United Kingdom

Thousands of expatriate Iraqis began casting ballots on Friday in their country’s first free election for more than half a century, with emotions running high despite the relatively limited numbers taking part. ”I’m doing this for my children … it’s the first step in a thousand-mile journey,” a voter in Dubai said.

British police spent £10 000 (R111 000) to catch and prosecute a woman driver for eating an apple while behind the wheel, reports said on Tuesday. Sarah McCaffrey, a 23-year-old nursery nurse, was fined £60 (R660) on Monday and ordered to pay £100 (R1 100) in legal fees.

Arsenal striker Dennis Bergkamp hopes to end his playing career when Arsenal bid farewell to their historic Highbury home in north London next season. Bergkamp, 36 in May, proved he still has what it takes to succeed in the Premiership when he scored Arsenal’s winner in Sunday’s 1-0 win against Newcastle at Highbury with a sublime finish.

England World Cup-winning captain Martin Johnson has said the British and Irish Lions won’t need him on their forthcoming tour of New Zealand. The 34-year-old Leicester lock retired from international rugby union early last year just months after leading England to the 2003 World Cup.

A British man with a sexual fetish for tie-on surgical masks was jailed on Thursday for telephoning hospitals and dental surgeries around the country to ask for supplies to be sent to him. The judge called Norman Hutchins "manipulative and deceptive" and a "menace to anyone involved in medical or dental institutions".

Arsenal reduced the gap behind Premiership leaders Chelsea to 10 points with a 1-0 win against Newcastle at Highbury in London on Sunday thanks to Dennis Bergkamp’s first-half strike. ”The team is back on track,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told Sky Sports afterwards.

Non-league minnows Exeter City bowed out of the FA Cup with their heads held high after making Manchester United sweat right to the end of their third-round replay on Wednesday night. It was not until Wayne Rooney’s 87th-minute strike completed a 2-0 win that the world’s richest club finally guaranteed their place in the fourth round.

For 75 of his 95 years, William Wagstaff rode the same bicycle — until a brush with a car finally made him decide to stop pedalling and donate the bike to a transport museum. Wagstaff, from Croydon in southern England, bought the bicycle for £14 in 1929, the Daily Mirror newspaper said on Wednesday.

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.