Save Scooby-doo

Cartoons should be given movie-style age ratings to protect children from the violence shown in programmes such as Scooby Doo and Batman, a child safety expert has warned. A senior lecturer at Lincoln University, USA, said that risky behavior which would normally lead to injury is rarely shown to have negative consequences in cartoons. She claims to have found evidence that there children who watch violent programmes are more likely to engage in risky behavior and injure themselves. Among the programmes she deemed to contain the most risky behavior were Scooby-Doo, Batman, X-Men and Ben 10.
There have been some protests among children against this but they have failed to bring any change as thet are very localised, being limited to households and neighborhoods.

Fat Kill

A jury on Friday convicted a man of murdering his former son-in-law, rejecting the man's defence that he was too fat to have run up and down a flight of stairs to commit the crime and make a quick getaway.
Edward Ates was found guilty of murder and weapons counts for killing Paul Duncsak, who was shot six times at his home in Ramsey, about 25 miles north-west of New York.
Ates had argued he did not have the energy to accurately shoot Duncsak from a perch on the staircase at Duncsak's home in August 2006. He was 62 years old and 285 pounds at the time of the murder. Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor termed Ates' defense "nonsense."

Hitler help

A council in Austria is attempting to block the sale of the house where Adolf Hitler was born over fears it could fall into the hands of neo-Nazis who would turn it into a shrine to his memory and again propagate his ideals. The owner of the house in Braunau-am-Inn wants to put it on the market with a likely asking price of over £2million. But there is not enough money in the town coffers to buy the property and the council plans to appeal to the government. Hitler was born in the house on April 20, 1889. His mother Klara and father Alois, rent ed a suite of rooms above the pub and lived in the apartment until 1892 when they moved to Linz.

Hopelessly happy

Researchers have found that giving patients with serious illnesses hope for a cure can make them more depressed. Peter Ubel, director of the University of Michigan Centre for Behavioural and Decision Sciences in Medicine, spoke about "the dark side of hope". "Sometimes, if hope makes people put off getting on with their life, it can get in the way of happiness," he explained. "We think they were happier because they got on with their lives. They realised the cards they were dealt and recognised that they had no choice. This sopped their need to recover, and they could focus on the better aspects of life" Ubel looked at a group of adults who had their colons removed.

Royal transfer

Prince Harry's dreams of taking on the Taliban in an Apache helicopter in war-ravaged Afghanistan are said to have been shattered, after his instructors told him that he is not suited to fly the chopper. The third-inline to the British throne is feeling somewhat downhearted, after being told he is unlikely to fulfill his dream of fighting the Taliban. Instead, the Prince is likely to be trained to fly the more sedate Lynx when he moves soon to his next posting at the Army Air Corps Base at Middle Wallop in Hampshire, the British newspaper said.