A 99-year-old pensioner accused of burglary is among more than 200 pensioners arrested by one police force in the last two years, ITN reports.
Avon and Somerset Police detained suspects aged over 70 for offences including loan sharking, possessing an automatic weapon and conspiracy to murder.
Information released under the Freedom of Information Act shows the force arrested 200 men and 23 women in 2007 and 2008.
The 99-year-old was the oldest person to be held, for an …

A lost Charlie Chaplin film has been discovered in a can of nitrate film bought on eBay for £3.20, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Morale Park from Henham, Essex, purchased the tin simply because he liked the look of it. He was amazed to discover its fragile contents: a previously unknown seven-minute film Chaplin film called Zepped.
His interest was piqued, he said, when he could not find any mention of it on the internet.
The film features footage of …

Taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) swung into a £1.5 billion operating loss for the third quarter after write-offs on bad debts nearly tripled compared with the same period a year ago, The Times reports.
The bank, which are now 84 per cent owned by Britain’s taxpayers after receiving an additional £33.5 billion in state funding this week, said that operating losses had improved from the £3.5 billion recorded in the second quarter of this year. …

One in 20 children in Britain think that Adolf Hitler was a football coach and one in six kids believe that Auschwitz was a 2nd World War theme park, the Daily Mail reports.
A study of 2,000 children which tested them on their knowledge of facts of both world wars found that 40 per cent of them did not know that Remembrance Day falls on 11th November. 12 per cent said the symbol of the day is …

Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned today that the West could withdraw support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai if he fails to live up to their expectations in his second term in power, AFP reports.
Defending Britain’s mission in Afghanistan against waning public support, Brown admitted that the Government in Kabul had become a “by-word for corruption” — and also pressed for more Afghan troops to bare the brunt of frontline action.
He said that he had spoken …

Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon signed a law granting amnesties to 10,000 inmates to mark the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the country’s constitution, which falls on Friday, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Amnesties are commonly used to celebrate political anniversaries in Tajikistan and this year’s will mark the twelfth amnesty since Tajikistan earned its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The amnesty would apply mainly to minors, the elderly, women and war veterans and “people who …

The debate over whether Australia should keep the Queen as head of state was reopened today, ten years to the day after the country voted against the idea of altering the Constitution to elect a president, The Times reports.
The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) claims that support for another referendum on the issue remains high, but the Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition – who both support Australia becoming a republic – say the time …

Suffolk County Council were forced to scrap a new £435,000 children’s home after they discovered that the next door neighbour was a convicted rapist, the Daily Mail reports.
The council bought the five-bedroom detached property in August 2009 without realising that registered sex offender Christopher Allison lived just yards away. Former psychotherapist Allison, 67, was jailed for eight years in 2002 for two rapes and ten counts of sexual assault on vulnerable patients over a 14-year period.
He …

Software maker Microsoft announced in a security bulletin advance notification that they will release four patches for Windows and two Office on 10th November, V3.co.uk reports.
The patches cover Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 and 2008. Unlike the last “Patch Tuesday” release, there are no fixes for Windows 7.
The two Office patches apply to Word and Excel in both the PC and Mac versions. Three of the patches are rated “critical”, all for Windows, and …

Documents yesterday revealed that Royal Mail dumped the plan to print a set of stamps with famous comedian Benny Hill on them, because his jokes were “in direct opposition to the company’s policies on harassment in the work place”.
The stamps were to be printed to commemorate 50 years of ITV.
Documents show that Royal Mail had the Benny Hill Show, Spitting Image, the Kenny Everett Video Show and Rising Damp as possibles for the comedy show …

Would-be judges will no longer have to declare if they are Freemasons, The Times reports.
The policy reversal was announced by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, after a threat of legal action forced a review. He said that it would be “disproportionate” to continue with the practice.
The United Grand Lodge of England threatened legal action in May, prompted by a European Court of Human Rights decision. The judges ruled in an Italian case in 2007 that the …

The parents of a six-year-old girl are outraged after their daughter was branded a racist for telling a black girl she had chocolate on her face, the Daily Mail reports.
Sharona Gower had been eating chocolate mousse and was playing with a friend when she was chased by two 11-year-old girls. When one of the older girls, who was black, said Sharona had chocolate on her face, the youngster replied: “Well, you’ve got chocolate on yours.”
The older …

British Airways have plunged to a record pre-tax loss of £292m over the past six months, traditionally their most profitable trading period, the Guardian reports.
British Airways’ chief executive, Willie Walsh, warned BA’s 38,690 staff that the airline’s worst first half results since privatisation made further cost reductions “essential”.
Last year in the six months to 30th September, the company made a profit of £52m. The airline are now losing £1.6m a day after failing to generate enough …

A company in Barcelona have launched an iPhone application which they say will take just 10 seconds to figure out why a baby is crying, the Daily Mail reports.
The Cry Translator “involves a revolutionary technology that quickly identifies an infant’s cry, based on one of five emotional or physiological states: hunger, fatigue, annoyance, stress or boredom”, the creators of the app, Pedro Barrera and Luis Meca, said. “These five cries are universal to all babies regardless …

The national postal strike has been put on hold after both sides in the dispute agreed to a “period of calm” before Christmas, The Times reports.
The Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union said that they would continue talks on the company’s modernisation plans without the spectre of industrial action. Two planned 24-hour walkouts for today and Monday, each involving up to 121,000 workers, have been called off.
Details of the agreement reached between the two sides are due to be published today, although sources said it was…

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will warn in a speech following the death of seven soldiers in six days that the British mission in Afghanistan could end in failure, the Daily Telegraph reports.
In an address intended to shore up public support for the operation, Brown will accept for the first time that international efforts to stabilise Afghanistan, which began eight years ago, may not succeed. Describing the Afghan mission as a “conflict of necessity not choice”, Brown …