A British humanist campaign is questioning the morality of the religious indoctrination of children. Should children be given the freedom to decide which religion they want to belong to, if any? Is it ethical to force a religion, and a religious label, upon a child?
The trial of a husband accused of murdering his wife as they slept in a camper van has heard he killed her while he dreamt she was an intruder.
Christine Thomas, 57, was killed in Aberporth, Ceredigion, in July 2008.
Swansea Crown Court heard Brian Thomas, 59, of Neath, accepts he killed her but says he has a sleep disorder which had been triggered by "boy racer activity".
Jurors have been told they can reach a verdict of not guilty or of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Prosecuting barrister Paul Thomas QC, in his opening words to the jury on Tuesday morning, described the case as "highly unusual".
He described how Mr Thomas killed his wife, his childhood sweetheart, because he had dreamt she was a man who had broken into their motor home.
The court was told Mr Thomas's disorder meant he was not in control of his actions when he strangled his partner of 40 years.
After commissioning evidence from sleep experts, the prosecution agreed his actions were involuntary and he could not be held responsible.
Prosecuting, Mr Thomas said the defendant was charged with the murder of his wife, whose death he accepted causing.
Act strangely
But the barrister said the prosecution did not seek a murder or manslaughter conviction.
Instead, he said the prosecution would be arguing for the "special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity".
The alternative, the jury was told, would be "a simple verdict of not guilty".
The jury was told that the couple, who have two grown-up daughters, enjoyed holidaying together in their camper van.
The daughters said their father had been prone to episodes of sleepwalking, during which he had been known sometimes to act strangely.
The court heard how Mr and Mrs Thomas had gone on holiday in their camper van in July 2008 and stayed the night at a vehicle park in Aberporth.
A group of younger people turned up at the car park after they had gone to bed, and the screeching of brakes and tyres - described in court as "boy racer activity" - disturbed the couple, who moved from the site's lower to its higher car park.
'Highly sceptical'
The prosecution said that at 0349 the next morning, Mr Thomas made a 999 call, which was later played to the court, in which he said he had killed his wife because he had mistaken her for an intruder in a dream.
He said he had dreamt he was fighting one of the boy racers.
The prosecution said the defendant had told the 999 operator: "I woke up fighting one of those boys but it wasn't a boy, it was Christine."
In police interviews, Mr Thomas repeated what he had told the 999 operator - that he had dreamt of a man crawling across the bed, putting him in a headlock, then waking to find his wife dead.
The prosecution told the jury that the police and CPS had been "highly sceptical" of his explanation and charged him with murder.
But because the defendant had raised the matter of his sleep disorder, both defence and prosecution commissioned experts to investigate it.
Tests were carried out on Mr Thomas as he slept and both sleep experts agreed he had killed his wife while affected by a sleep disorder, meaning his behaviour was "involuntary."The trial of a husband accused of murdering his wife as they slept in a camper van has... more
Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their chances of attracting men, new scientific research indicates.
Striking the right balance between revealing too much and being too conservative in how much skin is on show has long been a dilemma for women when choosing the right outfit for a night out.
However, a study by experts at the University of Leeds has come to the rescue by calculating the exact proportion of the body that should be exposed for optimum allure.
The findings were based on work by four female researchers, who discreetly observed women at one of the city’s biggest nightclubs from a balcony above the dance floor.
Using tape recorders hidden in their handbags, the researchers took note of what female clubbers were wearing and how many times they were approached by men asking them to dance.
For the purposes of the study, each arm accounted for 10 per cent of the body, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.
Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.
However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their... more
Prof Beddington, the country's top science adviser, said the evidence was "absolutely clear cut" but stopped short of criticising the removal of Prof Nutt.
However, he is now consulting other heads of expert committees to see if they have experienced difficulties or political interference in their roles.
Only in August this year, Prof Beddington warned leading academics will be discouraged from working with government if they fear being reprimanded for expressing their views.
It came as Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, backed the decision by his Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to force Prof Nutt to resign as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for criticising government policy, especially on cannabis.
The move has sparked a bitter row between the science community and politicians amid concerns over the future use of independent scientific advice.
Two ACMD members have already resigned and there remains the prospect a mass resignation of the remaining 28 if they do not receive sufficient reassurances about the future from Mr Johnson in a meeting next week.
One member said last night that the situation is on a "razor's edge".
The row over Prof Nutt followed a series of public comments including a view that alcohol and tobacco is more harmful than cannabis, ecstasy and LSD.
He has also criticised the Government's decision to move cannabis back to Class B, against the recommendation of the ACMD.
On whether cannabis is less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol, Prof Beddington said: "I think the scientific evidence is absolutely clear cut. I would agree with it."
He said the sacking was the result of a breakdown in trust between Prof Nutt and Mr Johnson but stressed it was for scientists to offer expert advice and politicians to make policy decisions.
"I think it's very difficult – when clearly trust had broken down between the Home Secretary and Professor Nutt – to see how that could go on," he said.
"I think it's fair to say we need to make a distinction between scientific advice and evidence – which is the role of experts and scientific committees and the role of ministers – which is to make policy."
Mr Brown publicly backed Mr Johnson's decision to sack Prof Nutt and warned that the latter's comments gave the impression the Government was sending "mixed messages" about drugs.
He told an audience of police, council workers and members of the public London: "Scientific advice is very important and we value it. You can see that with swine flu, with climate change and with all sorts of environmental problems.
"But advisers advise and ministers have to make decisions.
He added: "I think the issue here is we did have advice that we should not reclassify cannabis. We did not accept that.
"We have to take a broader view in the round that was more than just the scientific advice. It's about the effects on young people that drugs are harmful and not acceptable."
The move has caused splits inside Government after Lord Drayson, the science minister, wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to reverse the decision.
He said he was "pretty appalled" and claimed that Mr Johnson had made "a big mistake".
However Lord Drayson later rowed back from his comments claiming they were a hasty reaction before knowing the facts.
He said: "My comments in the email exchange were my immediate reaction to what had happened, without full knowledge of all the facts.
"I have talked to Alan Johnson and he has assured me of the importance he attaches to scientific advice and his respect for scientific advice while being the person who has to make the final difficult decisions."Prof Beddington, the country's top science adviser, said the evidence was "absolutely... more
A baby born on a London bus has been given the middle name Dennis, after the vehicle's manufacturer.
Olatidebe Dennis Agboola, weighing 7.5lbs, is believed to be the first birth aboard one of London's buses after he arrived at the back of a No394 in Hackney last Thursday.
Pauline Jacobs, the driver, alerted controllers to dispatch an ambulance as Emiloju Fatima Lawal went into labour.
She parked the single-decker bus near Mare Street to help the pregnant woman, and was assisted by passenger Carole Allen, 60, a switchboard supervisor at Homerton Hospital.
Miss Lawal, 37, of Hackney, who has three other children and who was gave birth on Tuesday, a day early, said: "A man asked if I was OK, I said 'No, I'm in Labour.'
"A few minutes later he came out and I said 'Excuse me, the baby is here'."
Miss Allen said: "he just flew out onto the floor. I didn't feel panicked, just relieved."A baby born on a London bus has been given the middle name Dennis, after the vehicle's... more
Lance Corporal Joe Glenton of the British Army told protesters at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park that he found it distressing to disobey orders but felt that he had been left with no choice.Lance Corporal Joe Glenton of the British Army told protesters at Speakers Corner in... more
UK — Postal union leader sees no other chance than to have more strikes as Royal Mail workers are not satisfied with privatization “It’s your service, it’s my job”.UK — Postal union leader sees no other chance than to have more strikes as Royal... more
The Danish company behind the ubiquitous brightly coloured building block toys released their latest product, the rebuildable Lego board games, in July.
They were invented by Cephas Howard, a British games designer. But his innovative plans were kept secret for three years, known only to six designers who worked in a high-security basement office in the Lego HQ in Billund, Denmark
Mr Howard says that the move to Lego was like joining a secretive Government agency.
He told The Mirror: “I’d just landed my dream job working for Lego but I had to swear not to tell a living soul.
“I couldn’t even tell my wife when I got home. I think she wondered if my Lego story was a front and I was actually working for the CIA.”
The bunker-like Concept Lab where Mr Howard works is run by director Flemming Ostergard. He says the security is necessary.
He said: “News travels fast in the toy industry.“The fear wasn’t that our competitors would create a better game, but that they’d create a worse one, so when we brought out our games kids would have been put off and wouldn’t buy ours either.”
The team originally came up with 300 different Lego board game concepts, but whittled it down to just 10. Since their release they have become one of the UK’s best-selling games and are on track to be this Christmas’s must-have toys.The Danish company behind the ubiquitous brightly coloured building block toys... more
An assistant at a grocery store in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, was ordered by the Performing Right Society (PRS) to obtain a performer's license and to pay royalties because she was informally singing popular songs while stocking groceries. The PRS later backed down and apologized. This after the same store had turned off the radio after a warning from the PRS. We have entered an era where music is no longer an art for all to enjoy, but rather a form of private property that must be regulated and taxed like alcohol. "Music to the ears" has become 'dollars in the bankAn assistant at a grocery store in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, was ordered by the... more
Escalator etiquette in most countries tends to match the rules of the road. In New York and Taipei, motorists and escalator users keep to the right, while in Singapore and Tokyo both keep to the left.
So why do passengers on the London Underground stand on the right-hand side of escalators when the rules of the road dictate that we drive on the left?
The mystery has been solved by a silent film from the 1920s that has been restored recently for The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival.
A visual joke in Underground, the first film to use extensive footage of the Tube, shows how the design of early escalators meant that it was important to step off with the right foot.
Unlike modern “comb” escalators, where the end of the moving stairway is at right angles to the direction of travel, older “shunt” escalators ended with a diagonal so that the stairway finished sooner for the right foot than for the left.
The idea was to allow passengers to keep their left foot on a moving stairway as they stepped off with their right.
Passengers who chose not to walk down the escalators were asked to stand on the right so that anyone wishing to overtake them at the end would be able to take advantage of the extra section of moving stairway.
When Underground was released in 1928, most Londoners were familiar with escalators but Asquith was the first film director to make them an important part of the plot.
Underground will receive a gala performance as part of The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival on Friday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.Escalator etiquette in most countries tends to match the rules of the road. In New... more
We know you're worried what will happen; we saw that Liam Neeson movie too, the one where the daughter goes abroad and gets kidnapped and only after killing 351 people does he get her back. Taking trips to Europe can be risky, but our Best Buy is old enough and responsible and can take care of itself, so we're okay with it taking a trip to the UK next year... even though we don't know exactly where it'll be landing.
It's been talking about going for so long it'd be a shame to say no now. Yes, it'll be packing its blue shirts and yellow name tags so everyone will know what it is, and once it gets there sometime next year we're sure it'll call and tell us which franchise location will be first. So until then just try not to worry -- and maybe sign it up for some self defense classes or something.We know you're worried what will happen; we saw that Liam Neeson movie too, the one... more
The little chair that Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have sat on before his army was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo is expected to fetch £15,000 pounds at auction.
The diminutive French dictator is said to have rested on the unremarkable, small wooden seat in 1815 at Courcelles in Belgium, 22 miles from the battlefield.
He stayed at the home of a family and the daughter of the owner, Pauline Cambier, kept the chair carefully, aware of who had perched upon it.
It comes with two letters of provenance, one from a friend of Cambier, stating how she had often told him about its history.
He adds: "She had always kept it with greatest care."
Featuring eight stretcher rungs, a rush seat and seven spindles, plus decorative features, it is at odds with the grandeur of the self-styled Emperor who sat on it.
It has had several owners and now is to be sold at auction and collectors from around Europe are expected to bid on it.
Despite his losing the Battle of Waterloo and being humiliatingly sent to exile on St Helena, Napoleon is still revered in France.The little chair that Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have sat on before his army was... more
A woman in Berkshire was left with no other option but to change her name by deed poll after years of hassle from bailiffs and debt collecters - care of credit score firms Equifax and Experian.
For two-and-a-half years Susan Brown has been hounded for the debts of another Susan Brown - who's racked up £37,000 worth on loans, credit cards and driving fines.
The confusion arose because the two women not only share a name, but the same date of birth too. Well, they did, now the name bit's been rectified and innocent Susan has incorporated her maiden name into her surname, becoming Susan Griffith-Brown.A woman in Berkshire was left with no other option but to change her name by deed poll... more
Researchers in Holland measured the sexual performance of nearly 500 men from five countries against the clock.
They found that British men had sex for 10 minutes on average before reaching an orgasm.
American men came second with an average performance of eight minutes, followed by the Dutch with a 6.5-minute innings.
Spaniards were fourth, giving their lovers 4.9 minutes of pleasure, while Turks trailed in last, clocking up an average 4.4 minutes.
One man, whose nationality was not identified, lasted just six seconds, the study by experts at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found.
However, another participant in the research put in a 52-minute performance before peaking.
A spokesman told The Sun: "The UK had the longest time. We found no major difference in those who used condoms. But men who drank alcohol before sex tended to last longer."
The study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, was examining premature ejaculation. The condition is medically defined as the inability to last more than a minute.
Forty per cent of British men are thought to suffer from the condition.Researchers in Holland measured the sexual performance of nearly 500 men from five... more
Do we think this is a good thing? I don't really mind the security at Airports as id does keep us safe, after all if something bad did happen we would point straight at security for not picking up on them. On a bad not now we will all have to hit the gym before walking through this thing!Do we think this is a good thing? I don't really mind the security at Airports as id... more
The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began corresponding with Khalid Awan in 2007, we had no idea why he was serving time in U.S. federal prison. We soon discovered Awan was one of the first of thousands of Muslims taken prisoner in the post-9/11 U.S. “terror war.” As the story began unfolding in our letters, we began to realize that this honest, humble and sincere man was not only innocent, but the ongoing injustice being done to him provides critical insight into the mindless, meanspirited, bureaucratic-yes-men idiocy fueling the illegal U.S. “war on terror” (and just about everything else that is going wrong in this country). At our insistence, Awan wrote his story and supplied us with whatever documents we requested. And now, after three months of cooperative efforts, the story of Khalid Awan can be told. We have come to know Awan as a peaceful man engaged in peaceful work who has been wrongfully accused, detained and repeatedly convicted of crimes he did not commit because he was a Muslim with international connections and an office in New York on 9/11. We present this to you in faith that you will realize a deeper understanding of the levels of complicity necessary for the “land of the free” to tolerate the phony war on terror year after year and in hope that Awan—and all the other million or more political prisoners being held by this country—will one day be reunited with their families.
Khalid Awan # 50959-054
USP Marion
P.O.BOX : 1000
Marion, IL 62959
USA http://www.freekhalidawan.com/, http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3759, http://awankhalid.com/, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60600467317The U.S. terror war as seen through the eyes of a prisoner
When we first began... more
The abundance and affordability of digital video have turned everyone into a potential Spielberg, and zero-budget films are the talk of festivals across the globe.
In 1977 the fanzine Sniffin’ Glue published pictures of three chords: having mastered those, it famously told its readers they could all go out and form their own bands. For film-makers, the punk aesthetic was less affordable; even a shoestring could cost a king’s ransom. Today, though, thanks to digital video, everyone is doing low-budget films. Movie-mad teenagers, ambitious first-timers, seasoned directors crunched by credit or seeking to recharge their creative batteries – all are eager to investigate how low you can go.
The Raindance Film Festival has a low-budget competition whose cut-off point is 50,000 in sterling, US dollars or euros. Bottom – or top – of the pile, is a British movie called Colin, which officially cost £45.
Though it is by no means without merit, Colin’s measly budget is its main selling point. The director, Marc Price, 30, enthuses how he pressed an elderly camcorder into service to shoot this epic of a suburban everyman bitten by a zombie.
Genre films like Colin are relatively saleable. Roger Corman built his empire on them, Robert Rodriguez made his name with the £7,000 Mexican comedy-thriller El Mariachi, while The Blair Witch Project remains the unholy grail for all low-rent wannabes. A recent subset has been the fad for cheap and cheeky remakes of blockbusters, where the joke is the mismatch between their peanut production values and the films that inspired them. Earlier this year, an “adaptation” of Raiders of the Lost Ark shot by three schoolboys achieved a cinema release, with Steven Spielberg’s blessing.
Among the six micro-budget films competing at Raindance is Paul Cotter’s Bomber, a dramedy about a young man who accompanies his elderly parents on a cathartic trip to Germany. The budget, £24,000, came from the director, his friends and his family, and it was edited on an iMac (another technology that has smoothed the way for low-cost film-making).
Cotter is British but worked for seven years in the United States, where he believes the independent film-making scene is far livelier. “There’s much more of a gung-ho, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude,” he says. Films are marginally easier to sell there, he thinks, though Bomber has yet to find a buyer on either side of the Atlantic.
Shane Meadows’s Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, shot in five days for £48,000, is the latest example. A mock-rockumentary, it’s semi-improvised by Meadows with his long-time muse, Paddy Considine, who plays Le Donk, a vainglorious roadie. Meadows appears as a version of himself, a documentary director chronicling Le Donk’s efforts to team up with and exploit a shy, tubby rapper and infiltrate a stadium gig by the Arctic Monkeys.
The names of Meadows and Considine will help sell audiences on this genially ambling, lo-fi comedy, which Meadows acknowledges it would have been near-impossible for an unknown director to get funded.The abundance and affordability of digital video have turned everyone into a potential... more
Oscar Wrigley, a two-year-old with the same IQ as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, has become the youngest boy in Britain to be accepted into Mensa.
Assessors at the Gifted Children's Information Centre in Solihull said Oscar, with an IQ of at least 160, is one of the brightest children they have every come across.
He has been ranked in the 99.99th percentile of the population and has been ranked off the scale as the Stanford-Binet test cannot measure higher than 160.
Oscar's father Joe, 29, an IT specialist from Reading in Berkshire, said: "Oscar was recently telling my wife about the reproductive cycle of penguins.
"He is always asking questions. Every parent likes to think their child was special but we knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar.
Dr Peter Congdon, who assessed Oscar, said he was a "child of very superior intelligence".
"His abilities fall well within the range sometimes referred to as intellectually gifted. He demonstrated outstanding ability," he said.
John Stevenage, Mensa's Chief Executive confirmed Oscar had been accepted aged two years, five months and 11 days.Oscar Wrigley, a two-year-old with the same IQ as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking,... more
Parents can help to keep their teenage children out of trouble by giving them a weekly allowance of alcohol, a British study has found.
Teenagers who rely on obtaining their own supplies of cheap alcohol are much more likely to be involved in violence and other forms of bad behaviour, it is claimed.
Researchers conducted a drinking survey of almost 10,000 young teenagers aged 15 to 16 in the north-west of England. No teenage drinking was risk-free, the researchers said. However, teenagers were more likely to get into trouble if they bought cheap alcohol themselves, rather than gaining access to it through their parents.
Study leader Professor Mark Bellis, from the Faculty of Applied Health and Social Science at Liverpool John Moores University, said: ''The negative impacts of alcohol on children's health are substantial. Those parents who choose to allow children aged 15 to 16 years to drink may limit harms by restricting consumption to lower frequencies (e.g. no more than once a week) and under no circumstances permitting binge drinking.
''However, parental efforts should be matched by genuine legislative and enforcement activity to reduce independent access to alcohol by children and to increase the price of cheap alcohol products.''
Carefully introducing alcohol to children may help them ''prepare themselves for life in an adult environment dominated by this drug'', said the researchers.Parents can help to keep their teenage children out of trouble by giving them a weekly... more
An exhibition of Vincent van Gogh's personal letters and drawings demolishes long-held myths about his madness – and you can even read them on your iPhone
The exhibition, some sections of which will be loaned to London's Royal Academy for a separate show in January, provides as many answers as it can, bringing together over 120 letters, the largest selection ever exhibited, and hundreds of related paintings and drawings. It is subtitled "the artist speaks". But he doesn't just speak; he enthrals. In the letters on show here he is often miserable, sick, hungover, scared, broke and sorry for himself. But he is more often gossipy, thoughtful, clever and hugely entertaining. He is never that wild man of Hollywood caricature, bellowing incoherently and hurling daubs of paint at the canvas.
The exhibitions also bring together letters where separate pages have ended up in different ownership, and unite vivid thumbnail sketches with preparatory drawings and the finished paintings. The originals are fragile, light-sensitive, and after the show is over will go back into their vault, to be shown only by appointment to scholars (only 36 letters will reach London).
But the Van Gogh Museum is also keen that the work should be made available permanently to a wider audience. To mark the exhibition's opening, six volumes have been published simultaneously in Dutch, French and English, transcribing every one of 819 letters the artist wrote – mostly to Theo, his brother, best friend and the man who kept him financially afloat – and 83 written to him. Alongside Van Gogh's own work, every print, painting or drawing he refers to, every artist he meets or mentions, every scrap of a book, poem or bible verse that he quoted (or misquoted), has been traced.
• Vincent van Gogh, the Letters is published in six volumes by Thames and Hudson. Price £325 until 31 December 2009, thereafter £395.An exhibition of Vincent van Gogh's personal letters and drawings demolishes long-held... more
