Natural Scenery Photos

Naked delight as nudists win right to bare all on beach

Nudists are a pretty tolerant bunch.

But when a beach came under threat from developers it was too much to bear.

Defence research group Qinetiq had been involved in a two-and-a-half-year battle to get planning permission for more than 100 flats on former Ministry of Defence land next to the nudist beach at Eastney in Portsmouth.

The naturists opposed the plans, fearing Qinetiq would ban them so as not to put off potential buyers.

Yesterday they won the right to enjoy the beach after the company agreed to allow them access.

Mike Houlsby of the Eastney Naturist Beach Liaison Group said: 'Nudists have been using the beach since the mid-1930s and the MoD always turned a blind eye.'

The 51-year-old father of one from Portsmouth added: 'On a sunny weekend hundreds of us of all ages and from all over come to enjoy the beach.'

a Medical Wikipedia

A project launched last week aims to create what is in essence a medical Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia focused on explaining conditions, drugs, procedures, medial facilities and other medical topics written by physicians and PhDs.

The Medpedia Project launched a preview of the Medpedia site Wednesday with the support of medical heavyweights like Harvard Medical School, the Stanford School of Medicine, the University of Michigan Medial School and the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health.

These schools and other organizations have agreed to provide content and to urge their employees to sign up to be editors of the new site, which is scheduled to go live with 1,000 pages of information by the end of the year.

The site, which is built with the same open source software that runs Wikipedia, will be written and edited by volunteer medical doctors or experts with PhD degrees, noted James Currier, Medpedia's founder and chairman. The site will provide profiles of each of each editor, including their background and areas of expertise, he added.

The volunteer editors will also have to disclose any compensation received from key outside entities like pharmaceutical companies. Experts can now apply on the site to be editors. Those selected will work with committees organized by specialties like pediatric oncology or dermatology to update and edit Medpedia Web pages.

Currier, who has worked on creating online communities since the 1990s, said that Medpedia aims to help apply the collaborative, bottoms-up approach that user-generated content brings to Web 2.0 sites to the medical community, which traditionally has been governed by the hierarchical, top-down approach of doctors handing down information to patients. Currier also founded Tickle, a psychological and self-assessment testing company that was sold to Monster in 2004 for more than US$90 million.

While the Medpedia plans initially received a "tepid" response from some in the medical community, interest increased they learned that the content would be created only by fully vetted licensed experts, according to Currier.

Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corp. and the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation, also supports the effort as a member of the Medpedia board of advisors, Currier said.

Currier said that the bottoms-up, collaborative approach made popular by Wikipedia and other social networks is perfectly suited to the Medpedia goal of creating and interlinking content about 13,000 drugs and 30,000 medical conditions.

"That problem alone is too complex for a top-down hierarchy," he said. "Whenever you have a very complex, interrelated ever-changing body of knowledge like medicine it is a perfect marriage with this bottoms- up collaborative process we've seen on the Web. As [the editors] contribute small bits, the sum total is much greater than anything a directed system could produce If there is a collaborative source it will not ever be perfect, but it will be the best we could ever do just from a mathematical perspective."

Currier said that unlike other online efforts around health information, Medpedia will provide all information relevant to a specific topic on one page and not chop it up over multiple pages to try to generate more page views. In addition, the navigation hierarchy has been designed to be simple for all levels of users, he added. While the main page on a topic will be written in language easy for consumers to understand, each topic will also feature a technical page for medical professionals or for patients as they delve deeper into a particular condition or topic, Currier added.

"It's feeling inevitable that all the medical and health information will be available worldwide at no charge via an open, collaborative platform like Medpedia," said Linda Hawes Clever, a medical doctor and clinical professor at University of California, San Francisco, Medical School, in a statement. "Medpedia will also serve as an important place for medical professionals to get credit and become known for their specialties."

Clever is also a member of Medpedia's advisory board.

In the future the site will show text-based advertising from third-party advertising sites like Google Ad Sense. A link will allow users to flag inappropriate ads, which will then be reviewed by editors and potentially prevented from being shown on the site in the future, Medpedia said.

For its part, Harvard Medical School will publish content on the site that are uneditable that their faculty has created. Other organizations like the University of Michigan Medical School will encourage their faculty to edit Medpedia, Currier noted.

Medpedia noted that other health and medical organizations supporting the effort include the American College of Physicians , the Oxford Health Alliance, the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies and the European Federation of Neurological Associations. These groups are contributing content and promoting participation in Medpedia to their members.

Medpedia is also receiving content and cooperation from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration and other government research groups.

Top cop demoted after saying BMWs were 'black man's wheels'

A senior police officer has been demoted after referring to a model BMW car as 'black man's wheels'.

Former Superintendent Chris Pretty was given the toy by colleagues at a party for his send-off as head of training for West Midlands Police.

Two officers complained about his 'racist joke' and Mr Pretty, a respected officer who headed a crackdown on black-on-black crime, was hauled before a misconduct panel.

He was demoted by one rank to Chief Inspector after the hearing last week.

Anti-racism campaigners yesterday welcomed the result.

Bini Brown, from the African Caribbean Self Help Organisation in Birmingham said: 'These particular comments made by a high-ranking police officer merely add fuel to the myth that BMWs are only driven by black criminals.

'If West Midlands Police have seen fit to make an example of this officer and discipline him then I welcome that.

'But I think the problem of institutional racism within the police force is a deep-rooted one and reflected across society. It is not going to be conquered overnight.'

The leaving party was held in Edgbaston, Birmingham, in September last year as Mr Pretty transferred to neighbouring Coventry.

A source said: 'Chris collects model cars and he was given one as a leaving present.

'He was a former captain in the army and is into hunting and shooting, but toy cars are his main hobby.

'When he opened the miniature BMW he joked: "Oh, Black Man's Wheels".

'It was just a joke. Cops seem to spend more time investigating each other these days than they do catching criminals.

'It's a complete over-reaction. They're obviously more interested in political correctness than letting officers get on with the job of tackling crooks.'

Mr Pretty has been applauded by members of the city's black community in the past.

He once headed West Midlands Police's Operation Ventara, a unit investigating black-on-black crime, and was instrumental in bringing witnesses forward for murder cases. West Midlands Police initially referred the complaints about the BMW comment to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

But the watchdog said it was happy for the force to carry out its own investigation. A force spokesman said: 'He has been dealt with in the appropriate manner. West Midlands Police expects the highest standards of professionalism and integrity from all its officers and staff and has robust procedures in place to deal with behaviour which falls outside those standards.'

Agony of the mother who shopped son found guilty of attempted murder

A mother who shopped her son to police for beating a man into a coma has defended her decision after he was found guilty of attempted murder.

Hilary Kellett, 47, says her son Liam Edwards, 27, thanked her for turning him in.

When she walked into court to give evidence, she said, 'he mouthed at me to keep calm and just tell the truth'.

But Mrs Kellet admitted: 'I am still wrestling with my conscience, wondering "did I do the right thing?" It was the toughest decision of my life.'

Edwards and his friend Adam Stebbing, 32, will be sentenced in September after their conviction at Winchester Crown Court.

Their victim Scott Speirs, 34, father of an eight-year-old son, has been in a coma since the assault in a Southampton park last December.

The court heard that the pair, who denied the charge, stamped on Mr Speirs's head at least 12 times and punched and kicked him before leaving him for dead.

Mrs Kellett became suspicious after overhearing her son talking on the phone to Stebbing, saying they had 'gone too far'.

She was violently sick with shock. She was also moved to tears after seeing Mr Speirs' mother on television, begging for somebody to come forward with information.

Mrs Kellett, from Southampton said her son had had a drugs problem since he was of 15.

She said: 'When he was off the drugs he was one of the nicest people you could meet  -  but when he was on them it was like someone had flicked a switch in his head.

'I had to do something. I was worried that maybe in a couple of weeks he may kill someone or he would be killed. That is how bad he had got.

'He came to me and said he needed help. I asked in what way and he said he couldn't explain because I would disown him. He said he needed to be stopped.

'I was hoping I could persuade him to hand himself in, but he just got worse and worse and I couldn't get him on his own  -  Adam was always around.'

Even so, she said calling the police was the hardest thing she had ever done and after her court appearance, 'I have never cried so much'.

She added: 'I'm not sure I would do it again. I have upset so many people and I feel I have betrayed my kids.'