John Prescott tonight demanded the Metropolitan police reopen its investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal as the Observer revealed that Scotland Yard holds News International documents suggesting that he was a target when deputy prime minister.

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read.

The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort.

The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail.

The findings from the study of 40 people are reported in Neuropsychology.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11181457

Before that election, Mr Rudd made use of the friendship. He appeared with Mr Katter at a rally in Townsville to oppose council amalgamations, a position John Howard had already adopted.

Mr Katter laughs as he recalls how Mr Rudd asked to be thanked publicly for his support, a gesture that would have helped Labor's election chances.

''I tried to step around that dingo trap,'' said Mr Katter. ''I told him, 'I'd have to thank John Howard first'.'' At the rally, Mr Rudd introduced Mr Katter as ''my good friend''.

Mr Katter laughs: ''I got trapped, I had to thank him. That's politics.''

It was all revival meeting, no political fireworks. The news reports accurately likened the atmosphere to that of a church picnic -- and no reporter wants to write about a church picnic.

But then I realized: The abundance of religiosity was the news. Beck is offering -- and whatever the precise crowd count on Saturday, a whole lot of people seemed to be buying -- a new form of fusion politics, melding the anti-government, anti-spending, anti-tax fervor of the Tea Party with the faith-based agenda of the religious right.

Doctors should stop giving newborn babies sugar to relieve the pain of minor medical procedures because it does not work and may damage their brains, new research in The Lancet warns today.

The study says that small doses of oral sucrose do not reduce the pain which a baby feels when its heel is pricked to yield a blood sample or it has a drip put in to receive antibiotics.

An Iranian newspaper has called Carla Bruni, France's first lady, a "prostitute" after she attacked Iran's plan to stone a woman to death.

The president's wife is part of a campaign to save the life of 43-year-old mother of two, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

Ashtiani is accused of cheating on her husband and then helping to kill him.

She is now facing capital punishment for her crimes.

France has urged the European Union to threaten new sanctions over the case.

'Lived and loved'

Independent MP Bob Katter, who says he is a "hair's breadth" away from making a decision on who to support to form government, has dismissed as "lightweight" the positions held by internationally-recognised climate change experts Sir Nicholas Stern and Ross Garnaut.

While his fellow independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, held briefings with climate experts yesterday, Mr Katter pointedly refused the invitation.

''I think their [Garnaut's and Stern's] positions are fairly lightweight,'' Mr Katter said.

Tony Blair came to the view that Gordon Brown would be a disaster as prime minister and that Labour could not win the 2010 general election, he reveals in his long awaited memoirs.

"It was never going to work," Blair writes of Brown's three years in No 10, arguing that the former chancellor had "zero emotional intelligence" and fatally abandoned the New Labour formula.

Blair's memoir contains a passionate defence of the war in Iraq and of New Labour's public service and welfare reform plans, which the former prime minister believes his successor abandoned.

pictures by Gus  — Top: part of the Hammersley range, Western Australia. Below: salt lake, central Australia

Tony Blair secretly courted Robert Mugabe in an effort to win lucrative trade deals for Britain, it has emerged in correspondence released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the relationship between New Labour and the Zimbabwean President blossomed soon after Tony Blair took office in Downing Street.

A senior rabbi from a party within Israel's coalition government has called for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to "vanish from our world".

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Shas, spoke out as Middle East talks are poised to begin in Washington.

The United States condemned the remarks as "deeply offensive".

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments with a statement saying that his government wanted peace with the Palestinians.

The attack on Mr Abbas, delivered in the rabbi's weekly sermon, also prompted chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat to condemn the remarks as "an incitement to genocide".

Incoming independent MP Andrew Wilkie has described the justification for the war in Afghanistan as "one of the great lies of the election campaign".

Mr Wilkie has claimed victory in the Tasmanian seat of Denison, but he will wait a few more days before declaring who he will support in a hung parliament.

He met Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Melbourne yesterday and presented her with a list of 20 issues that are important to him.

While his stance on the Afghanistan war is not part of that list, Mr Wilkie has made it clear he is against troops staying there.

Hundreds of photographers have gathered on the Sydney Harbour foreshore to rally against laws which prevent them from taking pictures of Australian landmarks without a permit.

Australian landscape photographer Ken Duncan says the laws imposed by all levels of government are inconsistent and unnecessary.

He says some of the country's most iconic landmarks are now off limits to commercial photographers unless they have a permit which can often cost them hundreds of dollars.

He says it is un-Australian.

"Australians are 'G'day mate, how ya going?' not 'What are you doing with that camera?'," he said.

King's presence was hotly anticipated given the controversial anniversary scheduling of "Beckapalooza." Although Beck said the date was a coincidence—then later dubbed it divine providence—many civil rights' activists, such as Rev. Al Sharpton, had taken umbrage to what they saw as Beck's appropriation of the day for causes incompatible with MLK's vision. (An online campaign to declare that "Glenn Beck is not Martin Luther King, Jr." gained more than 30,000 electronic signatures in the two days before the event, and Sharpton led his own march to celebrate the speech right along side of Beck's event.)