As Britain looks at a further tightening of anti-terror laws in the wake of the July 7 London attacks, it has been openly suggested that the government would do well to investigate the failure or success of integrating Muslims into British society. Britain has a 1,5-million-strong Muslim community.
Schools will not be obliged to offer new, updated subjects when the National Curriculum Statement is introduced for grade 10 from next year, the Department of Education said on Monday. The new curriculum has updated and sometimes renamed versions of subjects currently on offer.
An Australian teenager has had his nose bitten off in a violent argument over the merits of blood-and-guts feature film Sin City, news reports said on Monday. The 19-year-old was outside a cinema in Bathurst at the weekend when he got into a fight with another man over the quality of the film.
At least one person was killed and 34 injured on Monday as Typhoon Haitang pounded Taiwan, forcing airports and financial markets to shut, while south-east China evacuated more than half a million people as it braced for the storm. Haitang’s gusting winds of up to 227kph wreaked havoc across Taiwan.
Nigerian police say they have scored results in a crackdown launched by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government in the past three years on internet and e-mail fraud — which has grown to the point that it is associated with Nigeria all over the world. But new scammers are evolving fresh ruses to trap victims and evade detection.
The two main rebel movements in Sudan’s conflict-ridden western Darfur region have signed an agreement to stop all acts of enmities and friction between their supporters to maintain unity in the strife-torn province. The agreement was signed late on Sunday in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
A forum on commercial and economic cooperation between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa began on Monday, gathering about 1 000 participants, including government ministers from around the continent. The talks are due to take place until Wednesday in a plush hotel in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
A curry chef in central England claimed on Saturday to have rustled up the world’s biggest curry — a sizzling 10-tonne chicken tikka masala cooked in a swimming-pool-sized pot. Vast quantities of chicken, vegetables, spices and curry powder were chopped and sliced in advance for the bid to bust the world record.
The famously fun-loving city of Newcastle in north-east England is no stranger to public nudity, but it is mainly carried out in the name of excessive drunkenness rather than art. In contrast, about 1 500 people stripped naked on Sunday at various locations for the latest work by United States artist Spencer Tunick.
Police in India’s eastern state of Orissa rounded up about 200 people watching a porn movie in a cinema hall and made them do 10 sit-ups in public as punishment, a report said on Monday. They were also made to take a public vow never to watch a sleazy movie again, the <i>Hindustan Times</i> daily said.