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The Independent (London, England)
The Independent is a Monday to Sunday newspaper, owned and published by Independent Print Ltd and headquartered in London, England. It was first published in 1986 in reaction to the conservative views held by the London Times and the London Telegraph. It has a liberal slant. The Independent's audience is London based, with 54 percent of its readership living in London and its surroundings. Other notable qualities of its readership are: the average reader is 43 years old; 59 percent are employed; 62 percent are married; 48 percent have a college degree or higher; and 73 percent own their own homes. Regions covered include: London and South East, South West, Midlands, North and North East, North West, Scotland, and Wales. The Independent is the youngest of Britain's daily newspapers and is notable for challenging London's more established and conservative daily newspapers. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. In 2010, Simon Kelner, Editor-in-Chief of The Independent, and Johann Hari, a regular columnist in the paper, each received a Comment Award, similar to the U.S. Pultizer Prize. Oliver Wright is Whitehall editor; Oly Duff is home news editor, and Katherine Butler is comment editor.
Articles from April 29, 1997
Accused Home Director Had Not Read Care Guidelines
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A director of a residential home accused of ill-treating mentally handicapped patients had never read the principal guidelines governing their care, a court was told yesterday.Angela Rowe, 39, said she had never seen a copy of "Home Life", the national...
A Driving Force the Politicians Forget
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Sales of new cars have slowed right down: private buyers are putting off purchasing until they feel more confident about the realities of life under a newly elected government. Businesses are easing up because the staff expansion that led to big sales...
Arts: Crossing over to a New Place
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The man who built Durban's Playhouse must have been suffering from a bad case of nostalgia. There it stands, under the strong South African sun, a strange parody of Surbiton stockbroker's Tudor. Pseudo half-timbering abounds, inside and out; a mini (non-functional)...
Arts: Papering over the Cracks
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Justin Hawkes is an artist of two halves. There is the patient restorer, meticulously conserving the paintings of the past and there is the flamboyant colourist splurging in expansive swathes of brilliance across extravagant canvases. He is the Dr Jekyll...
Arts: Telling Porkies
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Three hundred square metres of paper strips, thickly covered in Chinese calligraphy, drape the walls, floor and ceiling of the room, recalling religious sutras or pages of newsprint. On closer inspection, the 4,000 characters are found to be meaningless...
Arts: Together Wherever We Go
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Theatrefolk, they're so promiscuous. Oh, really? A glance at the working lives of current major theatre talents confounds that old canard. Stephen Daldry's greatest hits have been with his partner, designer Ian MacNeil, lighting designer Rick Fisher...
Astronomers Collide over Matter of Fact
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When antimatter and matter meet, they annihilate each other utterly in a blaze of light. Now it seems the same can happen when American astronomers' claims reach the ears of rivals on this side of the Atlantic: after a brief burst, the two cancel each...
A Teddy Bear Grows Claws
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"Her accent," writes Sir Roy Strong of the Princess of Wales, "is really rather awful considering that she is an earl's daughter. Not an upper-class drawl at all, but rather tuneless and, dare I say it, a bit common."Strong stuff indeed, you might think,...
Big Players Holding Back Opportunity
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The biggest obstacle facing the British music industry is its domination by the leading record companies, according to the managers of British bands and singers, writes Ian Burrell.In an anonymous government-funded questionnaire of 120 British music...
Boy George, the Love of His Life and a Night Dressed as Boadicea
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Boy George, the DJ and former singer in Culture Club, said yesterday that Kirk Brandon, the frontman of Spear of Destiny and Theatre of Hate, had been "the great love" of his life in the early Eighties.George told the High Court that he and Brandon had...
BSM Shares Crash after Profit Warning
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Shares in the driving school business BSM crashed by more than a quarter yesterday after the company warned that new rules for learners taking their tests will cut profits by a half for the first six months of the year.The company also announced plans...
Business Comment: Accept the Apology and Let the Matter Rest
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Apologies as grovelling as the one issued by Sir Chips Keswick yesterday over Hambros' role in the failed bid for the Cooperative Wholesale Society are rare in the City but there may be merit in making them the norm in scandals of this sort. Certainly...
Business Comment: Launders Is Just the First One to Get the Boot
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Football managers know that the writing is on the wall when the club chairman expresses his full confidence in them. Robin Launders, who parted company with Leeds United yesterday after less than a year in the chief executive's job, was afforded no such...
Canada Liberals Face Two-Way Challenge
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Prime Minister Jean Chretien's decision to call a snap election a year and a half before it is required has run into trouble before the campaign is 48 hours old.The governing Liberals called the election for 2 June because there were indications that...
Challenge to the Company Favourites
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The heartland of fleet car sales belongs to two cars and two manufacturers. The Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Vectra are sitting pretty, but if allowed a choice the company car driver isn't starved of alternatives.The most recent challenge has been quite...
Check-Out Worker Begins Mother of All Pay Battles
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Deborah Banks began a battle yesterday which could cost employers millions of pounds and affect up to two million British women who work in low-paid and part-time jobs.The 25-year-old former supermarket checkout worker has gone to an industrial tribunal...
Commissioner Says EMU on Course
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Yves-Thibault de Silguy, the European Commissioner responsible for the single currency project, assured an audience in Washington yesterday that EMU remained on course.His remarks followed comments by IMF officials at the weekend warning that any delay...
Consumer Optimism at Highest Level since 1980s
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Consumer confidence is back at its highest since the late 1980s, according to a new survey yesterday. Further evidence of the booming economy came from a strong pick-up in the commercial property market, although the housing market apparently paused...
Coupe Set for a Superhero's Comeback
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When a car maker says never again it means nothing of the sort. There is no concept that cannot be revived and this summer sees a resurgence in glamorous coupes from some humdrum names.The last swoopy Volvo was Roger Moore's P1800 in The Saint. Now said...
Creativity
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Our request for uses for golfers has opened up a debate on the subject of whether golfers are of any use at present. "Golfers have always been useful," John Bateman maintains. "Their very existence proves to the rest of us that, however we may choose...
Cricket: Bamboozled by Brown
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The pitch at New Road may have allowed the seam bowlers too much movement in the morning, but not enough to explain away Worcestershire's collapse to 56 for 9 in the first 24 overs of the day after they had been put into bat.In an extraordinary first...
Cricket: Cronje Puts Ireland in Control
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The South African captain Hansie Cronje made an unbeaten 94 for Ireland, who had Middlesex in serious trouble when rain ended play early in their Benson and Hedges Cup zonal match in Dublin yesterday.Middlesex were 134 for 6 off 32.2 overs, now needing...
Cricket: Irani Marshalls Essex's Talents
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Ronnie Irani is clearly a man on a mission. Not content with being Essex's top-scorer in their first two games of the season, he made it three in a row yesterday, leading his team home over Glamorgan with an unbeaten 82, an innings whose decisiveness...
Cricket: Russell Ruffles Lord's Feathers
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Tim Lamb, the England Cricket Board's chief executive, yesterday refuted claims made by Jack Russell that Lord's have "dragged their heels" in dealing with a row surrounding the publication of controversial extracts from the Gloucestershire and England...
Deputy Attacks Grade in Battle for C4 Control
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The battle to succeed Michael Grade at Channel 4 took a new twist yesterday in reports that the highly respected internal candidate, John Willis, the director of programmes, had launched a scathing personal attack on his outgoing boss.It was claimed...
Drivers Could Get Go-Ahead for Pounds 17,000 Lift
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Scores of Brighton bus drivers yesterday found themselves in line for windfall payments of around pounds 17,000 each following a recommended pounds 5.76m takeover bid from the Go-Ahead Group to buy their company, Brighton Transport.But the planned takeover...
Election '97: Ashdown Plea on Tactical Voting
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Paddy Ashdown yesterday cautioned people against tactical voting, arguing that there was no difference between Labour and the Tories.The Liberal Democrat leader also claimed in an interview on GMTV that over the past five years his party had moved "from...
Election '97: Black Community Play Race Card on Labour
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The race card has finally been played on Labour, not by a Tory backbencher but by senior figures in the black community.The television presenter Darcus Howe and an alliance of black church leaders in south London are seeking to mobilise the black vote...
Election '97: Blair Warns of New Threat to NHS
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A big increase in private medical insurance, offering a cut-price deal for the fast-track use of NHS services, would be another step towards the destruction of the health service under a fifth-term Tory government, Tony Blair warned yesterday.The Labour...
Election '97: Dealer Who Strove to Shine with PM
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Willie Nagel is a multi-millionaire diamond broker in his seventies who, according to acquaintances, does not mix very well with other people but desperately wants to be accepted by the establishment.Letters leaked to the Independent show that Mr Nagel...
Election '97: English Tory Finds No Meanness on the Streets of Belfast
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At 9am yesterday, Sarah Dines, Conservative candidate for East Belfast, was being hugged by John Major in Belfast city centre. At 11am she was standing in the rain in an urban republican enclave, surrounded by Sinn Fein posters and anti-British murals.It...
Election '97: Hard to Put a Face to Predicted Blairite Swing
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Talk to a traditional Conservative voter in Cleethorpes and you will encounter resigned acceptance that a Labour MP will be elected here on Thursday for the first time in living memory.Labour supporters will tell you the same; so will Liberal Democrats....
Election '97: Is It a Bird? A Plane? No ... It's the Lib Dem Delight
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Ladies of a certain age in Eastbourne will never be quite the same again. Out of the sun in a helicopter he swooped, the ex-Royal Marine officer smiling that crinkle-cut smile and flirting with their voting intentions. However, no sooner had Paddy...
Election '97: Key Marginals Lean toward Labour
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Middle England is beginning to swing behind New Labour in significant numbers as polling day approaches, according to The Independent's group of disaffected Conservatives in a key marginal seat.Over the final, crucial weekend a number of the group in...
Election '97: Major Flies in Face of Opposition
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All that was missing were the baseball caps, T-shirts and the bomber jackets for the roadies.John Major's unprecedented campaign tour to the four corners of the United Kingdom was intended as a dramatic gesture of his support for the Union before polling...
Election '97: Mood of Change Threatens Tory Fightback
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Twelve months ago New Labour won a crushing victory over the Conservatives in the South East Staffordshire by-election. On Thursday the party seems certain to repeat the win in the re-drawn seat of Tamworth - though by a reduced margin - according to...
Election '97: Mood on the Streets Is of Disillusionment
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The situation is simple. Bedford is 61st on the list of 100 critical seats Labour must win to get a majority in the Commons and form a new government. And circumstances could hardly be better to achieve that goal.The boundary changes have turned Bedford...
Election '97: Postal Votes Surge in Fierce Ulster Contests
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Fiercely contested elections in the west of Northern Ireland have generated such large numbers of postal and proxy votes that electoral staff have been almost overwhelmed.Fifteen thousand applications have been made in three constituencies - Mid-Ulster,...
Election '97: Run around the Houses for Would-Be PM
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Tony Blair has confirmed that he will be moving into Downing Street if Labour wins the election, though it is unclear exactly where he will live in the famous street.He has intimated to civil servants that he will be moving out of his Islington home...
Election '97: Significant Minority Could Unseat 'Safe' Conservative
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Tory voters in this previously safe constituency are now unhappy with their party. Most will return to the fold, unable, in the end, to bring themselves to vote for anyone else.But a significant minority will not. The swing in Watford could be enough...
Election '97: Straight-Talking Right-Winger Reckons He Will Have Last Say
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The man in the battered Fiesta caught sight of David Evans, screeched to a halt and reversed back up the road. "How yer doing, guv'nor?" he yelled.The man, who turned out to be Den Cox, owner of a local fish-and-chip shop, had stopped to wish his local...
Election '97: THE CANDIDATE
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D minus three. The big cheese interviewer was interrupting too much. These things had a delicate ecology and the Candidate - while mildly irritated at the constant heckling - knew that it was his interrogator and not him who was likely to get the blame...
Election '97: THE HURRIED VOTER'S GUIDE
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THE CAMPAIGNPaddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, followed up his BBC Election Call, with a flying visit - by helicopter - to Colchester, Eastbourne, Lewes, and Twickenham, before going on to an Oxford rally. His itinerary over the three final...
Election '97: The Strange Case of the Diamond Dealer and the Pounds 20, 000 Gifts
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A millionaire diamond dealer who gave more than pounds 20,000 to John Major's Conservative constituency association was later invited to go on a prestigious trade mission to Israel and Jordan with the Prime Minister.According to correspondence leaked...
Election '97: The Tories Are Giving Up
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The Conservative election campaign began to fray at the edges yesterday, with despair setting in, public displays of anger and the battle increasingly focused on a one-man fight being waged by John Major.With only three days before polling day and all...
Election '97: Victim of the Recession Is Loath to Forgive
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Many Stevenage voters are being diverted away from their natural home with the Conservatives. Jo Hilsden, who with her husband, Trevor, runs TJ's Cafe, can reel off a list of small shopkeepers who have closed in the past four years - the kitchen designer,...
Election '97: Welsh Constituency Does It in Threes
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Labour and the Liberal Democrats are slugging it out toe-to-toe in Brecon and Radnorshire, a curate's egg of a constituency boasting a history of tight three-way battles.The major parties have all held sway there in the past 25 years. The Tory Jonathan...
Election '97: Whitehall Anticipates a Change at No 10
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A major political row broke over the head of the civil service, Sir Robin Butler, last night after he had briefed journalists about the possible transfer of power from John Major to Tony Blair later this week.There were strong protests from the Labour...
Even before They Lose, the Tory Knives Are Out
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The blaming has already begun. So far it is confined to a few bad headlines about differences between the Tory party chairman Brian Mawhinney and Lord Saatchi over the running of the Tory campaign. That is real enough. But it is trivial compared with...
Five Years on, LA Remembers How War Erupted on Its Streets
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Five years on, Charles Rachel is struggling with his memories of the Los Angeles riots. A member of Crips, one of LA's oldest neighbourhood gangs, who lost one brother to a shooting and another to jail, he works as a gang councillor on Vermont Avenue,...
Football: Dalglish Tempts Tomasson to Tyneside
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Kenny Dalglish has made Jon Dahl Tomasson his third major signing for Newcastle United in a pounds 2.5m move that will take the Dane from the Dutch Cup finalists, Heerenveen to, Tyneside in the summer.The attacking midfielder is one of the top scorers...
Football: Lucky Break at Last for Gallacher
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Footballers are a relentlessly ribald breed. Kevin Gallacher had no sooner donned his glasses after scoring twice to help Scotland overcome Austria than Ally McCoist was promising to describe the goals to him. As the squad jester explained, Gallacher...
Football: Neville Dispels Mancunian Myth
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According to football legend, international weeks are preceded by an ancient Mancunian ritual. It supposedly involves the manager, these days Alex Ferguson, calling his international players into his office and gently reminding them about that hamstring...
Fraud Hearing to Pit Lloyd's against SEC
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The Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to intervene unexpectedly against Lloyd's of London in a critical legal case opening in the US today. The world's oldest insurance market is fighting to stop itself facing for the first time allegations...
G7 Warning Fails to Dampen the Rising Dollar
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The dollar forged ahead yesterday despite a weekend signal from the Group of Seven industrial countries that the rise in the US currency has gone far enough.Currency traders took the bland wording of the G7 communique to mean there was little danger...
Halifax Investors in Line for Pounds 1,700 Windfall on Pounds 13bn Floa T
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The windfall from the flotation of Halifax Building Society could be worth an average of more than pounds 1,700 for its 7.6 million members, it emerged yesterday. And according to analysts, Halifax could be valued at almost pounds 13bn when trading in...
Hambro Stuns City with Co-Op Apology
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Sir Chips Keswick, chairman of Hambros Bank, issued an unprecedented public apology to the Co-operative Wholesale Society yesterday and paid a "substantial" cash settlement for his bank's part in Andrew Regan's aborted pounds 1.2bn bid for the group.The...
Haughey Wins a Reprieve in Secret Gifts Case
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Charles Haughey was yesterday given a temporary reprieve before answering claims by the former supermarket magnate Ben Dunne that he secretly paid the politician pounds 1.3m while Taoiseach between 1987 and 1991.The payments-to-politicians' tribunal...
Health: The Bug That Strikes before You Know It
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She's in her twenties or early thirties, a typical young professional: she'd like babies sometime, but not right now. She is, she thinks, well informed about health. She hasn't slept around, exactly - just sown a few wild oats. But she's been lucky -...
Heaney's Bog? Greeks Don't Have a Word for It
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I meet Kazantzakis's goddaughter in Kolonaki, Athens' Kensington. Katerina Angelakhi-Rooke is a well-known poet I last saw at a round-table workshop when she, I and Glyn Maxwell discovered deep rifts between Greek and British poetry. Now there are raucous...
Hockey: Kerly Boosts England Coaching
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Sean Kerly has been drafted in to help England's match preparation while they find a new performance director and national coach. The 37-year-old, who took Britain to gold in 1988 and bronze four years earlier, will join forces with the former England...
Hogg Dismisses Concern over BSE Risk to Dogs
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The Government was insisting last night that scientific evidence gathered six years ago, which suggests that dogs can develop "mad cow disease", was not followed up or published because it was not important.Yet in an apparently contradictory letter,...
Investment Column: Rising Losses at Chiroscience
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Most biotechnology companies have still to sell a single product, yet many have proved brilliant at marketing themselves. Chiroscience is a case in point. The group has racked up ever-increasing losses, which grew by another 61 per cent to pounds 18.7m...
Investment Column: Would-Be High-Flyer EIS Remains Firmly Earthbound
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The engineering group EIS makes much of the fact that profits never declined during the recession and indeed that it has now raised its results for 26 consecutive years. The problem is that much of that growth appears to have been achieved through uninspiring...
Jazz: Dave Douglas Quartet - Custard Factory, Birmingham
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Great as it is, the great tradition can be a ball and chain for younger artists, especially in jazz where modernism started late but caught up fast. The experiments in the clubs of New York between 1945 and 1965 are the equivalent of several generations...
Leading Article: Ashdown in Action Makes the Case for Change
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"Mummy, what is that man for?" If we apply the classic test to Paddy Ashdown, the answer has to be that his purpose is to open up the possibilities of British politics. It is too simple to say, as many Labour politicians do, that the Liberal Democrats...
Leeds Utd Chief Takes Early Bath
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Robin Launders was yesterday forced out as chief executive of Leeds United less than a year after joining the club following its debut on the stock market. He will receive a pay-off of pounds 150,000.The decision was taken at a board meeting over the...
Letter: Consultant: Why I Cannot Trust Tories
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Sir: I was the surgeon mentioned in your front page article "The truth about health" (25 April)The period about which Mrs Butler spoke was during a time when there were enormous changes taking place within St Helier, the hospital being among the first...
Lost in Translation West of Slough
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People with very unusual jobs indeed.No 71: A man who subtitles films in West Country dialect."I was bilingual when I was at school. I spoke English and I spoke the local West Country dialect. They tried to beat the West Country dialect out of me but...
Loyalists Fail to Blow Up Sinn Fein Office
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An attempt by loyalist terrorists to blow up Sinn Fein's offices in West Belfast with a large bomb failed yesterday when the device failed to explode.The attack coincided with John Major's visit to Belfast but did not appear to be linked to it.The bomb...
Market Report: P&G Presentation Could Kick Unilever off the Stage
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Every so often Procter & Gamble bemuses the stock market by holding a City investment presentation. Such an event, expected today, invariably prompts talk the US detergent behemoth, not quoted in London, is planning to swoop on a UK enterprise.Reckitt...
Motor Racing: Williams Puts His Faith in Villeneuve
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The roadshow moved on, congratulating itself on creating an open title contest with 10 points covering the seven leading drivers, but Frank Williams, who has been producing champions for 17 years, offered a sobering perspective.Even as Heinz-Harald Frentzen,...
Mulcahy Joins the Elite Who Earn Pounds 1m a Year
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Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy, chief executive of retail conglomerate Kingfisher, has rejoined the elite list of Britain's industrialists earning in excess of pounds 1m a year.The boss of the Comet electrical wholesaler and B&Q do-it-yourself chain saw his overall...
Network: A Doctor on the Screen
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When I was younger I remember seeing a set of home management books that belonged to my grandparents. Each one had a different theme, and among them was a family medical encyclopaedia which listed common illnesses, gave their symptoms to allow for easy...
Network: Aficionados of the Cyberbar
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The Internet is captivating Spain, a little behind the rest of Europe, via a social institution that Spaniards handle better than most: the bar. Spain has Europe's lowest take-up of the Internet, but many cities have flourishing "cyberbars" where would-be...
Network: Comdex Does the Biz
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As UK businesses grapple with the latest developments in computing, telecommunications and the Internet, an event in London last week attempted to provide some answers. More than 260 IT companies converged on the Earls Court exhibition centre to take...
Network: If We Put Pressure on Retailers, Service Providers and Government, We May Join the Online Efficiency Paradise This Side of the 21st Century
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Have you ever tried to contest a planning permission? Well, I have. Approximately 97 hours later, after filling in countless forms in triplicate, and attending eight meetings in my local council office held during totally inconvenient office hours, I...
Network: Meet Larry Ellison, the Software Supremo with an Ego to Match His Income
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"IBM is the past. Microsoft is the present. Oracle is the future." That was Larry Ellison's prediction four years ago. It hasn't come true yet, but Ellison's doing his damnedest to see that it does.Ellison is the co-founder and chief executive officer...
Network: Newsstand
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Any movie enthusiast who has played with Microsoft's splendid Cinemania CD-Rom will want to take a look at Cinemania Online, a weekly updated mix of topical and enduring material about films and those who make them.It's not a replacement for the CD,...
Obituary: Allan Francovich
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It was not I, but Tiny Rowland, who persuaded Allan Francovich to make his film about Lockerbie, writes Dr Jim Swire {further to the obituary by Tam Dalyell, 28 April}.I first met Allan for lunch in a London Italian restaurant, where his facility with...
Obituary: Bunny Roger
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Erstwhile couturier, wit, dandy, landowner, and social ornament, Bunny Roger was what obituary in its obliquer days styled a lifelong bachelor and what gossip columnists knew as a flamboyant homosexual.Not that the phraseology of old Fleet Street would...
Obituary: Churton Fairman
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When Radio 1 celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1992 one of the launch disc jockeys could not be found.The once well-known voice of Mike Raven had been included among the Sixties' Sounds available on headphones at the Royal Academy's Pop Art exhibition...
Obituary: Dr Robert Simpson
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Robert Simpson was a true son of Ballymena, the Co Antrim town where he spent his life as general practitioner and which he represented for 20 years in the Stormont Parliament. He spoke with the Scots accent typical of the area and exemplified the qualities...
People & Business: Chip off the Old Block Had an Auspicious Start to Life
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I had not realised until now that Sir Chips Keswick, chairman of Hambros Bank, got his Christian name because he was conceived on a Chippendale.Whether this was a Chippendale chaise-longue or chair is not clear, although I am happy to provide a picture...
People Carriers Get a Shrinking Feeling
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A couple of years ago, if you wanted an MPV - or multi-purpose vehicle - you chose a Renault Espace. Renault didn't exactly invent the concept of the people carrier - though it likes to let people think it did. That honour probably goes to Fiat, whose...
Performance: Stanshall Rides Again
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It's good to know that Vivian Stanshall is alive and well and living in the body of Ronald Fraser Munro. Stanshall may have spontaneously combusted in Muswell Hill in 1995 but his gifts for comic and linguistic subversion, so perfectly realised in his...
Poetry: Mark Doty - Poetry Society, London
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The 43-year-old gay man thought by many to be the best poet to have emerged from America in the past 20 years is gingerly easing his long frame down into the Poetry Society's great, steeple-backed Bardic Chair, the one that almost got left behind when...
Quality Care in Frame for Takeover
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Quality Care Homes, the Darlington-based nursing home group, saw its shares soar 37p to 311p yesterday after revealing that it was in bid talks. Any deal close to last night's closing price would put a price tag of pounds 42.6m on the company and bring...
Racing: Godolphin Team in Flying Form
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An auric glow - the sort of luminosity associated with the opening of a treasure chest - came to a cargo bay of Luton airport at 9am yesterday as one freight aircraft opened its doors.Only the occupants of the Queen's Flight get better service than the...
Rejected Slovaks Accept Russian Bear's Embrace
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Three days seems an unusually long time for any foreign head of government to spend in the small central European state of Slovakia. When the visitor is Russia's Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, one could be forgiven for thinking that something is...
Revelations: Gary Wilmot - Goodbye Dad, Hello Showbiz
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I don't remember much about my father's death because a lot of it was kept from me. I was only six, so I didn't attend the funeral, although there was a photographer there who took a bizarre wedding-style photo with all the relations lined up behind...
Rock 'N' Roll Becomes Respectable
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The Music Biz - for years regarded by sensible parents as a dangerous hotbed of rebellion and job insecurity - is now being eagerly promoted by the Government as a career with prospects.The Department for Education and Employment has funded an important...
Royal Engagements
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The Prince of Wales attends a reception at St James's Palace for the Prayer Book Society's 25th Anniversary; and as President, the Prince's Trust, attends Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyceum Theatre, London WC1. The Princess Royal, President, British...
Rugby League: Saints Rule out Gibbs' Return
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The St Helens coach, Shaun McRae, has poured cold water on the prospect of Scott Gibbs returning from rugby union to play in Saturday's Challenge Cup final. Saints have sounded out Swansea about the possibility of releasing Gibbs for the re-run of last...
Rugby: Rugby Should Avoid Creating Artificial and Meaninglesscompetitions Simply to Try to Make Money. the Extra Audience Is Not There
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The last player to be capped for England at both cricket and rugby was, I think, Mike Smith of Warwickshire. The most recent rugby internationals to play county cricket as well were Alastair Hignell, of Gloucestershire, Peter Squires, who was on Yorkshire's...
Rugby Union: Popplewell Handed 30-Day Suspension
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Nick Popplewell, the Irish international prop and 1993 Test Lion, last night fell foul of English rugby's increasingly strict disciplinary code and was handed a 30-day suspension for punching Scott Murray during Newcastle's league match at Bedford earlier...
Science: Dismayed, by a Big Majority
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The political adverts - oh, haven't you seen them? - say we have the choice of "BOOM OR GLOOM". Readers' responses to The Independent's interviews with science spokesmen for the three main political parties are less upbeat. With two days to go, British...
Science: Theoretically
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The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, whose mutation is implicated in some forms of human breast cancer, are most likely to be "caretakers" of their cells - looking after the integrity of their DNA - rather than "gatekeepers" which regulate tumours by inhibiting...
Science: The Stats - the Illusion of the Ecliptic
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For the past month and more, we've perhaps become rather blase about having a beautiful comet gracing the evening sky. Comet Hale-Bopp has lived up to all our expectations, retrieving the reputation of comets and astronomers alike after the fizzlers...
Shares: Taking Stock
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Each week Emerald Energy, the oil hopeful, issues a statement about its drilling in Colombia. The idea is to prevent the rumour mill sending out what could be false signals. But mobile telephones may be beating the company. Chairman Iain Alexander believes...
