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League One side Southampton dismiss manager Alan Pardew two days after their 4-0 win over Bristol Rovers.

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A 10-year-old girl is in hospital in Dundee after being attacked by two Rottweiler dogs in the street.

The incident happened at about 1100 BST on Sunday as she was riding her bike in Dryburgh Street.

The girl’s grandmother, who lives in the area, ran from her house to help. A passing motorist also sounded his horn to try to distract the dogs.

The child was taken to Ninewells Hospital in the city. Her injuries are not thought to be life threatening.

However, it is understood she has a fractured jaw and will need plastic surgery.

Tayside Police are carrying out inquiries and have traced the two dogs and confined them to kennels.

It is thought the animals will be put down.

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House star Hugh Laurie among the top British hopes at the Emmy television awards in the US on Sunday night.

The Blackadder star is the only Briton in an outstanding actor category which includes Lost star Matthew Fox and Mad Men’s John Hamm.

Sir Ian McKellen and Michael Sheen are also in the running for an acting award for their work in The Prisoner and The Special Relationship respectively.

Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith are also nominated for acting.

Dame Judi is recognised for her work in Cranford, while Dame Maggie is nominated for Capturing Mary.

Dame Judi has previously been shortlisted by the Emmys for her Cranford role in 2008.

Laurie’s Emmy nomination is his fourth for his role as curmudgeonly doctor Gregory House.

He has already won two Golden Globes for the show – in which he has starred since 2004.

Sheen’s third outing as former British prime minister Tony Blair has earned him his first Emmy nomination, for The Special Relationship.

It is an account of the close working bond between Mr Blair and former US president Bill Clinton. Dennis Quaid, who portrayed President Clinton, is also up for an acting award.

The film was written for TV by Peter Morgan, the screenwriter of The Queen and Frost/Nixon. Morgan is nominated for an award in the mini-series writing category.

Other actors flying the flag for the UK include Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Michael Gambon – both up for best supporting actor in a mini-series.

The Pacific, a World War II mini-series about the US Marine Corps has the most nominations, with 24.

Glee, a musical series set in a high school, has 19 and Mad Men – which is shown on BBC Four in the UK – has 17.

George Clooney will be presented with a Humanitarian Emmy for organizing the Help For Haiti Telethon earlier this year.

The 62nd Emmy Awards will take place in Los Angeles.

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Darris White is a deep thinker.

The engineer at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the US is currently finalising designs for a series of turbines that could be used to harness the immense energy of the Gulf Stream, flowing deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

The underwater stream roughly contains around 21,000 times more energy than the Niagara Falls and by some estimates, could potentially provide up to one-third of the US’s electricity needs.

“Hydrokinetic power from the Gulf Stream can provide enough power for over a million households in Florida,” said Professor White.

But that is easier said than done: harnessing that energy needs to happen 1,200m below the surface of the ocean in turbulent and constantly changing conditions.

The “marine energy” industry has come up with a number of ideas to make use of the movement of water around the globe, be it from ocean waves, tides slipping into and out of inlets, or regular ocean currents like the Gulf Stream.

The more common solution to the problem has been to build large turbines, to be anchored to the seabed.

But the nature of the Gulf Stream presents different challenges, said Professor White.

“Even though the Gulf Stream is constrained between two bodies of land, the flow rate and location of peak velocity will change, based on seasonal and weather conditions.”

The solution, Professor White and his team suggest, are autonomous turbines with so-called “swarm intelligence” that can navigate through the ocean currents, similar to a school of fish searching for food.

“Swarm intelligence can achieve two goals. One is to find the ‘sweet spot’ of the Gulf Stream, which is the location where the array will achieve maximum power output,” he said.

“The other goal is to find the array orientation and alignment that provides optimal efficiency.”

A prototype is currently under construction and should be complete within the next 18 months, he said.

The team plans to equip the turbines with sensors that detect the change of hydrodynamics and the swarm’s own movements, along communication mechanisms so that turbines can “talk” to one another and share their position.

The entire swarm will either be tethered to the sea floor with anchors, allowing them to migrate within a limited area, or be attached to a movable platform for fixing and transferring the power.

Power from all the turbines will be integrated into a single transmission line and transmitted to a substation on land through high-voltage power lines.

The idea of harnessing the power of the Gulf Stream is not entirely new.

Gulf Stream Turbines is a start-up company that holds several patents for water turbine designs; its founders hope to tie up with interested parties to develop the technology further and produce inexpensive energy continuously from the ocean currents.

But Professor White and his team believe their solution has several advantages over other approaches and current renewables, such as wind turbines.

“The best wind resources are in sparsely populated areas, which results in transmission challenges,” he explained.

“Water turbines placed in streams, rivers and ocean currents provide a relatively constant source of power with fewer intermittence problems.”

An array of 30 to 50 turbines is expected to generate around 15 to 20 million Watts of electricity at the sweet spot in the Gulf Stream, which is enough energy to meet the requirements of around 6000 to 8000 houses.

However, some experts are sceptical of the idea.

“It will require a herculean effort to tackle this approach,” says Trey Taylor, president of renewable firm Verdant Power.

“Collectively, the industry does not know enough yet about all of the variables that need to be addressed in this effort.”

Peter Fraenkel, technical director of leading UK marine energy firm Marine Current Turbines, agrees.

“The main disadvantage of this approach is that it does not sound very practical,” he said.

In particular, he said, the forces involved with extracting energy form the Gulf Stream are huge.

“This force has to be carried through any moorings and anchors into the seabed.”

Ordinary anchors would simply plough a furrow, rather than staying put.

As a result, he said, the turbines would need to be fixed to the seabed with solid anchors.

“How do you drill holes in the seabed 300 metres underwater?,” he asked. “With considerable difficulty.”

There’s also a question as to whether the turbines need to move around at all.

“The location of the highest currents is very predictable in these cases, and there would little benefit in trying to move the turbines around ‘intelligently’ from day to day,” says Chris Lawn, Professor of thermo-fluids engineering at Queen Mary, University of London.

However, Professor White and his colleague Yan Tang are not put off.

They point to evidence – although limited – that shows the sweet spot can move by a distance of up to 1km and that fixing the turbines in place wouldn’t allow for optimal operation during all seasons.

“Even if the currents don’t migrate that much, the current direction may change. So we need to adjust water turbine orientation to achieve optimal performance,” says Dr Tang.

The team also thinks that existing mooring systems developed for movable offshore rigs could be adapted to help the swarm operate, rather than developing an entirely new fixture.

They are also trying to head off other potential problems early, like the turbines’ effect on sea life.

One solution could be in-built intelligence that either shuts down the turbines or move the whole swarm out of the way of sea life.

Right now, the team is busy constructing a prototype and hopes to begin tests in 2012.

Testing individual or swarm turbines in the ocean will require the team to gain permission and permits from several federal agencies including the US Army Corp of Engineers.

“We need to overcome certain major milestones but the largest issue we face is permitting,” said Professor White.

“A permanent placement of water turbines in the Gulf Stream will also require an extensive and ongoing environmental impact study,” he said.

However, he added, it will be worth it if they can prove the concept works.

“Greenhouse gases would be reduced by the same amount as removing over a million vehicles from the road.

“I have three young daughters and one reason we are working on renewable energy projects is to ensure that our children and future generations enjoy the same quality of life that we have today.”

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Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said.

The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby.

The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset.

The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in rain-parched fields of barley.

The lightly-built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the south west of England, English Heritage said.

The dry conditions also allowed well-known sites to be photographed in greater detail.

Newton Kyme, near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, was shown to not only be home to a Roman fort dating back nearly 2,000 years but also a larger, stronger defence built in 290AD.

English Heritage senior investigator Dave MacLeod said: “It’s hard to remember a better year.

“Cropmarks are always at their best in dry weather, but the last few summers have been a disappointment.

“This year we have taken full advantage of the conditions. We try to concentrate on areas that in an average year don’t produce much archaeology.”

Flights over the Holderness area of the East Riding proved particularly productive with about 60 new sites, mainly prehistoric, found in just one day including livestock and settlement enclosures.

English Heritage said some sites which have not been visible since the drought of 1976 reappeared this summer.

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A senior rabbi from a party within Israel’s coalition government has called for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to “vanish from our world”.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Shas, spoke out as Middle East talks are poised to begin in Washington.

The United States condemned the remarks as “deeply offensive”.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments with a statement saying that his government wanted peace with the Palestinians.Rabbi calls for Abbas to ‘vanish’

The attack on Mr Abbas, delivered in the rabbi’s weekly sermon, also prompted chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat to condemn the remarks as “an incitement to genocide”.

Mr Erakat urged the Israeli government “to do more about peace and stop spreading hatred”, the AFP news agency reported.

Rabbi Yosef expressed the wish that “all the nasty people who hate Israel, like Abu Mazen (Abbas), vanish from our world”.

He went on to say: “May God strike them down with the plague along with all the nasty Palestinians who persecute Israel.”

The remarks come as Mr Netanyahu is due in Washington this week for direct peace talks with Mr Abbas.

US President Barack Obama hopes to bring the leaders together on Thursday for the first face-to-face discussions since December 2008, when the Palestinians broke off negotiations over Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip.

The US response to Rabbi Yosef, a founder of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, was swift.

In a statement, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said: “We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

“These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace.”

Mr Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying that Rabbi Yosef’s comments “do not reflect the views of Benjamin Netanyahu or of his government”.

The 89-year-old former chief rabbi of Israel has been at the centre of controversy before, with comments about Arabs, secular Jews, liberals, women and gays.

In 2001, during a Palestinian uprising, he called for the annihilation of Arabs and said it was forbidden to be merciful to them.

He later said he was referring only to “terrorists” who attacked Israelis.

Meanwhile, Mr Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said on Sunday that Israel’s policy of settlement-building could undermine the new round of peace talks.

“Israel will be held accountable for the failure of the talks if settlement construction should continue,” Mr Abbas said in a speech delivered in Jordan.

“The negotiations need to bring about serious action that will be able to bring liberation from the occupation and independence.”

Mr Abbas said Palestinians understood Israel’s need for security, but said that need should not be an “excuse to expand settlements and steal land”.

In the statement responding to Rabbi Yosef’s remarks, Mr Netanyahu’s office said Israel intended to negotiate in good faith in Washington.

“Israel plans to take part in peace negotiations out of a desire to advance toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians that will end the conflict and ensure peace, security and good neighbourly relations between the two peoples,” the statement said.

Analysts say expectations for the latest round of talks are low, with the settlement issue just one of a number of area of difference.

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The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has announced measures to boost lending aimed at combating the rising value of the yen.

Following an emergency meeting, the central bank said it would increasing lending to commercial banks by 10 trillion yen ($117bn; £75bn).

The measure is designed to stem the value of the currency, and boost lending to businesses.

Analysts fear the rising yen is undermining the country’s fragile economic recovery.

A strong yen makes these goods less competitive overseas. It also reduces the value of profits made abroad when they are repatriated to Japan.

In a statement, the BOJ said its low interest bank loan programme now totalled 30 trillion yen.

“The bank believes that the monetary-easing measure, together with government efforts, will be effective in further ensuring Japan’s economic recovery,” it said.

It is hoped that increasing the amount of loans available will reduce market interest rates, curbing rises in the yen.

Last week the currency hit a 15-month high against the dollar – potentially a significant problem for the Japanese economy which relies heavily on exports for growth.

A recent government survey suggested that many companies in Japan were considering moving production overseas if the yen remained strong.

The BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Roland Buerk said that the bank’s Governor, Masaaki Shirakawa returned from the United States a day earlier than planned to handle the currency crisis.

Our correspondent added that doubts persisted about whether the latest measures would have much effect, given that Japan was mired in deflation.

Falling prices make the cost of borrowing higher in real terms.

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