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Amnesty International has called for the war crimes committed during the Sudanese civil war to be investigated by prosecutors at the United Nations International Criminal Court in The Hague. In a report released in London on Tuesday, Amnesty urged the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Sudan to the special court.

A woman who used the date-rape drug Rohypnol to drug wealthy men and rob them of their expensive clothes and accessories was jailed for five years on Monday. Selina Hakki is believed to be the first woman to be found guilty of using Rohypnol to drug men in Britain.

Britain’s Tim Henman has said he will no longer play in the Davis Cup because of his ambition to win a Grand Slam crown. The news is a major blow to captain Jeremy Bates, with Greg Rusedski’s Davis Cup future also far from certain. Henman is yet to win a Grand Slam.

Having led his country back into the international mainstream after renouncing ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction, Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi is now being immortalised by a leading British opera company, it said on Thursday. The as-yet-unnamed work was commissioned by the English National Opera.

Strawberry Fields, the English orphanage immortalised in the famous Beatles song <i>Strawberry Fields Forever</i>, is to close soon. The facility in the Woolton district of Liverpool in north-west England, where John Lennon played as a child in the wooded park, has been ordered to close, the Salvation Army said on Wednesday.

An employee of British bookseller chain Waterstone’s has been fired for bringing the company into disrepute after he made entries on his weblog site identifying it in code as "Bastardstone’s" and accusing it of slavery. "I did not set out to attack the company in some systematic manner," Joe Gordon said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended new pub-licensing laws that will allow Britons to drink around the clock and insisted it will not lead to an explosion in booze-fuelled violence. Later this year, licensing laws that require most pubs in England and Wales to close at 11pm from Monday to Saturday and at 10.30pm on Sundays will be lifted.

Feminist icon Germaine Greer, who baffled observers by agreeing to appear in a reality television show, made an equally mysterious decision on Tuesday to quit the programme. The Australian writer and academic left British show Celebrity Big Brother after five days of being locked in a house with, among others, the ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone.

A ballet inspired by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and its challenging equation (e=mc2) will be premiered in London in May to mark the Einstein festivities this year, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Monday. The ballet, called Constant Speed, will be the highlight of the Rambert Dance Company’s spring tour.

A 1997 BMW car once owned by England football captain David Beckham has sold for more than &pound;90&nbsp;000 (R1,02-million) on eBay — to the dismay of the man who sold it two months ago for less than a fifth of that. Businessman John Pearson said it was "like winning a small lottery jackpot and losing the ticket".

Plans to broadcast a London musical that features a nappy-wearing Jesus who admits he is "a bit gay", have sparked a record 5&nbsp;500 complaints, a television watchdog said on Thursday. The BBC nevertheless vowed to go ahead with its plan to show <i>Jerry Springer: The Opera</i>, based on the controversial United States talk show.

An Israeli settler arrested at London’s Heathrow airport with a loaded handgun in his luggage was acquitted on Thursday of possessing a dangerous article. A jury at Isleworth Crown Court in west London accepted Benjamin Lehman’s claim that he had forgotten the gun was in his backpack.

Britain’s civil service embarked on an 18-year quest for the perfect toilet paper after a doctor voiced concern about a diplomat’s haemorrhoids, according to a government file made public on Tuesday. John Hunt, a London physician, wrote to the Treasury’s medical adviser in 1963 after he examined Sir John Pilcher.

It’s never too late to start a new career — even if you’re 96 years old and the new job is modelling cosmetics. Irene Sinclair, a Guyana-born pensioner living in London, is appearing on billboards around Britain this month, wrinkles and all, to help sell Dove, a popular brand of facial cream.

A British man celebrated his 100th birthday more than £7 000 (R75 000) the richer on Sunday after placing a bet 10 years ago — on his own long life expectancy. Arthur Best bet he would reach the age of 100, which he did on Sunday.

A charity pop single raising money for African relief has done a better job than the church in spreading the Christmas message, a Church of England bishop admitted on Thursday. Band Aid, the collective of pop stars gathered together by Bob Geldof, have done what organised religion ”was not able to or did not want to carry out”, said the bishop.

The unpaid mayor of a small English town has applied for unemployment benefits, but been rejected since he spends too much time at mandatory civic events, the Daily Telegraph said on Thursday. Roy Miller lost his full-time job at a print factory, which closed at the weekend after laying off its 400 employees.

An English mother who was highly allergic to tomatoes went into shock and died after opening a can to prepare spaghetti bolognaise for her four children, press reports said on Thursday. Raya French (37), who knew of her allergy, was opening a tin of minced meat and chopped tomatoes when she suffered anaphylactic shock.

The latest instalment in the Harry Potter series won’t hit stores for more than six months but it has already topped at least one bookseller’s most wanted list and is racking up thousands of advance orders, retailers said on Wednesday. It shot to number one on online bookseller Amazon.co.uk‘s Hot 100 book list.

Save the Children United Kingdom is pulling out of the Darfur region of Sudan because four of its workers have been killed there, the group said on Tuesday. The aid organisation said the decision was agonising but is necessary because risks to staff are too great. Disease and famine have killed 70 000 in Darfur since March.

A puritanical member of the congregation in the small southern English village of Wiston is thought to be behind the smashing of an 800-year-old pagan symbol that warns against lust, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. The erotic stone carving with its genitalia exposed had long been a talking point.

The queen has sacked a member of the Buckingham Palace staff for offering for sale on eBay one of the Christmas puddings she hands out to staff during the festive season, the Daily Mirror reported on Friday. Ben Church was frogmarched off the premises earlier this week, the left-wing tabloid said.

Tolkien’s Gollum from his Lord of the Rings trilogy suffered a personality disorder akin to schizophrenia, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal on Friday. The disturbed hobbit-like creature most probably suffered from schizoid personality disorder, medical students from London’s University College found.

A key but controversial aspect of Britain’s post-September 11 security policy was dealt a blow on Thursday as the country’s highest court ruled that detaining terror suspects indefinitely without trial breaks human rights laws. It is a blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair, just hours after Home Secretary David Blunkett resigned following a personal scandal.

The singer of the British pop group Erasure has said he is HIV-positive. Following a news report printed in Finland on Wednesday, Andy Bell made a statement on the band’s website revealing he has known for more than four years that he has the disease, which causes Aids.