Questions over royal omission A clergyman failed to mention the Duchess of Cornwall in prayers at a New Year’s Day church service attended by the Queen.
The Rev Jonathan Riviere named the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales during a service at Sandringham, but he made no mention of the Prince’s wife.
A week earlier the Queen did not mention the Prince’s wedding in her Christmas Day broadcast to the nation — a decision seen by some as a snub to her daughter-in-law.
Labour MEP dies suddenly
Phillip Whitehead, Labour MEP for the East Midlands and a former chairman of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, has died suddenly in hospital of a suspected heart attack after being taken ill at his Derbyshire home. He was 68. Mr Whitehead, a former television producer, also sat as Labour MP for Derby North from 1970 to 1983. In 1974, he won an Emmy award for his TV series The World at War.
Ex-gun-runner killed in his car
Police are investigating the murder of a former loyalist gun-runner after an incident on a busy city street. Lindsay Robb, 38, from Airdrie, Lanarkshire, was attacked as he sat in his car in Glasgow on Saturday afternoon. Robb was jailed for ten years in December 1995 for conspiring to run guns to loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. He was freed in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Smiths reunite, minus Morrissey
Two members of a cult 1980s band are to take to the stage together soon for the first time in nearly two decades. Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke, from the Smiths guitar group have not played publicly since the band split in 1987.
The two will lead a host of Manchester-based artists in a charity concert on January 28 to raise money for Christie’s Hospital in the city. Morrissey, the Smiths’ frontman and lyricist, will not appear.
'Tsunami' of anti-Semitism A tsunami-like wave of anti-Semitism is spreading around the world, the Chief Rabbi said yesterday. Denials of the Holocaust and hatred of Jews were increasingly evident on prime-time television and in best-selling books, Sir Jonathan Sacks said.
He told Radio 4 that Jewish communities across Europe had begun to experience uncomfortable repercussions from the view that Israel was the cause of all global conflicts.
Chef crushed
An unnamed man who works as a sous chef at Gravetye Manor country hotel in West Hoathly, West Sussex, is recovering in hospital after being crushed by his own car while trying to jump start it. He had been leaning through the driver’s window when the car moved. It is believed that alcohol was involved.
£9m win at risk
The owner of a winning National Lottery ticket worth £9.4 million has until 5.30pm today to claim the money before the 180-day deadline is passed. The ticket was bought for the July 6, 2005 draw in the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire. The winning numbers drawn were 3, 12, 17, 36, 44 and 49.
Cave-in death
The death of a man buried in a 2ft (0.6m) hole on a building site in Murton, County Durham, as he dug for Victorian bottles is being treated as an accident. Brian Spink, 46, died when soil collapsed into the hole. Police said that it should act as a warning about the dangers of excavations on building sites.
Extra episode
Extras who appeared in the television comedy series Dad’s Army (1968-1977) are making a documentary in which they will speak on screen for the first time. Residents of the Thetford, Norfolk, area who took part in the 90 episodes will tell backstage anecdotes, with the help of an £8,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant.
Teenager killed
A teenager died after being hit by two cars while walking on a street in the early hours in Hordle, Hampshire. One car was driven by a 45-year-old man from Hordle and the other by an 80-year-old woman from New Milton, Hampshire. The victim, aged 19, died at Southampton General Hospital.
Lovers' lane
A North Somerset lane is being closed for three months to allow toads to reach their mating grounds. The toads live in Norton’s Wood, near Clevedon, but make an annual trip to breed on the other side of the road. Last year Toad Patrol volunteers worked a shift system to carry the toads and stop them being squashed.
Scientists are to use a 3D computer model of London to examine how the city would cope with the sort of severe flooding that devastated New Orleans last year. The exercise, which envisages the Tube network and Houses of Parliament being deluged by the Thames, is part of a £5.5 million government-funded study. Similar studies will be made for the Clyde and Severn rivers.
Vitamin D sales
Britons have been stocking up on vitamin D in response to reports that it could halve the risk of developing some forms of cancer. Retailers say that sales are vastly surpassing those of other supplements, but many doctors caution against taking too much of it.
Mormon attack
A gang of youths attacked a pair of American Mormon missionaries in the Kinson area of Bournemouth. One of the missionaries, who were both aged 20 and from Phoenix, Arizona, was taken to hospital with a broken nose and two black eyes.
Medals stolen
Burglars posing as carol singers broke into a widow’s home and stole her late husband’s Second World War decorations. Kathleen Wood Hind, 84, of Christchurch, Dorset, has appealed for the return of nine medals awarded to Major Thomas Wood Hind.
Aerial in the eye
A boy is recovering after an aerial from a remote controlled car became wedged in his eye. Dillon Jane, 8, was taken to hospital in Plymouth, Devon, after the 2ft aerial became lodged in his eyelid. A plastic ball covering the end of the antenna had fallen off.
Text messages
Mobile phone users in Britain will send about 100 million text messages a day this year, researchers suggest. The number of texts sent will rise from about 88 million sent each day last year, according to a forecast by the Mobile Data Association.
Price of marriage
The average cost of a wedding in Britain is expected to rise to £17,370 — an increase of more than 5 per cent compared to last year. A survey by Weddingplan, the wedding insurers, suggests that getting married in London will cost on average £22,906.
Top of the pops
The charity single (Is This The Way To) Amarillo? by Tony Christie, featuring the comedian Peter Kay, was the bestselling song of 2005 at 1.06 million, according to HMV figures. That’s My Goal by Shayne Ward was second and Axel F by Crazy Frog third.
Girl describes her abductor
Police hunting a paedophile who snatched a girl aged six from her home on Tyneside said they they are looking for a white man, 5ft 4in to 5ft 8in. He was wearing a black hat, black coat and black gloves. The girl told officers he was “not skinny” and had hair on the side of his face.
Detective Chief Inspector Jim Napier asked the abductor to “search his conscience and give himself up”.
Boxing Day killing
A factory worker has been charged with murdering a teenage girl after a Boxing Day party at a rugby club in Glyncoch, South Wales. The ex-boyfriend of Rebecca Spry, 18 — Jordan Rees, 24 — was charged with her murder before Pontypridd magistrates.
Suicide prevention
The volunteer Beachy Head chaplaincy team, which patrols the East Sussex cliff in the evenings, has been credited with reducing suicides there. The number of people jumping to their death decreased from a record 35 in 2004 to 25 last year.
Euthanasia change
The Voluntary Euthanasia Society, an advocacy group, will change its name to Dignity in Dying from January 23. Deborah Annetts, the director, said that the present name was outdated and did not reflect the group’s range of activities.
77 years apart
Two sisters are to meet each other for the first time in 77 years. Doris Coughtrey, 79, from Peterborough, and Irene Baker, 85, from, Maidstone, Kent, were separated after their mother’s death. Doris tracked down Irene through the Genes Reunited website.
Man dies in fire
A 35-year-old man died after a house fire that left two other members of his family fighting for their lives. The blaze, which broke out at a semi-detached house in Lea Hall, Birmingham, at 4.50am, is thought to have started accidentally.
MRSA amputee
Norman Turner, 42, a former cleaning supervisor at Blackburn Royal Infirmary, has had his left leg amputated after catching the MRSA superbug at the hospital in which he worked for 15 years. He was originally admitted to have an artery replaced.
In the lick of time
A Labrador saved his owner’s life by licking his face to wake him up after his house caught fire. Simon Booth, 38, was sleeping when flames engulfed his home in Burgess Hill, East Sussex. Arthur, three, bounded into Mr Booth’s bedroom and licked him until he woke up.
Teenager falls in roof chase
A 17-year-old suspected robber fell 50ft off the roof of a building as he was being chased by police in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
Officers responding to reports of a robbery at 4.50am chased two suspects believed to be have snatched items from late-night revellers. The youth was in a serious but stable condition in Southend Hospital yesterday.
Insecure spell
George Cooper, 59, who owns a gift shop at Burley, in Hampshire, has been told by the Forestry Commission to remove a giant model of a witch and a host of animals from outside the shop because they are “tacky”. They are a tourist attraction in an area famed for its historic connections with witchcraft.
Spelling whiz-kid
A teenager from Northern Ireland has been named the country’s best young speller after winning the BBC’s word competition Hard Spell. Niall O’Neill, 13, from Ballymena, Co Antrim, won £10,000 in holiday vouchers by spelling galoshes, septicaemia, funambulist and quiquennium without making a mistake.
Fern favourite
Fern Britton, the host of This Morning on ITV1, is the celebrity women would most like to swap lives with, according to a poll by Boots. Men said they would most like to be Andrew Flintoff, the England cricketer. Second places went to X-Factor judge Sharon Osbourne and Tom Cruise.
Britons abroad
Some 3.2 million Britons took more than four foreign holidays last year, according to a survey for Sainsbury’s Bank. Nearly 10 million holidayed abroad once, 6.25 million twice, 4.61 million three times and 2.27 million four times. Overall, Britons took nearly 69 million foreign holidays in 2005.
Funniest films
Monty Python’s Life of Brian is the funniest big-screen comedy, according to a poll conducted by Channel 4 for The 50 Greatest Comedy Films. The 1979 New Testament satire beat Airplane! (1980) into second place, followed by Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).
In the pink
Benjamin Cohen, dubbed Britain’s first teenaged dotcom millionaire when, aged 16, he created the soJewish and JewishNet websites, has launched PinkUnlimited.co.uk, a network of media outlets for the gay community. One of the sites created by Mr Cohen, now 23, is PinkLegal.co.uk, focusing on “gay marriages”.
