Children In Hospital After Mass Plane Sickness

Sixty children have been treated by paramedics after some of them began vomiting and suffering diarrhoea on a flight to London.

The friends, who are aged between 10 and 14, told crew members they were feeling poorly after taking off from Dubai.

Emergency services met the plane when it landed at Heathrow

Four ambulances, as well as a rapid response bike and a hazardous materials unit, met the Emirates Airbus A380 when it landed at Heathrow airport.

Most of the children were treated on the runway but 11 were taken to hospital in Hillingdon, west London, and later discharged.

The youngsters had been travelling back from Cape Town, where they had performed together as part of the 64-strong Only Kids Aloud children's choir.

A separate platform was used to help the children from the plane

Bet Davies, of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, where the choir rehearses, said: "Some (of the children) were sick on take off, some on landing and some during the turbulence.

"The rules of the airline industry state that if more than three children are sick on the same flight, you need to have paramedics in to check on them.

"We were also anxious that they were checked out before travelling back to Wales as we have a duty of care towards them."

In total, 11 children were treated in hospital for vomiting and diarrhoea

She added: "The medics say it could have been somebody with a bit of a bug before they travelled or it could be a combination of what I describe as nausea, tiredness and not drinking enough."

Only Kids Aloud sang with multiple Grammy and Classical Brit Award winner Bryn Terfel during their trip to South Africa.

An Emirates spokesman said: "We're providing the affected passengers with all possible support and are working closely with the local authorities to investigate the issue."

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Mystery As Apple Hires Top Medical Experts

Apple has hired a raft of senior medical experts, stoking speculation about what its next big product could be.

An analysis of LinkedIn profiles by the Reuters news agency found that the tech giant has been on a hiring spree for the past year.

It found that at least six top experts in biomedicine had been signed up by the company in that time, with more tipped to join the company.

Apple has also been hiring experts in sensor technology, an area which chief executive Tim Cook said is primed to "explode".

Some industry insiders believe the company will use an anticipated "iWatch" wearable device to move into areas such as nutrition and the monitoring of blood sugar levels.

Malay Gandhi, from venture capital firm Rock Health, said: "This is a very specific play in the bio-sensing space."

Mr Cook has promised new product categories this year.

Several Apple patents point to wrist-worn devices, and in February, Apple filed a patent for a smart earbud patent that could track steps and detect gestures of the head.

One mobile health executive, who asked not to be named, told Reuters that Apple is considering a full health and fitness services platform modelled on its app store.

Joe Kiani, from medical device firm Masimo Corp, said: "Some of the talent (Apple recruited) has access to deep wells of trade secrets and information.

"They are just buying people. I just hope Apple is not doing what we're doing."

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Stephen Sutton Rejects Cancer 'Duping' Claims

A terminally ill teenager who has raised more than £3m for charity has denied "duping" people after being released from hospital following a dramatic improvement in his condition.

Stephen Sutton, who was diagnosed with incurable colorectal cancer aged 15, was recently discharged after saying he had "coughed up a tumour".

This has led to some people questioning his story, but Mr Sutton has responded by insisting that he still has incurable cancer.

Replying to one user on Twitter, Mr Sutton, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, wrote: "Sorry to disappoint you! So you know, I still have my cancer and it's still incurable, if that makes you feel less 'duped' x."

Mr Sutton recently met Prime Minister David Cameron

The Birmingham Mail has reported that one person wrote on its Facebook page: "Am I the only one who thinks something is not quite right here? While I hope I am wrong it feels like we are being conned.

"One minute he tweets saying he is dying and won't see the next day, then all of a sudden he is being released to go home.

"As I said, I hope I am wrong but I have a strange feeling about this."

Writing on Twitter on Monday, Stephen, 19, said: "I just gave a quick response, thought nothing of it and was (and still am) completely unaffected by it.

Breaking a world record was on the 19-year-old's 'bucket list'

"Trolls and cynics exist. It's a shame. But just try not to retaliate too aggressively or get too riled.

"Like I've said before: On the whole people are 'good', lets concentrate on that."

Justin Stebbing, professor of cancer medicine and oncology at Imperial College, London, told Sky News it was possible for some cancer patients to cough up tumours and have temporary respite in their condition.

He said: "I think Stephen's an amazing young man, and it's incredible what he has done.

"It's quite feasible for people to cough up pieces of tumour and be able to leave hospital.

"But unfortunately, cancer sometimes affects young people and he looks like he's a very sick young man."

A spokeswoman for Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where Mr Sutton was being treated for multiple tumours, declined to comment on his case on the grounds of patient confidentiality.

Mr Sutton experienced a huge surge in donations to his JustGiving page after celebrities used Twitter to highlight his fundraising for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Raising £1m for charity had been one of the items on his "bucket list" of 46 things to do.

On Sunday he ticked another item off the list when he set a Guinness World Record for the most people making a heart-shaped hand gesture - more than 500 people.

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Oscar Pistorius Trial: Athlete Was 'Frantic'

One of Oscar Pistorius' former neighbours has told the athlete's murder trial how he "begged" her to save his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp's life.

Carice Viljoen, who raced to the 27-year-old's home after he called her father for help, said the distressed athlete was "frantic" from the moment she stepped inside his house on Valentine's Day last year.

Pistorius covered his ears with his hands as an emotional Ms Viljoen told the court: "He was saying, 'Please, please'. He was begging me to put her in the car and take her to the hospital.

"I was kneeling at Reeva's side and there was blood everywhere."

Ms Steenkamp was shot dead on February 14, 2013. Pic: Stimulii

Earlier, Ms Viljoen's father, Johan Stander, who worked on the luxury estate in South Africa where Pistorius lived, recalled the desperate phone call from the sprinter in the early hours of the morning.

He told the court: "He said, 'Please, please, please come to my house, please. I shot Reeva. I thought she was an intruder. Please, please come quick.'"

He said he arrived at Pistorius' house around three minutes later to find the athlete "broken", "screaming" and carrying Ms Steenkamp's body down the stairs.

"Oscar was crying, really crying," he said. "He was in pain. He asked us to help him. He wanted us to put Reeva in a car and take her to hospital.

"We tried to calm him down. He was broken. He was screaming, crying, praying."

Ms Viljoen said that after getting Pistorius to lay his girlfriend on the floor, she ran upstairs, grabbed a handful of towels and used them to try to stop the bleeding.

"Oscar was holding pressure on her hip," she said. "He had his finger in her mouth, trying to help her breathe.

"He just kept asking me, 'Where's the ambulance, where's the ambulance?'

"We tried our very best to keep her alive."

Mr Stander, who used to look after Pistorius' dogs while the athlete was competing overseas, told the court his neighbour was "committed" to saving Ms Steenkamp.

Mr Stander said he found Pistorius carrying his girlfriend down the stairs

The witness, a former administrator at the Silver Woods estate in Pretoria, also said Pistorius would ask to be kept abreast of local crimes when he returned from his travels.

In one incident, he said, thieves broke through a fence and used a ladder to gain access to a house - a scenario the athlete has previously said he was concerned about.

A woman was tied up by intruders during another break-in, he added.

Pistorius' legal team are set to call ballistics, audio and psychological experts over the coming days, as the trial enters what is likely to prove a critical phase.

Sky's Special Correspondent Alex Crawford, in Pretoria, said: "The defence has to counter several prosecution claims - not least that there was a pause between shots which, crucially, would have given Ms Steenkamp time to shout out in anguish before the fatal head shot."

Pistorius admits shooting his partner but denies a charge of premeditated murder, claiming he mistook her for an intruder.

The trial continues.

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Amanda Knox: CCTV Casts Doubt Over Alibi

CCTV footage has emerged that could challenge Amanda Knox's alibi on the night Meredith Kercher was murdered.

A video obtained by Italian television shows a person resembling Knox walking through a car park away from the house the pair shared in Perugia.

The American, who this year was re-convicted of murder after a second trial, has always said she was with then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito on the night of the killing.

TV programme Quarto Grado claims the figure shown on the film has similar clothes to those worn by Knox in the days after the murder, and even compares the walk of the two people.

Amanda Knox says she had "no reason" to kill her housemate

It claims British student Meredith Kercher is also seen on the film two minutes before, apparently heading back to the house.

The route through the car park is said to be a shortcut between the property and the centre of Perugia.

Quarto Grado also says that Rudy Guede, the only person jailed for the murder, was recorded by the same video camera earlier in the evening.

The CCTV is stamped 20:53 on the night of the killing, November 1, 2007, but the Italian television programme says the time could be out by 10 minutes either way.

An author who wrote a book on the case, Barbie Latza Nadeau, told The Times the video was known about but neither side chose to use it in court.

Ms Kercher's throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted

"It's not helpful to the prosecution or the defence. If the prosecution shows someone like Amanda Knox walking away from the crime scene it's not helpful.

"For the defence, if there is a video of her anywhere near the house it's not helpful to them because her alibi is that she was at Raffaele's house," said Ms Latza Nadeau.

Ms Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was found dead in her apartment on November 2, 2007. Her throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted.

Drug dealer Rudy Guede was sentenced to 16 years for the murder

Knox and Sollecito were arrested four days later and served four years in prison before they were acquitted by an appeals court in 2011.

The high court in Italy overturned that acquittal and ordered a new trial, and in January Knox was sentenced to 28 and a half years and Sollecito 25 years.

The judge said Knox acted with Sollecito and Guede, but it was she who delivered the fatal knife blow.

Alessandro Nencini said Knox was motivated by a "desire to humiliate" Meredith Kercher after she accused the American of taking money from her room

Knox, who lives in Seattle, is appealing to Italy's highest court and last week told CNN she "never fought" with her housemate and the pair were "becoming friends".

"I did not kill my friend," she told CNN. "I did not wield a knife. I had no reason to.

"There is no trace of us. If Rudy Guede committed this crime, which he did, we know that because his DNA is there around Meredith's body - his handprints and footprints in her blood.

"None of that exists for me. If I were there, I would have traces of Meredith's broken body on me. And I would have left traces of myself around Meredith's corpse."

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Cricket Club Fights Player's Deportation

A cricket club has launched a campaign to prevent one of its players from being deported to Pakistan.

Ahad Rizvi, 19, and his sister Anum, 20, face being removed from the UK after they were detained in immigration centres at the end of March.

Their parents applied for asylum to the UK, saying they faced religious persecution in Pakistan from groups including Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhanqui, which both have ties with al Qaeda.

Dave Cullum, a member at Easton Cowboys Cricket Club in Bristol, said the first they knew about Ahad's situation was when the all-rounder failed to turn up to a training session at the start of the new season.

He told Sky News: "It's like years ago when young people used to respect their elders. Ahad is a very polite, very steady and quite serious young man.

Members of Easton Cowboys Cricket Club wear Ahad facemasks

"The cricket season has just started. We had no idea anything was wrong he was just not there at outdoor training."

Ahad is being held at Colnbrook immigration centre in West Drayton, in the west London borough of Hillingdon, while his sister is being held at Yarl's Wood near Bedford.

They were both held in custody after attending a police station in Bristol as part of their asylum application.

Members of the cricket club have been raising funds to help drive the family to visit their children as they do not have a car.

They have also set up a Facebook page, and an e-petition that calls on Home Secretary Theresa May to overturn the decision to refuse their asylum application. As of Monday morning the petition had more than 650 signatures.

The Facebook page set up to highlight Ahad and Anum's plight

Mr Cullum said: "The family are very, very distressed that they have been separated and they are in detention.

"Ahad's father came to England to further his education and improve his qualifications.

"The rest of the family came to visit, but they had word from Pakistan that an arrest warrant had been placed on the mother so they legitimately applied for asylum.

"They have never missed an appointment with the police and their only appeal is now on compassionate grounds."

Ahad's two younger brothers also play for Easton Cowboys and members of the club wore Ahad facemasks to highlight his predicament during a recent game.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The UK has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need it and we consider every application on its individual merits.

"We do not routinely comment on individual cases."

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Severe Turbulence On Plane Leaves Six Hurt

Fasten Seatbelts For More Turbulence

Updated: 11:49am UK, Tuesday 09 April 2013

Flights are set to become bumpier in the future as passengers experience more turbulence because of global warming, British scientists have warned.

Light turbulence shakes the plane, but more severe episodes can injure passengers and cause structural damage to aircraft, costing an estimated £100m a year.

A rise in turbulence would make air travel more uncomfortable and increase the risks to passengers and crew.

And detours to avoid strong patches of turbulence would lead to longer journey times, more fuel consumption and airport delays which would ultimately drive up prices, the experts said.

Climate change is not only heating up the Earth's surface but it is also destabilising the winds six miles above the planet where planes fly, the researchers at the universities of Reading and East Anglia said.

Most air passengers have probably experienced turbulence which is linked to atmospheric jet streams that are projected to strengthen with climate change.

Turbulence, which can happen without warning, is mainly caused by vertical airflow - up-draughts and down-draughts near clouds and thunderstorms.

The scientists said turbulence will be stronger and occur more often if carbon dioxide emissions double by 2050 as the International Energy Agency forecasts.

Carbon dioxide is one of the most potent greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Increasing emissions raise the global average temperature, heating up the lower atmosphere.

However, warming also changes the atmosphere six miles above ground level, making it more unstable for planes, said Paul Williams at the University of Reading and co-author of the report.

The scientists focused on the North Atlantic flight corridor - where 600 planes travel between Europe and North America each day - using computer simulations to examine the effects of climate change on conditions there.

They found that the chances of encountering significant turbulence by the middle of the century will increase by between 40 and 170%, with the most likely outcome being a doubling of airspace containing significant turbulence.

The average strength of turbulence would also increase by between 10 and 40%.

"Aviation is partly responsible for changing the climate in the first place. It is ironic that the climate looks set to exact its revenge by creating a more turbulent atmosphere for flying," Mr Williams said.

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Ukraine Helicopter Shot Down Over Slavyansk

A Ukrainian helicopter has been shot down over the pro-Russian stronghold of Slavyansk as the security situation in the country continues to worsen.

Ukraine's defence ministry said the pilots survived. Elsewhere in the east of the country four paramilitary policemen were shot dead in fighting.

A number of other rebels and civilians are also thought to have been killed or injured, according to Sky's Stuart Ramsay, who is in eastern Ukraine.

The helicopter, an Mi-24, came under fire from a heavy machine gun and crashed into a river.

The ministry said the crew were evacuated to a nearby camp but did not give details about their condition.

At least three other helicopters have been shot down by pro-Russian rebels in the violence that is increasing in eastern parts of the country.

Pictures shot by news wires on Monday showed pro-Russia rebels carrying rocket launchers and rocket propelled grenades.

The four Ukrainian security personnel who died were killed in fighting near Slavyansk that also injured 30 others, the interior ministry said.

The funeral of 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova in Kramatorsk

Ukraine's government said the dead men were ambushed by separatist rebels on the outskirts of the city but other reports said they were involved in operations to clear checkpoints from surrounding roads.

Stuart Ramsay, who saw the helicopter come down, said: "The helicopter was picking up soldiers. It would have been travelling very slowly.

"The fighting was very intense this morning. It was described as an ambush but we understand it was part of the Ukraine government's attempts to take out a ring of checkpoints."

The fighting has been intensifying since the Ukrainian forces began an operation nearly two weeks ago to remove the rebels from their strongholds in a number of eastern towns and cities.

Reuters reported that cars were seen ferrying wounded people from the sites of clashes on the separatist side but there were no casualty figures.

One civilian woman in Slavyansk was reported to have been hit in the head by a bullet, and pictures showed the funeral of a 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova, in Kramatorsk, who was said to have been killed in fighting in the surrounding area in the days before.

The Interior Minister drafted a new special forces unit into the southern port city of Odessa to tackle pro-Russian separatists there after a weekend of violence that left dozens dead.

The violence in Odessa, a culturally mixed city way away from the towns hit by fighting in the east, was seen as a turning point in Kiev, encroaching for the first time beyond Russian-speaking areas.

Hours of clashes between pro-Russia activists on the streets of the one million-strong city ended when the protesters withdrew to a building that later burnt down with the loss of over 40 lives - bloodshed that Moscow blamed on Kiev.

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Gerry Adams Warned Of 'Credible Death Threat'

Gerry Adams: Barman To Political Operator

Updated: 2:15pm UK, Thursday 01 May 2014

Gerry Adams has been president of Sinn Fein since 1983 and has always denied membership of the IRA.

But he defended its gunmen for a substantial period of the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland.

A hate figure in 1980s Britain, he was banned from speaking on British television and radio in October 1988.

It meant viewers and listeners could not hear his voice, but that of an actor's instead, reading from a transcript.

The prison hunger strikes of 1981, during which one of the inmates, the IRA's former commanding officer Bobby Sands was elected as MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, prompted Sinn Fein - and Mr Adams - to move towards electoral politics.

In 1980 he said: "The British realise there can be no military victory. It is time that republicans realised there can be no military victory."

And he described the 1984 Grand Hotel, Brighton bombing at the Tory Party conference - which nearly killed Margaret Thatcher - as "a blow for democracy".

He said Sands' election "exposed the lie that the hunger strikers - and by extension the IRA and the whole republican movement - had no popular support".

He himself was elected to the British Parliament in 1983 as MP for Belfast West.

However, he refused to take his seat in the House of Commons - and again when he was re-elected in the same constituency in 1997.

Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major once said the thought of sitting down with him "turned his stomach".

The voice ban was lifted in September 1994, two weeks after the first ceasefire was announced by the Provisional IRA, which Mr Adams helped broker.

As head of the political wing of the IRA, Mr Adams was a key player in the peace process, which concluded with the Belfast Agreement, signed on Good Friday in 1998.

President Bill Clinton invited Mr Adams to the White House for St Patrick's Day celebrations in 1995.

And Mr Adams made history by visiting 10 Downing Street at the invitation of the Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The peace deal largely ended three decades of violence between republican paramilitaries seeking union with Ireland and mainly loyalist paramilitaries, who wanted to maintain Northern Ireland's position as a part of the UK.

It also paved the way for an end to the IRA's armed campaign in 2005 when it pledged to dump its arms and commit to a political solution which culminated with a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

Since the Good Friday Agreement Mr Adams is now widely regarded a statesman, and has also written 13 books.

In 2010 he resigned his Westminster seat and has since represented County Louth in the Irish parliament.

He was born on October 6, 1948, in Belfast to parents who came from republican backgrounds.

After finishing school he worked as barman before he became interested in politics and civil rights and got involved in the Irish republican movement, joining Sinn Fein in 1964, and surviving an assassination attempt in 1984 by the loyalist paramilitary UDA.

He married his wife Collette in 1971 with whom he has a son, Gerald.

His brother Liam was sentenced last year to 16 years in prison for raping his daughter Aine Tyrell - who waived her right to anonymity - when she was a child.

Shortly after she made the allegations public in a 2009 television documentary, Gerry Adams revealed that his father, also called Gerry, a veteran IRA man, had physically and sexually assaulted members of the family.

The Sinn Fein leader has rejected claims he was involved in the 1972 murder of widowed mother-of-10 Jean McConville as "malicious".

He has been implicated by two republicans - former IRA commander Brendan Hughes and Old Bailey bomber Dolours Price - in taped interviews they gave before their deaths to a research project at Boston College in the United States.

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Nigerian Girls' Kidnapper: 'I Will Sell Them'

The Islamist kidnapper of more than 200 Nigerian girls missing since April 14 has vowed to sell them, reports say.

Abubakar Shekau claimed in a video obtained by the AFP news wire service that a buyer for the schoolgirls would be found.

Describing the students as "slaves," he said: "I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah."

At least 276 youngsters were seized from their school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state, north Nigeria, by Boko Haram militants three weeks ago.

Nigerian police said 53 managed to escape shortly after the attack, but at least 223 are still missing. Relatives suggest that figure could be considerably higher.

Reports had previously circulated that some of the girls missing have already been sold as brides across Nigeria's border with Chad and Cameroon for as little as £7 ($12).

The girls were abducted from Borno state three weeks ago

It is not clear whether the video was recorded before or after those reports.

It marked the first time Boko Haram has admitted carrying out the abduction.

The group, whose name means "Western education is sinful," regularly attacks civilian targets. However, the brazenness of the school attack - during which the girls were rounded up and put on to trucks - has shocked Nigerians accustomed to atrocities in the five-year conflict with the insurgents.

A group called "Bring Back Our Girls," comprised of relatives of the missing students, have staged regular protests across Nigeria calling for the government and military to do more to find the girls.

President Goodluck Jonathan took to the radio and TV on Sunday night to respond to criticism over his government's handling of the crisis.

Relatives have held a series of protests to pressure Nigerian authorities

He said: "We promise that anywhere the girls are, we will surely get them out."

The president said he had asked US President Barack Obama, Britain, France and China, for help to counter the activities of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram.

And he dismissed claims his government was negotiating with Boko Haram.

He also pleaded for the parents of the missing girls and their local communities to co-operate with the rescue efforts during what he described as a "trying" and "painful" time.

It came amid claims that protest leader Naomi Mutah Nyadar was arrested at the presidential palace after holding a meeting with Nigeria's First Lady, Patience Jonathon.

First Lady and President of Nigeria Patience and Goodluck Jonathan

Fellow protester Hadiza Bala Usman said Ms Nyadar was arrested "at the request of the first lady" after falsely identifying herself as one of the mothers of the girls.

Another, Lawan Abana, said Ms Nyadar was in fact representing mothers who could not make it to the meeting in Nigeria's capital Abuja and had never claimed otherwise.

Protester Saratu Angus Ndirpaya added that Patience Jonathan had abused the women gathered at the presidential palace and expressed doubts there was any kidnapping. She also allegedly accused them of belonging to Boko Haram.

AP journalists waiting outside the police station in Abuja, where Ms Nyadar was apparently being held, saw the protest leader bundled into a presidential car and driven away.

Ayo Adewuyi, spokesman for first lady Patience Jonathan, told AP there was a meeting but he was unaware of any arrests.

"The first lady did not order the arrest of anybody, and I'm sure of that," he said.

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