN Security Council.

A Lufthansa cargo plane has crashed at King Khaled International Airport in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Saudi state television reports.

There were no casualties on the German-owned plane, the kingdom's civil aviation authority said.

But the plane's two pilots were being treated in hospital, Lufthansa said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

The Saudi civil aviation authority has been trying to put out a fire on the plane, reports said.

A heat ray gun developed by the US military has been withdrawn from Afghanistan, army chiefs have confirmed.

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a non-lethal weapon that heats up the skin "intolerably" but, according to tests, causes no permanent damage.

Its invisible beam is designed to repel enemies and disperse violent crowds, causing anyone targeted to immediately move away.

US military commanders in the country have had the weapon at their disposal but have now decided against using it.

The weapon was never actually deployed in a 'real life' scenario.

A decision by Israel's Supreme Court to double a 15-month jail term for a policeman who shot dead an unarmed Palestinian driver suspected of stealing a car has provoked denunciations from police commanders and government officials.

Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the internal security minister, condemned the judges for "sending a terrible message to police officers."

On the advice of police lawyers, the accused policeman, Shahar Mizrahi, had appealed his conviction last year in the expectation that the ruling would be overturned by the Supreme Court.

Honduras - The transnational NIKE Corporation reached an agreement with the largest labor union of Honduras to create a fund to help laid off workers to the tune of $1.54 million. Two maquiladora (assembly enterprises) that contract for NIKE closed their doors in January 2009, while owing $2 million in salaries and benefits to 1800 workers.

Honduras - The Center for Constitutional Rights has released a letter  sent to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opposing easy readmission into the OAS for Honduras. CCR is a highly credible institution; its opinion that "The human rights situation in Honduras is dire and has continued to deteriorate" represents a consensus of international human rights organizations.

Panama - The police chief of Bocas del Toro, Didier Degracia, said today  that the "intention was not to hurt anyone seriously" during the violent repression of {banana worker] protests, but they had to shoot birdshot because "there were many strikers". He added that those who participated in the protest marches "maintained high levels of discipline, determination and strategies for the struggle". Much saner observations came today from former consul of Panama in London, Kevin Harrington, who visited Changuinola and surrounding areas.

The Nation - Here is the US policy in a nutshell: we pay Mexicans to kill Mexicans, and this slaughter has no effect on drug shipments or prices.

British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines - giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before - that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.

Channel 4 News gains exclusive access to the UK's first shale gas well, a new way of extracting natural gas from underground rocks which could profoundly change the energy market.

Adding insult to the Gulf's injury, a wellhead hit by a tug boat is now spewing oil near a Louisiana marsh area, officials said Tuesday.

The oil is shooting up 20 feet into the air, the office of Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

The well is in inland waterways on the border of Plaquemines and Jefferson parishes, about 65 miles south of New Orleans, and in a marsh area not accessible by road.

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts was quoted as saying by WWL-TV in New Orleans that "there is a pretty good amount of oil flowing there." He did not have a more specific estimate.

While BP publicly stuck to claims that its blow-out well was leaking at rate of 5,000 gallons of oil per day, the company was privately operating under the assumption that at least five times that amount was gushing into the Gulf, according to documents released today by congressional investigators.

BP's internal estimate of 53,000 barrels per day is buried in one of the company's requests to use more than the maximum threshold of dispersants established by the EPA, which the Coast Guard released earlier this month. In letters dated July 6 and 11 to the government's on-scene coordinator in the Gulf, at that time Coast Guard Admiral James Watson, BP Chief Operating Office Doug Suttles cited the 53,000 figure in justifying the company's request to use 25,200 gallons of dispersant per day to break up the oil.

July 27 (Reuters) - The amount of new wind power installed in the United States fell by 71 percent in the first half of 2010 from a year ago as government support for the renewable energy source waned, the U.S. wind industry umbrella group said on Tuesday.

About 700 megawatts of new wind capacity were brought on line in the first six months of the year, although that figure was expected to grow in the second half since there were more than 5,500 megawatts currently under construction.

New wind power installation fell behind new coal-fired plant additions for the first time in five years, Denise Bode, chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association told a conference call.

U.S. wind installations had reached a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009, equal to the capacity of about 10 new coal-fired plants

The port of Tulcea in Romania gradually drops out of sight as we sail down the Danube. It takes two hours to reach the little town of Sulina, at the southern extremity of the delta, where the river spills into the Black Sea. It feels as if we have reached the end of the world. Two thousand years ago the Roman empire chose this point as its eastern limit. More recently, in the 19th century, the European Commission of the Danube established its headquarters at Sulina.

But the fine buildings belong to another era. After the second world war communism put an end to hopes of development. "We did not even manage to build a little bridge across the river," complains Stefan Raileanu, a vet with a passion for the wild delta horses.

BP petrol stations across central London were temporarily shut down by activists today in a move they said was designed to make the troubled oil company adopt greener policies.

Greenpeace claimed supporters had at one time stopped the pumps at 46 outlets by stealing parts of safety switches in forecourts - action the company said was "childish and irresponsible".

The protests, coinciding with the replacement of BP chief Tony Hayward by Bob Dudley, was meant to encouraged the public to help speed-up the end of the oil age.

A few months ago NASA's Kepler mission made headlines when word leaked the plucky little spacecraft had found signs of hundreds of new planets circling distant stars. By contrast there are only about 500 exoplanets known now, after more than a decade of careful observation by some of the world's most sensitive land based instruments. But information on the most exciting class of potential planet, those more similar to the earth and less like the gas giants that orbit farther out in our own solar system, was frustratingly sparse. But one of the astronomers involved with Kepler may have just spilled the beans:

At 8:15 into his 18-minute talk, Sasselov showed a bar graph of planet size. Of the approximate 265 Kepler planets represented on the graph, about 140 were labeled "like Earth," that is, having a radius smaller than twice Earth's radius. "You can see here small planets dominate the picture," said Sasselov. Until now, astronomers' exoplanet finds had been more like gas giant Jupiter than rocky little Earth. Even Kepler investigators had refrained from discussing any Earth-size finds.

The tired idea that born-on-the-Web news sites will replace traditional media is wrong-headed, and it's past time that academic research and news reports reflect that. Jay Rosen, the New York University professor and media critic, calls them "replaceniks," and it's an apt term. Rosen is talking about people who insist on evaluating new, born-on-the-web news outlets as potential replacements for established news organizations, such as your local newspaper. As if.

As if the new online publishers are trying to replace the local traditional outlets. As if newspaper-centric standards of dailiness and comprehensiveness matter the way they did pre-Web. As if citizens can only turn to one or the other type of outlet amidst a vast and diverse emerging new ecosystem and only one type of news site will prevail.

Two British police forces have begun trials of a sophisticated computer software package which aims to boost their efficiency by predicting where and when future crimes will take place.

The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates patterns of past and present incidents, then combines the information with a range of data including crime reports, intelligence briefings, offender behaviour profiles and even weather forecasts. This is used to identify potential hot spots and flashpoints, so police forces can allocate resources to areas where particular crimes are most likely to occur.

Usually I avoid topics like women in technology because (1) it is a can of worms, and (2) I can really only speak for myself. For the most part, I'd rather be seen as a person in technology than a woman, but this weekend the twitterverse erupted with opinions about Google sponsoring female students to attend JSConf. As a woman who is often the only-woman-in-the-room, I want people to know it isn't always easy. I was a bit shocked by the blatant failure to empathize.

The media reportage on the effects of the decommissioning of speed cameras on road traffic accidents in Swindon has already caused Full Fact some concern today. However the factual problems in this debate do not begin and end in the Wiltshire town. With Oxfordshire announcing last week that it would follow Swindon's lead in switching off their under-fire cameras and the Government cutting maintenance funding for those still in use, the Taxpayers' Alliance released a report questioning their impact on road safety. This suggested that the decline in accidents on Britain's roads actually slowed after the introduction of speed cameras in 1992.

I received a call today from Chris, an outreach worker at Denver's homeless youth services Urban Peak .  He said he had to pick up some kids left stranded by a "sales crew". I never heard of such a thing so it didn't "register" or make sense.

When I arrived at their downtown facility I met Jeremy and Alicia. They were left stranded by an organization that exploits homeless youth for labor. These organizations promise great income and fun travel. To a kid in poverty being able to travel and make money is often too sexy to resist. Of course, this is just a labor trafficking scheme. The kids make very little money, are often abused, and when they want out they are left stranded back homeless, often worse than when they started.

The head of child protection for the Catholic church in England and Wales has said the Vatican should remove the statute of limitations on prosecution of of priests for child abuse offences.

William Kilgallon, the chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission (NCSC), argued that the time limit was unhelpful and failed to reflect the long-lasting effects of abuse.

He described the Vatican's recent decision to double the time period from 10 years to to 20 as "better than it was", but said he would have preferred its abolition.

The Vatican's leading art historian has dismissed claims made in its newspaper that a painting found in a Jesuit church in Rome is a Caravaggio.

An article on the front page of the paper, headlined "a new Caravaggio", highlighted similarities between the work and that of the Italian master.

Now Vatican Museums head Antonio Paolucci has responded in a piece headlined "new Caravaggio? Not really".

He said it was of "modest" quality, painted with "inadequate" technique.

When he hit European television screens in 1977, pogoing across music stages with a glint in his eye and a flower in his buttonhole, Plastic Bertrand gave no reason for anyone to doubt him when he yelled into the audience "Ça plane pour moi" (All's cool with me). Thirty-three years later, however, the erstwhile hero of Brussels' music scene could be forgiven for ruing his youthful chutzpah.

If evidence given to a Belgian court this week is to be believed, the man recognised as the voice behind Euro-punk's anthem had built his acclaim on shaky ground: he did not actually sing the song.

Videos Rouse Russian Anger Toward Police - NYTimes.com

One day last fall, a police officer here put on his uniform and sat on a drab tan couch before a video camera. In a halting monotone, he recorded two video appeals to Vladimir V. Putin, 13 minutes in all.

He was a nobody cop from a nowhere city, but his words would startle this country.

"How can a police officer accept bribes?" the officer asked. "Do you understand where our society is heading?  You talk about reducing corruption," he said. "You say that it should not be just a crime, that it should be immoral. But it is not like that. I told my boss that the police are corrupt. And he told me that it cannot be done away with.  I am not afraid of quitting. I will tell you my name. I am Dymovsky, Aleksei Aleksandrovich."

<...>

Mr. Dymovsky said the only real answer is for Russians to create a grass-roots anticorruption movement. Since his release from jail, he has been traveling around the country, trying to rally support for new policies.

But he is still apparently considered a danger.

Recently, he went to Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, to attend a protest. He said he was accosted by four plainclothes police officers, who told him that if he ever wanted to see his family again, he should leave and never return.

The US Congress has approved a bill aimed at protecting US writers from libel tourists using English courts to pursue defamation claims. The SPEECH (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage) Act now goes to President Obama to be signed into law.

Last week I had an encounter with open justice. I was attending the Information Tribunal hearing of a friend who is trying to peel back layers of secrecy surrounding allegations that the Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust had a history of silencing whistleblowing staff by offering them public money to sign confidentiality or `gagging' contracts.

I've been to the Tribunal before when I was fighting for the release of MPs' expenses and that's when I discovered the only record of proceedings of this so-called "open" people's court (the Tribunals are meant to be a less formal, more accessible form of justice) were my scribbled notes. When it came time to write a script for a dramatised version of the hearing my notes and those of other reporters were all we had to go on. I'd asked at the time if I could tape record the hearing and was told "no".

Ron Ramsey, Tennessee's Lieutenant Governor and a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial primary, is claiming Islam, the world's second largest religion, may not be a religion after all.

Ramsey, lagging in polls in the Republican gubernatorial primary race, claims he's not sure if Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion apply to Islam, since, he says, Islam may be a cult, and not a religion.

For an elected official to suggest that Muslims are not entitled to First Amendment protection is so outrageous as to be near criminal. 

Justice Minister Keiko Chiba - who opposes the death penalty - witnessed the executions and announced the formation of a group to review the death penalty.

Opinion polls show broad support for capital punishment in Japan.

...

Ms Chiba said that as justice minister she believed it was her duty to witness the executions in person.

* If you decide to buy Wenlock, don't try and use your Solo card. "In recognition of Visa's longstanding support of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the London 2012 Shop is proud to only accept card payments by Visa."

New stars are forming inside this giant cloud of dust and gas as seen in infrared light by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Sprawling across the constellation Vela is a complex of dark, dense clouds of dust and gas, difficult to detect with telescopes that see only visible light. The complex is called the Vela Molecular Cloud Ridge.

A 14-year-old Dutch girl who wants to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world has won a court's permission to attempt the voyage.

The court in Middelburg lifted a guardianship order imposed last year, which placed Laura Dekker under the care of child protection services.

Laura must complete the two-year trip before she turns 17 in September 2012 to break the record.

Her mother has dropped her objections to the plan.

A five-year-old Irish boy who was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps has won 7,500 euros damages for defamation of character.

The case, reported in the Irish Times on Wednesday, concerned Tadhg Mooney from Balbriggan in County Dublin.

The court heard he was in a local branch of Lidl with his mother in June 2009 when a shop assistant grabbed his arm and made the accusation.

It's a story of Zara Phillips, daughter of the Princess Royal (Windsor division). The difficulty comes in trying to work out where the logic broke down. Is it the Lesser Windsor who's nutty, the PR people she's employing, or the reporter reporting on what the latter had arranged for the former?

I suspect quite a few wires got crossed.

You can't be me, I'm taken