Category: news

A small US church planning to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York is facing international condemnation.

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Daniels, Williams and Henson (L-R) still do not know who their partners will be

Rugby player Gavin Henson, magician Paul Daniels and former Destiny’s Child star Michelle Williams will all compete in this year’s Strictly Come Dancing.

They will be joined by former soap stars Kara Tointon and Tina O’Brien, actress Felicity Kendal and former MP Ann Widdecombe.

Ex-England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, actress Patsy Kensit and presenter Matt Baker are also included in the line-up.

The show’s eighth series launches on 11 September on BBC One.

That programme will see the celebrities meet their professional dance partners for the first time. The first live show will follow several weeks later, on 1 October.

Completing this year’s line-up are EastEnders’ and former Bill star Scott Maslen, comic and psychologist Pamela Stephenson, DJ-turned-actor Goldie and film actor Jimi Mistry.

Mistry, another former resident of Albert Square, has film credits including East is East, The Guru and Blood Diamond.

Tointon played Dawn Swann in EastEnders but left last year, while O’Brien played Sarah-Louise Platt for eight years in Coronation Street.

Peter Shilton (centre) holds the record for the most England caps

Baker, who now appears on Countryfile, is a past Blue Peter presenter.

Daniels, 72, said: “I feel sorry for anyone who gets lumbered with me because they are really going to have their work cut out.

“I guess they shouldn’t be very tall!

It was recently announced that Strictly’s co-host, Bruce Forsyth, would not be presenting the Sunday night results show this year.

He is being replaced by Claudia Winkleman, who will appear alongside Tess Daly.

Forsyth will continue to host the BBC One Saturday night competition shows and will also host the launch show.

Judges Len Goodman, Craig Revel Horwood, Bruno Tonioli and Alesha Dixon all return to the panel.

Dixon received criticism for her role last year after she replaced former Strictly judge, Arlene Phillips.

“It was hard last year because there was a lot of negativity before I’d even started,” she said.

“But I am a fighter and I was determined to not let any of the negative opinions get to me,” she added.

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Connaught provides a wide range of services including property management for the public sector

Property and environmental services giant Connaught is expected to formally enter administration later, putting thousands of jobs at risk.

The company, which specialises in social housing, said late on Tuesday it was “in the process of appointing administrators”.

However, it added that some subsidiaries would not be affected and would continue to trade “as normal”.

Earlier, the firm said it had failed to secure funding to pay £220m of debt.

Connaught employs almost 10,000 people. Trading in the company’s shares was suspended on Tuesday.

Reports suggest that rival firms, such as Mears, are ready to step in to take over some of Connaught’s contracts.

“The board is saddened to announce that it is in the process of appointing partners from KPMG as administrators of Connaught and its subsidiary, Connaught Partnerships, which comprises its social housing division,” the company said in a statement released on Tuesday.

It added that its other main subsidiaries, Connaught Compliance, National Britannia Holdings, Fountains and Connaught Environmental are not being placed into administration, and “will continue to trade normally”.

In an earlier statement, Connaught said it believed the funding it needed from its lenders to continue operating would “not be forthcoming”.

Connaught provides a wide range of services, including property management for the public sector and affordable housing projects.

It is also involved in waste management, cleaning and forestry services.

Connaught ran into serious difficulties in recent months after it became clear that a number of contracts would be loss-making.

In June, it warned that public spending cuts, designed to reduce the government’s budget deficit, would impact 31 projects, reducing its revenues by £80m this year.

This hit, it said, would push the company into the red for this year.

Shares in the Exeter-based company, which began life in 1982, have lost about 90% of their value since late June.

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Driving tests will soon require people to drive for 10 minutes without being given directions

The details of driving test routes will no longer be published online by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA), Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said.

Test routes used by test centres are currently published online, but this will stop when new routes are introduced on 4 October.

The DSA wants to make the driving test “more representative of real driving”.

Mr Penning said learning to drive test routes by rote would not teach people to drive “safely and independently”.

He added: “Stopping the publication of test routes will help to make sure that the driving test better reflects realistic driving conditions and will give new drivers the skills and confidence they need to stay safe on the roads.”

The change is being made to support the introduction of independent driving, which will test candidates on their ability to drive safely in more realistic driving situations, rather than memorising a pre-defined test route.

DSA’s chief driving examiner Trevor Wedge said: “Evidence shows that the biggest challenge newly qualified drivers face after passing their test is learning how to cope when they no longer have their instructor there to help and prompt them.”

“We want to make sure that new drivers and riders are ready to make their own decisions when driving alone; learning how to do that in preparation for their test should lead to better and safer drivers.”

To better assess whether a learner driver is ready to drive unsupervised, independent driving will be introduced into the test in early October.

This will see candidates drive for about 10 minutes, without step-by-step direction from their examiner.

This will involve either following a series of directions, following traffic signs, or a combination of both. The remainder of the test is unchanged.

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Examples of “good” dancing and “bad” dancing

Scientists say they’ve carried out the first rigorous analysis of dance moves that make men attractive to women.

The researchers say that movements associated with good dancing may be indicative of good health and reproductive potential.

Their findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

“When you go out to clubs people have an intuitive understanding of what makes a good and bad dancer,” said co-author Dr Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University, UK.

“What we’ve done for the very first time is put those things together with a biometric analysis so we can actually calculate very precisely the kinds of movements people focus on and associate them with women’s ratings of male dancers.”

Dr Neave asked young men who were not professional dancers, to dance in a laboratory to a very basic drum rhythm and their movements with 12 cameras.

Dr Nick Neave explains what makes for good moves on the dance floor

These movements were then converted into a computer-generated cartoon – an avatar – which women rated on a scale of one to seven. He was surprised by the results.

“We thought that people’s arms and legs would be really important. The kind of expressive gestures the hands [make], for example. But in fact this was not the case,” he said.

“We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region: the torso, the neck, the head. It was not just the speed of the movements, it was also the variability of the movement. So someone who is twisting, bending, moving, nodding.”

Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive – so called “Dad dancing”.

Dr Neave’s aim was to establish whether young men exhibited the same courtship movement rituals in night clubs as animals do in the wild. In the case of animals, these movements give information about their health, age, their reproductive potential and their hormone status.

“People go to night clubs to show off and attract the opposite sex so I think it’s a valid way of doing this,” Dr Neave explained.

“In animals, the male has to be in good physical quality to carry out these movements. We think the same is happening in humans and certainly the guys that can put these movements together are going to be young and fit and healthy.”

Dr Neave also took blood samples from the volunteers. Early indications from biochemical tests suggest that the men who were better dancers were also more healthy.

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The programme for government will be Mr Salmond’s last before the 2011 Holyrood election

Scottish ministers are setting out their final programme for government before next May’s Holyrood election.

First Minister Alex Salmond will announce a list of nine bills he wants to see passed in the coming months.

The key piece of legislation will be a Budget Bill, setting out the SNP’s latest spending plans.

The move comes amid uncertainty over how the UK government’s forthcoming spending cuts, which are expected to be tough, will affect Scotland.

The precise level of reductions will be set out in the autumn Comprehensive Spending Review, as the Westminster government seeks to tackle the UK spending deficit.

But Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney has warned Scotland faces £3.7bn of cuts over the next four years.

Referendum dropped

As well as setting out a Budget Bill, which MSPs are due to vote on in November, Mr Salmond is also expected to propose a change in the law which would scrap the controversial “double jeopardy” rule, which prevents a person standing trial twice for the same crime.

That could lead to convicted killer Angus Sinclair standing trial for a second time over the World’s End murders.

In a statement to parliament, Mr Salmond will say the programme shows his government to be “full of vigour” and ready for the coming election.

But political opponents say the SNP administration has run out of steam.

The government’s plans will also include improvements to private housing regulation, the handling of elections and protection from forced marriages.

The SNP minority government has already decided to drop its central manifesto pledge for an independence referendum bill, because of a lack of Holyrood support.

The Nationalists will instead seek to make it one of the key issues of the 2011 election campaign.

Separately, there is still legislation in progress from the last session of parliament, including the Alcohol Bill, which would introduce minimum drink pricing.

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The XX have won this year’s Mercury Music Prize for their debut album xx.

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Paul Weller was the first star to arrive on the red carpet

Nominated artists, including Paul Weller, Dizzee Rascal and The XX, are arriving in London for this year’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize.

Fellow nominees Laura Marling, Wild Beasts, and folk-rock quartet Mumford and Sons are also due at the ceremony.

They are joined by Corinne Bailey Rae, Biffy Clyro, Foals, Villagers, I Am Kloot and the Kit Downes Trio.

The winner of the £20,000 prize for album of the year will be announced live on BBC Two.

Bookmakers William Hill slashed its odds on Weller winning the prize after an “unprecedented” rush of bets over the weekend.

The former Jam star – who has been nominated for the award once before – is now 4/6 to take the title with his album Wake Up The Nation.

It is 16 years since his second solo release, Wild Wood, was shortlisted. On the night, he lost out to M People’s Elegant Slumming.

The 52-year-old, who was the first star to turn up, told the press he did not resent missing out in 1994.

“No not at all, I’m not one to hold grudges,” he said.

‘Grin like mad’

London trio The XX had previously been the favourites.

“We make very non-main-stream, intricate, complex music”

Kit Downes (centre)

Laura Marling is another second-time nominee for her latest album, I Speak Because I Can.

Her boyfriend – Marcus Mumford – is frontman of Mumford And Sons who are nominated for their debut release, Sigh No More.

Speaking before the ceremony, Kit Downes from the acoustic jazz outfit The Kit Downes Trio, said: “Winning isn’t that big a deal really.

“You’e got to understand where we come from – we come from under a rock. We make very non-main-stream, intricate, complex music. When you go into jazz, you don’t think you’re going to be on the front cover of NME.”

Dizzee Rascal is the only nominee to have won the prize before, with his debut release Boy In Da Corner in 2003.

This latest nomination, for Tongue N’ Cheek, marks his third shot at the title after only four albums, as he was also listed in 2007 for Maths + English.

I Am Kloot, are nominated for their fifth album Sky At Night. It was produced by Guy Garvey from Elbow, who won the Mercury prize in 2008.

John Bramwell from I Am Kloot said Garvey had given them advice, telling them to “grin like mad, and clap when you lose”.

The Mercury prize is open to UK and Irish acts who have released albums over the past year.

Twelve months ago, the award went to hip-hop star Speech Debelle for her debut release, Speech Therapy.

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Images from the awards ceremony for the Mercury Music Prize

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Goce flies lower than any other scientific satellite

Europe’s gravity probe, Goce, was knocked offline because some of its onboard systems got too cold as the satellite circled the Earth.

The spacecraft is on a mission to make the most precise maps yet of how gravity varies across the globe.

But when a fault appeared in its only functional computer, the flow of science data to the ground stopped.

Controllers managed to recover the situation only when they turned the heat up inside the satellite.

“We’re really thrilled we’ve got Goce back,” mission manager Dr Rune Floberghagen told BBC News, “but we also need to find out what went wrong. I don’t think there’s anyone who has a full understanding of what happened.”

Goce’s chilly state came to light when a patch was sent up to the hamstrung spacecraft to enable it to send key engineering data to the ground.

This revealed the floor in a part of the satellite holding the battery, the computer and the onboard power distribution unit was just a few degrees above zero.

And when the command was then despatched to Goce to tell it warm itself by about seven Celsius, the normal flow of telemetry was suddenly re-established.

Some two-thirds of the gravity data originally expected from the mission have been acquired so far

Dr Floberghagen explained: “The anomaly happened on 8 July which is very close to when the satellite is at its furthest from the Sun. Plus, in the case of Goce, we are flying through the eclipse of the Earth for a good portion of each orbital revolution; so it’s at that time of the year when the satellite experiences the coldest temperatures.”

However, the chill was not particularly extreme and engineers are continuing to investigate why the electronics were impacted in they way they were.

The restoration of Goce’s capabilities could not have come at a better time.

The mission team is due to go before European Space Agency member-state delegations this week to ask for the funds to extend a project that had up until the anomaly returned some remarkable science.

From an altitude of just under 260km, Goce senses tiny differences from place to place in the tug of Earth’s mass.

Scientists will use its data to make high-resolution maps of the geoid which, simply put, traces “the level” on our planet.

Geoid information has many applications but perhaps the biggest knowledge gains from Goce will come in the study of ocean behaviour.

By combining gravity data with measurements of sea-surface height gathered by other spacecraft, scientists will be able to track the direction and speed of ocean currents.

Understanding better how the seas move heat around the planet will help improve the computer models that are used to forecast global climate change.

The pan-European team working on Goce hopes to win approval for a mission extension up until at least the end of 2012.

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PC Fletcher was killed in 1984

PM David Cameron has written to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi over the stalled probe into the death of Pc Yvonne Fletcher.

He wrote to the Libyan leader in July – part of a series of “intense representations” which resulted in a UK delegation visiting Tripoli in August.

The news emerged during an MPs’ debate on the case of Pc Fletcher, who was shot dead in 1984 by a gunman believed to be inside Libya’s embassy in London.

Minister Alistair Burt said he hoped it would mark a new stage of co-operation.

The debate was called by Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Libya, who said Pc Fletcher’s killer must face justice in the UK.

He condemned a deal done with Libya in 2006 in which anyone charged with Pc Fletcher’s death would face trial in Libya as a “shoddy backroom deal”.

“You cannot face British justice in a Libyan court. It is simply impossible to face British justice in a court under British jurisdiction in Tripoli,” he said.

For the government, Foreign Minister Mr Burt said the “engagement of the Libyan authorities is essential” if Pc Fletcher’s killer was to be found, and he said the deal reflected Libya’s right to decide where a suspect would be tried under their own extradition rules.

He said the protocol had led directly to police being allowed to visit Libya to carry out witness interviews in December 2006 and May 2007, which had been an “important step forward for the investigation”.

“But if there is a successful investigation, which is the most important issue, then a joint decision will be reached about any trial,” Mr Burt said.

“We should be realistic that a trial is more likely, if one is to take place, to be in Libya than anywhere else.”

He said the government had “made it clear to the Libyans that this issue will continue to cast a shadow over the bilateral relationship between our two countries and continue to do serious damage to the image of Libya among the UK media and public”.

And he said “commercial considerations” would play no part in the way the investigation into Pc Fletcher’s death was pursued.

He and Foreign Secretary William Hague had raised the case with their Libyan counterparts, he said, adding: “The prime minister also raised the case of WPc Fletcher when he wrote to Colonel Gaddafi in July.”

Mr Burt added that the government would “not let the issue go away”, and said the stalled investigation was one of the final remaining issues which still seriously affected the UK’s relationship with Libya. It was “unacceptable” they had suspended the investigation in 2006.

But, he said: “I’m pleased to say that following intense negotiations by Her Majesty’s Government, including by the prime minister and foreign secretary, last month a joint Foreign Office-Metropolitan Police delegation did visit Tripoli.

“This was at the invitation of the Libyan government and was the first time since May 2007 that Metropolitan Police investigators have been allowed to return to Libya to discuss the case.”

“That meeting, on the 5 August, discussed ways of moving the investigation forward to the satisfaction of both countries and will, I hope, be the start of a new stage of co-operation.”

But while it was a “welcome step forward”, he said “much more needs to be done”.

Pc Fletcher, originally from Semley, near Shaftesbury, was shot as she policed a demonstration at the Libyan embassy in central London in 1984.

No arrests have been made in connection with her killing. It was followed by an 11-day siege at the embassy, which led to embassy staff being allowed to leave the UK under diplomatic immunity laws.

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Millions of Londoners have been attempting to travel home amid a major Tube strike affecting nearly all its lines.

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CONNAUGHT Last Updated at 06 Sep 2010, 11:30 ET price change %16.65 p+

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Connaught, the property services group that specialises in social housing, is on the brink of going into administration, the BBC has learned.

An announcement is expected later, BBC business editor Robert Peston said.

Connaught, which employs 10,000 people, has £220m of debt, provided by six banks and a quartet of other creditors.

Connaught ran into serious difficulties over the past couple of months, after it emerged that a series of contracts would be loss making.

The lead bank is Royal Bank of Scotland, which recently provided Connaught with a further £15m in an attempt to keep the group going.

The management, under a new chairman, Sir Roy Gardner, the chairmen of Compass, the catering giant, has tried to put together a rescue plan.

However its bank creditors have decided instead to put the business in administration, under UK insolvency procedures.

In his blog, Robert Peston writes: “In spite of the severity of the economic crisis that engulfed the UK in 2008, few listed businesses have collapsed.

“In that sense Connaught, a FTSE 250 company which at one stage had a market value of well over £500m, is unusual.”

Shares in the Exeter-based company have lost about 90% of their value since late June, when it announced it had identified 31 contracts that had been deferred following the spending cuts announced in the Budget.

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At least four people have been killed and 13 injured in a bombing near police headquarters in the north-western Pakistani town of Kohat, police say.

The car bomb exploded at the gates to the police family compound as people were breaking their fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Many buildings have collapsed or been damaged. Rescuers are at the scene.

The blast comes a day after a suicide car bomb targeting a police station in the north-west killed 19 people.

BBC correspondents say militants appear to be back in business following a lull in violence during the recent devastating floods.

Kohat, about 50km (35 miles) south-west of Peshawar, is near militant strongholds in lawless tribal areas.

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Nearly six million people who have paid the wrong amount of income tax will start to receive letters from the tax office on Tuesday, letting them know about the errors.

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