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Do you remember Shari Lewis? I try and avoid describing women in sexualized terms, however sometimes it suits, as she was an astoundingly beautiful ventriloquist on American television when I was a child thus becoming my first and fondest celebrity crush. She had several puppets, however the best known was a little sheep named Lamb Chop. (As I think of it now, that's really a rather ominous name, like calling a chicken KFC.) Lewis recorded several albums of children's songs...

Murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich has been confirmed as being a Wikileaks source by Seymour Hersh in a leaked telephone call. The journalist, who has high level FBI sources, discussed what he knows about the murder in the call and revealed some interesting details about what is in the FBI report following the cyber unit investigation. Seth Rich was an American employee for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who was fatally shot in the Bloomingdale neighbourhood of Washington. His murder has...

Donald Trump dubbed New Hampshire a "drug-infested den", boasted about his election victory and urged his Mexican counterpart to remain quiet about a border wall in a telephone call which has been leaked by the Washington Post. The transcript provides a rare glimpse into the private conversations of a new US President testing his negotiating powers on foreign counterparts, with the phone call taking place just seven days after Trump entered office. More than 30 references to "the wall" are made in the...

Residents and agency staff are digging in to clear mountains of rubbish which has been piling up on the streets of Birmingham for five weeks - after a strike by binmen. Dozens of fed-up homeowners in the Sparkhill area of the city have not had their refuse collected while binmen take industrial action over possible job cuts. The strike started on June 30 after Birmingham City Council announced restructuring plans, which trade union Unite claim will threaten the jobs of...

Britain's top university came under fire today (fri) when it emerged that less than one in seven of its top paid staff are female. Just 17 out of 123 Cambridge University's staff earning over £140,000 a year are women, according to figures released after a Freedom of Information request. The gender pay gap was branded "shocking" by Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner. It comes in contrast with rivals at Oxford University where a bursar has slammed the "grossly excessive" £410,000 pay...

A bishop is 'waging holy war' against Muslims and lefties who want to wrest control of a cathedral away from the Catholic Church - who stole it from the Moors 800 years ago. The bitter row has broken out over the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba in Andalusia, southern Spain. The consecrated site is believed to have originally been a Christian church dedicated to Saint Vincent the third. The city was seized in 711 by a Moorish army, and it became a...

Plunging into a Scottish loch, this majestic osprey emerges triumphant with a DOUBLE FISH SUPPER. Spectacular pictures capture the moment the majestic bird of prey folds its wings and plunges down into the water. The osprey then snapped up two massive trout -- but didn't managed to hold on to them for long. The incident was documented by amateur photographer Mark Chrimes who was on a holiday in Scotland with his friends The 51-year-old, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, has taken...

So the latest since our last check-in is that the President has been having imaginary conversations with the head of the Boy Scouts of America and the President of Mexico. These were either bald-faced lies (most likely), possible signs of creeping dementia (not unlikely), or one of those flashbacks we were all promised when we were ingesting recreational chemicals back in our tossed salad days (pleasant to consider). Oh yes, and Trump has also been quoted as telling his wealthy...

An ozone layer just like that surrounding Earth has been detected surrounding a planet outside the solar system for the first time. The 'sunscreen' on the distant gas giant known as WASP-121b was identified by british scientists in groundbreaking research. It has a stratosphere - one of the main layers of our own planet's atmosphere - but is totally ununhabitable with temperatures hot enough to boil iron. But the discovery reported in Nature could help identify other worlds where life...