Around half of appeals against parking tickets are successful, according to UK government figures out yesterday.

A total of 47 per cent of those who appealed against on-street penalty charge notices (PCNs) in England in 2009/10 had their tickets cancelled or waived. And 59 per cent who challenged off-street (car park) PCNs were successful, the Department for Transport figures showed.

AA president Edmund King said: “While we welcome the fact that almost half of the drivers who appealed against unfair parking tickets won their cases, we must question why so many of these drivers were given tickets in the first place. It is extremely worrying and time-consuming for drivers to have to go through this process when they have done nothing wrong.” (PA)

Icon returned

­­British pop star Boy George has given back to Cyprus an 18th century icon after unwittingly buying the stolen artefact 26 years ago from a London dealer.

An eagle-eyed priest had spotted the post-Byzantine icon of Christ hanging on the former Culture Club singer’s wall during a Dutch TV show. The clergy recognised the icon as the one stolen from Saint Charalambos church in Neo Chorio Kythreas in Turkish-held northern Cyprus.

Church officials then contacted the singer and provided documentation of its origin from experts and testimony from the parish priest from where the 300-year-old icon was taken. Boy George, 49, bought the icon in 1985 from an art dealer in London, but was unaware of its origin.

“The singer agreed to return the icon, expressing his wish that it is returned soon to the church from which it was illegally removed and hoped others follow his example,” a church statement said. (AFP)

Health legislation

French politicians yesterday voted to overturn rules that saw iconic comedian Jacques Tati lose his beloved pipe and existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre ditch his trademark cigarette.

A parliamentary commission voted for a Bill that would exclude cultural heritage from the stringent health legislation passed in 1991 that forbids any direct or indirect promotion of smoking.

Last year posters for a Tati retrospective in Paris showed the late actor and director with his pipe replaced by a yellow toy windmill – which critics slammed as an overdose of political correctness.

“The falsifications of history, the censorship of works of the mind, the denial of reality... should remain the ignominious mark of totalitarian regimes,” said the Bill proposed by the opposition Socialists. (AFP)

Quiz skills

Taking everyday decisions could be made easier by a new educational computer game, researchers say.

The game, invented by experts at Queen’s University, Belfast, teaches people to assess uncertainty when faced with simple choices.

Learning to weigh up risks and likely outcomes by playing the game can improve decision-making skills, it is claimed. (PA)

Artistic gift

A room in the National Gallery has been named after a hedge fund manager and his wife who donated £2 million to it.

Australian-born Michael Hintze said being able to give the gift, from his family’s charitable foundation, was both “a privilege and an obligation”.

The money will be used to refurbish parts of the gallery in Trafalgar Square, central London. (PA)

Giant snails

A Russian waterworks has recruited giant African snails to act as living sensors to monitor air pollution from a sewage incinerator, the company has said.

The waterworks is using six snails as an innovative way to monitor pollution from an incinerator that burns sewage residue on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, the Vodokanal state utilities company said.

The Achatina snails, which reach 20 centimetres in length and are widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, were chosen because they have lungs and breathe air like humans.

The snails have been fitted with heart monitors and motion sensors while breathing smoke from the plant and their readings will be compared with a control group.

While living organisms are frequently used to monitor pollution, an expert dismissed the use of snails to monitor the controversial incinerator as a publicity stunt. (AFP)