The Lovers who were born to be together

A couple are tying the knot this weekend - 22 years after they were born next to each other in the same hospital ward.

Gnome at last!

Stolen garden elf is returned after a 7-month adventure around the world

Introducing the all white blackbird.

'I was so surprised when I saw it hopping around'.

For more on this rare sighting and more photos click here

Author uses royalties on massive house for care home friends.

Most writers slaving away on their first novel dream of fame, fortune and a place on the bestseller lists.

But at 93, Lorna Page had a rather more altruistic ambition - she wanted to save her friends from having to live in nursing homes.

She pledged to spend all the proceeds from her book, A Dangerous Weakness, on moving into a bigger house so that they could come and live with her.

Read more of this amazing story here

Aliens have landed!

Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed.

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, said he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth during his career with NASA but each one was covered up.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is 'not nearly as sophisticated' as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned 'we would be been gone by now'.

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

'I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real,' Dr Mitchell said.

'It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

source & more on this story.

Petrol slashed by 5p as Tesco joins supermarket fuel war

Britain's biggest supermarket is to slash petrol prices by up to 5p a litre.

Tesco said it would join a price war started by rivals Asda and Morrisons by matching the lowest price near their supermarket outlets.

The move will finally bring some relief to hard-pressed motorists.

All four of the biggest supermarkets took between 3p and 5p off the price of a litre of petrol and diesel today.

A spokesman for Tesco said: "We will come down by similar amounts. We price-match in geographical locations, so if a rival's prices are going down, then we will go down as well."

Supermarket chain Asda announced it would cut the cost of unleaded and diesel by 3p a litre, and Morrisons swiftly followed suit by dropping the price of unleaded and diesel by 4p a litre.

Sainsbury's said it was cutting petrol by 5p a litre from Thursday for customers who spent £50 or more in stores. The promotion will run for two weeks.

Asda and Morrisons said they were responding to a drop in the price of oil - down from $147 to $130.

Asda said all 170 of its petrol forecourts across the country would sell unleaded petrol for 113.9p a litre and diesel for 128.9p a litre from today.

The supermarket's trading director, David Miles, said: "We are seeing a more stable reduction in oil prices, allowing us to pass on the savings to customers.

"We urge other retailers to follow our lead at a time when customers need as much help as possible."

Morrisons later said it had cut the cost of unleaded and diesel by 4p a litre at all of its 285 forecourts across the UK, a move that came into effect at 6pm yesterday.

Morrisons group store operations director, Mark Gunter, said: "The cost of crude oil and refined product has fallen in the last few days and we are ensuring our customers reap the benefit by passing on the saving quickly, for cheaper prices at the pumps."

A spokeswoman for Sainsbury's said: "From Thursday our customers can reap an even bigger reward because we are running a 5p-off-per-litre promotion when they spend £50 or more in-store plus they will also earn Nectar points."

AA president Edmund King said: "Asda's petrol price drop is excellent news for UK motorists and we urge other fuel retailers to reduce their prices - and not only where they find themselves neighbouring an Asda petrol station.

"We have seen two drops in European wholesale fuel prices so far this summer with the UK motorist seeing next to no benefit.

"Since mid-July the wholesale price of gasoline has fallen six per cent and the AA expects fuel suppliers to pass on - not pocket - the saving for the good of UK families, hauliers and the economy."

Mr King added: "We will watch price movements like a hawk, and should fuel suppliers and retailers appear to be dragging their feet we will seek to expose this."

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The prostate cancer 'wonder pill' set to save thousands every year

British researchers have made a dramatic breakthrough against a lethal form of prostate cancer.

Trials of a new pill have shown that it can shrink tumours in up to 80 per cent of cases, and end the need for damaging chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Experts hailed the advance as potentially the biggest in the field of prostate cancer for decades, capable of saving many thousands of lives.

Scientists believe the technique could also be effective on other tumours, such as breast and bowel cancers.

The drug, abiraterone, was discovered by researchers at the Royal Marsden Hospital in South-West London.

Their leader, Dr Johann de Bono, said patients there had been able to control the disease with just four pills a day and very few side-effects.

Prostate cancer is Britain's most common cancer among men and the second highest killer, after lung cancer. Some 35,000 people a year are diagnosed with it - and 12,000 die.

There are two types, aggressive and non-aggressive, which are often called 'tiger' and 'pussycat'. Men with pussycat cancer can often lead a healthy life, but the tiger variety - a third of cases - is usually fatal within 18 months.

Hormone therapy, the standard method of treating prostate cancer, involves blocking production of male hormones like testosterone, which 'feed' the tumour. But it can be ineffective on aggressive forms.

If it fails, doctors turn to chemotherapy, which can have severe side-effects such as nausea, pain, malnutrition, haemorrhages and hair loss.

Many patients also have radiotherapy, to reduce associated pain in the bones. This can be dangerous too, damaging organs and leaving patients exhausted and with little quality of life.

Abiraterone uses a different approach, blocking chemicals in the body which help in the production of the male hormones. It is expected to be widely available in three years, but until then can be obtained only as part of clinical trials.

John Neate, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity, said: 'This is an exciting development which has been eagerly anticipated. Advanced prostate cancer is very difficult to treat as, after time, it stops responding to conventional ways of controlling the male hormone.

'We look forward to the results of the larger trials already under way or being planned for this drug to prove its potential effectiveness.'

Previous hormone therapy had been directed at stopping the production of male hormones in the testes. This works for only about a quarter of aggressive cancer cases, however, and most scientists had written off hormones as a target for research.

But the Royal Marsden team ignored the doubters through 15 years of painstaking study.

The breakthrough came when they found that sometimes the tumour itself can produce hormones - meaning that new treatment needed to target hormones anywhere in the body.

They decided to aim at a key enzyme which is needed for the hormones to be produced.

Experiments with tumour cells in the Royal Marsden's state-of-the art laboratories - the base of Britain's Institute of Cancer Research and Europe's largest cancer research centre - eventually came up with abiraterone.

Studies on 100 patients at the hospital and 150 more in the U.S. have shown that in more than three quarters of cases, the tumour shrunk.

Most men experienced far less pain, meaning radiotherapy could become a thing of the past.

Maltese-born Dr de Bono, 41, who came to Britain in 1984, said last night: 'The Royal Marsden patients have been monitored for up to two and a half years and with continued use of abiraterone they were able to control their disease with few side-effects.

'The drug works even if the cancer has spread beyond the prostate, such as to the bone.

'These men have very aggressive prostate cancer which is exceptionally difficult to treat and almost always proves to be fatal. We hope that abiraterone will eventually offer them real hope of an effective way of managing their condition and prolonging their lives. My vision is to make chemotherapy obsolete.'

Dr de Bono said patients should ask their consultant for details about getting on one of the clinical trials.

As the drug is newly in development, it is not yet known how many years' extra survival it can bring. But patients on the trial have so far lived longer than the estimated 12 or 18 months.

Prostate cancer is associated with ageing, and over the next 25 years it is estimated there will be a 60 per cent increase in the number of men over 65. This means there will be more cases of the cancer and abiraterone could save many thousands of lives.

Its side-effects can include loss of libido, breathlessness, fatigue, fluid retention and weight gain. Some men may be left impotent, but the effects are far less than with chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Abiraterone is now being used in a 1,200-patient international study, including at ten sites across the UK. If it is licensed as expected in 2011, it will have to await approval by the rationing watchdog NICE before it is made freely available across the NHS.

Dr de Bono describes prostate cancer as the 'Cinderella cancer' because it receives just a quarter of the funding of breast cancer - £10million against £40million last year - even though it kills just as many people.

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A Galactic Debut

Calm has been restored to the outer-solar system following a row over what to call a dwarf planet and exactly how it should be characterised.

The red-speckled bright object that hovers near Pluto was initially nicknamed Easterbunny because it was discovered shortly after Easter in 2005.

Galactic unrest erupted in the ranks of the International Astronomical Union over what the official name should be.

And after much debate, the name Makemake has been decided on as a tribute to the Polynesian god of fertility and creator of humanity.

As for its status, the newly-named planet which is coated in red methane is now officially a plutoid.

Pluto, which made headlines last year as it was demoted from its planet status, and Eris are the other two plutoids. A fourth dwarf planet named Ceres has been excluded from the plutoid club because it orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Makemake has a diameter of roughly 1,000 miles and is quite bright given its distance from the Sun.

Despite this, it was not discovered until recently, well after many much fainter objects in its region of the solar system.

Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who discovered the dwarf planet and suggested its name, discussed the trouble he had naming the planet in his blog.

"Three years is a long time to have only a license plate number instead of a name, so for most of the time, we simply referred to this object as 'Easterbunny' in honor of the fact that it was discovered just a few days past Easter in 2005," he writes.

He discusses the trouble the team had finding a name, until they considered the island Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island, and its mythology.

"I wasn't familiar with the mythology of the island so I had to look it up, and I found Make-make, the chief god, the creator of humanity, and the god of fertility.

"I am partial to fertility gods for things I discovered around that time. Eris, Makemake, and 2003 EL61 were all discovered as my wife was three to six months pregnant with our daughter."

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Cat safe after 300 mile journey in coach engine!

A mechanic described his shock after finding a cat had travelled 300 miles from Scotland to Yorkshire in the engine compartment of a coach.

The young ginger tom, who has been nicknamed Gulliver because of his travels, is believed to have got in the National Holidays coach at Arrochar, north of Glasgow, at the weekend.

He was only found by mechanic Daniel Parnel after the driver returned to his base in Hull on Sunday.

Mr Parnel, 27, said he found Gulliver when he opened a panel to clean the radiator.
The cat was sitting on the radiator itself and the mechanic first thought it was a rat or a squirrel.

Mr Parnel said he decided to take the cat home and keep it after it was checked out by a vet. He has been told there a lot of feral cats in Arrochar.

He told the Hull Daily Mail: 'The most likely thing to have happened is he will have been attracted to the heat of the engine, gone to sleep on the radiator and been driven away.

'He hasn't done badly getting to Hull. It gets really hot in there.'

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Home-made submarine!

A Chinese labourer with only a basic school education has made a submarine at home.

Tao Xiangli made the 1.6 tonnes submarine mostly from metal barrels and improvised parts by hand, reports Zhong'an Online.

"Metal barrels are possibly the best material for me because of their low cost," said Tao, a migrant worker in Beijing.

The 20ft submarine is cramped inside with room for only one person but it features pressure metres, monitoring cameras, a TV set, oxygen supply and headlights.

"Although the equipment is simple, it's enough for a basic submarine, and more importantly, it enables the passenger to see things clearly underwater," said Tao.

It took Tao more than a year of research and experiments, but he says the most difficult challenge he faced was not a lack of knowledge, but of funds.

"The devices for submarines are all expensive, so because I couldn't afford them I found a lot of inexpensive replacements," he said.

Tao said the basic submarine cost him £2,200, the equivalent of a year's pay.

Tao is now in the final phase of debugging the submarine and hopes it will make its maiden voyage within the next week in Beijing. He says it can dive to a maximum depth of 10 meters, and should be quite safe.

Although he has only an elementary school education, Tao owns 17 patents, including a head massager, a washing machine and a shoe polisher.

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Miracle terrier survives for a WEEK wedged in eight-inch underground pipe

A dog survived an incredible seven days trapped inside an eight-inch underground pipe after running away during a walk.

Amazingly, Timmy the Terrier was rescued in almost perfect health from the narrow pipe.

The pet had gone missing after running off to chase rabbits during a walk near his home in Cheshire on 4 July.

Mrs Whittle and her husband Mark frantically searched fields surrounding their home in Whitchurch Road, Combermere, Cheshire, but for seven days there was no sign of Timmy.

After seven days, The couple decided to use their other dog Meg in the search and she led them to a sewerage pipe next to a riverbed.

Mr Whittle said: 'Angie was sure she could hear Timmy inside, so we phoned a friend who is an ex-fireman and he came down with us to try and get him out.

'Along with the farmer whose land it was, we managed to dig down 10ft and found the 8in wide steel pipe.

'It was only when we cut the pipe that we realised the sound had travelled and Timmy was actually about 20m or 30m away from where we thought he was.'

After five hours of trying unsuccessfully to rescue the dog, the couple called in the RSPCA and the Fire and Rescue Service.

RSPCA officer Claire Davis said: 'I assessed the scene and verified there was really an animal in the pipe and soon afterwards a fire crew arrived.

'They started work at 10.15pm and Timmy was finally pulled out unhurt by one of the firefighters at about 1.30am.'

Timmy was immediately treated by an emergency vet for a slight eye infection, but was otherwise unharmed by his ordeal.

Mr Whittle added: 'It was my birthday on Friday July 11 - the day we got him out of the tunnel - and getting Timmy back was the best birthday present I could hope for.'

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Incredible pictures of Mars - and they look surprisingly like some parts of Earth

Ever since Victorian astronomers pointed their telescopes towards Mars and wrongly believed they had discovered canals, mankind has been obsessed by the red planet.

Now these astonishing new images - captured by a European spacecraft in orbit around Mars - are helping to fuel that fascination.

They show in astonishing detail a network of giant valleys, vast plains and towering waterfalls carved into the surface of our neighbouring planet, millions of miles away.

And while Mars today appears lifeless and parched, they are a reminder of how its surface was shaped by fast flowing streams, rivers and oceans.

The pictures were captured by the European Space Agency's Mars Express Probe - a spacecraft the size of a large fridge-freezer that has been circling Mars since Christmas 2003.

Mars Express infamously gave Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe a lift to Mars. While that mission ended in disaster, the Mars Express has been a fantastic success.

Over the last five years its stereo, high resolution camera has taken thousands of images of the surface, revealing the planet's awe inspiring beauty in unprecedented detail.

The latest images show the Echus Chasma, a vast valley just north of Mars equator around 62 miles long and six miles wide. The feature is cut into a high plateau and its steep-sided cliffs - some 12,000 feet high - bear a striking resemblance to the canyons of North America.

Thunderous waterfalls may have once plunged over these cliffs, from the high Lunea Planum plateau that surrounds the Echus Chasma, on to the valley floor below.

Some of the images show a five mile wide impact crater formed when asteroids - lumps of floating rock in space - smashed into Mars. Others show a 15 mile long dyke formed when molten rock, evidence of Mars's volcanic past.

At the edges of the main valley lie smaller light-coloured tributary valleys or "sapping canyons" - around six miles long and 1800 feet deep.

The Echus Chasma - described by Nasa as one of the largest water sources on the planet - is connected to a much bigger valley system called the Kasei Valles which extends thousands of miles to the north.

Both valleys are impressive - but are dwarfed by an even larger canyon which lies to the south. The Valles Marineris is four miles deep in places, around 120 miles wide and 2,500 miles long.

The images were created by combining pictures taken from different orbits. The images can be viewed from different angles in three dimensions

Mars Express launched in June 2003. The craft is a cube around 5ft by 6ft by 5ft with two 60ft long radar antennae. It is photographing the entire surface of Mars in high resolution, producing a detailed colour map of the minerals on the surface, mapping the atmosphere and probing beneath the surface using radar.

Interest in Mars is at an all time high. Nasa and ESA have announced plans to bring back rocks and soil samples from Mars, while Nasa has three probes on the planet - two rovers and its Phoenix polar lander, which arrived in May.

The Phoenix has scraped ice from beneath the surface of Mars and is analysing samples in its laboratory to see if the planet has the right chemicals needed for life.

In 2013, ESA is planning to launch ExoMars - a robotic rover than will explore the planet's surface. If successful, it will be Europe's first mission to the Martian surface.

Scientists unveiled plans on Monday to bring back rocks from the Red Planet as a preliminary step to putting a man on Mars.

Professor Monica Grady, at the Open University, co-chaired the expert panel that wrote the mission proposal.

She said it was a vital next step before considering a crewed mission.

'If you can't bring a rock back you are not going to be able to bring people back,' she said.

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Men on a mission - Mormons Exposed!

The 2008 Men on a Mission calendar features twelve handsome returned Mormon missionaries from across the United States who, for the first time ever, have dared to pose bare-chested in a steamy national calendar.

Usually seen riding their bicycles and preaching door-to-door, these hunky young men of faith explode with sexuality on each calendar page. Hand-selected for their striking appearances and powerful spiritual commitment, the "devout dozen" are stepping away from the Mormon traditions of modest dress, and "baring their testimony" to demonstrate that they can have strong faith and be proud of who they are, both with a sense of individualism and a sense of humor.

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Koala dragged 9 miles after car crash & survives!

A koala survived with barely a scratch after being dragged for almost nine miles with its head stuck in the grille of a car.

Named "Lucky Grilles" after his narrow escape, the eight-year-old is now recovering from his ordeal at a wildlife refuge.

"An examination showed that he was in good health and had no serious injuries," spokeswoman Caroline Beaton of the Australian Animal Hospital said.

"It is quite miraculous."

The lucky creature was found with his bottom sticking out of the grille of a woman's car after she pulled up at a petrol station on the outskirts of Brisbane.

Earlier, the driver had noticed a koala in the road but drove on when she failed to see anything in her rear view mirror.

It was only when she stopped that the koala was spotted.

The koala is being kept for treatment for an infection he was found to have, but other than shock suffered no harm from the ride.

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The car that can travel from London to Scotland on £8.50 of fuel

Volkswagen have developed a car that can travel from London to Scotland at a cost of just £8.50 in fuel.

The 'tandem' style car is called the One-Litre because that is how much fuel it needs to travel 100km.

It has a lightweight frame and boasts 282 miles per gallon, according to the manufacturer.

Motorists would be able to drive from London to Edinburgh without refuelling and the entire journey would cost only £8.50.

However, Volkswagen hopes to introduce it on the market as a limited edition from 2010.

Its efficiency is said to be helped by its aerodynamic design.

Shaped like a teardrop, it has 'tandem' seats with the passenger sitting behind the driver.

The two-seater runs on diesel and the tank holds just 1.4 gallons (6.5 litres). But the car is so fuel efficient that a full tank could last for more than 400 miles.

Based on the current average price of diesel of £6 a gallon (131.9p a litre), it would cost just £8.50 to fill up the One-Litre.

It could cost up to £23,000 to buy, with a top speed of 75mph, but the car is not ideal for a trip to the supermarket as there is just 2.8 cubic feet of storage space behind the seats.

The car is made of carbon fibre composites and uses a single cylinder 0.33 litre engine.

The minimalist design means that the traditional wing mirrors have been replaced with cameras and electric displays to help the driver navigate.

The car also is also equipped with 'smart' technology and the engine will turn off automatically when the car halts and will restart again when the accelerator is pressed, making it good in traffic jams.

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5 Bedroom Home for £25!

Fancy a five-bedroom house with 11 acres of Devonshire countryside, a private lake and woodland lodges for £25?

One couple is offering just that, and, unsurprisingly, they have been overwhelmed by the response.

After trying to sell their house in the traditional way for a few months, Brian and Wendy Wilshaw from Morchard Bishop in Devon decided on a more unusual approach.

They are selling 46,000 tickets at £25 each in what they describe as a 'dream competition'.

The winner walks away with their entire country estate, and the chance to leave the rat race for good.

The Wilshaws have already sold a quarter of the tickets and had 30,000 hits on their website.

Brian Wilshaw broke down in tears as he told Sky News why they planned to move on.

"We have lived here for more than 14 years and I'm 64 and ready to downsize." he said.

"It was the credit crunch. We just want someone to live here who could never normally have afforded it but who really loves it.

"It makes me emotional, I just want an ordinary person to win it." he said.

His wife, Wendy, says the home, with its woodland paddock and parking for a dozen cars, is ideal for families.

""It's been an absolute rollercoaster. I have very mixed emotions.

"I love the idea of taking someone round this place and showing them where my children used to run around. It's a bubble to live in - so detached from reality - it's a dream place."

"We just want to bring some feel-good spirit to people in a time of economic doom and gloom." she said.

If the couple do not manage to sell all the tickets, the winner will receive a cash prize instead.

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Dementia patient makes 'amazing' progress after using infrared helmet

Two months ago Clem Fennell was fading fast.

The victim of an aggressive type of dementia, the 57-year-old businessmen was unable to answer the phone, order a meal or string more than a couple of words together.

In desperation, his family agreed to try a revolutionary new treatment - a bizzare-looking, experimental helmet devised by a British GP that bathes the brain in infra-red light twice a day..

To their astonishment, Mr Fennel began to make an astonishing recovery in just three weeks.

"My husband, Clem, was fading away. It is as if he is back" said his wife Vickey Fennell, 55. "His personality has started to show again. We are absolutely thrilled."

While the helmet has yet to be proven in clinical trials, the family say the effects of the 10 minute sessions are incredible. Mr Fennell can now hold conversations and go shopping unaccompanied.

Two months ago Clem Fennell was fading fast.

The victim of an aggressive type of dementia, the 57-year-old businessmen was unable to answer the phone, order a meal or string more than a couple of words together.

In desperation, his family agreed to try a revolutionary new treatment - a bizzare-looking, experimental helmet devised by a British GP that bathes the brain in infra-red light twice a day..

To their astonishment, Mr Fennel began to make an astonishing recovery in just three weeks.

"My husband, Clem, was fading away. It is as if he is back" said his wife Vickey Fennell, 55. "His personality has started to show again. We are absolutely thrilled."

While the helmet has yet to be proven in clinical trials, the family say the effects of the 10 minute sessions are incredible. Mr Fennell can now hold conversations and go shopping unaccompanied.

The treatment is the brainchild of Dr Gordon Dougal, a County Durham GP. He believes the device could eventually help thousands of dementia patients.

"Potentially, this is hugely significant," said Dr Dougal, who is based in Easington, County Durham and is a director of Virulite, a medical research company.

Developed with Sunderland University, the helmet has 700 LED lights that penetrate the skull. They are thought to be the right wavelength to stimulate the growth of brain cells, slowing down the decline in memory and brain function and reversing symptoms of dementia..

Clem Fennell - the head of a family engineering firm in Cincinnati, Ohio - travelled to the UK after neurologists told him nothing could stop the decline of his dementia. The family's friends had seen a report about the helmet on CBS.

"Honestly I can tell you that within ten days, the deterioration was stopped, then we started to see improvements," said Mrs Fennell, from North Kentucky. "He started to respond to people more quickly when they talked to him."

Three weeks later, the father of two is still making gradual improvements.

His daughter, 22-year-old Maggie said: "When we go to the restaurant we usually have to order his meals for him, now he can order for himself."

"Now we are okay about letting him go to the bank or the post office but he would not have been able to do that three weeks ago.

"Dr Dougal has been a godsend to our family. There was nothing anyone could do to help Clem until now."

It is too soon to say whether Dr Dougal's invention could help other sufferers. The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and dementia can vary from day to day - and relapses are not unusual. And not all patients may benefit from the treatment.

Dr Dougal stressed that a full, clinically controlled trial would be needed before his anti-dementia helmet could be licensed for public use. A trial of 100 patients is expected to start later this year.

"I made it clear to the Fennells that I didn't know for a fact whether it would work or not, but the results are good," said Dr Dougal.

"He was monosyllabic when I first saw him, but if I ring up now he will answer the phone. He didn't have the verbal skills to do that three weeks ago."

The Fennells have been told they can take the prototype helmet back to the US with them so they can continue the treatment at home.

Commercial versions of the helmet will include 700 LEDs and cost around £10,000.

The Alzheimer’s Society said: "’A treatment that reverses the effects of dementia rather than just temporarily halting its symptoms could change the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who live with this devastating condition.

‘Non-thermal near infra-red treatment for people with dementia is a potentially interesting technique. We look forward to further research to determine whether it could help improve cognition in humans. Only then can we begin to investigate whether near infra-red could benefit people with dementia.’

One in three people will end their lives with a form of dementia. Around 700,000 suffer from dementia - with more than half having Alzheimer's disease.

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White 'ghost bikes' pay tribute to dead riders in danger spots across Britain

They are becoming a familiar sight alongside many British roads.

More than 100 old bicycles painted white and chained to lampposts and railings have sprung up at ‘danger-spots’ over the past year.

Dubbed ‘ghost-bikes’, they have been put there to warn motorists approaching dangerous bends to look out for cyclists and, in many cases, have been left at locations where riders were killed.

The UK campaign was started by road safety campaigner Steve Allen after his friend was killed in a North London street.

In July 2003, cyclist James Foster was struck by a drunk driver doing 55mph on a 30mph road.

Sabrina Harman, 29, was sentenced to 21 months in prison and banned from driving for three years.

Angry at what he believed to be a lenient sentence, Mr Allen, 38, set off on a quest to highlight the dangers for cyclists on Britain’s roads.

He travelled to America where he teamed up with Ghost Bikes, the campaigning group that started the white-bike idea in 2000. It now operates in 43 countries worldwide.

When he returned home, Mr Allen established a UK branch of Ghost Bikes.

He picked up the bikes for a pittance from landfill dumps and scrap metal merchants and painted them white in his back garden.

The website developer has since placed more than 100 of them on the roadside in London, Oxfordshire, Manchester and Brighton, although local councils have removed many of them.

He said: ‘Something had to be done. James was a great mate, a young man in the prime of his life.

‘Cycle deaths on the road in the UK go largely unreported and I wanted to put something tangible out there to document the tragedies and warn drivers to look out for cyclists.’

One of the white bikes is on a junction in Hackney, North London. It was erected in April after the death of cyclist Anthony Smith, 37, who was crushed by a lorry.

Another was placed on a Brighton street where James Danson-Hatcher, 23, was killed by a car driving at

60mph in April last year. James’s grieving sister Alison Swann said: ‘I am glad a ghost bike has been put at the spot where he was killed. Anything that helps raise awareness of road safety is a good thing.’

In April this year, a white bike was left on a street in Manchester after 55-year-old Stephen Wills was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

He suffered fatal head injuries after being knocked off his bike but no one has been prosecuted.

Last year 3,000 people, including 500 children, were killed on UK roads. More than 130 were cyclists.

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The new Mozart: Blind girl, 5, can play any song on piano 'after just one listen'

A blind five-year-old pianist from South Korea has stunned the music world after a video of her performance received more than 27million hits.

Yoo Ye-eun, who was born blind and adopted in 2002, has never had a formal piano lesson but can play any song after just one listen.

And now her remarkable talent is set to propel her to stardom as clips of her amazing performance have attracted millions of viewers to Korean website Pandora TV. A similar clip on YouTube has so far received two million hits.

Her display on 'Star King', a Korean talent show, earned the youngster £500 in prize money and moved the studio audience to tears

The video opens with the gifted youngster being lifted up to the piano seat by the show's host, before settling down to play.

Ye-eun's adoptive mother, Park Jung Soon, said: 'She has perfect pitch even though she has never learnt to play. We never taught her.'

In May she performed a duet of 'You Raise me Up' with seven-year-old British singer Connie Talbot, who last year starred in reality show Britain's Got Talent.

After taking part in the national celebrations for Korea Day, the five-year-old's rise to fame continued last week with a performance in front of the Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

The youngster has been dubbed 'a five-year-old genius Mozart' and her performances have led to many offers, including one from doctors who tried but failed to restore her sight.

Ye-eun, whose act includes classics from such composers as Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, practices every day and says her ambition is to become 'a great pianist.'

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Stolen car returned - after 14 years

A couple have been given back their VW Golf car - 14 years after it was stolen.

Milos and Spomenka Jokic, from Setic in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, had their Mark II Golf stolen after they parked it on a street in Belgrade during a holiday in 1994.

They returned a few hours later to find it gone, but were more surprised when a policeman knocked on their door this week and told them they had found the car.

Spomenka Jokic, 51, said: "Me and my husband thought it was a joke at first but the police told us they had stopped a driver during a routine roadside check and realised it was stolen and then traced it back through old records to us.

"It seems it had actually been stolen a few times since we had it taken from us and they can't say if the mileage on the clock is accurate as it had probably been turned back a few times but it's definitely our car.

"It still drives well and in fact my husband says it feels as good as it did 14 years ago. The insurance company that had already paid out compensation say they don't want the car as it's not worth anything now."

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