London, Sept. 19 : Controversial Scotland Yard police chief Ali Dizaei has been suspended over allegations of misconduct.

Iranian-born Dizaei is being investigated over several separate claims, including one complaint about an allegation he made about being assaulted in a row with a man outside a restaurant in London.

He was suspended after "very careful consideration" after a meeting of the professional standards committee of the Metropolitan Police Authority, which oversees the running of Britain''s biggest force, reports The Telegraph.

Scotland Yard insiders said that the gravity of the claim made the suspension inevitable.

The suspension is likely to deepen a racial crisis at the Yard.

London - Sometimes it is difficult not to feel sorry for Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has endured a barrage of savage and public attacks on his leadership over circumstances that are not all entirely of his making.

"Stand aside or be pushed aside" has been the battle cry of a growing band of disgruntled Labour Party parliamentarians who remain unimpressed with Brown's leadership of Britain over the past 15 months.

London  - This summer's conflict between Russia and Georgia should lead to a "more considered analysis" of NATO enlargement to avoid eastward expansion becoming a "game of Russian roulette," a leading defence research institute warned Thursday.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said the conflict had marked the "distinct end of the romantic phase of the post-Cold War order" and cast doubt on whether Georgia would be a "responsible member" of the NATO alliance.

London, Sept 18 : Police has caught an elderly widow in possession of 1,300 pounds of cocaine, who said that she planned to take the drug to give her “a lift”.

Betty Lily Nicholls, 77, was arrested after police was informed that drugs were being transported in the car she was travelling in.

Exeter court was told that when police stopped Nicholls’ Ford Focus car on the M5 last November, she and the driver appeared “very nervous and avoided eye contact”.

After searching Nicholls’ handbag, police spotted compressed white powder, but she denied knowing anything about the nature of the powder.

“I don’t know what it is. I thought it was puff,” The Daily Express quoted Nicholls, as telling police.

London, Sept 18 : The number of parents reading to their children regularly has significantly reduced in the past two years in Britain, according to a new survey.

The survey by the reading initiatives Booktime and Booked Up showed that only a third or 33 per cent of parents of primary school aged children now read to them daily, compared to 43 per cent two years ago.

The poll showed that nearly 23 per cent rarely or never read to their children.

The parents said that they rarely had time to read to their children. Thirty-five per cent said they had too much else to do while 30 per cent said they were too tired to read to them and 25 per cent said they were too busy cooking dinner.

London, September 18 : University of Calgary researchers say that it is possible to simplify the process of mining extremely viscous oil sands.

Oil sands are naturally occurring mixtures of clay, sand, water and extremely viscous bitumen.

Steve Carter and his colleagues at the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for In Situ Energy at the university say that oil sands can be upgraded while they are still in the ground by starting the refining process early, and making them flow more easily.