London, Oct. 18 : A female professor has become the first woman to lead a mixed congregation in Islamic prayer in Britain.

Professor Amina Wadud gave a sermon at a centre in Oxford in what is being called a "leap forward" for equality in Islam.

According to The Telegraph, the sermon was controversial as tradition holds that Muslim religious leaders, called Imams, must always be men when there are services with both sexes. Some Muslims also believe it is against Islam for a woman to conduct such services.

Prof Wadud took the service, known as a khutbah, to mark the start of a conference on Islam and feminism at Wolfson College, Oxford. "There''s nothing in the Koran that prohibits it," she said.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine undertook the survey on Britons’ hand-washing habits. The survey shows many Britons don’t wash their hands properly after visiting the washroom.  

October 15, is considered as the Global Hand-Washing Day to promote clean hands to ward off infection, specifically in developing countries.

London, October 18 (ANI): Squid squirt ink to alert their companions to the presence of predators, according to a study.

"When fish bleed, the scent of their blood has been proven to alert nearby fish of danger, so I wondered if ink was also being used as some form of alarm," New Scientist quoted James Wood, a marine biologist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, as saying.

For their study, Wood and his colleagues gathered ink from individual squid by scaring them with a shake of their aquaria.

The researchers either added a dose of ink to a squid''s aquarium, to a nearby unoccupied aquarium, or added ink that had had the dark melanin colouring removed.

London, Oct 18 : A former MI5 chief, whose services superannuated 12 years ago, has said that the world’s response to the 9/11 air attacks was “huge over-reaction”, and that the US’ invasion of Iraq had “influenced” young men in Britain to take to terrorism.

She described the air attacks on US’ twin towers like “any another terrorist incident”, which, according to her, was “qualitatively different from any others”.

London, October 18 : Portuguese chemists have created what they call an ion jelly that could make a range of electrochemical devices, including batteries, fuel cells and solar cells, which are cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

According to a report in New Scientist, the jelly is made by dissolving gelatine in an ionic liquid - a solution made up entirely of negatively and positively charged ions.

Ionic liquids conduct electricity and are generally very stable, non-flammable and non-volatile. That makes them attractive as environmentally friendly replacements for materials normally used as the electrolytes that separate the positive and negative electrodes in electrochemical devices, such as batteries.

Johannesburg - Britain's Princes William, 26, and Harry, 24, started a 1,700-kilometre rally in aid of charity through South Africa Saturday.

The two set off from Port Edward on the east coast of the country with some 80 others in the early morning sunshine on the eight-day Enduro Africa 2008 trek.

Each participant paid 1,500 pounds (2,600 dollars) to take part in the event, raising 300,000 pounds for charities such as Harry's Sentebale (don't forget me), founded in 2006, which helps AIDS orphans in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho.