United Kingdom

England striker Wayne Rooney said on Monday the ill-tempered behaviour that has landed him in trouble will be long gone by the time he arrives in Germany for next year’s Word Cup finals. Rooney is expected to become a target for opposition defences when England embark on yet another hopeful World Cup campaign.

A fire at a warehouse in England on Monday destroyed all the sets, props and models in the Wallace and Gromit films, just after the latest release hit number one at the United States box office. The building housed all the props and sets from Morph to the Wallace and Gromit films.

Developers announced plans on Friday to open a multimillion-pound sexual ”theme park” near London’s Piccadilly Circus, home to the much-photographed statue of the Greek god of love. Backers say the London Academy of Sex and Relationships, due to open next spring, will not be a sleazy sex museum.

The world’s first self-controlled robotic fish were due to be unveiled at the London Aquarium on Thursday, officials said. The three aquatic robots were developed by a team at the University of Essex, in south-east England, to teach the public more about robotic technology.

An original set of waxwork heads of The Beatles, which was used on the band’s album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, has been found and will be put up for sale this month, an auction house said on Thursday. The heads were unearthed in a store room at Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum in London.

There is enough rugby potential in England for the national side to mount a successful defence of its World Cup in 2007, former skipper Lawrence Dallaglio said on Wednesday. Dallaglio is yet to officially come out of England retirement, but his desire to pull on an English jersey burns strongly once again.

Most <i>Scrabble</i> players presented with a rack containing a tile marked "LL" would be both puzzled and stuck. But for players of the newly released Welsh edition of the popular word game, it’s an easy score. Released on Wednesday, the new edition is aimed at the estimated 500 000 speakers of Welsh.

The unpredictable and often confusing story of the British weather is to be told more simply in future in order to make forecasts more ”relevant” to the public. The Meteorological Office said efforts to introduce greater clarity to the weather report do not represent an attempt to make the weather appear ”more positive”.

British researchers said on Tuesday they hope to produce the first-ever authoritative map of the country’s last uncharted territory: what lies beneath people’s feet. With the help of utility companies, engineers from the University of Birmingham in central Britain hope to come up with a comprehensive chart of the more than four million kilometres of underground cables and pipes.

A British bank employee who stole huge sums from his employer left a note in a safe admitting he had ”borrowed” seven million pounds (,3-million), a court was told on Tuesday. In fact, the true scale of financial consultant Graham Price’s theft and deception totalled nearer £10-million, Swansea magistrates’ court in South Wales heard.

Former Manchester United football star George Best, who has battled alcoholism since quitting the game, was in a ”serious” condition in intensive care at a London hospital on Monday, his doctor said. Best (59) was admitted to the private Cromwell hospital in central London on Saturday with influenza-like symptoms.

Britain is give all school pupils lessons in cooking healthy meals as part of attempts to tackle an epidemic of obesity in young people. All senior school pupils aged 11 to 14 will receive practical cooking lessons and learn about the importance of a balanced diet, food safety and hygiene, the education department said.

England World Cup hero Jonny Wilkinson returned to action in Newcastle’s impressive 34-9 Anglo-Welsh Cup win over Sale on Sunday. Wilkinson came off the bench after 54 minutes and made an immediate impact, sending Matthew Burke over for a try and controlling the game with his varied kicking.

Robbie Keane came off the bench to score the winner, and Tottenham rallied from a two-goal deficit to beat second-place Charlton 3-2 on Saturday in the English Premier League. In another comeback, Ruud van Nistelrooy scored twice to lead Manchester United to a 3-2 victory at Fulham.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes the decision by bookmakers to pay out on Chelsea defending their Premiership title will backfire and spur his side to challenge their London rivals. While Chelsea are 11 points clear of Arsenal and 10 clear of Manchester United, Wenger insists the race is far from over.

When an 11-year-old boy sneaked his first kiss under a British railway bridge in 1965, he most likely never expected it to be front-page news 40 years later. But then he did choose British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s future wife. Stephen Smerdon woke up on Thursday to find his fledgling love life of four decades ago splashed across newspapers.

He might be the self-professed enemy of the West, but a decade ago terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden considered seeking asylum in Britain, the country’s interior minister of the time has said. Michael Howard told The Times on Thursday that the request from the al-Qaeda chief appeared to be serious.

A British university has launched a three-year degree course in the hunt for life beyond the planet Earth. The University of Glamorgan this week launched what it said is Britain’s first undergraduate course in astrobiology, the search for extraterrestrial life.

An infamous swimming-pool-based clinch from the much-criticised 1995 film Showgirls received the dubious honour on Wednesday of being named the worst sex scene in the history of cinema. Second place was awarded to Damage, a 1992 European art-house film starring Jeremy Irons.

Under-fire England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson has insisted he still has the support of the players despite the suggestion of rifts within the England squad. Eriksson changed his formation for the embarrassing 1-0 defeat to Northern Ireland earlier this month, with captain David Beckham accommodated in a deep central role.