GRi British Press Review 01 - 09 - 2000

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The Times

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Drug stop aging discovered

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Ageing may soon be a thing of the past if drugs developed by scientists from Britain and the United States prove successful on human beings, the Times reports on its front page.

The drug significantly slowed the ageing process in worms, the first time that it has happened in a living creature, the researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK and the Buck Institute in California said.

The findings reported in the journal Science, hold out the prospect that similar drugs could be used to prolong youthfulness in human beings, and that we might soon have to "reconsider ageing as inevitability." The research will also assist the search for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

In the study, microscopic nematode worms were treated with drugs to counteract natural radicals in the body thought to be connected with ageing.

Most of the treated worms lived 50 per cent longer and some lived twice as long as those not given the drugs. In addition, a mutant nematode strain that usually dies young lived a normal lifespan after treatment.

Gordon Lithgow of the University of Manchester said: "We were amazed by what we were seeing down the microscope as these experiments progressed. As the untreated worms began to die, the drug-treated worms were swimming around, full of life. Every time we repeated the experiment, it worked and we realised we were on to something pretty significant."

The drug is yet to be tested on humans and the next stage is to experiment with mammals. If it proves successful, it will mean that people will soon be looking forever young.

Blair orders DNA register of criminals

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Britain's entire criminal population would be registered on the national DNA base within three years, under a drive launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mr Blair announced that an extra £109 million would be provided so that police can take samples from three million people suspected of anything from car theft to murder.

Police already have the power to take DNA samples from anyone suspected of, charged with or reported for a recordable crime, but with each swab costing £40, chief constables have advised officers to take them only for the most serious offences. The extra money should allow them to extend testing to minor cases.

But the idea was immediately opposed by civil liberties groups, which are already alarmed that police are illegally holding thousands of samples that should have been destroyed from people who have been freed without charge or cleared by the courts.

The police have also been accused of not making full use of the information they are already getting from DNA samples, so that key suspects remain at large.

Judge blames betrayed wife for divorce

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In a ruling that is likely to embolden men to engage in extra-marital affairs, a judge at Doncaster County Court, has ruled granted a husband divorce on grounds that his wife behaved unruly when she discovered his extra-marital activities.

Judge Rodney Jackson in his ruling granted Robert Dunn his request to divorce his wife of 50 years because Mrs Rhona Dunn had behaved "unreasonably" when she learnt of his deceit.

Mr Dunn a former Conservative councillor known as old king coal be cause of his successful career, led a double life for more than a decade.

For part of the week the 75-year old former director of mining lived with his wife, Rhona 74, intheir £220,000 family home in Clophill, Bedfordshire. For the rest of the time, he lived 100 miles away in a £120,000 house at Bawtry, South Yorkshire, with Pauline Dixon, 46.

He got away with by telling Rhona that he was staying motels on business.

The court said Rhona who fond out about the relationship just two years ago through a car insurance claim to the Bawtry address, made nasty phone calls, contacted the press and spread rumours about her husband.

"I am satisfied that the respondent has been so overwhelmed by her hurt and outrage at the deception that she went over on to the attack in order to destroy the petitioner and his second family unit.

"No legitimate anger can reasonably lead to the conduct of the kind committed by the respondent. I am completely satisfied that the respondent's attitude was one of aggressive retaliation," Judge Jackson said.

The Mirror

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Last words of doomed Concorde

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It has been revealed that the last words of the pilot of the doomed Air France Concorde which crashed last month killing all its 109 passengers and four on the ground, were: "Too late... no time," The Mirror reports on its front page.

The story says as Christian Marty the pilot, struggled with the blazing jet, controllers at the Tower urged him to return to Charles de Gaulle Airport, but there was little he could do.

Co-pilot Jean Marcot said: "We are trying for Le Bourg…," meaning the nearby Le Bourget airport but could not finish when the crash occurred.

The Concorde exploded in a fireball and crashed on to a hotel annexe just two minutes after take off, in what has come to be known as the worse disaster in Concorde's history.

Transcripts of the crash released on Thursday confirmed that a tire blow out caused the crash.

GRi