Werner Herzog is the director of more than 50 films

German director Werner Herzog will head the jury at the Berlin Film Festival next year, organisers have announced.

Herzog, 67, will head the international panel that selects the winners of the coveted Golden and Silver Bear prizes.

Best known for films like Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, he was nominated for the best documentary Oscar this year for Encounters at the End of the World.

Festival head Dieter Kosslick praised Herzog for making films that "convey the artistic strength of cinema."

"We are very pleased to have this outstanding director as jury president for the 60th anniversary of the festival."

Herzog’s sequel to The Bad Lieutenant, with Nicolas Cage as an unconventional New Orleans police officer, was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September.

At the same event he unveiled another work, the quirkily titled My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.

The 60th Berlin Film Festival runs from 11 to 21 February 2010.

Last year’s jury, headed by actress Tilda Swinton, gave the Golden Bear to Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow.

The 24th series began with 21,000 audience members dancing to The Black Eyed Peas hit I Gotta Feeling

The Oprah Winfrey Show is to end in September 2011, after 25 years on the air.

From controversies to celebrity sofa-jumping, here are some of the most memorable moments from the chat show’s history.

The very first episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast on 8 September, 1986. Initially, the format was more akin to a talk show, covering everyday issues with everyday people.

How to Marry the Man or Woman of Your Dreams was described as "a good old fashioned dating show" by producers. The topic struck a chord with viewers, easing the show on to the road to success.

To represent her recent 67lbs (30kg) weight loss, in November 1988, Winfrey wheeled out a wagon carrying the same amount of fat. It was to start a national obsession with her yo-yoing weight.

She later described it as her "biggest, fattest" mistake saying: "I had literally starved myself for four months to get into that pair of size 10 jeans. Two hours after that show, I started eating to celebrate – of course, within two days those jeans no longer fit!"

Winfrey delighted nearly 300 audience member by giving them new cars

Winfrey has become famous for her gift-giving stunts.

Annually since 2002, a segment entitled Oprah’s Favourite Things has seen audience members being given everything from laptops to camcorders, clothes, TVs, DVD players and credit cards loaded with $1000 (£607).

At the start of series 19 in 2005, Winfrey surprised nearly 300 members of her audience by giving them each a new car – a prize fund worth $7m (£4.5m).

Winfrey’s interview with Michael Jackson in 1993 from his Neverland Ranch is the highest rated single episode of the chat show.

The interview saw the star take Winfrey on a tour of his house and grounds, perform the moonwalk in his private theatre and address many of the rumours surrounding him including the revelation he suffered from the skin-pigment disorder vitiligo.

During a discussion about mad cow disease in 1996, Winfrey commented that she had been put off eating burgers. Two years later, a group of Texas cattle ranchers sued Winfrey for libel.

The entire Oprah Winfrey show had to be moved to Amarillo, Texas, for a month while a trial was conducted. However, a gagging order meant Winfrey was not allowed to mention the trial on her show or explain why she was there. She was later acquitted on all charges in 2002.

The Hollywood star appeared on the show in May 2005 to promote his latest film, War of the Worlds.

However the interview became more famous for Cruise’s excitable behaviour as he jumped around the sofa and fell to his knees with declarations of love for his then-girlfriend Katie Holmes.

After repeatedly hugging Winfrey, the star ended up running backstage and dragged an embarrassed looking Holmes back on set to display his affection for her even more.

A host of celebrities and politicians have appeared on the show

A whole host of celebrities and politicians have lined up to either promote their wares or talk about their personal problems on Oprah. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a celebrity who has not been on the show.

Recent guests have included signer Whitney Houston, who gave her first major interview for seven years, and opened up about her drug addiction; and Mackenzie Phillips, who alleged she had a 10-year incestuous relationship with her father John Phillips, leader of 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.

Other heavyweights include Liberace, who made his final public appearance on Oprah on Christmas Day in 1986, dying six weeks later from Aids; and Elizabeth Taylor who refused to answer questions about her marriages and current relationship. Winfrey later described it as her worst ever interview.

Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor stars Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis also got a US boost when Simon Cowell brought both of them to Oprah’s attention.

Winfrey began Oprah’s Book Club in 1996, where a new novel would be selected each month for viewers to read and discuss. Titles chosen became bestsellers overnight, often selling several million copies thanks to Winfrey’s endorsement.

However, the star’s endorsement of James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, landed her in controversy in 2005 after a whistle-blowing website revealed that chunks of the book – dealing with his recovery from drug addiction – were fabricated.

Winfrey invited Frey onto the show and forced him to admit he lied about the claims made in his book.

The first episode of the latest series saw 21,000 audience members in Chicago surprise Winfrey by breaking out in a synchronised dance routine while the Black Eyed Peas performed their hit I Gotta Feeling.

The dance had been taught to the entire crowd earlier in the day.

Freddie Mercury wrote some of his classic songs at his parents’ London home

Eighteen years after the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, the people of Feltham in west London are preparing to honour him with a commemorative pavement star.

Mercury was born Farrukh Bulsara in Zanzibar, 1946, to parents originally from Mumbai.

He went to boarding school in India, and along with his family moved to west London in 1964 where he enrolled in art college and embarked on his musical career.

The star’s 87-year-old mother, Jer Bulsara, spoke to BBC Asian Network’s Dil Neiyyar about her memories of her famous son.

In a bungalow in a quiet Midlands cul-de sac, an 87-year-old year woman looks longingly at pictures of her son.

Her eyes moisten and her chest fills with pride as her fingers caress the images.

"I’m so proud of him," she whispers.

The pictures are of Freddie Mercury and the woman lingering over them is his mother, Jer Bulsara.

Jer Bulsara has proud recollections of her superstar son

"We were in Feltham for quite some time. Freddie used to come and visit us. So it’s nice that he is remembered by the people there," she says.

"He really wanted to come to England. Being a teenager he was aware about these things in Western countries and it attracted him," explains Mrs Bulsara.

She says that Freddie was a performer from a very early age.

"He used to love playing records all the time and then sing – any sort of music, folk, classical or Indian music."

But the youngster’s cheery spirit was put to the test when he was sent to boarding school in Mumbai. At first he was upset at being separated from his family in Africa and was homesick.

Singing for supper

But he soon made friends with other students and formed a band called The Hectics. He was an accomplished musician and was even happy to perform for his supper.

"Any sort of music in the school he used to play and sometimes he used to play at the weekend because it was [near] a holiday resort.

"So foreigners used to come in the hotel and he was asked to play piano for them, and all just for a free dinner. He used to do that. He used to love it and it was great," beams his mother.

Freddie was 16 when the family moved to Britain. His mother and father, Bomi, were initially keen for him to continue his studies.

He used to write some of the songs down and tuck them under the pillow before going to college Jer Bulsara

"He knew we wanted him to be a lawyer or an accountant or something like that, because most of his cousins were.

"But he’d say, ‘I’m not that clever mum. I’m not that clever’".

It soon became apparent to the family that Freddie wanted a career in music, and at their humble terraced home he composed music that would later make him world famous.

"He used to write some of the songs down and tuck them under the pillow before going to college," his mother says.

"I used to tell him, ‘Don’t you put rubbish underneath or I’ll throw it away!’. He used to say ‘Don’t throw it away, Mum, it’s very important," she laughs.

But he was soon forced to choose between living with his parents and his love of music.

"The neighbours were elderly and said that it was disturbing them. He was a very conscientious man. He knew it was disturbing them.

"I was sad when he left but he said, ‘This is the only way to move forward, Mum’.

Flamboyant Freddie was a Top of the Pops regular in the 1970s

"I just told him to work hard, do his best and we were here to help him," adds Mrs Bulsara.

Freddie moved to Kensington in central London and from there his musical career took off. But he would continue to visit his parents regularly, even after he’d become a superstar.

"He used to phone me because he used to love home cooking. He’d say, ‘Mum, I’m coming home’ and he’d come in his Rolls Royce and the neighbours were all excited about it.

"But nobody bothered him, they were all very good and used to respect us and him," she says.

His mother’s cooking even sustained Queen during long recording sessions which would stretch late into the night.

"When he used to go to studio for his music he loved the cheese biscuits that I used to bake," his mother says.

Eighteen years after his death, Queen and Freddie Mercury’s legacy continue to go from strength to strength, with The X Factor recently paying homage to the band and their songs.

Mrs Bulsara is particularly proud that his former home town is now going to honour her son.

"I thought that they’d have done it earlier a lot earlier. A long time earlier. But anyway I’m very proud," she says.

Hear the full story on Asian Network Reports at 1230 BST and 1800 BST on Friday, or listen again on BBC iPlayer.

Sir Edward Elgar might be one of the best known British composers, but playing the trombone did not number among his many musical skills.

How can you expect me to play this dodgasted thing if you laugh? Sir Edward Elgar

"I don’t think he played it very well," says Sue Addison, Principal Trombone with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, who has wiped off the dust to play the instrument for the first time since his death in 1934.

Elgar probably first picked up the instrument fairly late in his life, and never seems to have got to grips with it.

The composer first mentions his new hobby in 1900, when he was 43 years old, signing off a letter to his publicist with the words "PS I’m learning the trombone".

His friend Dora Penny later wrote of going to visit Elgar:

"On one occasion he got up and fetched a trombone that was standing in a corner and began trying to play passages in the score.

"He didn’t do it very well and often played a note higher or lower than the one he wanted… and as he swore every time that happened I got into such a state of hysterics that I didn’t know what to do. Then he turned on me:

"’How can you expect me to play this dodgasted thing if you laugh?’

"I went out of the room as quickly as I could and sat on the stairs, clinging to the banisters till the pain eased, but it was no good.

"I couldn’t stop there as he went on making comic noises, so I went downstairs out of ear-shot for a bit."

Perhaps put off by the underwhelming support, Elgar eventually gave up the instrument, donating it during World War I to the YMCA for use by wounded soldiers.

The trombone then appeared to go missing, but resurfaced in 1934 in the Ealing YMCA, after a newspaper advert inquired about its whereabouts.

Since then it has been housed in the Royal College of Music, next to the trombone owned by fellow composer Gustav Holst, who could actually play the instrument.

Sue Addison remembered having seen it there as a student and resurrected it for a forthcoming performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

"Strangely enough, Holst’s trombone seems to play much better," she says.

"You can certainly make a lot of weird noises on Elgar’s. But you can also play beautiful music on it."

Six channels run by universities are also involved in the initial launch.

YouTube’s parent company Google has announced on its blog that automatic captions are to begin to roll out across the site.

The machine-generated captions will initially be generated in English. At first they will only be found on 13 channels.

These include National Geographic, Columbia, as well as most Google and YouTube channels.

The software engineer behind the technology, Ken Harrenstien, is deaf.

Currently YouTube offers a manual captioning service but video makers tend not to use it.

"The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me," Mr Harrenstien wrote in the Google blog.

His solution combines automatic speech recognition with the current caption system.

The translation is not always perfect (in a demonstration the phrase "sim card" becomes "salmon" in text), but Mr Harrenstien says that the technology "will continue to improve with time".

Alternatively users can upload a transcript of their video and auto-timing algorithms will match the text to the words as they are spoken.

Vint Cerf, vice president at Google, is widely recognised as a founding father of the internet. He is also hard of hearing and has worn a hearing aid since the age of 13.

"One of the big challenges of the video medium is whether it can be made accessible to everyone," he told news agency AFP.

Earlier in the week YouTube announced the launch of YouTube Direct, a feed of uploaded amateur videos of newsworthy events such as protests and extreme weather conditions.

It is aimed at the media industry, and editors who subscribe will be able to request the phone numbers of contributors. So far it has been trialled by a select group of radio stations, newspapers and websites in the US.

Facebook has an estimated 250million users worldwide

Facebook has threatened legal action against a service that sells friends on the social networking site.

It said it would take the action against marketing firm USocial unless it stopped violating Facebook’s rights.

It also wanted USocial to stop helping members break the site’s terms and conditions, specifically letting people profit from their profile.

In response, USocial agreed to a change in its practices but would not shut down its service.

Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.

Customers of USocial use it to boost follower and friend numbers on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

On micro-blogging site Twitter, followers can be bought in blocks starting at £53 for 1,000. The biggest block USocial is selling is 100,000 people.

USocial defended itself against Facebook’s claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles.

However, in response to the legal letters, USocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends. It also put a notice on its site saying it was not affiliated with Facebook.

However, it said, there was "possibility" that it would resell the service in the future. If it was to re-start the service it said it would let Facebook know beforehand.

Linn will stop making CD players, but not turntables for vinyl

A manufacturer of hi-fi systems has sounded what it said could be the death knell of the compact disc player.

Linn Products has become the first manufacturer to announce it will give up on CDs from the start of next year.

Instead, the niche company, based in East Renfrewshire, will focus on producing digital streaming equipment.

The firm, which makes systems costing from £2,500 to more than £100,000, said discerning customers recognised the superior quality of digital streaming.

Yet it continues to make turntables for vinyl records, as there remains a demand for the quality of sound compression offered by older record technology.

Linn, which has its own small record label, foresees a move to what it calls Studio Master Quality material, available for download.

Digital players

The shift from CD players to digital music streamers has been very recent. It was only during 2009 that the digital players outsold Linn’s CD players.

The newer technology allows digital streaming through other operating systems, including home computers and networking throughout homes.

Gilad Tiefenbrun, managing director of Linn Products, said: "Our customers have fast recognised the limitations of CD players and in the age of home networking, people now want better control of their music and the ability to enjoy it in any room of their home.

"CD players no longer belong in the specialist domain."

The company reckons that the CD format will continue to be useful as a way of recording and storing music. It claims that a CD recorded onto a hard disk can achieve a higher quality than one played on a CD player.

Falling CD sales

Compact discs began commercial music sales in 1982, replacing the cassette tape as well as vinyl records. The shift from compact discs to digital downloading is again changing the music market.

BPI, representing the British recorded music industry, announced last month that 2009 had already broken last year’s record number of legally downloaded single and individual track sales. Of 117 million sales, nearly 99% were digital downloads.

But there is a different market for album sales. CD sales continue to dominate, but their share of the market is sliding.

In 2006, there were 154 million album sales, of which CDs accounted for 151m, and digital for 2.7m.

In 2007, with 138m sales, 131m were CDs and 6.2m were digital.

In 2008, there were 137m album sales, with 123m CDs and 10.3m digital downloads. Vinyl records, cassettes and other formats accounted for around 300,000.

Some shops opened with a fanfare then quietly closed

Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you’d be forgiven for asking if it’s still going.

Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn’t plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines.

Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their "second life" online.

And everything about this world can be customised for a price – new outfits, drinks in a bar, even a luxury mansion can be bought with Linden dollars.

Mentions of Second Life first crept into the UK media mainstream in early 2006.

The Maldives were the first to open a virtual embassy in 2007

A year later, newspapers fell over themselves to cover it, devoting many column inches in their business, technology and lifestyle sections to profiles and trend pieces. By the end of 2007 Second Life had secured more than 600 mentions in UK newspapers and magazines, according to the media database Lexis Nexis.

IBM bought property in 2006, American Apparel opened a shop the same summer, Reuters installed avatar journalist Adam Pasick – also known as Adam Reuters – to report on virtual happenings, and countries established virtual embassies.

The number of people joining the site jumped from 450,000 to four million in 2007.

But just as quickly as it had flared, media interest ebbed away. References plummeted by 40% in 2008 and dropped further this year. And businesses diverted their resources back to real life.

American Apparel closed its shop just one year after opening. Reuters pulled its correspondent in October 2008. When asked about his virtual experience, Pasick says: "It isn’t a subject we like to revisit."

So, what happened?

SECOND LIFE’S PRECURSOR In Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, a seminal sci-fi work of the 90s, one of the plots is that there was this whole metaverse exactly like Second Life, only cooler. You had a whole generation of people who read Snow Crash and were talking about this idea of the internet as a 3D world you could immerse yourself in Ben Hammersley

Not much, says Wired UK editor-at-large Ben Hammersley, and that was the problem.

"You could go and open these stores and no-one would turn up," he says.

"They would have 20 to 30 people there when it opened, and after that no-one would bother going in there again. It just wasn’t worth the spend."

The "spend" varied from business to business. A retailer like American Apparel might spend £10,000 on designers, as well as storage space from Linden Lab, to build a virtual store.

But at the peak of the hype, the cost of purchasing or building property was worth it.

"The first to go online would make the front page of the Guardian," Mr Hammersley says. "But when you’re the 15th country who goes on Second Life, no magazine, no newspaper touches it."

Some businesses and users found it wasn’t quite for them. The technology wasn’t easily grasped and some computers couldn’t handle it.

Second Life has had to temper its ambitions for the quality of graphics to extend its accessibility across varying speeds of broadband around the world, leading to complaints about the cartoony look and feel of the site.

And there is a fundamental question about whether Second Life is a game or a social networking site.

"It’s not a really good social space," Mr Hammersley says. "Not as good as Facebook or any general online forum.

Avatars can walk, fly and teleport

Simon Gardner, a 23-year-old freelance social media marketer, believed the hype in 2007.

He signed on, created an avatar with a shock of red hair that vaguely resembled him, and jumped into what he found to be a lacklustre experience.

"It was a real pain. You have to learn how to control things and read manuals on how to get to islands and get off. Half the time you’re just wandering around talking to weirdos."

After three months Mr Gardner became bored and left.

Mobile dilemma

And the online social network scene is a crowded one. "The key to anything online is to get a broader reach of people," says Jim Clark of market researchers Mintel. The learning curve required for Second Life prevents many general users from returning regularly.

As more people turn to smart phones, sites need a mobile presence to stay relevant.

"Mobile is the future of any activity online. This is something that Second Life will struggle to penetrate," says Mr Clark.

This is because the graphics require more memory than current smart phones can handle.

But Linden Labs isn’t worried, because the number of users continues to rise.

"Monthly repeat login – a metric we use to gauge the number of users engaged with Second Life – grew 23% from September 2008 to September 2009," says Mark Kingdon, chief executive of Linden Lab.

In IBM’s Virtual Green Data Center, avatars can seek IT advice

On average, a million people log in each month, he says. In October 2009, 75,000 of those were in the UK.

And the site continues to evolve, Mr Kingdon says. It launched a new product earlier this month geared towards businesses, and will soon be launching more user-friendly and intuitive software.

And many companies and organisations are still hold on to their virtual selves – 1,400 of them says Mr Kingdon. IBM continues to be an avid supporter of Second Life.

But for many others, the jury is out.

Send us your comments using the form below.

It’s the ultimate sandbox to build whatever you can imagine. Hospitals & universities are using it, Harvard Law School is one among many who teaches there. Reuters missed every major story while they had a site in SL. It’s wonderful for builders, artists, and live performers to start out, but no-one is going to login to it to buy trainers.
Pam, UK

I’ve just had my third "birthday" in Second Life and fully intend to have many more there. I attribute my happiness there to four simple rules I follow, three DON’Ts and one DO:
1) I don’t run a business – I have enough of that in real life. Second Life is a hobby and I’m willing to pay for my hobby.
2) I don’t get into relationships – far too dangerous as I’m a happily married family man. My Second Life friends are not ‘friends with benefits’.
3) I don’t get involved in arguments and fighting – enough of that in real life.
4) I do have a reason to go there – like real life, Second Life is not Facebook, which is simply about keeping in touch with people in your network. I was lost at first, but quickly found new friends and new things to do. I help run a travelling vaudeville theatre group and write & perform comedy acts – something I’d never have thought of doing in real life. In fact my second life is as busy and involved as my first. Second Life has a healthy and growing population that doesn’t need hype and counter-hype to continue to grow and enjoy it.
HeadBurro Antfarm, RL is Lancashire, SL is Steelhead

Another of SL’s weaknesses is that events happen in real time. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace would not work so well if you could only communicate with your friends when you’re both online. My experience of many events in SL is that I tend to spend more time explaining to people about Second Life, how to use it, how to set up microphones etc, than I do enjoying the event. Perhaps if a client were available for consoles then interest could be bought back in.
Darren Wall

Updates; that was what killed it for me. Every time you revisited you were compelled to upload more and more updates, which seemed really cool at first, until you realised that you were inflating the spec. Eventually, the technological improvements outstripped the natural upgrading budget of the average PC owner – there were a lot of stay-at-home moms, kids and freelancers online when I was there – and the experience became like wading through buggy sludge until it crashed on you. Not pleasant.
Jon A, Bristol, UK

I joined SL but it was absolutely impossible to navigate. I could barely get out of the intro area and once you did, there was no help or guidance left. I wandered round and round in circles for a couple of days and then gave up. It was a great idea but just didn’t work in practice. Shame, really.
Emma, UK

Use media as a measurement of how well an online community is surviving is much like determining the health of your car by the number of pedestrians that look at you drive past. Secondly, the idea of the Net in Second Life’s form was from William Gibson in the 80s, not Stephenson in the 90s.
Rob Lang, Reading

I don’t remember the media falling over themselves to cover Second Life. The BBC always did though. I could never work out why, with so many larger, more important online communities out there, the Beeb chose to focus so heavily on one that was relatively small and obscure.
Sarah, Maidstone, England

Second Life (and I’m not a user but have/had an account) is just as viable than it was before the hype. It appeals to people who wish to escape reality – so anyone trying to replicate reality find there was no business case. Unfortunately this tenancy to seek out and hype the new and quirky (and equate numbers growth with success) confuses and distracts people from what is important – and proven – online v what is novel and unproven.
Duane Raymond, London, UK

Twitter will go the same way.
Adam, Dundee

I spent two years on Second Life. Were it not for finding good company in the trivia game community, I would never have stayed that long. Most of the other things I found a bit pointless and superficial.
Rickson Barbosa

Don’t confuse hype with success. I am sure you are as aware of Gartner’s Hype Cycle as I am: Second Life has been through the over-hype, where it suffered particularly from corporates completely missing the point – they could hardly do anything but fail. Today, Second Life seems healthily on what Gartner called the Slope of Enlightenment, on the way to the Plateau of Productivity. Where Second Life really scores today in my view is as a teaching environment, and as a venue for virtual conferences and events which are far more cost-effective and environmentally sound than flying people across the world. As far as teaching environments are concerned, look at the Frideswide region where the University of Oxford’s WWI Poetry Digital Archive has established a stunning presentation of aspects of their collection in a simulated Western Front.
Richard E, Cambridge UK

I set up a Second Life account and spent a few hours trying to figure out how the whole thing worked – I failed and gave up and have never been back. As with any technology or service usability is important.
Ed, London

Second Life is boring! You can’t do anything without spending money, so for the person casually checking it out, there’s absolutely nothing to attract them. And despite the comment in the article about "talking to weirdos", it’s actually quite difficult to find anyone in there to talk to at all.
Vince, Croydon, UK

I have been visiting Second Life on and off for three years and it is what you make of it, like anything else. I do not consider myself to be a weirdo and I am certainly not looking for cheap thrills or an extra-marital affair. I have SL friends who I regularly chat with and they range from university professors to gardeners and from teachers to artists. A wide social mix of people visit Second Life, which is certainly the best virtual world without a shadow of a doubt. As a building tool Second Life is terrific eg: I designed a kitchen extension online that you can walk around as opposed to paying an architect a fortune to draw it for me. It is not for everybody but to write it off now would be incredibly premature.
RC Robjohn, London

It’s better than any social networking or chat room. It’s more interactive. Although there are a lot of rude people on there especially new users/avatars. I met my wife on there. However you can grow bored of it and its speed sometimes is slow. I now go on it once every couple of weeks.
Rob H, Wolves, UK

Second Life is STILL huge… any search on the web will prove that due to the reams of blogs, articles and content generated by the metaverse. The problem is it faced a lot of negative press, which detracted from the actual user experience. It’s not all about geeks and perverts – many people use Second life as a way to perform their music in a live environment. It’s also a great outlet for creators, I know of many people who make living wages from the items they sell in-world. That said, it’s not all about money, it’s all about user experience. I’ve made lots of new friends and learned new technical skills from my time in world. People who want to try it should research it first and assess their expectations – sure you can use it as a social networking tool, but you have to build up that network first of all unless you already have friends in world. Basically, if you go into the metaverse with no clear ambitions then you are going to struggle, but if you want to use Second Life as a creative outlet then you’ll find it a very rewarding one indeed.
Kitty O’Toole (Lisa Millar), Jasper Islands, Second Life (Chesterfield, UK)

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Experts warn that universities’ e-mail systems are vulnerable to attacks

The e-mail system of one the world’s leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.

E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.

An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.

"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the spokesman stated.

"Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine.

"This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation.

"We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry."

Researchers at CRU, one of the world’s leading research bodies on natural and human-induced climate change, played a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, which is considered to be the most authoritative report of its kind.

‘Inside information’

Graham Cluley, a computer security expert, suggested that December’s key climate summit in Copenhagen, which has made headlines around the world, could have increased the university’s profile as a possible target among hackers.

"There are passionate opinions on both sides of the climate debate and there will be people trying to knock down the other side," Mr Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, told BBC News.

"If they feel that they can gather inside information on what the other side is up to, then they may feel that is ammunition for their counterargument."

Mr Cluley added that universities were vulnerable to attacks by hackers because some many people required access to IT systems.

"You do need proper security in place; you need to be careful regarding communications and make sure your systems are secure.

"I trust that they will now be looking at the systems, and investigating how this happened and ensuring that something like this does not happen again."

Costar, Hubble’s “spectacles”, was removed in May and returned to Earth

Two instruments that served more than 15 years aboard the Hubble telescope have gone on display in the US.

Washington DC’s National Air and Space Museum is the new home for the WFPC-2 and Costar, which once served as the telescope’s eyes and its spectacles.

The two instruments were replaced during a servicing mission in May.

They will depart in December for a brief tour of California before returning permanently to the museum in March 2010.

The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or Costar, was a suite of optics providing the fix for a manufacturing fault that initially stymied Hubble’s mission.

The “Pillars of Creation” image became as famous as the telescope

A tiny flaw in the curvature of the telescope’s main mirror meant its first images were blurred.

In 1993, Costar was installed to act as "spectacles" to correct the images for a range of Hubble’s instruments and cameras. In addition, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) was installed, which already had the optical fix built into it.

The rejuvenated telescope then began to produce some of the most stunning images astronomers – and the public – have ever seen.

The WFPC-2 was responsible for the ubiquitous image of the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation", among 135,000 others during its 15 years in space.

The two instruments were removed in the final Hubble servicing mission in May and returned to Earth.

"This was the camera that saved Hubble," said Dr Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa’s science mission directorate.

"I have looked forward for a long time to stand in front of this very instrument while on display to the public."

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum holds thousands of artefacts from the history of aviation and spaceflight.

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is ready to re-start following a programme of repairs to rectify damage caused by an accident last year.

The fault, which caused one tonne of helium to leak into the tunnel that houses the LHC, occurred just nine days after the collider was switched on to much fanfare.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) has spent some 40m Swiss francs (£24m) on repairing the machine following the embarrassing mishap.

What was the accident that shut down the LHC?

The Large Hadron Collider started up on 10 September 2008. Engineers successfully sent proton beams in opposite directions around the 27km-long circular tunnel underground.

But just nine days later, a major accident in the tunnel forced Cern to switch off the machine.

An investigation confirmed that the cause of the accident was an electrical fault in a "soldering joint" linking two of the 1,200 "superconducting" magnets that steer sub-atomic particles around the LHC.

Superconductivity is the property, exhibited by some materials at very low temperatures, of channelling electrical current with zero resistance and very little power loss.

The fault triggered the release of helium within one of the magnets. This caused a pressure increase which lifted several of the superconducting magnets off their supports, breaking the interconnections between them.

This chain of events also triggered numerous magnet "quenches". A quench occurs when part of a magnet heats up, causing its superconducting properties to be lost.

The accident also caused about one tonne of helium to leak out into the tunnel. Liquid helium is used to cool the LHC to its operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F).

What repairs had to be made?

Engineers needed to replace 53 superconducting magnets in all. Some 54 electrical interconnections were fully repaired, while partial repairs were made to another 150 interconnections.

Over 4km of beam tube – the piping which carries sub-atomic particles through the magnets – had to be cleaned following the incident.

Cern also said it would fit a restraining system to some magnets and install hundreds of helium pressure release ports around the machine.

Could the same kind of incident happen again?

Cern officials say they are confident that the re-fit will prevent accidents of the kind that happened in September 2008.

To this end, they have also been upgrading the system which is designed to provide warning of magnet quenches.

Engineers have had to install hundreds of new detectors around the machine.

The incident delayed the LHC’s “science run” by more than a year

Among other things, the upgraded quench protection system is expected to improve monitoring of the interconnections between magnets.

Gianluigi Arduini, deputy head of hardware commissioning for the LHC, told BBC News: "It will allow us to constantly monitor the status of the interconnections. If there is any deterioration detected by the system, the powering of the magnets will be automatically stopped, preventing any damage."

Is the LHC in full working order now?

Almost. Since the incident in 2008, engineers have discovered the collider has hundreds to thousands of flawed electrical splices between magnets.

These do not need urgent repair, but they do limit the amount of current which can be safely put into the machine.

Officials have decided to put off repairing all the faulty splices. Instead, when the collider begins circulating proton beams, engineers have been told not to exceed a maximum "safe" limit of five trillion electron volts.

Secondly, tests have uncovered concerns about a number of the magnets themselves. All LHC magnets undergo a "training" process, in which engineers crank up the electrical current until the magnets quench.

After a few iterations, a stable configuration is reached where the magnet can reliably operate at the current it was designed for.

The magnets had been trained to their operating current before being lowered into the LHC tunnel. But once connected underground, some of them were found to have "lost" their training.

When the machine goes into its planned downtime in November 2010, engineers will attempt to re-train some of the magnets and, potentially, replace some proportion of the splices to ready the LHC for a push towards seven trillion electron volts – the LHC’s maximum energy.

A long neck requires a special heart

For children and scientists alike the extraordinary shape of the giraffe has posed many questions.

Why they have such long necks has so far been partly answered.

However, exactly how they maintain this neck, and get blood to a head that is two metres from their heart, has remained unknown.

Now research reveals that giraffes have a small, powerful, supercharged heart that is different to that possessed by other similar mammals.

Scientists have published the discovery in the journal Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A.

Funny long neck

"There are not many animals that have evolved to have a very long neck," says giraffe expert Professor Graham Mitchell from the Centre of Wildlife Studies in Onderstepoort, South Africa.

Prof Mitchell undertook the study along with Prof John Skinner at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, US.

The heart is smaller than you’d expect in similar-sized animals, but the walls are incredibly thick Professor Graham Mitchell Centre of Wildlife Studies, Onderstepoort, South Africa

"Giraffes have this very funny long neck, and two questions immediately arise, one is why and the other is how," he says.

The answer to the first question, says Prof Mitchell, is that a long neck probably confers a range of advantages, helping the animal feed on different browse, thermoregulate its body and be more vigilant.

But he wanted to find out more about how the giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) maintains such a long neck and is able to overcome its physiological constraints.

"Giraffes have this huge problem of having a head that is 2m away from the heart," Prof Mitchell says.

"So in a really big animal, how does it get blood up there?"

Under pressure

Most mammals have a relatively low blood pressure because their blood needs only move a short distance between head and heart.

For the giraffe the distance is significant.

That creates two problems: a giraffe’s heart must cope with the hydrostatic pressure exerted on it by the sheer amount of blood in the neck.

For blood to reach the head, the heart must then beat strongly enough to overcome this significant downward pressure caused by gravity.

Previous studies have found the giraffe has an extremely high blood pressure that is twice that found in other animals.

But this study is the first to unravel the true nature of the giraffe heart and cardiovascular system.

ADVANTAGES OF A LONG NECK Feeding: enables giraffes to eat food that other animals cannot reach Vigilance: communication with other giraffes by sight and seeing predators from a distance Thermoregulation: provides a large surface area to lose heat in the hot sun

"For a long time it was thought that the origin of the high blood pressure was a really big heart and that was based on a single measurement based in the 1950s," says Prof Mitchell.

The researchers based their results on a range of measurements taken from giraffes culled in south eastern Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2009.

"Our concern was partly to explain the origin of high blood pressure and what physiological mechanisms operate to push the blood pressure to the level in the giraffe," he says.

"We established that the heart is actually quite small. It’s smaller than you’d expect in similar-sized animals, but the walls are incredibly thick," Prof Mitchell says.

"You have a small but a very powerful heart delivering the blood pressure."

The researchers say giraffes are adapted to the high blood pressure and do not suffer as a consequence.

A giraffe’s heart has evolved to have thick muscle walls and a small radius, giving it great power.

The walls of the blood vessels also thicken with age as the giraffe’s neck grows longer, to avoid rupturing under increasing pressure.

Expanding vessels

The giraffe also has other specialist mechanisms to help deal with the high blood pressure, Prof Mitchell says.

"Blood pressure depends on the capacity of the cardiovascular system as well as the efficiency of the pump."

"Giraffes have got a way of adjusting the capacity of the cardiovascular system and are able to shrink and expand their blood vessels to change the volume of the cardiovascular system very efficiently."

From the data collected on the body dimensions of the dead giraffes, the researchers hope to reveal more about its extraordinary body, including insights into its range of vision and breathing.

Prof Mitchell says it will also be exciting to study the physiology of living giraffes using remote devices to collect data.

"To measure blood pressure in a free living giraffe doing it’s thing, that would be really interesting," he says.

"For people who study high blood pressure in humans, or people just like me who wonder how giraffes get it right."

Tamiflu is used to treat swine flu

Health officials are investigating the possible person-to-person spread of a Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu.

The strain has infected a small number of patients at the University Hospital Wales, in Cardiff, all of whom had serious underlying health conditions.

One patient apparently developed resistance to the antiviral drug, and the strain was then passed on to others at the hospital.

If confirmed, this would be the first case of its kind in Europe.

There have been several dozen reports around the world of people developing resistance to Tamiflu while taking the drug.

But there has only been one case of person-to-person transmission of a Tamiflu-resistant strain, between two people at a US summer camp.

All the University Hospital Wales patients are said to be recovering in controlled environments – so there is no risk to anyone else.

And health officials say tests are being carried out to confirm exactly what happened.

The UK has bought enough doses of Tamiflu, which can shorten the duration of swine flu and reduce the risk of complications, for half the population.

And any spread of a Tamiflu resistant strain of the illness would be a serious public health concern.

People with Down’s tend to develop fewer tumours

US research has raised hopes of developing a drug therapy to reverse the learning problems associated with Down’s syndrome.

At birth children with Down’s syndrome are not developmentally delayed, but memory problems often mean they soon tend to fall behind.

The new study, in mice, pinpoints the key defects in the brain, and suggests a possible way to tackle them.

The study appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

It is often associated with deficits in the memory centres, making it difficult for the brain to collect and make use of experiences in a way necessary to form new memories and underpin the development of learning.

Nest building

We still have a long way to go, but these are very interesting results Dr Melanie Manning Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital

In the latest study researchers from Stanford University and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital – both located in Stanford, California – worked on mice genetically engineered to mimic Down’s syndrome.

Unlike other mice, the genetically engineered animals, when placed in a cage with which they were unfamiliar, failed to start building new nests.

The researchers showed that cells in an area of the animals’ brain called the hippocampus were starved of a supply of a chemical called noradrenaline, which helps nerve cells to communicate with each other.

The problem seems to be due to the deterioration of another area of the brain called the locus coeruleus, which usually communicates with the hippocampus during the formation of memories.

It seems that the copy of the extra chromosome carried by people with Down’s contains a specific gene – APP – which spells trouble for the locus coeruleus.

The researchers found that when levels of the chemical were artificially boosted, it had an almost instant positive effect on the animals’ behaviour – they started nest building, and improved their performance on other tests too.

Drugs available

Drugs that target the noradrenaline system have already been developed for depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The researchers say their work suggests they might also help people with Down’s syndrome.

They suspect the most fruitful approach might be to focus in tandem on noradrenaline and another brain chemical which has been implicated in Down’s syndrome, called acetylcholine.

Lead researcher Dr Ahmad Salehi said the study suggested that an early intervention with the right drugs might help children with Down’s syndrome to collect and make sense of information.

He said: "Theoretically, that could lead to an improvement in cognitive functions in these kids."

Dr Melanie Manning, director of the Center for Down Syndrome at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, said: "It’s very exciting.

"We still have a long way to go, but these are very interesting results."

Professor Tony Holland, an expert in learning disabilities at the University of Cambridge, said: "This type of research offers the possibility of understanding the problems that can arise in the brain as a result of inheriting an extra copy of chromosome 21.

"This is turn could lead to targeted and rationale therapies.

However, whether such treatments are safe and effective in humans and whether they can have significant effects on function and bring longer term benefits is a very different matter."

Carol Boys, chief executive of Down’s Syndrome Association said: "There is a great deal of research being done in this field, mainly in the US and we are following progress with interest.

"However, it will be quite some time before any of these treatments are available and safe for use with human beings.

"There is much that we need to understand about the genetic makeup of people with Down’s syndrome."

The discovery concerns abnormal proteins at cell level

Scientists at the University of Leeds say they have made a significant discovery which could help in the treatment of "mad cow disease".

The team found a protein which assists in the development of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and its human form Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD).

The protein Glypican-1 was found to cause other proteins in the nervous system to become abnormal.

Professor Nigel Hooper said the find may also help to fight Alzheimer’s.

BSE is known to be caused by an abnormal form of prion protein which develop on cells within the nervous system.

However it had previously been unclear why these proteins became abnormal.

Designing drugs

Researchers at the Faculty of Biological Sciences in Leeds discovered that the presence of protein Glypican-1 in cells caused the number of abnormal prion proteins to rise.

Professor Hooper explained: "We were looking at how the normal prion protein functions in cells and spotted that it was interacting with something.

"Some lateral thinking and deduction led us to Glypican-1 and when we carried out the experiment, we found we were right.

The scientists found that Glypican-1 acts as a scaffold bringing two forms of the prion protein together which then causes normal prions to mutate into an infectious form.

Professor Hooper said: "Now that we know the identity of one of the key molecules in the disease process, we may in the future be able to design drugs that target this."

He added that it was possible the discovery of the influence of Glypican-1 could have implications for the treatment of other serious diseases.

"While initial experiments haven’t shown any link with other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s , we’re not yet completely ruling that out", he said.

The Oprah Winfrey Show remains hugely influential

The Oprah Winfrey Show is to close in 2011 after more than two decades on air, the production company behind the programme has said.

Billionaire Winfrey, one of the most influential women in the US, has hosted the show since 1986.

A spokesman for the star’s Harpo production company would not say why she had made the decision, but said she would discuss it on Friday’s show.

Winfrey is expected to focus instead on the launch of her own TV channel.

The Oprah Winfrey Show is a media institution in the US, with an average of seven million viewers.

The BBC’s Richard Lister in Washington says the show’s open atmosphere and frank conversation redefined the talk show genre and made Winfrey the wealthiest black woman in the world.

Authors appearing on the show often become bestsellers overnight and Winfrey’s support for US President Barack Obama was seen as crucial to his presidential election campaign.

Oprah is still the highest-rated talk show on US television but audiences are half what they were a decade ago.

Her empire also includes magazines, a radio show and from next year, a television network, so it would seem likely her place in American culture will continue.

OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, is scheduled for launch in 2011.

Blur closed Glastonbury with a set on the Pyramid stage on 28 June

Blur’s appearance on the last night of the Glastonbury festival has been named the best headline performance of 2009 at this year’s UK Festival awards.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn was also named "festival fitty" at the event, held on Thursday at the 02 in London.

Other awards went to Kings of Leon and Florence and the Machine, recipients of the anthem of the summer prize and best breakthrough act respectively.

Glastonbury was named the best major festival at the annual ceremony.

The all-important prize for best toilets, meanwhile, left Scotland’s T in the Park event flushed with success.

‘Awe-inspiring’

The reformed Blur’s performance at Glastonbury marked their first appearance at the Somerset event since 1998.

Steve Jenner, co-director of the awards, said it had been an "awe-inspiring" show in what he described as "another fantastic festival season".

As previously announced, Katrina Larkin received a lifetime achievement award for her role in establishing the Big Chill festival in Herefordshire.

The student-only Beach Break Live, meanwhile, was named best small festival, picking up an additional prize for promoter of the year.

The female equivalent of Albarn’s eye-catching prize was awarded to Lily Allen.

There are more than 100 fan sites devoted to Twilight

The sequel to hit teenage vampire movie Twilight is expected to score one of the biggest opening weekends ever for a non-summer film, experts predict.

It is thought that New Moon will take nearly $100m (£60m) when it opens in UK and US cinemas on Friday.

The first movie in the series, starring Brit actor Robert Pattinson, made $69.6m (£41.8m) last year.

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire holds the current record with takings of $102m (£61.3m) in 2005.

‘Huge expectations’

The new film follows the romance between high school student Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen, and her friendship with Jacob Black, a werewolf.

The movie adaptations are based on the series of books by American author Stephenie Meyer.

The books have sold 85 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Last year, Twilight’s US opening of $69m (£41m) beat the James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, which earned $67.5m (£40.6m).

And it took $383m (£229m) worldwide – just ahead of Oscar sensation Slumdog Millionaire.

"I have huge expectations for the movie," said Paul Dergarabedian, from the box office division of film website Hollywood.com.

"I’m not going to say it’s going to exceed it, but a $100 million opening weekend, I think, is totally on the cards for this one."

In the UK, fans flocked to selected cinemas on Thursday night, which opened especially to show a midnight viewing of the new film.

Ronnie Corbett was the surprise host last week

Veteran TV presenter Bruce Forsyth is well enough to host this weekend’s Strictly Come Dancing, after missing last week’s because of flu.

A BBC spokesman confirmed the 81-year-old would be back on the BBC One Saturday night show.

Last weekend, his co-presenter Tess Daly was joined by Claudia Winkleman and comedian Ronnie Corbett.

It was the first time Forsyth has missed a show since Strictly Come Dancing began on BBC One in 2004.

It was announced last Friday that the star was not well enough to present and was missing the show "on doctor’s orders".

Sir Terry (centre) has hosted Children in Need since 1980

Top names from the worlds of TV, music and theatre are preparing to take part in Children in Need, the BBC’s annual charity TV telethon.

Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders stars will be part of the seven-hour show, hosted by Sir Terry Wogan, Tess Daly and Alesha Dixon.

Comic Peter Kay will unveil this year’s official single, while JLS, Pixie Lott and Spandau Ballet are set to perform.

The programme kicks off at 1900 GMT on BBC One.

Highlights this year include an exclusive preview of the Doctor Who Christmas episode and a performance from the stars of Strictly Come Dancing.

Sir Terry will appear in a special edition of period drama Lark Rise to Candleford, while the BBC newsreaders will contribute their customary musical skit.

The Dragons’ Den team will be seen renovating a community centre in London, while the hosts of The One Show will recreate a scene from Fame.

The show boasts a preview of David Tennant’s penultimate Doctor Who

The show will also include musical contributions from the casts of EastEnders, Hollyoaks and The Bill.

Organisers are hoping to repeat the success of last year’s programme, which raised more than £21m on the night and almost £38m overall.

It follows Thursday’s transmission of a Children in Need charity concert, held last week at the Royal Albert Hall in London, that featured performances from Take That, Robbie Williams and Sir Paul McCartney.

Children in Need has raised more than £525m for disadvantaged children and young people in the UK since the first appeal was held in 1980.

Earlier this month, Sir Terry said he planned to continue presenting the annual event "until hell freezes over".

More and more beat bobbies are turning to Twitter.

PC Ed Rogerson is like many other beat bobbies. He patrols his patch, fights crime and gives out crime prevention advice. But in one respect he is different to almost every other copper walking a beat.

PC Ed Rogerson is on Twitter. He is one of about 20 or so police officers that have turned to the micro-blogging service.

He started using Twitter in October in a bid to reach more of the people that live along the streets he patrols in Starbeck, Harrogate.

"Twitter is the new thing," he said. "I’m just trying to keep up and communicate with people in Harrogate."

"It works on a far more local level than the force-wide Facebook group," he said. "It’s local to Harrogate and our problems."

Some of his messages, or tweets, contain advice for residents. On occasion he announces an arrest. Others are just to let people know that, while they were out, the police were on patrol.

"People do not see us so they do not think we are there," he said.

North Yorkshire police are among the few forces using social media. It’s Safer Neighbourhood teams use it to send out messages and it has reserved a page that will soon become its presence on Facebook.

"These kinds of social media are ultimately just another way of communicating with the public," Tom Stirling, North Yorkshire’s web officer told the BBC.

"Posting a message on Twitter warning about a spate of burglaries in an area is a similar concept to pinning up a poster on the local parish council noticeboard."

"Doing either in isolation might be fine, but by doing both we can spread that warning even further."

Street talk

There is no national plan to make the police use social media, but its use by beat bobbies and many other officers is about to get a boost with the creation of the MyPolice website.

Forces are finding that social media can be an investigative tool.

Set up by designers Sarah Drummond and Lauren Currie, it hopes to become a central point on which members of the public can relate the good and bad of their experiences with the police.

"Its creation stems from my friend getting robbed," said Ms Drummond.

"She didn’t have a terrible experience but there were aspects of her case that she was not happy with."

In a similar way the site will log these problems, funnel them to the police and find out what happens to put things right.

"It’s meant to be very bottom up," said Ms Drummond. "It’ll engage with the bobby on the beat, community wardens and PCSOs. They are the ones seeing the problems at ground level."

She said: "It will give the police a chance to listen and they should be listening to people."

Ms Drummond said the plan is to run a closed pilot with a couple of forces before rolling it out more widely. The two designers are working on data visualisation tools to ensure that the site is easy to use for both the public and police.

Net gains

Even before MyPolice gets going some forces are pioneering widespread use of social media.

West Midlands police has redesigned its public website to work better with social media, it has Facebook pages for local areas, some officers are blogging. It has been known to use keywords, or hashtags, on Twitter to ensure people know its views about popular issues.

"We want to talk to people and allow people to talk to influence the way we police," said Inspector Mark Payne, a spokesman for West Midlands police. "Print media is shrinking and losing some of its traditional audience."

Forensics is fantastic, but it’s people that solve crime Inspector Mark Payne

"This is not about abandoning the traditional ways," he said. "More and more people are using social media to communicate and, if that’s where people are talking, that’s where we need to go."

"We can find out if we are doing the right things," said Inspector Payne. "Have we get a problem we do not know about?"

One of the reasons that West Midlands police got interested in social media was because it found it was the subject of discussions and videos on YouTube.

In a bid to put its point of view across it got involved with the discussions and now posts videos straight to its own channel on the site.

Police forces are finding it hard to ignore social media.

Nick Keane who works for the National Police Improvement Agency advising forces about social media, said West Midlands’ experience was common.

"It’s a matter for forces as to whether they use social media," he said. "If you are a force that doesn’t that is a perfectly defensible thing."

"However," he added, "they cannot ignore it. The conversations about those forces carry on anyway."

Unless forces move to engage their critics or the concerns being aired on social media sites they risk having their role undermined, said Mr Keane.

The partiality of social media, especially video, often misses the context surrounding an incident leaving many with a false impression of what happened.

In light of this, West Midlands police used both Twitter and YouTube while policing a potentially rowdy demonstration mounted by the far right England and Wales Defence League (EDL) in Birmingham.

The police sent messages via Twitter using the hashtag created by EDL members to let protestors know what was, and was not, permissible during a demonstration. West Mids also posted their own video of the way the demo was policed.

Beyond helping the police reach out to communities, social media also has a definite operational benefit.

Information that has helped PC Rogerson round up persistent graffiti artists arrived via social media. Inspector Payne said West Mids’ presence on Facebook has helped find a missing person and with a murder case.

"Forensics is fantastic, but it’s people that solve crime," he said. "And this is just another way of talking to people."

White tigers are rare in the wild because they stand out in the jungle

Two lions at a zoo in the northern Czech Republic have killed a rare white tigress after entering her enclosure.

The incident happened at Liberec Zoo – the only one in the country which has white tigers.

Zoo workers were alerted by the cries of the tigress, but were unable to stop the killing.

White tigers – the result of a recessive gene – find it difficult to catch prey in the wild because their colouration stands out in the jungle.

The lions – Sultan, aged 14, and Elsa, 11 – managed to open a trap door leading to an open-air area occupied by the 17-year-old tigress, Isabella.

Surviving daughter

Lions and tigers in the zoo share the same pavilion overnight, which they leave for separate open-air enclosures during the day.

But the open-air enclosures are rotated, and zoo authorities believe the lions were trying to get into the area where they had spent the previous day.

"The current security system has been in place for 12 years and such an accident has never happened before," said zoo director David Nejedlo.

There are three surviving white tigers at the zoo, including Isabella’s daughter.

The zoo is the oldest in the Czech Republic and was established in 1919.

The sign on the right with the red cross says ‘clinic’

In a village on the outskirts of Beijing, a red cross and the word "clinic" have been hand painted on a sign hanging outside a backstreet shop.

Inside there is a table and desk, a bed with a dirty pink sheet on it, and a set of shelves covered with boxes and bottles of medicine.

People go there to seek medical advice, admits the man in charge, although he refuses to show the BBC the clinic’s permission to practise.

Dressed in a black jacket and jeans, he does not look like a doctor and turns away when asked about his own medical training.

Beijing city government admits that the Chinese capital has a problem with illegal medical centres – known as black clinics.

It closed down more than 3,300 of these unregulated and sometimes dangerous clinics last year alone.

‘Not safe’

They are set up to serve the capital’s poorest people, many of them migrant workers who have come to Beijing to find a job.

Most are on the outskirts of the city, often near large construction sites that can employ hundreds of migrant workers.

They offer a cheaper alternative to the city’s government-backed clinics and hospitals.

But there are problems – they are often dirty, staffed by people with no formal medical qualifications and it is not clear where they buy their medicine and equipment.

The clinic we visited, in the village of Jinzhan, had been open only for 10 days, according to the man in charge, who declined to give his name.

Basic medical equipment is on show at a backstreet clinic in Jinzhan

After initially admitting that he treated patients, he then backtracked and said he was simply running a pharmacy.

But the sign outside and the medical equipment on show inside – including a stethoscope – suggest otherwise.

Migrant worker Yang Shengping, who lives near the clinic with his wife, said he would never go there because it was not hygienic.

But the 36-year-old, who comes from Jiangxi Province in southern China, is lucky – he has medical insurance based in his hometown.

"I’m not covered for minor illnesses, but I can claim 30% of medical expenses for serious problems," said Mr Yang, who installs windows.

"If I go to the doctor’s here, I just have to get a receipt and take it back to my hometown to get my money back."

He can afford to go to the village’s community health centre, which is just a few streets away from the backstreet clinic.

It looks new and is staffed by workers wearing clean, white medical coats – the problem is that not everyone can afford to use it.

Hidden from view

A visit to this medical centre can cost 10 times more than to an illegal clinic.

China is currently in the middle of reforming its health care system and is trying to give everyone basic health insurance.

But not everyone has the insurance and even those who do still have to pay something towards their medical bills – a burden some find too great.

One person who struggles to pay is Jinzhan resident Yao Ya, who moved to Beijing from the nearby province of Hebei with her five-year-old child.

She admits that she sometimes visits black clinics. "If my child got a cold or a fever I’d have to take him to a proper place, but if it was me who was ill I wouldn’t bother," she said.

Beijing’s city government has launched a campaign to close down the capital’s illegal clinics, but it says that is not an easy task.

"As illegal medical practices are mainly concentrated in the hidden integration of urban and rural districts and rural areas, they are difficult to combat," said a statement from the local health authority.

Officials hope to persuade poorer people that they could be endangering their health by visiting black clinics.

But while people remain poor, black clinics will remain tempting.

The Oprah Winfrey Show remains hugely influential

The Oprah Winfrey Show is to close in 2011 after more than two decades on air, the production company behind the programme has said.

Billionaire Ms Winfrey, one of the most influential women in the US, has hosted the show since 1986.

A spokesman for Ms Winfrey’s Harpo production company would not say why she had made the decision, but said she would discuss it on Friday’s show.

Ms Winfrey is expected to focus instead on the launch of her own TV channel.

The Oprah Winfrey Show is a media institution in the US, with an average of 7 million viewers.

The BBC’s Richard Lister in Washington says the show’s open atmosphere and frank conversation redefined the talk show genre and made Ms Winfrey the wealthiest black woman in the world.

Authors appearing on the show often become bestsellers overnight and Ms Winfrey’s support for Barack Obama was seen as crucial to his presidential election campaign, our correspondent says.

Oprah is still the highest-rated talk show on US television but audiences are half what they were a decade ago.

But, our correspondent adds, her empire also includes magazines, a radio show and, from next year, a television network, so it seems likely her place in American culture will continue.

OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, is scheduled for launch in 2011.

Internet search giant Google has lifted the lid on its operating system, known as Chrome OS.

The free and open source system is initially aimed at low-cost netbooks and does away with many of the features of a traditional program.

All applications are designed to run in a web browser and all the user’s data is stored on Google’s servers.

Engineers from the firm said the first computers running the system would be available before the end of 2010.

"We are trying to offer a choice for users," said Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, during an event at the firm’s headquarters in California.

"This model of computing is fundamentally different."

The event follows the recent launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s operating system upgrade, Snow Leopard.

Speed test

Google first announced its intention to build an operating system in July this year.

The firm has designed the system around its Chrome browser. The program was released 14 months ago and already has 40m regular users, the firm said.

We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast Sundar Pichai, Google

"It’s very familiar and intuitive to users – most people know how to use the browser," said Mr Pichai.

All programs or applications – such as word processing and e-mail – run in different tabs in the browser.

"There are no conventional desktop applications," said Mr Pichai. "That means you don’t have to install or update software.

"It’s just a browser; a browser with a few modifications."

Mr Pichai said the system was based around speed, simplicity and security.

He showed it booting up in seven seconds.

"We’re working very, very, very hard to make that time shorter," he said. "We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast."

He said they wanted it to be like a television, where a computer could be switched on and instantly running and connected to the web.

Google has been able to boost the speed of the system by designing it for specific hardware. The firm said that it would only run on computers using "solid state drives" instead of traditional hard drives.

In addition, the firm has been talking to hardware manufacturers to specify which components to include on finished machines.

This means that the company could "optimise" the code to run as quickly as possible, said Mr Pichai.

Memory games

He used the demonstration to show the machine doing many common tasks such as playing games and music, as well as reading books and writing text.

The system is a direct challenge to Microsoft Windows

Any documents and files created on the computer were automatically synced and saved on Google’s servers, said Matthew Papakipos, an engineer working on the system.

As a result, he added, anybody who lost their computer would be able to buy a new machine and easily recover all their data.

"In a matter of seconds, all the data syncs back to the machine."

Although the firm envisages most tasks will be done online, it will also offer the capability to use some programs when there is no connection.

It already offers a similar feature for programs such as Gmail and Google Docs using its Gears program.

Initially, the firm envisages people will use the operating system on a second, portable machine.

Memory intensive tasks, such as video editing, would require a more powerful machine.

Open offer

The demonstration could dramatically change the market for operating systems, especially for Microsoft, the biggest player with about 90% share of the market.

Chrome OS will at first be aimed at low cost netbooks

When it was first announced, Rob Enderle, industry watcher and president of the Enderle Group, described it as "the first real attempt by anyone to go after Microsoft".

The fact that it is free could encourage many users to try the system.

Currently, Mr Pichai said the company did not have a business plan but admitted that encouraging people to use the web and Google services "benefits us as a company".

Google derives most of its revenue from selling advertising around search and its other online products.

Most consumers will have to wait until 2010 to get their hands on a device running the system.

However, the firm used the event to release an early version of the code for developers.

"You can get Chrome OS up and running today," said Mr Pichai.

They said they had chosen to release the code and the designs for the system because it was based on a variety of existing open source projects such as the Linux and Ubuntu operating systems.

Open source systems allow people to tinker and use the underlying code to build and customize applications. It is normal to publish any modifications to allow other people to take advantage of the changes.

"We’re looking forward to feedback from the open source community," said Mr Pinchai.