Woolwich attack 'hard to prevent'
By Anonymous on May 24, 2013 03:06 am 24 May 2013 Last updated at 00:43 ET 
The men are now known as Michael Adebolajo, left, and Michael Adebowale
Preventing the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby outside Woolwich Barracks would have been "incredibly hard", an ex-senior intelligence officer has said.
The UK's security services face a Commons inquiry after it was confirmed the two men arrested over his murder were known to MI5 for eight years
They are now known to be Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.
Ex-MI6 counter-terrorism head Richard Barrett said little can be done to stop attacks that are not carefully planned.
His warning came as video footage, obtained by the Daily Mirror, emerged showing the moment police shot Mr Adebolajo, 28, originally of Romford, Essex, and Mr Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, south-east London.
It shows one of the men charge at police sitting in a patrol car. He drops a knife as he is shot and falls to the ground.
Further arrests The other man is shown aiming a gun at officers as he runs in a different direction. Police are heard firing eight shots in total at the two men.
Both the men remain under armed guard in separate London hospitals in stable conditions with non-life-threatening injuries.
Detectives are also interviewing a man and a woman at a south London police station after they were arrested on Thursday night on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
Former MI6 officer Richard Barrett told BBC Two's Newsnight programme he thought the two suspects "probably didn't have any intention to commit a crime like this until relatively recently".
"I assume that these people are probably coming out of a small group without, necessarily, any overseas connections or any other broader connections in the United Kingdom which could come to the attention of the security services more than they did," he said.
"When does a person who expresses radical views, who joins a radical group, flip over to over to be a violent extremist?
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Video has emerged of suspect Michael Adebolajo at an Islamist protest in 2007 (Left, in white clothes)
"To find the signals, the red flags as it were, I think is enormously hard."
While the security services must have had an indication "these guys were a problem in order to note their names", it was "quite another thing to take invasive action to track their movements", he added.
The BBC has uncovered its own footage of Mr Adebolajo taking part in an Islamist demonstration in April 2007 against the arrest of a man from Luton, holding a placard reading "Crusade Against Muslims".
He is shown standing next to then-leader of the now banned al-Muhajiroun organisation, Anjem Choudary, who has said Mr Adebolajo went his own way in around 2010.
Shortly after killing Drummer Rigby on Wednesday, Mr Adebolajo, was filmed by a passer-by saying he carried out the attack because British soldiers killed Muslims every day.
Mr Choudary appeared on Newsnight on Thursday and said Mr Adebolajo had made comments that "I think not many Muslims can disagree with".
The radical Islamist preacher was asked on several occasions by presenter Kirsty Wark whether he "abhorred" what had happened in Woolwich but he instead he was "shocked" by what had happened.
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Anjem Choudary said he encountered one of the suspects at a number of Islamist demonstrations
He also said: "One man killed in the street does not equate to the hundreds and thousands and millions, in fact, who've been slaughtered by the British and American foreign policy."
Meanwhile, thousands of members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community are expected to gather in London to offer prayers for the dead soldier and his family and to "express solidarity against extremism".
National president Rafiq Hayat said: "We hope that the perpetrators of this crime, that is based on a twisted and warped ideology, are brought to justice."
And Canon Philip Miller, who will lead prayers for Drummer Rigby in his home town of Middleton, Greater Manchester, on Friday morning said: "We feel for Lee, who's lost his life with so much ahead of him and so much potential and so much of his life to live, a brave young man like that.
"So we feel for him but we also feel for Mum and Dad and the rest of the family and what they must be going through, and we can only imagine."
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Sex education 'must counter porn'
By Anonymous on May 23, 2013 08:53 pm 23 May 2013 Last updated at 20:53 ET By Judith Burns BBC News education reporter 
In an age when "extremely violent and sadistic imagery is two clicks away", school sex education is struggling to keep pace, a study suggests.
Relationship and sex education should be compulsory in all schools and include time for pupils to discuss the impact of pornography say the authors.
Lessons on relationships should start in primary school, said deputy children's commissioner Sue Berelowitz.
The government said its reforms would help all pupils stay safe online.
The report, led by the University of Middlesex and commissioned by the Office of The Children's Commissioner, suggests some children are exposed to pornography while still at primary school, and the proportion increases with age with "a significant proportion of children and young people" viewing pornography.
Urgent action is needed to develop children's resilience to types of porn that are "very different" to what today's parents may have seen as children, said Ms Berelowitz.
"Just a few clicks away on any mobile phone, on any tablet for example, children can find really graphic depictions of extreme and violent sexual acts."
The report suggests that pornography can affect attitudes and behaviour among children and young people.
'Risky behaviours' It can lead to more sexually permissive attitudes, more casual sex, sex at a younger age, and the belief that women are sex objects with males dominant and females submissive, suggests the study.
There is a correlation between children and young people who use pornography and "risky behaviours" such as anal sex, sex with multiple partners and using alcohol and other drugs during sex, say the authors.
The authors draw a distinction between "being exposed to pornography" - being forced to watch it or stumbling upon it online - and deliberately "accessing" it.
Young men and boys are more likely than young women and girls to do both, say the authors.
"Boys and young men generally view pornography more positively and state that they view it primarily out of curiosity while girls and young women generally report that it is unwelcome and socially distasteful."
The findings are based on interviews with young people in England, plus analysis of 276 previous academic papers on young people and pornography.
The report urges the Department for Education to ensure that all schools, including private schools, faith schools, colleges and academies, "deliver effective relationship and sex education".
The report also notes emerging evidence that young people are dissatisfied with the sex education they are receiving and "increasingly" draw on pornography for education and information on sexual practices.
Building resilience The authors say the sex education curriculum needs to be more relevant to young people's lives and include pornography.
They also call for more emphasis on relationship education in secondary schools.
"We think it's really important that the curriculum includes pornography to help build children's resilience to what they are seeing on the internet - to help them differentiate between what they are seeing and good healthy relationships which are not about submission and not about being forced," said Ms Berelowitz. .
She added that parents needed to recognise the effect of pornography on their children.
A DfE spokeswoman said sex and relationship education was already compulsory in maintained secondary schools but it was up to primary schools to decide whether to teach it.
"We are strengthening the curriculum so that, from the age of five, children will be taught how to stay safe online. Schools can already teach children about the dangers of pornography provided all lessons are age-appropriate and follow the correct guidance.
"The UK Council for Child Internet Safety is already working with internet service providers to make it easier for parents to protect their children from harmful material online."
Siobhan Freegard of the parenting site Netmums called the report a "wake-up call".
"The consequences of young kids viewing horrific porn are only just becoming apparent with sex attacks by underage kids doubling in some areas in just 12 months and kids as young as five being assaulted.
"Doing nothing isn't an option and we need to implement everything in the report and more to keep our kids safe."
Read in browser » US road bridge falls into river
By Anonymous on May 24, 2013 12:55 am 23 May 2013 Last updated at 22:54 ET 
Part of a road bridge has collapsed into the Skagit River in the US state of Washington, officials say.
Police said some vehicles were in the water after the section of the Interstate 5 highway collapsed.
Read in browser » Cockroaches evolving to evade traps
By Anonymous on May 23, 2013 08:18 pm 23 May 2013 Last updated at 20:18 ET By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News 
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Dr Coby Schal: The cockroaches spit out the glucose "like a baby rejects spinach"
A strain of cockroaches in Europe has evolved to outsmart the sugar traps used to eradicate them.
American scientists found that the mutant cockroaches had a "reorganised" sense of taste, making them perceive the glucose used to coat poisoned bait not as sweet but rather as bitter.
A North Carolina State University team tested the theory by giving cockroaches a choice of jam or peanut butter.
They then analysed the insects' taste receptors, equivalent to our tastebuds.
Researchers from the same team first noticed 20 years ago that some pest controllers were failing to eradicate cockroaches from properties, because the insects were simply refusing to eat the bait.
Continue reading the main story Clever pests
- There are about 4,600 species of cockroach and fewer than 30 of these are considered pests. (There are about 5,400 species of mammals)
- The world's smallest cockroach is only 0.3mm long and lives in ant nests.
- The heaviest cockroach is the huge Australian Rhinoceros Cockroach at 8cm in length
Source: Natural History Museum
Dr Coby Schal explained in the journal Science that this new study had revealed the "neural mechanism" behind this refusal.
Jam v peanut butter In the first part of the experiment, the researchers offered the hungry cockroaches a choice of two foods - peanut butter or glucose-rich jam [known as jelly is the US].
"The jelly contains lots of glucose and the peanut butter has a much smaller amount," explained Dr Schal.
"You can see the mutant cockroaches taste the jelly and jump back - they're repulsed and they swarm over the peanut butter."
In the second part of the experiment, the team was able to find out exactly why the cockroaches were so repulsed.
The scientists immobilised the cockroaches and used tiny electrodes to record the activity of taste receptors - cells that respond to flavour that are "housed" in microscopic hairs on the insects' mouthparts
"The cells that normally respond to bitter compounds were responding to glucose in these [mutant] cockroaches," said Dr Schal.
"So they're perceiving glucose to be a bitter compound.
"The sweet-responding cell does also fire, but the bitter compound actually inhibits it - so the end result is that bitterness overrides sweetness."
Highly magnified footage of these experiments clearly shows a glucose-averse cockroach reacting to a dose of the sugar.
"It behaves like a baby that rejects spinach," explained Dr Schal.
"It shakes its head and refuses to imbibe that liquid, at the end, you can see the [glucose] on the side of the head of the cockroach that has refused it."
Continue reading the main story Natural selection in action
George Beccaloni Curator of cockroaches, Natural History Museum
The process of natural selection would strongly favour any chance genetic change that caused a cockroach to avoid the bait and therefore death. Since individuals with the trait would have a greater chance of surviving and reproducing, their descendants with the trait would in time replace those that lacked the trait in the cockroach population.
This is the same process that has led to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria, and warfarin resistance in rats.
The discovery of natural selection was one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time and this year sees worldwide celebrations commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist who co-discovered natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1858.
Dr Elli Leadbeater from the Institute of Zoology in London said the work was exciting.
"Usually, when natural selection changes taste abilities, it simply makes animals more or less sensitive to certain taste types.
"For example, bees that specialise on collecting nectar are less sensitive to sugar than other bees, which means that they only collect concentrated nectar. Evolution has made sugar taste less sweet to them, but they still like it.
"In the cockroach case, sugar actually tastes bitter - an effective way for natural selection to quickly produce cockroaches that won't accept the sugar baits that hide poison."
Dr Schal said this was another chapter in the evolutionary arms race between humans and cockroaches.
"We keep throwing insecticides at them and they keep evolving mechanisms to avoid them," he said.
"I have always had incredible respect for cockroaches," he added. "They depend on us, but they also take advantage of us."
Read in browser » US Boy Scouts to allow gay members
By Anonymous on May 23, 2013 09:01 pm 23 May 2013 Last updated at 19:09 ET 
The group has about 2.6 million young members in the US
The Boy Scouts of America organisation has voted to welcome openly gay scouts, ending a divisive ban.
But a ban on openly gay adult scout leaders will remain in place.
More than 60% of the national council, with 1,400 voting members, supported the change at a meeting in Texas.
The campaign over the ban pitted conservatives, especially religious groups that sponsor local scouting chapters, against liberals opposed to what they deem outdated discrimination.
The change is effective on 1 January.
The issue was put to the organisation's national board in February, but a decision was delayed until the larger council could decide.
Risking donor appeal? 
Young scouts were called upon to protest against the inclusion of openly gay boys
Some within the scouting movement were concerned conservative and religious groups would withdraw financial support if the ban were lifted.
But many liberal groups also hoped the ban on gay adult leaders would go, finding it absurd that openly gay teenage scouts would have to leave the organisation when upon reaching adulthood.
The Boy Scouts of America, founded in 1910, has about 2.6 million young members, down from a peak of around 4 million, and about 1 million adult leaders and volunteers.
As recently as July 2012, the Boy Scouts concluded that its long-standing ban on gay scouts was "the best policy for the organisation".
In 2000, the organisation went to the US Supreme Court, saying its policy of "morally straight" conduct fell within its right to freedom of expression.
Read in browser » Euro bank chief sees UK improvements
By Anonymous on May 23, 2013 06:04 pm 23 May 2013 Last updated at 18:04 ET 
Mario Draghi says the economy was showing signs of improvement in a number of areas
European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi has said he sees "encouraging signs of tangible improvements" in the UK economy.
Mr Draghi pointed to three of the weaker eurozone economies - Ireland, Spain and Portugal - saying they had made "impressive" improvements in their export performances.
He said that bank lending remained "anaemic" but that, too was improving for businesses and households.
He was speaking on a visit to London.
Despite his mildly upbeat tone, Mr Draghi's ECB this month cut eurozone interest rates to a record low and latest figures show most of the eurozone economies are shrinking.
Even Germany, the strongest, barely experienced any growth in the first three months of this year.
Despite the cut, the euro as a currency has remained steady and Mr Draghi said the markets were "fully confident that the euro is a strong and stable currency".
He was speaking almost a year after he gave a speech which said he would do "whatever it takes" to save the euro, the one comment among many that seemed to stabilise confidence in the region which had been buffeted by investment sell-offs.
Mr Draghi said: "The answer to the crisis has not been less Europe but more Europe."
Politics He was alluding to the current political debate within the UK about its membership of the European Union.
The UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, has promised to renegotiate its role within the EU and hold a referendum on membership before the end of 2017, should his Conservative Party win the next general election.
Mr Draghi said both sides would benefit from closer understanding: "What I can say is that Europe needs a more European UK as much as the UK needs a more British Europe "
He also urged action on creating a Europe-wide agency that had powers to restructure damaged banks, something that would shift the burden of support away from national governments.
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