Baby and child found dead in home

November 13, 2008

The two boys were found after concerns were raised for their welfare

The two boys were found after concerns were raised for their welfare

A three-month-old boy and a boy aged three have been found dead at a property in Greater Manchester.

Officers discovered the bodies at an address in Kilmington Drive, Cheetham Hill, on Wednesday night.

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UN’s Ban takes on DR Congo crisis

November 4, 2008

Ban Ki-moon said the conflict had 'catastrophic consequences'

Ban Ki-moon said the conflict had

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he will travel to East Africa to push forward efforts at ending the ongoing crisis in eastern DR Congo.

Mr Ban decried the “catastrophic consequences” of the conflict along the Rwandan-Congolese border.

Recent fighting in the area between government and rebel forces has forced 250,000 people from their homes.

Earlier, the French foreign minister called for the mandate of UN troops in DR Congo to be strengthened.

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Women’s hands ‘harbour more bugs’

November 4, 2008

Human skin harbours many bacteria

Human skin harbours many bacteria

 

Women have a greater range of different types of bacteria on the palms of their hands than men, US research suggests.

The study also found that human hands harbour far higher numbers of bacteria species than previously thought.

Using powerful gene sequencing techniques, researchers found a typical hand had roughly 150 different species of bacteria living on it.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study found bacteria types varied greatly between individuals.

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Stanford Super Series

October 27, 2008

England's seam bowlers ensured they successfully defended a modest target

England

Stanford Super Series, Antigua: England 121-4 (20 ovs) bt Middlesex 109-4 (20 ovs) by 12 runs

England’s preparations for Saturday’s $20m showdown with the Stanford Superstars began with a narrow 12-run victory over Middlesex in Antigua.

Opting to bat, their openers shared 43 inside eight overs but England found the pitch difficult and needed Owais Shah with 39 in 37 balls to make 121-4.

Middlesex were kept in touch by a stand of 62 from Ed Joyce and Dawid Malan.

Malan hit five fours and a six in 41no but the seamers kept things tight, Stuart Broad with 1-13 from four overs.

England, without the injured Steve Harmison, were happy to bat first and venerable Middlesex skipper Shaun Udal admitted he would have done the same, but it quickly became apparent that runs were not going to be easy to come by.

The slow surface was difficult enough, but the outfield compounded the problems, cleanly struck shots absorbed by the lush grass, like milk into a sponge.

Ian Bell drove the first ball beautifully down the ground for four, but only two more boundaries came in the next eight overs.

Bell, who survived a regulation slip catch to Murali Kartik in the third over, ran well with Prior before succumbing to a direct hit in the eighth over.

Udal and Kartik applied to brakes in the middle of the innings with some shrewd slow bowling.

In addition to his dropped catch, however, Kartik also inexplicably sent down three no-balls, but England scored only two runs from the four free hits they had in the innings.

Those errors aside, Kartik bowled expertly, and his classic left-arm spinner’s delivery lured Kevin Pietersen out of his ground, the ball turning away to allow Ben Scott time to remove the bails and the dismissal to be confirmed without the need for a replay.

Andrew Flintoff, who arrived at the ground without his kit and had to bat in Harmison’s shirt, batted rather more like the Durham paceman against Kartik’s spin and should have been out without scoring.

Ian Bell

Bell battled his way to 23 but England did not find the pitch to their liking

He was also completely deceived in the flight and spooned a leading edge to short mid-wicket, but as he was turning for the pavilion, Andrew Strauss had the misfortune of dropping one of the easiest catches in the history of international cricket.

A rare full toss from Tim Murtagh allowed Shah to free his arms and swipe the first six and Flintoff launched a glorious drive over long-on for six more in the same over.

Middlesex dropped a total of four catches but Joyce did hold on to one from Flintoff, managing to stay inches inside the rope on the boundary.

England needed a good start in the field, but though Strauss lost his leg-stump swiping across the line at Ryan Sidebottom, James Anderson appeared to have problems with his run-up.

Flintoff was excellent with the ball as always and should have had a wicket with his first ball, Paul Collingwood, usually the safest of fieldsmen, fumbling a sharp low chance at point.

Then Pietersen, having made good ground to get to a steepling top edge from Neil Carter off Broad, became the next in an astonishing number already in this series to spill a catch.

Carter was well taken on the mid-wicket fence by Samit Patel, and Broad continued the good work by England’s two tall seamers by dismissing Eoin Morgan.

Middlesex had drifted but were content with Joyce and Malan at the crease, the latter lifting Pietersen back over his head for a delightful straight six.

They needed 33 from the final 18 balls, 12 of which were available for Flintoff to bowl.

Anderson was entrusted with the penultimate over and had Joyce safely caught on the long-off boundary with 18 still needed.

In the end it was a relatively comfortable victory, but England will be aware that they need to sharpen up before the big match next weekend.

Given the number of catches dropped in the first two matches of the series, both sets of players remained on the ground afterwards to go through some fielding drills under the lights.

Collingwood observed: “They are different than any other set of lights we have played under. The ball hits you a lot harder than expected.

“If catches keep being dropped then it becomes a confidence thing but hopefully we’ll get used to them.”

Pietersen said: “Getting a a win under your belt is always important. We have a week to go (before the $20m match), we know the areas we need to work on - catching is one big area.”

Udal was proud of his players and said: “The only thing that surprised me was the pitch. It was slow and low and I think straight-batted shots rather than cross-batted will be the way to go.”

Source: bbc.co.uk/

Hurricane Ike barrels over Cuba

September 10, 2008

Strong winds and rains batter Havana

Strong winds and rains batter Havana

Hurricane Ike rattled Havana after its second landfall in Cuba and is now swirling across the Gulf of Mexico on a projected path towards the Texas coast.

Ike destroyed at least 16 buildings in the Cuban capital but the city was spared the extensive damage suffered in other parts of the country.

The UN estimates the cost of the damage at between $3bn-$4bn.

Four people died in Cuba as a result of the hurricane - the first storm-related fatalities for several years.

One person was killed by a falling tree, an elderly woman died when her house collapsed and two others were electrocuted.

State television said almost 1.25 million people had been moved to shelters - more than one-tenth of the island’s population.

Louisiana warning

The eye of the storm made its second landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province, about 55 miles (90km) south-west of Havana, packing sustained winds of 80mph (130km/h).

Hurricane Ike’s projected path

Enlarge Map

Ike first struck in Holguin province, which is home to the nickel mines, the country’s top export earner.

The BBC’s Michael Voss in Havana says it is still too early to tell the full extent of the economic impact wrought by Ike.

Tens of thousands of buildings have been damaged and crops destroyed.

There is also likely to be an impact on the tourist industry, our correspondent says.

With the storm crossing the the Gulf of Mexico, it is expected to pick up speed and is projected to reach the US Gulf coast.

Louisiana’s governor has warned coastal residents to be prepared to move inland.

The US National Hurricane Center projections show Ike reaching the Texas coast by the end of the week but the storm’s path could veer.

Vulnerable architecture

The United Nations cultural agency, Unesco, has offered to help the Cuban government make good any damage to heritage sites and important buildings in Havana.

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The agency’s director in Havana, Herman van Hooff, said that the latest storm could be a setback to restoration work.

“Since the [1990s] there has been a very strong management system in place for the old Havana area, and a lot has been restored since then,” he told the BBC.

“There is still a lot of fabric, a lot of architecture, a lot of housing that is in a fragile state, so any impact by a hurricane, be it wind or rain, is a great concern to everybody.”

Cuba is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Gustav, which hit just over a week ago, damaging almost 100,000 homes in the west of the island.

Ike earlier caused 66 deaths in Haiti and reportedly damaged 80% of the homes in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has endured the onslaught of four tropical storms in a three-week period, causing more than 550 deaths.

Source: bbc.co.uk/

Cern collider ready for power-up

September 10, 2008

Cern collider ready for power-up

Cern collider ready for power-up

Three decades after it was conceived, the world’s most powerful physics experiment is ready to be powered up.

Engineers will attempt to circulate a beam of particles around the 27km-long underground tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force, revealing signs of new physics in the wreckage.

This will re-create conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

But it has not been plain sailing; the project has been hit by cost overruns, equipment trouble and construction problems. The switch-on itself is two years late.

We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang
Dr Tara Shears, University of Liverpool

The collider is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research - better known by its French acronym Cern.

The vast circular tunnel - the “ring” - which runs under the French-Swiss border contains more than 1,000 cylindrical magnets arranged end-to-end.

The magnets are there to steer the beam - made up of particles called protons - around this 27km-long ring.

Eventually, two proton beams will be steered in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive “detectors” that monitor the collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Major effort

“We will be able to see deeper into matter than ever before,” said Dr Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool.

“We will be looking at what the Universe was made of billionths of a second after the Big Bang. That is amazing, that really is fantastic.”

The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass?

LHC DETECTORS
ATLAS - one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions
CMS - the second general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter
ALICE - will study a “liquid” form of matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang
LHCb - Equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the “missing” anti-matter

“We know the answer will be found at the LHC,” said Jim Virdee, a particle physicist at Imperial College London.

The currently favoured model involves a particle called the Higgs boson - dubbed the “God Particle”. According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field carried by the Higgs.

The latest astronomical observations suggest ordinary matter - such as the galaxies, gas, stars and planets - makes up just 4% of the Universe.

The rest is dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). Physicists think the LHC could provide clues about the nature of this mysterious “stuff”.

But Professor Virdee told BBC News: “Nature can surprise us… we have to be ready to detect anything it throws at us.”

Full beam ahead

Engineers injected the first low-intensity proton beams into the LHC in August. But they did not go all the way around the ring.

Now they will attempt to pass a proton beam around the full circumference of the LHC tunnel.

“We see how far the beam will go,” said Steve Myers, head of the accelerator and beams department at Cern, “we will try and make it go round the full 27km sometime on Wednesday morning.”

Superconducting magnet (Cern/M. Brice)

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

Engineers will be on the lookout for any potential problems: “There are on the order of 2,000 magnetic circuits in the machine. This means there are 2,000 power supplies which generate the current which flows in the coils of the magnets,” he told BBC News.

“If any single one of them has got the wrong polarity, or has the wrong calibration constant, or whatever, then the beam will not go round.

“If, in any of the channels [in the magnets], there is any piece of debris - it is a very small channel - then the beam will not go round.”

Grabbing protons

Mr Myers has experience of the latter problem. While working on the LHC’s predecessor, a machine called the Large-Electron Positron Collider, engineers found two beer bottles wedged into the beam pipe - a deliberate, one-off act of sabotage.

The culprits - who were drinking a particular brand which advertising once claimed would “refresh the parts other beers cannot reach” - were never found.

If all goes well, and the beam makes one turn, engineers will “close the orbit”, allowing the beam to circulate continuously around the LHC.

Engineers will then try to “capture” it. The beam which circles the LHC is not continuous; it is composed of several packets - each about a metre long - containing billions of protons.

The protons would disperse if left to their own devices, so engineers use electrical forces to “grab” them, keeping the particles tightly huddled in packets.

Once the beam has been captured, the same system of electrical forces is used to give the particles an energetic kick, accelerating them to greater and greater speeds.

After Wednesday’s test, engineers will need to get two beams running in opposite directions around the LHC. They can then carry out collisions by smashing them together.

Long haul

The idea of the Large Hadron Collider emerged in the early 1980s. The project was eventually approved in 1996 at a cost of SFr2.6bn.

However, Cern underestimated equipment and engineering costs when it set out its original budget, plunging the lab into a cash crisis.

Cern had to borrow hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans to get the LHC completed. The current price is nearly four times that originally envisaged.

During winter, the LHC will be shut down, allowing equipment to be fine-tuned for collisions at full energy.

“What’s so exciting is that we haven’t had a large new facility starting up for years,” explained Dr Shears.

“Our experiments are so huge, so complex and so expensive that they don’t come along very often. When they do, we get all the physics out of them that we can.”

Steve Myers said engineers would break out the champagne if all went to plan. But a particular brand of beer will not be on the menu, he said.

Source: bbc.co.uk/

Ferdinand to miss England opener

September 6, 2008

Rio Ferdinand will miss England’s opening World Cup qualifier against Andorra on Saturday.

The Manchester United defender has a back injury but manager Fabio Capello expects him to be fit for the key game against Croatia on Wednesday.

Joleon Lescott, Wes Brown or Matthew Upson could step in to partner skipper John Terry in central defence.

Chelsea midfielders Frank Lampard and Joe Cole are both likely to shake off minor knocks.

England are expected to get their qualification campaign off to a winning start against the Group Six minnows in Barcelona on Saturday, Capello’s first competitive game as manager.

In the absence of injured midfielders Steven Gerrard, Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves, Fulham’s Jimmy Bullard is pushing to make his international debut at the Olympic Stadium, although Gareth Barry seems more likely to play alongside Lampard.

Some newspaper reports on Friday claimed Arsenal youngster Theo Walcott could make a surprise start with David Beckham being saved for the match against Croatia.

The last time England played Andorra at the Olympic Stadium, in March 2007, a goalless first half led to a torrent of verbal abuse being directed at then England boss Steve McClaren.

FOOTBALL BLOG
This may be a pressure point for Capello, but if he feels the strain he does not show it
BBC Sport’s Phil McNulty with the England team in Barcelona

England eventually won 3-0 in far from convincing fashion, and Wayne Rooney had to be substituted for fear he would get a second yellow card.

“The players who were there will have learnt from that experience. It was hostile,” said Barry, who was a non-playing substitute that day, but is expected to partner Lampard in midfield on Saturday.

Andorra go into the match seeking damage limitation after suffering a miserable Euro 2008 qualifying campaign in which they lost all 12 of their games, scoring two goals and conceding 42.

Coach David Rodrigo, who has been in his post since 1999, had a bad start to his campaign in Kazakhstan two weeks ago, when they lost 3-0 in Almaty, conceding three first-half goals.

 


Andorra (probable): Koldo; Jordi Escura, Toni Lima, Ildefons Lima, Oscar Sonejee; Marcio Vieira, Marc Vales, Josep Ayala, Marc Pujol, Xavi Andorra; Fernando Silva.

England squad: Paul Robinson, David James, Robert Green, Wes Brown, Glen Johnson, Wayne Bridge, Ashley Cole, John Terry (capt), Rio Ferdinand, Joleon Lescott, Matthew Upson, Gareth Barry, Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Jimmy Bullard, David Beckham, Stewart Downing, David Bentley, Jermaine Jenas, Theo Walcott, Wayne Rooney, Jermain Defoe, Emile Heskey.

Source: bbc.co.uk/

Protests shut down Thai airports, rail services

August 29, 2008

Protesters with the People's Alliance for Democracy sleep outside the goverment complex Friday in Bangkok.

Protesters with the People

Anti-government protesters closed down three airports in Thailand Friday in an effort to force the prime minister to step down, airport officials said.

Protesters also regained control of the Government House compound, where demonstrations have been taking place for months, the state-run news agency Thai News Agency (TNA) said.

The chief of the country’s armed forces, Supreme Commander Gen. Boonsang Niempradit, said the military was “adhering to a democratic way and peaceful means,” because violence won’t “solve the problem,” TNA reported.

Effects of the protests spread nationwide. Rail services in much of Thailand ground to a halt as union workers went on strike to support anti-government protests in the capital, TNA said.

According to The Associated Press, Thai police have used tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesters besieging the capital’s police headquarters.

Associated Press journalists said police threw dozens of canisters of gas at the crowd of at least 2,000 people.

Phuket airport, a gateway for vacationing Westerners, closed down when the protest prevented airplanes from taking off, airport officials said.

In Hat Yai, demonstrators kept departing passengers from reaching the airport, effectively halting air traffic, an official said.

The tarmac was blocked at the Krabi airport, keeping planes from taxing, an airport official said.

Protesters seized several government buildings in Bangkok this week, including the prime minister’s office and the state-run television station. Thai judges issued warrants for their arrest, but the prime minister has said authorities will not use force to evict them.

The protesters want Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to resign. Video Watch protesters block the PM’s office compound »

On Friday, rail service in southern Thailand was suspended indefinitely, the news agency said, quoting Pichet Suwanchatree, railway union chief at the State Railway of Thailand. The action “forces at least a temporary halt to all trains into Bangkok, effective Friday,” the agency said. It warned that some commuters “might be left stranded.”

The union called for a nationwide suspension of railway service “to press the government to resign,” the news agency said. The action was meant to support protesters with the People’s Alliance for Democracy, who are demanding the prime minister’s resignation.

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Their protests outside Government House have been going on for months, but the demonstrations grew Tuesday, when hundreds of protesters took to nearby streets and later seized buildings.

The have prevented Sundaravej from getting inside his official residence and prevented other government ministers from attending a weekly Cabinet meeting.

The People’s Alliance for Democracy says Samak’s administration is a proxy for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

The alliance contends Samak was trying to amend the constitution so that Thaksin would not have to face charges — Thaksin returned to England this month, just as he was to appear in court in a corruption case.

No charges have been filed against Samak.

The People’s Alliance for Democracy is well-supported among the middle-class and traditional elite of Bangkok. Yet many outside the city — especially in northeastern Thailand — many despise the group.

That leaves a powerful minority in the capital that doesn’t agree with the government that a vast majority outside Bangkok have elected, and Thaksin and Samak both remain popular.

Though the protesters want Samak gone, those who spoke with CNN’s Dan Rivers seem unsure who they would want to take his place.

“They told me they know they want to get rid of Samak, Thaksin, and all their cronies, but the problem is they don’t seem to know what will happen if they do,” Rivers said.

“The leader of the PAD, Sondhi Limthongkul, has told me that the entire political system needs to be changed and says that perhaps Thailand isn’t ready for full democracy because of the endemic corruption.”

Source: cnn.com

European Grand Prix

August 25, 2008

Hamilton is left to contemplate Massa\'s pace as the Brazilian celebrates

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa became Lewis Hamilton’s closest championship challenger with a copybook victory in the European Grand Prix at Valencia.

The Brazilian held off the challenge from Hamilton’s McLaren throughout the race on the new Spanish street track.

Massa survived a stewards’ inquiry after being released into the path of another car after his second pit stop.

BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica was third, while Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen saw his title hopes dented with retirement.

Hamilton’s lead is a point bigger than it was at the start of the race - he now leads by six points from Massa, while Raikkonen’s deficit following his engine failure has grown from five points to 13.

Massa’s victory was allowed to stand after an inquiry into an incident at his pit stop on lap 37, when he was released illegally into the path of Force India’s Adrian Sutil.

Unusually, the stewards decided they would investigate at the end of the race - a move that will be met with cynicism in the F1 paddock given the potential impact on the title battle.

Officials eventually chose to reprimand and fine Ferrari 10,000 euros (£7, 981), ruling that the incident was unsafe but that Massa had not gained a sporting advantage.

I thought we would keep a certain gap and maintain it but he just stretched it
Lewis Hamilton

Massa’s near-miss with Sutil may have been influenced by Ferrari’s pit-stop system, in which the team do not have a “lollipop man” controlling the driver.

Instead, they use a system of lights, which are operated by the crew doing the pit stop.

Out on the track, Massa and Hamilton staged their own private battle at the front of the field, but the Ferrari driver was always just that bit too fast for his rival.

Massa consolidated his pole position into a lead on the first lap as Hamilton, starting on the dirty side of the track, was forced to defend his second place from Kubica.

Massa then proceeded to edge away from Hamilton until he had a lead of nearly five seconds by the time of his first pit stop on lap 15, two laps earlier than Hamilton’s first stop.

But despite two superbly quick laps from the McLaren driver before he came into the pits, the margin between the two was reduced by only a second when Hamilton rejoined.

And Massa was even stronger in the second stint, pulling away from Hamilton in a more convincing fashion to be more than eight seconds in front by the time of his second stop on lap 37.

Felipe Massa leads Lewis Hamilton at the start of the European Grand Prix

Massa led comfortably from Hamilton throughout the race

The Ferrari driver regained his lead when Hamilton stopped two laps later and cruised to his fourth victory of the year - the same number as Hamilton.

“I can’t complain with second place,” Hamilton said.

“We’ve had quite a strong weekend. I’ve had a traumatised weekend - I’ve had a problem health-wise.

“But we got some good points this weekend and so it was solid for us.

“I got a reasonably decent start but I just had to try and hold my spot but after that I was able to relax and try and attack and keep up with Massa.

“I thought we would keep a certain gap and maintain it but he just stretched it.”

Massa was thrilled to make up for the disappointment of losing a win in the last race in Hungary when his engine failed with three laps to go.

“It’s amazing after such a bad result,” Massa said. “We’ve come here to a new track and did a fantastic job; preparing the car in the sessions and choosing the right tyres, which was pretty difficult.

“Then making the pole and winning the race and making the fastest lap there is nothing more we can ask for.”

Ferrari’s pit stop system also came under the spotlight when Raikkonen made his final stop - the Finn left while the refuelling hose was still attached.

606: DEBATE
Those incidents have happened before and unless real danger is created forcing the likes of Sutil today to have an emergency stop to prevent an accident I really don’t see why more than a penalty and a reprimend are needed
carlotoone

He had pitted at the same time as McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen, who he had been attempting to pass for fourth place.

But in his keenness to get out of the pits ahead of his fellow Finn, Raikkonen knocked over one of the two men holding the refuelling hose, and had to stop again and he lost a place to Toyota’s Jarno Trulli.

A Ferrari spokesman said he thought Raikkonen had left the pits before being given the green light by the pit system.

The mechanic was taken to the circuit’s medical centre for attention.

There was worse to come for Raikkonen, when his engine failed a couple of laps later.

In the race, Raikkonen, who has not won since the Spanish Grand Prix in April, suffered again for his inability to string a competitive lap together in qualifying.

The Finn was held up behind Kovalainen in the first stint of the race, but had a particularly poor second stint, when he lapped the best part of a second slower than Massa despite being on a clear track.

Marshals push away Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari following its retirement with engine failure

It was a disastrous race for Raikkonen, who retired with engine failure

Kubica drove a lonely race, unable to challenge the leaders, but comfortably clear of the pursuing Kovalainen and Raikkonen.

Following Raikkonen’s retirement, Kovalainen was comfortable in fourth, ahead of Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Vettel, who lost out to the Italian during the first pit stops.

Toyota’s Timo Glock and Williams’s Nico Rosberg took the final points positions.

Home favourite Fernando Alonso, the reason Spain has landed a second race, had a miserable weekend in his Renault.

After qualifying a lowly 12th, the double world champion was hit from behind by Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima on the opening lap.

The incident knocked off Alonso’s rear wing and damaged his suspension and gearbox, forcing him into retirement.

Source: bbc.co.uk/

Big Brother star Goody has cancer

August 19, 2008

Big Brother star Goody has cancer

Reality TV star Jade Goody has been diagnosed with cervical cancer, her publicist has confirmed.

The 27-year-old had been appearing in an Indian version of Big Brother, called Bigg Boss.

Max Clifford told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat Goody was “extremely upset and frightened and will be back as soon as they can get her on a plane”.

Show producers confirmed Goody had left the house for “medical reasons”. She is due to arrive back in the UK later.

“Jade had some tests recently, then she went off to India to appear in the Indian Big Brother,” Mr Clifford said.

“Yesterday we got a call from her consultant to say she had cancer of the cervix and so she has to come back straight away.”

‘Shocked’

Jade Goody leaves the Big Brother house

Goody says goodbye to her Big Brother housemates

He added: “We put the consultant in touch with the programme maker in India and because of the circumstances was allowed to speak to her and explain the results of her tests.”

When asked if the result was a positive smear test or a confirmed diagnosis of cancer, Mr Clifford said: “No, it is cancer.”

“The important thing is to get her back as soon as possible and get this treated.

“Obviously there were some problems - that’s why she had tests. But she had no idea that would be the diagnosis - she was shocked.”

No further details regarding Goody’s diagnosis or treatment were given.

 

Goody had undergone tests earlier this month after collapsing and losing blood at her Essex home.

But she had decided fly to Mumbai to appear in Bigg Boss to make amends after being accused of racism towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother in the UK.

‘Unbelievable’

According to The Sun newspaper, scenes showing Goody being told of her diagnosis were not broadcast at the time and will not be shown in India.

Show bosses have yet to decide whether she will be replaced on the programme.

Shetty, who hosts the Indian show, said: “It is unbelievable, how life is so unpredictable and finds a way to distract and derail you from your plans.

“My prayers are with Jade, her family in this hour, when they face one of the biggest tests of their life in times ahead.

“I pray she comes out of this soon and stronger with happy memories from this country.”

Cervical cancer develops from cells lining the neck of the womb.

It is the second most common cancer in women under the age of 35 in the UK. There are around 2,700 new cases each year.

Source: bbc.co.uk/

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