Peers have been warned to expect a fresh push to reform the House of Lords – by disgruntled MPs knocked off their pancake-day perch.
The upper chamber held the upper hand in the Westminster Shrove Tuesday charity contest, dashing their elected rivals’ hopes of a hat trick of annual titles.
A six-strong team flipped their way to victory in a time of just under four minutes, finishing ahead of both the MPs and the media.
Defeated Liberal Democrat Martin Horwood wrote on Twitter: “Batterly disappointed that Lords won.” (PA)
No holiday thanks to fraudsters
Fraudsters are stealing around £7 million a year from holidaymakers, according to a British police report.
One couple were left more than £1,000 out of pocket after being conned into booking a holiday at Loch Ness at a romantic lodge that did not exist.
Scams include travellers receiving fake airline tickets, with flights to West Africa a particular target.
The report, by the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, showed that during a 12-month period more than 4,500 cases of fraud were reported.
They included fake packages for the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and also for golf’s Ryder Cup. (PA)
61,000 invited to jobs meeting
Police dispersed an angry crowd of jobseekers outside an employment office in Stockholm on Wednesday after it called 61,000 people for a recruitment meeting by mistake.
“Something has gone wrong with the mailing list...it has set off a very messy situation at the city office,” said Clas Olsson, acting director of the employment office. (Reuters)
Farmer creates giant snowman
A farmer in the US state of Minnesota has created a towering tribute to winter’s excess.
Greg Novak says he has invested hundreds of hours to build a 50ft (15m) snowman named Granddaddy, which he hopes will wake onlookers from their winter doldrums.
The mammoth snowman began to take shape earlier this winter when the Gilman farmer needed to move mounting snow piles away from his greenhouses.
He said: “As long as you’re moving it, might as well do something practical with it.” (PA)
Ink hurled at top businessman
A lawyer threw ink at a top Indian businessman as he arrived at India’s highest court to face charges that his company failed to return billions of dollars to investors.
Tycoon Subrata Roy, along with scores of police and security guards, was entering the Supreme Court building when the lawyer threw black ink at him. Roy’s Sahara conglomerate is a co-owner of a Formula One team and sponsored the Indian cricket team until recently.
India’s securities regulator has accused Roy’s group of raising nearly 200 billion rupees (£1.9 billion) through bonds which were later found to be illegal.
Anger against Roy has been growing as millions of poor Indians lost their life savings after investing. (PA)
Getting along is the right move
People can be made less racist by simply moving to live in ethnically-mixed areas, new research shows.
An Oxford University-led international study found that white people develop “passive tolerance” of minorities in mixed areas, even if they have no direct contact with them.
Professor Miles Hewstone, director of the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict, said governments could create more “harmonious neighbourhoods” by doing more to encourage different ethnic groups to mix.
“The size of this ‘passive tolerance’ effect on people’s prejudice is of the same order as the effect of passive smoking on lung cancer risk.” he added.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal. (PA)