Set the dining table, light some candles and crack open a nice bag of wine. Serving guests wine from a plastic pouch or box may no longer be a social faux pas, say some in the wine industry — as consumers warm to packaging that is seen as kinder to the environment than glass bottles.
The Harry Potter books have spawned a parallel universe on the internet, where sites attract millions of fans every day and play a major part in the success of the novels and their Hollywood adaptations. So popular are JK Rowling’s stories, and the web pages built around them, that a handful of online fans have become stars in their own right.
A British employment tribunal ordered rock star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler to pay 000 in compensation on Tuesday for wrongfully dismissing their former chef. Jane Martin, who cooked for Sting and his family at their country estate in England, filed a claim in July last year saying she had been sacked by Styler after revealing she was pregnant.
Ernie Els’s record in the British Open is of the highest order, but the suspicion remains that it could and should have been even better. The big South African will be playing in his 17th Open Championship at Carnoustie this week with his one win to date coming in the 2002 edition at Muirfield, where he won a four-man play-off.
Britain announced on Monday the expulsion of four Russian diplomats to protest against Moscow’s refusal to extradite a suspect over the murder of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko, the first such step in over a decade. The decision marks a major escalation in the row triggered by Litvinenko’s radioactive poisoning last November.
Five-time Major winner Seve Ballesteros announced his retirement from golf on Monday, ending one of the most glittering careers in the modern game. The Spaniard, who won the British Open three times and the United States Masters twice, told a news conference at Carnoustie: ”This has been the most difficult decision of my life.”
The University of Edinburgh confirmed on Monday that it had withdrawn an honorary doctorate awarded to Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe in 1984 because of concern over his human rights record. The decision was the first time the British institution has taken such a step since it was founded in 1583.
Does Harry Potter die? Fictional or not, the question of what happens to the boy wizard at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is on millions of lips five days before it goes on sale. Security measures in place to protect the contents of book seven sound like something from a heist movie.
High-profile trio Tyson Gay, Jeremy Wariner and double amputee Oscar Pistorius all suffered in the rain at Sunday’s IAAF British Grand Prix. Gay admitted he was unhappy with his performance after winning the men’s 100m. Pistorius was disqualified for running outside of his lane after trailing in last in 47,65 on the wet track.
Fears that hundreds of thousands of high-quality British jobs have been outsourced to low-cost emerging economies such as India are largely unfounded, but developing nations are being plundered for skilled staff to keep Britain growing, according to reports out recently.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown set a target on Wednesday of building three million new houses in Britain by 2020 under measures to tackle a growing crisis over a shortage of affordable homes. Brown knows that solving the housing problem and improving public services may be crucial to his Labour Party winning a fourth successive general election.
The suspended chief designer of the McLaren Formula One team will provide a sworn declaration about how he obtained papers at the heart of an alleged spying row, a spokesperson for Ferrari said on Wednesday. Mike Coughlan is facing legal action brought by Ferrari at London’s High Court.
A British court sentenced four men on Wednesday to 40 years in jail each for an al-Qaeda-directed attempt to carry out suicide bomb attacks on London’s transport system on July 21 2005. Muktah Said Ibrahim, Yassin Hassan Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussein Osman were found guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder in connection with the botched attacks.
From Africa to Russia, from Peru to China, mining companies face a problem: the workers who haul up the earth’s riches are coming down with HIV/Aids, and it is hampering operations at a time of booming demand for minerals. Worldwide the disease has killed about 30-million people, double the amount of casualties in World War I.
Oscar Pistorius believes he has the talent to compete against the best Olympic-level runners in the world. Pistorius, a double-amputee who races on carbon-fibre blades attached below his knees, will get his chance this weekend when he runs in a world-class able-bodied race for the first time.
George Melly, the larger-than-life British jazz star, has died at his home in London at the age of 80, his wife said. The singer and writer was also a lecturer on art history, specialising in surrealism, as well as an award-winning film and television critic. The hard-drinking entertainer was known for his high-living, loud suits and jaunty fedora hats.
British artificial-intelligence expert Donald Michie and his ex-wife, leading geneticist Dame Anne McLaren, died in a car crash on July 7, their son said. Michie (84) and McLaren (80) were killed when their car veered off a highway while they were travelling from Cambridge to the home they shared in London, Jonathan Michie said.
Astronomers using a giant telescope say they have found glimpses of the most distant — and oldest — galaxies ever seen. The light the researchers viewed originated when the universe was only 500-million years old and has been travelling through distant space for billions of years.
A bitter row between the Ferrari and McLaren Formula One teams over alleged espionage in Formula One came to London’s High Court on Tuesday. Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney was sacked after being accused of supplying McLaren’s chief designer, Mike Coughlan, with over 500 pages of secret Ferrari technical information in April.
A female Muslim juror has been arrested in Britain after allegedly listening to an MP3 player under her <i>hijab</i> headscarf during a murder trial, police said on Monday. The woman was meant to be helping try the case of a pensioner accused of bludgeoning his wife to death after 50 years of marriage.
Britain said on Tuesday that Russia’s refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the main suspect in the murder of Russian émigré Alexander Litvinenko, was ”unacceptable”. ”We’ve consistently said that the murder of Litvinenko is a serious criminal matter,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair overrode Cabinet colleagues who had doubts about going to war against Iraq, his former press chief revealed in diaries published on Monday. The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell also gives behind-the-scenes insights into Blair’s relations with United States President George Bush.
Four men were convicted on Monday of plotting to bomb London’s transport system on July 21 2005 in a botched attempt to replicate Islamist suicide bombings that had killed 52 people two weeks earlier. Police said the men, Muslims of African origin, would have caused carnage on a similar scale to the attacks a fortnight before.
An English court found three defendants guilty on Monday over a failed Islamist plot to set off bombs in London on July 21 2005, two weeks after suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters in the capital. Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed were found guilty of conspiracy to murder after a six-month trial.
Thousands of Harry Potter fans have signed a petition urging JK Rowling to keep writing novels about the boy wizard after she admitted she could ”never say never” to more books. The ”Save Harry!” petition calls on Rowling to reverse her decision to end the best-selling series with the seventh and final instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
”I’d been given a ticket for parking illegally on the pavement near the Greek temples at Agrigento in southern Sicily more than a year ago. My excuse? Everyone was doing it and the car park looked full … I’d been a fugitive for too long and it was time to turn myself in.” Giles Elgood discovers it’s rather hard to pay a Sicilian parking ticket.
Pride and revenge are on Tom Boonen’s agenda when the second stage of the Tour de France takes the peloton from Dunkirk to Ghent on Monday. The stage is expected to end in another bunch sprint and having been beaten into third by Robbie McEwen in Sunday’s first stage, Boonen needs to shine in his home country.
Australian Robbie McEwen produced one of his greatest sprint performances on Sunday when he recovered from a crash 21km from the finish to blast through the field and claim the first stage of the Tour de France. McEwen looked down and out when he was catapulted over his handlebars just as he was thinking about working for position for the sprint finish into Canterbury.
Second seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and Liezel Huber of South Africa won their second Wimbledon women’s doubles title in three years defeating Slovenian Katarina Srebotnik and Japan’s Ai Sugiyama on Sunday. The African pair came from a set down to win 3-6 6-3 6-2 and capture their second grand slam title of the year.
Roger Federer emulated the legendary Bjorn Borg when he captured his fifth successive Wimbledon title with a 7-6 (9/7), 4-6, 7-6 (7/3), 2-6, 6-2 win over Rafael Nadal in a thrilling final on Sunday. It was Federer’s 11th career Grand Slam title, taking him within three of Pete Sampras’s record of 14 and his 54th consecutive grasscourt win.
Kimi Raikkonen confirmed his and Ferrari’s return to form with a dazzling triumph in Sunday’s British Grand Prix as home hero Lewis Hamilton struggled home third. The 27-year-old Finn took full advantage of Ferrari’s excellent strategy and tyre problems that slowed both Hamilton and his McLaren Mercedes-Benz teammate and defending champion Fernando Alonso.
Venus Williams said her fourth Wimbledon trophy was special because she had overcome so much to win it but that she was unlikely to swap it with her 2005 one which she keeps by her bed. Williams got off to a wobbly start at this year’s championships when she was taken to three sets in her first and third round matches.