Film costumes in Titanic exhibition

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Kate Winslet's Titanic costumes will go on show at a new exhibition

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Costumes worn by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in the Oscar-laden 1997 movie Titanic will feature in an exhibition about the ill-fated ship which opens next month.

Lasting until the beginning of July, the display is being mounted by bone china company Royal Crown Derby which supplied items to the Titanic's first-class restaurant.

The exhibition, in Derby, will open on February 26 - almost 100 years to the day that the Titanic's owner, White Star Line, placed an order with Royal Crown Derby.

The order included 600 dinner plates, 150 soup bowls, 150 breakfast plates, 100 salad plates, 150 breakfast cups and saucers, and 100 teacups and saucers.

Royal Crown Derby still has the 1911 pattern book with the design of the crockery which was to be exclusive for the Titanic and was no longer to be manufactured for general sale.

Apart from one plate, currently at Southampton Museum, none of the original crockery survived the 1912 disaster. But Royal Crown Derby has put the range back into full production for the first time since 1911.

As well as the Winslet and DiCaprio costumes, the exhibition will feature memorabilia from the Titanic and from her sister ship, The Olympic.

The centrepiece of the exhibition, which runs until July 2, will be a recreation of the Titanic first-class a la carte restaurant, with a table laid as it would have been on its 1912 voyage.

Two men face oil theft charges

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Two men are due in court next month in connection with a heating oil theft.

A 19-year-old man has been charged with attempted burglary, going equipped and theft, and an 18-year-old man has been charged with going equipped, attempted burglary, possession of a class B drug and theft.

Both are expected to appear at Antrim Magistrates Court on Tuesday, February 1.

A spokesman for the PSNI said the charges could be subject to review by the Public Prosecution Service.

It is understood the charges relate to an incident in Ballyclare on the evening of January 5 when heating oil was stolen from a domestic tank at a house on Rashee Road and an attempted burglary of a house at Cherryburn Road, Templepatrick, the previous evening.

Meanwhile a man, believed to be in his 20s, who was arrested during the search of a house at Glenville Park, Newtownabbey, yesterday morning was last night continuing to assist police with their inquiries.

Fruit and vegetables can alter skin colour

Saturday, 8 January 2011

The Prince of Wales could owe his healthy glow to a diet rich in organic carrots

Consumers could have a new incentive to eat fruit and vegetables after a study found that eating heavily pigmented produce like carrots and plums makes people more attractive.

Researchers at St Andrews and Bristol universities studied the relationship between skin colour and attractiveness, and found people with a yellow skin hue were perceived as healthy and attractive, the Grocer magazine reported.

They also established for the first time that yellow pigments, or carotenoids, from certain fruit and vegetables played a key role in producing yellowness in skin.

Forty volunteers rated 51 Scottish caucasian faces for healthiness and attractiveness. The results will be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior in March.

Ian Stephen, one of the scientists involved in the project, said the link between yellowness and carotenoids opened up new strategies for encouraging young people to eat more fruit and vegetables, especially as it took just two months of increased consumption to produce visible results.

He told the Grocer: “Telling people they might have a heart attack in 40 years' time if they don't eat more healthily is one thing. What we can do is say ‘this is what you could look like in a couple of months if you increased your fruit and veg intake'.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange secures book deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has signed a book deal to tell his “fascinating” life story.

Edinburgh-based Canongate Books said it has acquired world rights — apart from North America — to the whistleblower's story.

Assange leapt into the limelight with a string of headlines as a result of US cables published on his WikiLeaks website.

The book will see Assange discuss his own philosophies, according to Canongate.

Assange said: “I hope this book will become one of the unifying documents of our generation.”

Under the deal, brokered by agents Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, the book will be published in the UK in April. Alfred A. Knopf will publish it in North America.

French nationals kidnapped in Niger

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Two French nationals have been kidnapped at gunpoint in Niger

Two French nationals have been kidnapped at gunpoint in Niger's capital, witnesses said.

Hamadou Djaoga was dining inside the Flotille when he says he saw two men walk in, pull out guns and tell the French citizens to follow them. Outside two more men were waiting and they forced them into a truck and sped off.

Niger has become a kidnapping hub for al-Qaida's North Africa branch which in September seized five French citizens from a uranium mining town.

Djaoga and other patrons say the turbaned men were wearing the attire common in the country's northern desert among the Tuareg people who have been involved in past al-Qaida kidnappings. They spoke French and Arabic.

Protest at Royal Mail privatisation

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Protesters will target David Cameron's Witney constituency

Hundreds of trade unionists, students and residents will take part in a demonstration in David Cameron's constituency on Sunday to protest against plans to privatise the Royal Mail as well as the Government's spending cuts.

The rally in Witney, Oxfordshire, will be staged just days before the Postal Services Bill receives its third reading in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union said: "Government cuts are really beginning to draw blood now as jobs and services suffer. The planned privatisation of Royal Mail is an unnecessary ideological move which will damage postal services forever.

"On Sunday hundreds of people, representing thousands of families, small businesses, pensioners, students and workers, will take the message of saving the Royal Mail to the Prime Minister's constituency. Will he listen, or will he press ahead with the privatisation of Royal Mail and risk an increase in mail prices, a decrease in services, and mass post office closures?"

A 6ft coffin bearing the message "Here Lies the Remains of Royal Mail" will be held aloft at the protest, which is supported by several trade unions and other groups.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Royal Mail warmly supports the Postal Services Bill. It will play a key part in ensuring a successful future for the company and safeguard the one-price-goes-anywhere delivery service to the UK's 28 million addresses.

"The Bill seeks to resolve Royal Mail's historic £10.3 billion actuarial deficit. It will also allow Royal Mail access to capital for investment in its operations and seeks to deliver a new regulatory framework."

Postal Affairs Minister Edward Davey said: "The Government's plans are actually about protecting the long-term future of Royal Mail and the Post Office - two cornerstones of British life. Both businesses are facing some huge challenges and without the action we are proposing they could certainly be damaged.

"We have no intention of downgrading services. We have pledged that the Post Office will not be sold and that there will be no programme of closures. We have delivered a £1.34 billion package of new funding for the Post Office network, and we want to help Royal Mail access the substantial private sector investment it needs to modernise.

"Doing nothing is not an option - mail volumes are falling, Royal Mail has a multi billion pound pension deficit, less efficiency than its competitors and an urgent need for more money at a time when there are huge constraints on the public purse."

Iran nuclear visit 'is job for UN'

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Labour peer Catherine Ashton said the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency should take up Iran's invitation to visit

The European Union's foreign policy chief appeared to signal a rejection of Iran's invitation to visit its nuclear sites when she said the job should be done by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

Labour peer Catherine Ashton said: "The inspection of nuclear sites is the job for the IAEA. We will be welcoming the fact that Iran is interested in having those visit at the sites, but the role and responsibility for doing that rests with the IAEA."

Iran has denied claims by other nations that its nuclear programme is aimed at producing weapons. But its refusal to co-operate with an IAEA probe into suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons programme has heightened international concerns.

Meir Dagan, Israel's outgoing spy chief, was quoted by an Israeli newspaper yesterday as saying that Iran's nuclear programme had been delayed and predicting that the country would not have a nuclear weapon before 2015.

Iran recently invited Hungary, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and several other countries including Russia, China and Cuba - but not the US - to tour its nuclear sites, suggesting January 15-16 for the trip.

Baroness Ashton, visiting Budapest with the rest of the EU's executive commission, said Iran was one of the subjects she discussed with Hungarian foreign minister Janos Martonyi, particularly the talks Iran is tentatively scheduled to hold on January 20 and 21 in Turkey with the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's nuclear department, said the invitation was aimed at greater transparency.

"On the eve of talks ... and as a gesture of goodwill, we have announced time and again that representatives of certain international communities and a number of countries can inspect Iran's nuclear installations," he told the official IRNA news agency in Tehran.

Talks in Geneva between Iran and these countries ended in December with agreement on little else but to meet again.

The Istanbul meeting aims to explore whether there is common ground for more substantive talks on Iran's nuclear programme, which is seen by the US and its allies as a cover for secret plans to make nuclear arms. Iran says its uranium enrichment and other programmes are meant for peaceful purposes only, to generate fuel for a future network of nuclear reactors.