The Court of
Session in Edinburgh has fined a Scottish man £40,000 in damages after he sent
a message on Twitter calling a lesbian same-sex marriage advocate "a
danger to children”, and she sued him for defamation.
A man who disrupted
a pro-life rally outside an abortion clinic in London by throwing a banner over
a hedge and wrecking posters was fined £500 and made to write a letter of
apology (which was six words long, including greeting and signature).
Hemel Hempstead was
voted the ugliest town in the UK. Six of the top ten “crap towns” in the survey
were within an hour of London.
Marion Bartoli, who
won the Wimbledon ladies’ singles championship less than six weeks ago, has retired from
tennis at the age of 28 due to a chronic Achilles tendon injury.
A Scottish teenage boy killed himself after footage recorded on Skype, when he thought he was conversing with a girl of his own age, was used to blackmail him. Meanwhile, there was an unexpected development in the case of Hannah Smith, the teenager who recently killed herself after receiving abuse on the anonymous website Ask.fm; the website's owners say that 98% of the abuse came from Hannah's own IP address, and have suggested that she may have posted much of the abuse herself under various names. Her father has angrily rejected this, and investigations are continuing.
A Scottish teenage boy killed himself after footage recorded on Skype, when he thought he was conversing with a girl of his own age, was used to blackmail him. Meanwhile, there was an unexpected development in the case of Hannah Smith, the teenager who recently killed herself after receiving abuse on the anonymous website Ask.fm; the website's owners say that 98% of the abuse came from Hannah's own IP address, and have suggested that she may have posted much of the abuse herself under various names. Her father has angrily rejected this, and investigations are continuing.
The athletics World
Championships in Moscow have been partly overshadowed by international
criticism of Russia’s anti-gay laws. Some competitors have painted their
fingernails in rainbow colours to show support for gay people; Russian Olympic
champion pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva has spoken out in favour of the laws.
The IAAF has said that both opinions must be respected.
Military forces in
Cairo forcibly cleared two camps of anti-government protesters, resulting in
many hundreds of deaths, including some government troops.
A dispute between the
UK and Spain over fishing in the seas around Gibraltar has escalated to the point
where the UK government sent warships to the area for “routine exercises”.
A football match
between Scotland and England was decided by a winning goal from a 31-year-oild
Englishman making his first ever touch of the ball as an England player. Other
surprising results included Northern Ireland defeating Russia in a World Cup
qualifier and Switzerland beating Brazil in a friendly.
A pastor and his colleague went on trial this week
after being arrested for reading a Bible aloud in public outside of a
California Department of Motor Vehicles. Prosecutors were unable to charge them
with "preaching to a captive audience” (the charge for which they were
arrested, but which is not in any California penal code) or with “obstructing a
lawful business” (because the DMV was closed at the time). They were eventually
charged with “conducting a protest on state grounds without a permit”. The
judge found them not guilty.
And finally, a billionaire entrepreneur proposed a
new magnetic levitation train service between Los Angeles and San Francisco,
travelling at speeds of up to 700 mph in an air-cushioned tunnel. The satirical
website The Onion suggested that it would be powered entirely by sound energy
generated by passengers’ screams.
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