News Shorts

A man's life has been saved this week by the skin of his fake teeth. Stipe Cavlovic and his wife Mirna, both from Zagreb, survived an attempt on their lives after the bullet ricocheted off Mirna's cheek and was caught in Stipe's false teeth.

The couple, badly shaken but uninjured, got caught up in a row between two men over a debt, one of whom pulled a gun and shot at them at point blank range.

"He was so close you'd think that one or both of them would be dead instantly," said a police source.

The bullet grazed the cheekbone of Mr Cavlovic's wife and slammed into his mouth. But instead of killing him, the shot got caught in his dentures and fell harmlessly to the ground.

Police ballistics experts believe Mr Cavlovic survived the bullet because it had lost so much speed when it first skimmed his wife's cheek.

"Go on, jump. Do it, now!" A few seconds later Shaun Dykes, 17, died after the fall from the roof of the Westfield shopping centre in Derby on 27 September.

The boy, a student at Heanor Gate Science College, jumped down when a group of onlookers gathered to watch while trained negotiators spent three hours trying to coax him down to safety.

As reported by local witnesses, a groop of onlookers taunted the 17 year old to kill him self shouting: "Jump".

One student told me he could not believe people place such little value on life. It's almost like they are in a television show. It's unreal," said Rob Howard, headteacher of the Gate College.

"The sad thing is that a couple of the students, if they could have got close enough, felt that they could have made a difference. It's very traumatic," added the teacher.

Police condemned firmly the onlookers who incited the boy to jump, and added that their presence did not help their attempts to save Shaun.

High heels: deep pain for the body and the pocket. Recently reported figures have revealed that injuries to feet from wearing high heels cost the UK £29m a year to put right.

The study of 1,000 women, funded by shoe company MBT, found that those living in Liverpool and Manchester were most likely to suffer from wearing heels, with 45 per cent wearing them every day.

A table of high heel-induced injuries shows that bunion removal can cost £4,000 a time and that a total of £10.5m is spent on this procedure each year.

Toe straightening, the most common procedure, can cost £1,200 each time with an annual total cost of £10.4m.

"While we all love our high heels, wearing them for prolonged periods is bad news for our health and our wallets", said Emma Supple, consultant podiatrist for the MBT Academy.

Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper plagiarized his "crucial" 2003 speech made in support of the US-led invasion of Iraq, it has been revelaed.

Five years on, and with Mr Harper now battling for re-election as prime minister, it has emerged that more than half of the speech was lifted from one given by John Howard, prime minister of Australia, in 2001.

Behind the plagiarism was Owen Lippert, a senior staffer in Mr Harper's campaign, who resigned from his post last week.

"Pressed for time, I was overzealous in copying segments of another world leader's speech," explained Lippert, who added that neither Mr Harper nor anyone else in his office had any idea he had copied from the Howard speech.

Mr Howard delcined to comment, although John Kunkel, an Australian economist who served as his speechwriter from 2004-2007 said that he was unlikely to take offence.

An Edinburgh joiner who built himself a replica police box to compete with Police Box Coffee Bars across the city has been successful in his application for a renewal of his trading license. John McConnell has come out on top in his battle against Tollcross Community Council and the Police Box Coffee Bars, who objected to his siting of a replica police box at the top of Middle Meadow Walk.

The community council argued that the Mr McConnell's box was sited in an area already saturated with coffee shops, being adjacent to two branches of Starbucks and a Police Box Cafe. Objections were also raised over the fact that the box was left on the pathway overnight.

Unacceptable. That's the answer of the Scottish trade unions to the latest pay deal offered by councils.

The unions, which decided to reject the offer during a meeting in Glasgow, are now planning to ballot all 10,000 of their Scottish council worker members.

This means that the threat of further council strikes is very real. Scotland's councils increased their previous pay offer form 2.5 per cent to three per cent, but union bosses say the below-inflation deal is unacceptable.

"It is clear our activists do not accept that this offer is good enough. Our members, like others are suffering from the effects of the economic downturn," said Dougie Black, Unison regional officer and lead negotiator.

"The recent increases in inflation – especially in basic necessities like food and fuel – impact particularly hard on low paid members and a three per cent increase does not deliver the kind of help they need."