London - Unemployment in Britain has risen sharply to reach 1.79 million or 5.7 per cent of the workforce, its highest level since 1999, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Wednesday.

The figures relate to the second quarter of this year, up to the end of August, a period during which unemployment increased by 164,000.

The rise - the biggest since 1991 - took the official unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent from 5.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

In September, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased by 31,800 to 939,900, the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest figure for almost two years.

London, Oct 15 : A Viennese art collective group has knit a 200-foot-long giant pink rabbit, which has been placed on the side of the Colletto Fava mountain in Italy – and is visible from the space!

The pink rabbit was knitted by Gelitin, the Viennese art collective, as an outdoor sculpture for people to climb on, sleep on, and generally play with.

The rabbit, which has been made of soft pink wool and waterproof material and is stuffed with straw, by many grannies, has been attracting multifarious visitors each year and via satellite can be seen on the Internet also.

"It was knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool,” The Telegraph quoted Gelitin, as saying.

London, October 15 : Seals have an oxygen reservoir within their muscles that enables them to dive underwater for up to 80 minutes at a time without taking a breath, according to a study.

Thomas Jue and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, have discovered that seals’ muscles contains 20 times as much myoglobin—a protein that stores and transfers oxygen within their cells—as humans.

The researchers believe that the way seals stop breathing for 20 minutes at a time while asleep on land helps them conserve energy.

London, Oct 15 : British women are three times more likely to have dirty hands than men, says a new study.

The survey, which claims that female cleanliness is a myth, found that the difference between the sexes was starkest in London, where 21 per cent of women were carrying faecal bacteria on their hands, compared with 6 per cent of men.

Women in Birmingham and Cardiff also outranked men for bacterial contamination, but in the north – Newcastle and Liverpool – stereotypes reasserted themselves and men had the filthiest hands, the Dirty Hands study found.

The research highlighted poor hygiene habits as part of the first Global Handwashing Day today.

Commuters'' at five train stations were swab-tested for bacteria.

Washington, October 15 : A research council in the United Kingdom has launched the world’s largest ever household longitudinal study to understand how changes occurring in the ever-evolving societies affect human communities.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) hopes that the ‘Understanding Society’ project will provide valuable new evidence to inform research on the vital issues facing our communities.

The initial funding of 15.5million dollars for the project comes from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills and the ESRC.

This project is said to eb the largest single investment in academic social research resources ever launched in the UK.

London - Unemployment in Britain has risen sharply to reach 1.79 million or 5.7 per cent of the workforce, its highest level since 1999, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Wednesday.

The figures relate to the second quarter of this year, up to the end of August, a period during which unemployment increased by 164,000.

The rise - the biggest since 1991 - took the official unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent from 5.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

In September, the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased by 31,800 to 939,900, the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest figure for almost two years.