Around 15,000 suspected pirates may soon get legal letters accusing them of illegally sharing movies and games. ACS:Law plans to send notes to the accused in the new year offering a chance to settle out of court for “several hundreds of pounds”. A lawyer who has defended people who have received similar letters described it [...]
A lawyer for John Demjanjuk, accused of helping to murder 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp, has accused German prosecutors of double standards. Mr Demjanjuk, 89, denies he was a guard at Sobibor camp, in wartime Poland. As the case began in Munich, his legal team said in previous cases Germans assigned to the [...]
The central bank of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said it will provide banks with extra liquidity. The news comes days after the state-owned Dubai World said it would ask for an extension on repaying its debts, sending world stock markets tumbling. The liquidity will be available to all UAE banks as well as [...]
Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, official results show. More than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons – or provinces – voted in favour of the ban. The proposal had been put forward by the Swiss People’s Party, (SVP), the largest party in parliament, [...]
New discoveries into how the body clock works could provide clues to help combat jet lag, research suggests. A University of Manchester team studied special cells which they say play an important role in regulating a person’s body clock. The cells had been thought to be inactive during the day – but their research found [...]
A website has published what it says are 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Wikileaks says it will not reveal who gave it the messages – some of which are from federal agencies as well as ordinary citizens. Internet analysts say they believe the messages are genuine [...]
European shares have been hit by concerns over Dubai’s financial health, after a government-owned company asked for an extension on repaying its debts. The UK’s FTSE 100 index lost 3.2%, its biggest one-day fall since March, after Dubai World asked creditors to postpone upcoming repayments until May 2010. Banks were hit particularly hard on concerns [...]
Exercising may get rid of a hangover, but working out cannot undo the damage that heavy drinking may cause, the government says. A survey for the Department of Health found almost one in five people in England admitted to exercising to "make up" for a heavy bout of drinking. The poll also found that one [...]
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia "lost" 49,000 of its volunteer editors in the first three months of 2009, University research suggests. The figure compares with a loss of 4,900 over the same period in 2008. The encyclopaedia-style website encourages editorial changes from everybody who comes to the site. Wikimedia UK, a chapter of the organisation that operates [...]
A student has opened fire on classmates at a university in southern Hungary, killing one person and wounding three others, officials say. The man started shooting during a class in the biophysics research institute at Pecs University, authorities say. Police said the alleged gunman – a 23-year-old pharmacology student – ran to a clinic [...]
A cup of Brazilian mint tea has pain relieving qualities to match those of commercially available analgesics, a study suggests. Hyptis crenata has been prescribed by Brazilian healers for millennia to treat ailments from headaches and stomach pain to fever and flu. Working on mice, a Newcastle University team has proved scientifically that the ancient [...]
General Motors (GM) has said that it will not be closing any of Opel’s four plants in Germany as part of its restructuring plans. The US carmaker also said it would be cutting about 9,000 jobs in Europe, slightly fewer than the 10,000 it originally estimated. It also said the future of the Antwerp plant [...]