United Kingdom

WPIL Limited inks JV with UK firms; Stock Surges 6%

Sikh girl wins right to wear religious bangle in Britain

Sikh girl wins right to wear religious bangle in Britain London  - A 14-year-old girl of Sikh faith Tuesday won a High Court discrimination battle against her school in Britain where she will now be allowed to wear a religious bangle known as the Kara.

Sarika Singh, from Cwmbach, in Wales, was excluded from her girls' school in November 2007 for refusing to take off the slim steel bracelet which teachers said contravened rules on jewellery at the school.

Sarika's lawyers said wearing the bangle was important to her as a symbol of her Sikh faith. She will now return to the school in September.

3000 UK passports stolen

UK PassportLondon, July 29 : At least 3,000 British passports that were to be sent to the country’s embassies abroad have been stolen.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said 24 parcels containing blank passports and vignettes (blank stickers for visa stamps), were removed from a van that was travelling from a factory in Oldham to the Royal Air Force Base in Northolt near London.

According to the Daily Express, the Greater Manchester Police has been roped in to investigate this security breach.

The Home Office and the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) have taken "preventative action" to guard against forgeries.

Taxi drivers may soon have to pass chatting test for driving licence!

United KingdomLondon, July 29 : Draft rules under consideration may soon make it compulsory for one to pass a 15-minutes conversation test to obtain a taxi driver’s licence in Walsall, England.

The test would require applicants to convince their examiners that they could keep passengers entertained on a journey.

The drivers would be discussing topics like their favourite places in the West Midlands with the examiners.

The test, originally designed after concerns about foreign drivers'' standard of English, is expected to be approved by Walsall Council at a meeting on July 30.

Garden stone turns out to be an 80-million-year-old fossil!

Garden stone turns out to be an 80-million-year-old fossil!London, July 29 : What a retired police officer in UK picked up and brought to his rock garden, and kept it there for 15 years, was actually an 80-million-year-old fossil!

Peter Parvin (74) of Maidstone picked up the fossilised fish head from a beach between Pevensey, East Sussex and Dungeness, Kent, during a holiday. It was then in his garden until experts at the town''s museum looked at it.

Sticky Martian soil foils Phoenix Lander’s first ice study

Sticky Martian soil foils Phoenix Lander’s first ice studyLondon, July 29 : The first attempt by NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander to quickly collect and analyze ice samples was foiled by sticky Martian soil that refused to budge from the collection scoop.

On July 26th, the robot drilled holes with a rasp on its robotic arm in a work trench known as “Snow White”.

Phoenix’s robotic arm then scooped up an icy soil sample and attempted to quickly transfer it to the onboard TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer) instrument before the ice vaporised in the thin Martian air.

Pages