Hit me Granny !

A pensioner arrested after a row with a teenage gang which left her with a suspected broken arm will not face assault charges. Diane Bond, 64, of Llandrindod Wells, Powys, said she was walking her dog when a teenager blocked her path and challenged her to hit him.

Mrs Bond said she did - and was then "flattened" by the teenager.

Dyfed-Powys Police said it had been decided that proceeding with the case was "not in the public interest."

Mrs Bond called the police inquiry "a waste of time from the very start".

She said "I suppose I'm quite relieved that I'm not going to court and I'm not going to be locked up," she said.

"It was bizarre, stupid and I'm appalled by the way police have treated me." She is considering taking the matter further.

Roger Williams, Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon and Radnorshire said: "I'm pleased that the pressure has been taken off this lady but my main concern was, and still is, how she was dealt with following the incident."

A spokeswoman for Dyfed-Powys Police said: "A file of evidence was sent to the CPS who have decided it is not in the public interest to proceed with the case."

The retired lab technician was walking her dog Hettie in a park on 27 July when the incident happened.

Ms Bond said at the time: "There were three main teenagers who were blocking our way on the path. The kids are sometimes like that around here, taunting you and stuff and it is usually water off a duck's back. This time one of them was showing off, flexing his muscles in front me and he said 'hit me' - so I did.

"I didn't do any damage at all but the next thing I know he's flattened me. I don't remember how I got up off the floor or how I got home. I was left shaken and crying."

Police officers later called round to the 5ft 1in grandmother's home and arrested her on suspicion of assault.

She said she was held between 2130 BST that day and 0130 BST the following morning, before police released her.

Kennel webcams

Did you have a miserable time on holiday this year because you were worried about how Fido or Spot was getting on back in the kennels? Leaving the cherished pet behind can be a real problem for devoted owners, but now your worries are over.

In a move likely to become standard in no time at all, one up-to-date kennel in County Antrim has found a way to keep pets and their owners in touch across the miles. The kennel has some special features, including heated flooring and ambiance music.

However, it provides an even more unusual service for its clients - a webcam.

The Maguire family is just back from holiday and while they did not like leaving their pet behind, they were able to see him every day. Thanks to a series of web-cameras, the dogs can be monitored night or day.

All their owners need to do is find an internet café and log on to the website.

Proprietor David McQuillan said the webcam link was used by many people using kennels for the first time.

"To be able to have the reassurance of seeing their pet, even though they can't actually pet it or feed it, to be able to even see it and see that it's happy, content and relaxed puts their mind at ease."

Maura Maguire said the webcam system had "become an essential ingredient" of the family's holidays when their dog, Paddy, was put in the boarding kennel.

"Every day, when we are away on holidays - Paddy's usually up here about four times a year - we access the website, my husband certainly more than me. He tells me how well Paddy is. I don't want to look at him in case it makes me homesick."

While the "pet-cam system" is only available for dogs at the moment, the owners hope to extend it to include all pets, including cats and birds in the near future.

Hurricanes are swell !

Britain's top surfers have made the most of huge waves off the Cornish coast thanks to the tail-end of Hurricane Gordon. The Gold Rush Big Wave Contest was arranged at short notice to take advantage of the 8ft (2.5m) swell at Newquay's Fistral beach.

Three Cornish surfers made the final heat, and the winner was Scott Eastwood from Jersey. The British Surfing Association (BSA) got special permission from the RNLI.

Tony Good the surf contest director said surfers were delighted with the conditions.

He told BBC News: "We were forecasting 6ft-plus and we've actually had double overhead waves.

"The guys are really stoked to be out there and we've probably had the best waves for a contest ever held in the UK."

What came first , the minnow or the egg ?

Biologists at the University of Manchester want help in cracking their "miracle" discovery of three fish inside a sealed egg. The group found the duck egg in a small pond on a field trip to the French Alps and noticed something moving inside it.

When they cracked open the shell, three live minnows were inside.

They have enlisted the help of other experts, but despite their extensive combined knowledge, the biologists admit they are "baffled".

Dr Matthew Cobb, a lecturer in animal behaviour at the university, said: "As 21st century scientists rather than 17th century antiquarians we think it's unlikely this represents a hitherto unknown mode of fish reproduction.

"Perhaps the egg fell into the pond following some kind of predatory attack but we're baffled as to how the minnows got to be inside. Certainly, we didn't see any crack in the egg."

Dr Cobb and his colleague, Henry McGhie, head of natural sciences at the Manchester Museum, have written to the New Scientist magazine in the hope readers will help solve the mystery.

Minnows are small freshwater fish, often used as bait by anglers.

Vinyards not happy at new motorway

Baron Geoffroy de Luze usually loves this time of year, when the soft rains fall on the grapes in Margaux just before the harvest. He can look out over his vineyards in the hope of another vintage year - but not this year.

The baron is filled with foreboding because the French authorities are threatening to build a motorway right next to his vines.

He is one of many winemakers in the region fighting back over plans for a motorway which they say will ruin the country's most profitable vineyards in the Medoc. It is an area of Bordeaux world-famous for the quality of its wines.

The Bordeaux authorities will decide this week which routes to put forward to the French transport ministry, and whether the Bordeaux bypass should be constructed next to the Margaux vineyards or elsewhere, further from the valuable vines.

Officials say the bypass is needed to minimise congestion on the motorway from Paris down to Spain and Portugal.

"The motorway would come within 70m (231ft) of my vineyards, and who knows what impact it will have on the wine and the soil? This is why we are very worried here in Margaux," he says, examining the grapes ahead of this week's harvest.

"From the projections, we will get 25,000 big lorries a day on a motorway that will be six lanes in total, so it's bound to affect our environment. And Margaux is a jewel. Would you run a motorway through the park of Versailles?" he asks rhetorically.

Baron de Luze insists that his battle is not a case of "not in my back vineyard" but a genuine fear that the motorway could prove a disaster in this finely balanced eco-system.

The wines produced here are among the world's best-known Bordeaux. Indeed, some of Margaux's top chateaux, such as Chateau Margaux, are commanding prices of up to £276 ($519) a bottle for their 2005 vintage.

Branson pledges billions

Sir Richard Branson is to invest $3bn (£1.6bn) to fight global warming.

The Virgin boss said he would commit all profits from his travel firms, such as airline Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains, over the next 10 years.

"We must rapidly wean ourselves off our dependence on coal and fossil fuels," Sir Richard said.

The funds will be invested in schemes to develop new renewable energy technologies, through an investment unit called Virgin Fuels.

One of the UK's best known entrepreneurs, Sir Richard made the announcement in New York on the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual conference hosted by former US President Bill Clinton.

Sir Richard, 56, said that transport and energy companies "must be at the forefront of developing environmentally friendly business strategies".

Statue to Ronnie

WARSAW -- Polish admirers of Ronald Reagan say they will erect a statue of the late US president in Warsaw to thank him for helping to end communist rule.

They say the 3.5-metre (10.5ft) stone and bronze statue will stand opposite the US embassy in the Polish capital.

"The statue is a way for his legacy to live on," said Janusz Dorosiewicz, a businessman behind the private project.

In 1989, Poland became the first nation in Eastern Europe to defeat communism. Reagan died in 2004 at the age of 93.

"This is an entirely private initiative undertaken by Poles in Poland, the United States and Canada," Mr Dorosiewicz said.

"Reagan was the person who defeated the communists and opened the way for freedom in Poland," he said.

The organisers estimate that the statue will cost about 140,000 euros (£94,000).

It will be unveiled on 4 July 2007 - US Independence Day.

Can we have our bullets back please?

An armed policeman has lost more than a dozen bullets while on duty in the Nottingham city area.

Police said a metal holder containing 15 bullets were lost by the officer sometime between Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday.

They said that, while the bullets do not in themselves represent a danger to members of the public, they could be dangerous if mistreated.

An investigation into the loss is being carried out.

The holder is black in colour and approximately six inches long.

Nottinghamshire Police have urged anyone who finds the bullets to contact them.

This is the third time the force has appealed for help from the public in finding lost bullets.

Multilingual school

A London school has pupils that speak in a mind-boggling 71 different languages.

Southfields Community College in Wandsworth, South London, takes kids who have fled war zones around the world and speak no English. Some have never been to school before.

But incredibly the college — believed to be the most cosmopolitan in Europe — has only THREE translators. It has 1,300 UK and foreign pupils aged 11-18 — and 550 of these arrived in Britain speaking no English.

So their first lesson was a crash course in our mother tongue. The pupils are then slowly introduced into mainstream classes, supported by the school’s ethnic minority achievement unit.
Among the languages spoken are Arabic, Kurdish, Farsi Kazak , Croatian, Zulu (South Africa), Swahili (Kenya) and Krio (Sierra Leone).

Headteacher Jacqueline Valin said many of the children arrive deeply traumatised. She recalled: “One young Somalian girl had a scar on her hand from being shot. We’ve had an increase in the number of pupils from abroad but there has never been a problem with the racial mix. These children have a burning desire to learn.”

Despite the language barrier the school’s exam results are improving.

The proportion of pupils getting five Cs or better at GCSE rose from 27 per cent in 2002 to 38 per cent last year.

Yeah dude , like , you're sued !

California sued six of the world's largest automakers over global warming on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

It comes less than a month after California lawmakers adopted the nation's first global warming law mandating a cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

California also has targeted the motor industry with first-in-the-nation rules adopted in 2004 requiring carmakers to force cuts in tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

Automakers, however, have so far blocked those rules with their own legal action -- prompting one analyst to say California's lawsuit represents a way for California to pressure car manufacturers to accept the rules.

"That's the objective," said David Cole, chairman of the Centre for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organisation that provides public research and forecasts about the industry. "They want to get the automakers basically to bow down and pay homage to the (emissions) law."

The complaint, which an motor industry trade group called a "nuisance" suit, names General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG and the North American units of Japan's Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd..

Environmental groups hailed the lawsuit, saying it represented another weapon for the state as it seeks to curb greenhouse gas emissions and spur the motor industry to build vehicles that pollute less.

Nice one

A struggling actor has been paid nearly $260,000 by a casino after he was initially denied the money when managers said his apparent win was a mistake.

Freddy Howard, 53, of Sunny Isles Beach, took part in a free promotional game, the Swipe and Win Progressive jackpot, while at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino near Hollywood on Aug. 29. Howard swiped his Players Club card, and a hostess and supervisor broke the news: He had won $259,945.75.

Howard was showered with attention and presented with a giant cardboard cheque. Then casino managers broke the bad news — a computer glitch had caused an error and he was not a big winner.

On Tuesday, the Hard Rock paid him anyway.

“We are making this payment as a gesture of goodwill, and I am pleased to tell you that Mr. Howard has accepted,” said Allen Huff, chairman of the Seminole Gaming Commission.

However, Huff said Howard used a Players Club card that belonged to his father and was not eligible to win, even if there had not been a mistake. Howard had hired a lawyer and also threatened to picket the casino.

“Honestly, I just want to be gathered together with relatives and with friends and thank God once again for this whole thing,” Howard said. He said he agreed not to discuss the details of his deal with the casino.

Officials said an independent testing facility, Gaming Laboratories International, determined a communications glitch between computers had created the problem that indicated Howard had won.

Then casino staff added to the problem.

“We became overexcited at the operations level,” said Seminole gaming chief executive officer James Allen. “Our marketing team’s job is to create excitement, and, candidly, they went a little too far.”

56 yr old tattoo ban lifted

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) - A 56-year-old ban on tattoo parlours has been lifted in this navy town.

City council approved an ordinance Tuesday allowing tattoo parlours in certain parts of the city, home to the world's largest naval base. The ordinance restricts parlours to a few industrial zones and downtown.

The move came after courts ruled that cities may no longer prohibit tattoo parlours.

Sixty years ago, Norfolk's East Main Street was world-famous for its tattoo parlours, taverns and burlesque palaces. In 1945, there were about a dozen parlours.

That ended in 1950 when city council banned all tattoo parlours. Tattoos were branded unsanitary, vulgar, even "cannibalistic."

Tattoos have become heavily regulated by the navy. It forbids tattoos in places not covered by the uniform and regulates the types of tattoos sailors may have.

Doggles

Chico likes his fashion doggy-style. Chico, a cheeky chihuahua cross, likes to mix it up – a little J-Lo jacket mixed with Snoop Dogg gangsta eyewear. Chico will not wear anything that is, like, so last season. And he is not alone.

Pet owners New Zealand-wide are embracing the growing range of doggy clothes and accessories.

Monique Somner, owner of Chico and manager of pet store Animates, said the rise in the popularity of small dogs as pets had pet lovers filling up wardrobes with the latest in summer essentials.

"And clothing is just the start. There's jewellery, bedding, whole bedrooms. Some have their own trainers, specific doctors, groomers and doggy daycare," she said.

Small dogs, popularised by celebrity dog owners such as Paris Hilton, can be dressed in fashionista flamboyance or rugged in classic Kiwiana – wet-weather gear or bush shirts.

Who says fashion has gone to the dogs?

"In my opinion, people dress their dogs because they are a child substitute. There are a lot of people out there with disposable income, and if they want to spend it on their pets, why not?" Somner said. She said Chico was "quite the man-about-town", but her other dog, a french bulldog called Betty Sparkle, occasionally wore a jacket, glasses and even fairy wings.

"People look at them with amusement, but there's more to it than being cool. They actually started making these things for a reason," she said. Protective goggles, or "doggles", can stop cataracts and eye ulcers, while dog shoes prevent paw pads wearing out.

Japanese student Towa Jose graduated from Massey University last year with a Diploma in Fashion and Technology. Since returning to Osaka, she has produced a range of designer dog T-shirts.

Jose said she believed dogs were at their happiest when being given attention.

Pet hotel beds

THE hotel chain Travelodge is to test market a special 2ft 6in long 2ft wide pet bed for guests who cannot bear to be parted from their cats and dogs.

The beds will be tried out at hotels in Newcastle upon Tyne, Liverpool, Birmingham and Nottingham.

PJ fury

PEOPLE wearing pyjamas in public, still common in Shanghai, is one of the most irritating aspects of life in China's biggest city, along with aggressive pets and unhelpful neighbours according to a poll of residents.

More than 16 per cent of respondents said they or family members often wore pyjamas in public, and 25 per cent sometimes did.

Lunatic fringe

UK - The Home Secretary has been barracked by a protester after he urged British Muslims to help fight terrorism. John Reid was shouted down as he called on Muslim parents to look out for "tell-tale signs" of terrorists brainwashing their children.

He was talking in London's East End - the focus of a number of recent investigations into alleged terrorist plots. A few minutes into his speech, a man called Abu Izzadeen stood up and berated the Home Secretary over police arresting more than a thousand" Muslims.

Izzadeen said: "You (Mr Reid) are a tyrant" and "You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims". He ranted: "State terrorism by British police", before officers and stewards led him from the building.

The protester, also known as Trevor Brook, is an extremist from the al Ghurabaa group, which was banned by Mr Reid under new anti-terror laws. Police have investigated Mr Izzadeen in the past after he praised the July 7 London Tube bombers.

A second protester was ejected when he also interrupted the minister's speech.

Mr Reid said: "There will always be people who will not be prepared to take part in a dialogue, but who will try to intimidate and shout down."

Returning to his speech, he insisted terrorists were waging a "violent and indiscriminate war" and warned that communities needed to be more aware of signs of terrorist activity.

The tooth , the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

Cordoba: An Argentinian robber was caught after he lost his false teeth during a raid on a house.

Householder Juan Navarro, from Cordoba, noticed one of the masked robbers lose his dentures. In his hurry to escape, the robber left the false teeth behind and Mr Navarro handed them over to the police.

Two days after the robbery, Mr Navarro noticed his own nephew suddenly seemed to have lost his teeth.

A police spokesman said: "Mr Navarro came straight to us and we had the denture analysed. It turns out it belongs to his nephew. What a funny thing to happen. Caught by a denture! Unbelievable!"

Elephant legged woman pissed off

London: A woman suffering from a rare condition that dramatically increases the size of her legs and feet has told of how she is teased by strangers.

Mandy Sellars, who weighs 16-stone, is one of only around 120 people in the world with Proteus Syndrome, which has left her with a size 12 top half, but her legs are 35 inches in circumference. Mandy told ITV's This Morning show: "Adults can be very hurtful. In a restaurant one blurted out "look at the size of those feet""I don't mind children staring, but adults should know better."

Proteus Syndrome leaves its victims with atypical growth of the bones, skin and head.

It can also lead to and a variety of other symptoms like increasing the size of an organ, or parts of the body.

Online history of UK phone books

London: It wasn't that long ago you could pick up the phone and speak to anyone you wanted be it Sir Winston Churchill, Laurence Olivier or even the man who started it all, Alexander Graham Bell.

Nowadays, footballers, politicians and pop stars go ex-directory to stop members of the public ringing up and haranguing them.
But phone books dating back to 1880 have now been made available online and show that, until fairly recently, almost everyone was listed.

Other 'celebs' you could have contacted include actor Sir John Gielgud, film director Alfred Hitchcock and Dracula author Bram Stoker. A close reading of the 1941 edition also reveals that you could have phoned a Capt John Terry, of London, a number of George Bushes and James Kirks, as well as the odd Lily Allen.

Back then, people could still ask to go ex-directory but there was little point because numbers were created for names in strict alphabetical order.

The online collection contains more than 250million names ,430 books were printed for London and the Home Counties alone.

Genealogy website ancestry.co.uk has joined up with BT to launch the complete online history of phone books from 1880 to 1984.

Ancestry.co.uk spokesman Josh Hanna believes it will provide a unique snapshot of 20th-century life ,as well as being invaluable to researchers tracing their family trees. "People today will find it remarkable that, in the those days, you could contact a celebrity just by picking up a phone book,And if they were a politician you could just ring them and lobby them" he said.

However, it was not until the 1940s that phone ownership became common, according t o Sian Wynn-Jones of BT Heritage. "Anyone listed before that was likely to be rich and famous, Being included in the phone book showed you were up with the crowd and people were proud to be included."

Bell is widely considered to have invented the phone in 1876. He and his backers formed the Bell Telephone Company in the US and a year later demonstrated it to Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight. The first list of phone numbers appeared in 1880.

Sit-com University course

Have you ever watched episodes of Only Fools and Horses or cult modern comedy The Office thinking, 'I could do that'? If you fancy yourself as the next Ricky Gervais, a new comedy writing course at Cardiff University could be the route to success.

The 10-week course promises to teach the skills which separate a rejected script from a commissioned series. Tutor James Daniel says the death of the sitcom has been prematurely announced on many occasions.

A scriptwriter who has co-written shows for the BBC, he believes it is possible to teach somebody the secrets of comedy writing but only if they have "a spark and a desperate willingness to do it" to begin with. He told BBC News: "It's a lot of work. There are techniques you can use to develop what you are writing by planting humour into the premise of your situation - there are certain tricks.

"A lot of new writers make the mistake of trying to tell a dramatic situation through non-stop funny dialogue."

Mr Daniel said as well as using his own experience from 20 years of writing, he would be able to pass on tips he had learned from industry figures during writing workshops over the years. He stresses he is not trying to create clone writers who all work to the same formula.

"The reason The Office was so successful was it was pushing back the boundaries of the genre," he said. "It's almost impossible to write anything set in a workplace situation now!"

Having said that, Mr Daniel believes the setting is not the most important aspect of a successful show.

"A sitcom is not about the situation, it's about the characters. The setting for the show is really not that relevant. It's an airtight box where you place desperate characters."

He said the first class would focus on creating a character, adding: "Somebody who embodies all of our struggles. Every great sitcom character in this country has had a monstrous element to them."

And the essence of a successful sitcom? "It's the right script with the right actors at the right time."

Welsh actor Rachel Isaac, who played Trudy in The Office, said she could see straight away from the script that the series would be a success. "There was emotional resonance within each scene, not just gags. Sometimes when you read comedy scripts driven by gags, you can see right through it," she said. "Within the confines of comedy, it depends on how see-through the gag is [whether it will work]. As they say, it's best if they don't see it coming."

She believes the best writing has "layers within the scene, layers that reveal human emotions".

She went on: "You see, oh that's a funny line, but if it's something you may have heard in real life - and people are funny - you're able to connect with the reality of it. Comedy's funniest when there's an element of reality in it. If it's all set-ups, you're aware of the falseness of it."

The Writing a Sitcom course runs for 10 weeks at Cardiff University's Centre for Lifelong Learning from 4 October.