A pensioner, who unnecessarily had her leg amputated after she was wrongly diagnosed with cancer, won a six-figure payout from the hospital trust responsible, it emerged yesterday.
Doreen Nicholls, 72, was told a lump in her foot was cancerous and needed her leg to be removed below the knee to stop it spreading. But after the operation at Birmingham's Royal Orthopaedic Hospital she was told the lump had not been cancerous at all.
The mother-of-two has now received a six-figure payout in an out-of-court compensation payment, but yesterday her solicitor called for the hospital to ensure lessons are learned. (PA)
Ahead of their time
Christmas decorations have appeared at one of Britain's largest shopping malls - two-and-a-half months early.
The 100ft-tall Christmas decorations are already in place in the atrium at the John Lewis department store at Cribbs Causeway, in Bristol.
Over the next month rope access supervisor Rob Tucker and a team of eight will be travelling around 27 John Lewis stores to fit their decorations. (PA)
'Obama did nothing to deserve Nobel'
Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez said yesterday that US President Barack Obama had done nothing beyond wishful thinking to earn the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr Chavez, who has mixed praise for Mr Obama personally with criticism of his government's "imperialist" policies, said he thought it was a mistake when he read the US leader had won.
"What has Obama done to deserve this prize? The jury put store on his hope for a nuclear arms-free world, forgetting his role in perpetuating his batallions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his decision to install new military bases in Colombia," Mr Chavez wrote in a column.
"For the first time, we are witnessing an award with the nominee having done nothing to deserve it: rewarding someone for a wish that is very far from becoming reality."
Though Caracas and Washington have hostile political relations, the US remains the main buyer of oil from the Opec member nation. (Reuters)
Porridge champion
An American man was crowned the best porridge maker in the world at a competition in the Scottish Highlands.
Matthew Cox, who travelled all the way from Milwaukie in Oregon for the contest, impressed judges in Carrbridge, Strathspey, with his version of the traditional oatmeal dish.
Mr Cox beat stiff competition from last year's winner, local man Ian Bishop, to net the 2009 world championship title and lift the coveted Golden Spurtle trophy. (PA)
Fined for smoking on the job in truck
A Canadian truck driver has been fined for smoking in his vehicle because it is considered his workplace.
A police officer saw the 48-year-old trucker driving on a highway in south-western Ontario with a cigarette in his mouth on Wednesday, and gave him a C$305 (€198) ticket.
The Smoke-Free Ontario Act, adopted in 2006, prohibits smoking in an enclosed workplace or enclosed public area, and that extends to work vehicles, said Constable Shawna Coulter of the Ontario Provincial Police in Essex County.
"We enforce the legislation and this truck driver was in violation of that," she said. (Reuters)
Record cigar?
Grand master cigar maker Wallace Reyes began work last Thursday on what he hopes will be a world record - 180-foot long cigar.
A 180-foot cigar would shatter the old world record by more than 35-feet. Mr Reyes of Tampa, Florida, in the US, said it will take him 30 pounds of tobacco and more than 100-hours of work to finish his cigar. He is making his record setting cigar in 10-foot sections at the Ybor City Museum and it will be assembled and displayed on November 21st at the Tampa Cigar Heritage Festival.
"We have to do it in sections because in the Ybor district we don't have a building that has the length that I need, "he said. (PA)
Jugglers have rewired brains
University of Oxford researchers recruited 48 healthy young adults who were unable to juggle and put them in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to get a cross-section map of their brain.
Half the volunteers then underwent a six-week training period to learn how to juggle, during which they were also encouraged to practise for 30 minutes a day.
At the end, they were all able to perform at least two cycles of the classic three-ball "cascade".
They were then scanned again, as were their 24 non-juggling counterparts.
Among the juggling group, imaging showed important changes in white matter, the bundle of long nerve fibres that carry electrical signals between nerve cells and connect different areas of the brain. (AFP)