Logo

Brett Domino and Steven Peavis perform a medley of Justin Timberlake hits using assorted miniature instruments and lap tray travel bags.

Unilever, the maker of Marmite, has threatened legal action against the British National Party to stop it from using a jar of the spread in a party broadcast.

Unilever said it had not given the BNP permission to use its product and clearly doesn't want its brand to be associated with a political party widely reputed to be a racist organisation.

BNP leader Nick Griffin has a reputation as a holocaust denier and last year, in a BBC interview, suggested that European navies should be used to destroy refugee boats off the northern coast of Africa in order to prevent them claiming asylum within the EU.

The BNP's broadcast has been removed from their official website, but it can still be seen on YouTube.

In an official statement Mr Griffin went said that the Marmite jar had been added in reaction to a recent advertising campaign for Marmite which he said mocked the BNP.

The Marmite advert he referred to featured two spoof political parties, the 'Love Party' and the 'Hate Party' - an obvious reference to the Marmite catchphase "you'll either love it or hate it".

The BNP claims the Hate Party was "clearly based" on itself.

Source: BBC

An animated video explaining copyright in a simple way.

Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world's most notorious atheist campaigner, intends to have Pope Benedict arrested during his state visit to Britain for "crimes against humanity".

Dawkins has joined forces with renowned atheist writer Christopher Hitchens and together they have asked human rights lawyers to prepare a case against the pontiff.

Benedict will be in Britain between September 16 and 19, visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry.

A lawyer representing Dawkins and Hitchens, Mr Mark Stephens, said: "The courts will examine the claim of immunity. I believe that an English court would reject it. If the Pope was here on a state visit, ordinarily a head of state would have sovereign immunity. What I believe is that because he's not a sovereign, not a head of state, he's not entitled to the defence."

Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence.”

The Pope has been heavily criticised after it emerged that he signed a letter which delayed the punishment of a paedophile priest in the US for the "good of the universal church".

Source: Press Association & The Times

Using his own savings and his mother's credit card a 12 year-old boy has thrown away £900 ($1368) buying virtual coins on the Facebook based farm simulation 'FarmVille'.

FarmVille allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting crops, trees and livestock. New users are given virtual coins to establish their farm, and the revenue from their crops can be used to maintain it. Many choose to hasten their progress by purchasing extra virtual coins using real cash.

The boy's mother does not blame Facebook or Zynga but has spoken out against a lack of controls on the social network that could prevent something like this from happening:

"I do think they need to shoulder some responsibility in this business and put systems in place to stop this happening again. The fact that he was using a card in a different name should bring up some sort of security and the online secure payment filter seems to be bypassed for Facebook payments."

Since FarmVille is one of Facebook's most popular integrated games it is highly unlikely that this incident will lead to in any changes to the site unless it is frequently repeated.

FarmVille is estimated to have more than 80 million players worldwide, including 30 million who tend to their farm every day - in this blogger's opinion that's 80 million people who could be wasting their time (and money) playing a decent video game instead.


Source: Guardian

The mayor of Jafr, 185 miles east of Jordan's capital Amman, is considering suing a newspaper after their April Fools Day joke caused widespread panic.

Jordanian paper Al-Ghad's front-page story described flying saucers carrying '10ft tall' aliens had landing in the small desert town late at night.

Jafr's mayor, Mohammed Mleihan, described the disruption caused by the story:

"Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents," Mr Mleihan told the Associated Press.

He was swift to call in the security authorities, who he said then combed the area looking for the aliens. A Jordanian security official, speaking anonymously, said an emergency plan was almost enacted in Jafr.

While it has become somewhat traditional across much of the world for newspapers to publish hoax articles on 1 April, it is not a common practice in Jordan.

Managing editor of Al-Ghad, Moussa Barhoumeh, apologised for any inconvenience and tried to defuse the situation, saying "We meant to entertain, not scare people,".




Source: AP & BBC