Tom Daley performed

He will hope to perform a similar dive to win Olympic gold in 12 months time.

But last night Tom Daley performed arguably one of the most important dives of his career to date.

The 17-year-old former world champion performed an inward one-and-a-half piked somersault from the 10-metre board to celebrate the opening of the Olympic Aquatic Centre exactly one year before the games.

A cheering crowd gave the diver a ten second countdown before he sprung off the board and plunged to the water below.

Honour: Tom Daley performs the ceremonial first dive into the water at the newly opened aquatics centre at the Olympic Park

Impressive: Daley performs his one and a half somersault with pike dive at the pool, which he described as 'absolutely incredible'

Flying high: Daley takes off from the ten metre board, a height at which he has previously won a world championship in 2009

Not making a splash: Tom Daley plunges into the dive pool after completing the dive

As Daley performed the dive, across London a large crowd had gathered at Trafalgar Square to celebrate the anniversary.

The event saw International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge, alongside London Mayor Boris Johnson and David Cameron, officially inviting the 200 nations who will take part to the Games.

The Prime Minister described the celebrations as 'a great night for London, a great night for Britain'.

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• Coe hits out at plan to go soft on drug-takers at London 2012 Olympics

He recalled the joyous scenes six years ago when Trafalgar Square erupted with cheers when London was named as the next host city.

Mr Cameron said: 'Six years on with one year to go, the sense of excitement is even greater today than it was then.

'I think this has the makings of a great British success story. With a year to go it is on time and on budget. I believe this can be a great advertisement for our country.'

London calling: Flanked by both Princess Anne and David Cameron, IOC president Jacques Rogge addresses the crowds in Trafalgar Square

Speeches: London Mayor Boris Johnson and PM David Cameron delivered short statements on the game to the gathered crowd

Mr Rogge added: 'On 6 July, 2005 a dream was born when the IOC awarded the 2012 games to London.

'The world's finest athletes began dreaming of competing in this magnificent city in packed state of the art venues and in front of passionate crowds.

'As in 1908 and 1948 they knew they would be coming to the nation that invented modern sport and the concept of fair play.'

The ceremony ended with the grand unveiling of the gold, silver and bronze medal designs that athletes will compete for next year.

The medal was designed by artist David Watkins and take a circular form which is intended to be a metaphor for the world. He said he was 'absolutely delighted' with the finished product.

Grand unveiling: Double gold winners Dame Kelly Holmes and Lord Coe show off the medals on stage in Trafalgar Square

Going for gold: These are the medal designs for victorious athletes during the London Olympics, which begin in exactly a year's time

Weighty: Each medal measures 85mm in diameter and 7mm thick and weighs in at 375-400g, making them some of the biggest Olympic medals ever

Each measures 85mm in diameter and 7mm thick and weighs in at 375-400g, making them some of the biggest Olympic medals ever.

The front of each medals depict the same imagery used at every Summer Games, that of the Greek Goddess of Victory, Nike, stepping out of the Partenon to a host city.

On the London medals, the back will contain five symbolic elements, including the London 2012 sign and items which are meant to be symbolic of achievement and effort.

The medals' unveiling came on a day of celebration in London as figures from across the world of sport gathered at the locations across the city to mark the occasion, including at the newly finished aquatics centre.

Fire breaks out at Newquay hotel

Fire breaks out at Newquay hotel

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14 Dec 2011

A hotel in Newquay has been damaged after a fire broke out in the building this morning (14th December).

More than fifty firefighters were called to the Pendennis Hotel at Mount Wise, which has been occupied by squatters, on Wednesday morning at around 5.30am, reports BBC News.

Twelve people from a nearby building were evacuated into a local hotel and the surrounding area was cordoned off.

Nigel Vincent from Cornwall fire and rescue service told the news provider: "The wind was in our favour. The Pendennis is contained in its own grounds.

"We have had 55 firefighters on the scene. The appliances have come as far as St Just in west Cornwall."

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, a 'suitable and sufficient' fire risk assessment must be conducted on all commercial properties in England and Wales.

If the fire risk assessment is deemed to be carried out to an insufficient extent, the Responsible Person can face an unlimited fine or a prison sentence of up to two years.

Local police are treating the blaze as suspicious.

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sent hearse to ex-partner's house

ASBO for woman who twice sent hearse to ex-partner's house

A WOMAN twice phoned for a hearse to collect a body from a former partner’s house in sick hoax calls, a court heard.

Nicola Thomas, aged 45, also made a string of false complaints to police, saying she had been attacked by other people on several occasions, Plymouth magistrates were told. She has even reported herself as missing.

1. ​
   Nicola Thomas

Magistrates have banned her from making hoax calls for 10 years in a wide-ranging antisocial behaviour order. Dylan Sadler, applying for the order on behalf of Plymouth City Council, said she was a “prolific stalker and hoax caller”.

He added: “She called a hearse on two occasions to collect a body from the house. I do not think you can get any sicker.”

Mr Sadler said the former partner, who lives in Somerset, felt so intimidated by the harassment that she felt “imprisoned” in her own house.

Magistrates granted a seven-point order covering the next 10 years. Breaking any of its terms could land Thomas in prison. Thomas is banned from making any false complaints about any person to any public authority and from making hoax calls. She is also prohibited from calling 999 except for in a genuine emergency.

Mr Sadler said that as well as the harassment of the ex-partner, she had also made 18 complaints against her next-door neighbour. He added she had reported drug-dealing, antisocial behaviour and noise on the premises.

Mr Sadler said: “She is the archetypal neighbour from hell. If you live next door to her you can kiss goodbye to any quality of life. All the claims were unsubstantiated and false. She is someone who is quite willing to destroy the reputation, the peace, and the lives effectively of other people to satisfy some bitter desire within her.”

He added she had 17 aliases and had used three dates of births. Thomas told the court her real name was in fact Nicola Ryan.

Mr Sadler said she had made numerous complaints about named individuals including ex-partners, claiming that she had been assaulted or sent abusive text messages. She had also made a complaint a male intruder had raped her in her own home, the court heard.

Mr Sadler said she named a suspect and police had investigated for four months before deciding no crime had taken place. He added she then provided the police with little assistance in her allegations.

Mr Sadler said: “She makes it up as she goes along. All of this puts a strain on the resources of the emergency services, especially the police.”

Alex Travers, for Thomas, said she was vulnerable and suffered from anxiety and depression. She added that Thomas was in no fit state to challenge the council’s witnesses or to give evidence herself. Mrs Travers said she also had cirrhosis, needed real help from the health services and a carer regularly visited her home to provide help, but she was feeling more isolated in her own home. Mrs Travers questioned the evidence that she went out of her way to make people’s lives miserable.

She added: “When someone feels threatened or they are a victim of crime they are entitled to report it to police.”

UK'S MOST SUSTAINABLE BREWERY

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OTTER NAMED THE UK'S MOST SUSTAINABLE BREWERY We have just scooped a prestigious industry award for our pioneering green efforts and ethically driven commitment to producing top quality beer. On Monday 14th November we won the 'Best Sustainability' category at the 2011 SIBA Business Awards in London. SIBA is the Society of Independent Brewers who since 1980 have represented the interests of the UK's burgeoning independent brewing sector.   The Business Awards, now in their sixth year, invited entries from SIBA's 500+ brewer members into a number of categories such as Best Customer Support, Best E-Business, Best Pump Clip and Best Marketing. Our entry drew praise from the judges for a wide range of green initiatives including the use of reed...

Fire breaks out at pub in Devon

Fire breaks out at pub in Devon

More than 30 firefighters spend the night tackling a fire at a pub in Chudleigh, Devon.

Fire at Coaching House pub in Chudleigh

Firefighters said the flames reached into the sky some 10m above the building. Video: Simon Grost

More than 30 firefighters have been called to a fire at a pub in Devon.

The blaze started at the Old Coaching House on Fore Street, Chudleigh, at about 20:00 GMT on Wednesday.

A hydraulic platform, water bowser and an incident command unit were called to the scene. Crews have been fighting the fire overnight.

At least two floors of the three-storey building, parts of which date back to the 17th Century, have been damaged, the fire service said.

Station Manager Matt Johnson, of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, said: "When we arrived, I could see that the roof was well alight and also starting to spread to the floor below.

"The flames were reaching into the sky some 10m [33ft] above the roof."

There have been no reports of any injuries.

An investigation was to be carried out into the cause, and a building control officer was to examine the structure, the fire service said.

Fore Street has been closed in both directions. Police said it may be closed for the rest of Thursday.

The inn, which has 14 guest rooms, was one of the few buildings to survive a large fire in the town in 1807.

City gets new dean of cathedral

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LHC scientists to release best evidence

Higgs boson: LHC scientists to release best evidence

Continue reading the main story

Related Stories

• Have we found the Higgs or not?
• Q&A: The Higgs boson
• Large Hadron Collider: Guide introduction

Anticipation is building in the run-up to presentations of the best-yet evidence for - or against - the existence of the Higgs boson.

The famed particle is a missing link in current theories of physics, used to explain how everything gains its mass.

Rumours have been swirling about the findings for weeks, ahead of the announcement on Tuesday afternoon.

It is likely to yield only tantalising hints, as the teams do not have enough data to claim a formal discovery.

However, most physicists concede that not finding the Higgs boson is as exciting a prospect as finding it in the place where existing theory predicts it should be.

"If we wouldn't find it it would be even - in a way - more exciting, but you know, both ways, it's a win-win situation," said Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a particle physicist from the University of Manchester.

"[If] we find it, we know this theory's complete, but there's still more things to look for. If we don't find it, we know there must be something else which we haven't understood yet."

Field day

Finding the Higgs was a key goal for the $10bn (£6bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - a 27km (17-mile) circumference accelerator ring of superconducting magnets, designed to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the Universe itself.

The collider hosts two experiments - Atlas and CMS - that are searching for the particle independently.

There is intense excitement among physicists working at Cern, the Geneva-based organisation which operates the collider, over hints that the hunters have cornered their quarry.

"It is a fantastic time at the moment, you can feel people are enthusiastic," Dr Christoph Rembser, a senior scientist on the Atlas experiment, told BBC News. "It is really very lively."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If the Universe really is like that, I find it really quite breathtaking and humbling that we can understand it”

Dr Tara ShearsUniversity of Liverpool, UK

Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, from the University of Manchester, called the quality of the LHC's results "exceptional", adding: "Within one year we will probably know whether the Higgs particle exists, but it is likely not going to be a Christmas present."

He told me: "The Higgs particle would, of course, be a great discovery, but it would be an even greater discovery if it didn't exist where theory predicts it to be."

The Higgs boson is a "fundamental" particle; one of the basic building blocks of the Universe. It is also the last missing piece in the leading theory of particle physics - known as the Standard Model - which describes how particles and forces interact.

The Higgs explains why other particles have mass. As the Universe cooled after the Big Bang, an invisible force known as the Higgs field formed together with its associated boson particle.

It is this field (and not the boson) that imparts mass to the fundamental particles that make up atoms. Without it, these particles would zip through the cosmos at the speed of light.

Mass mechanism

The way the Higgs field works has been likened to the way photographers and reporters congregate around a celebrity. The cluster of people are strongly attracted to the celebrity and create resistance to his or her movement across a room. In other words, they give the celebrity "mass".

Continue reading the main story

The Higgs boson

• The Higgs is a sub-atomic particle that is predicted to exist, but has not yet been seen
• It was proposed as a mechanism to explain mass by six physicists, including Peter Higgs, in 1964
• It imparts mass to other fundamental particles via the associated Higgs field
• It is the last missing member of the Standard Model, which explains how particles interact

• Q&A: The Higgs boson

"The thing about the Higgs is that we always say we need it to explain mass. But the real importance of it is that we need it to make sense of the Universe," said Dr Tara Shears, a particle physicist at Liverpool University.

She told BBC News: "Discovering the Higgs confirms that the approach we have been taking to understand the Universe is correct."

Such deeper motivations underlie the current effort at Cern to dislodge the Higgs and other phenomena. Housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border, the LHC smashes particle beams together at close to the speed of light, with the aim of detecting new particles in the debris.

Physicists do not know the mass of the Higgs itself, which has made hunting for it more difficult. They have to look for the particle by systematically searching a range of masses where it is predicted to be.

From 1989-2000, Cern's LEP particle smasher ruled the Higgs out up to a mass of 114 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). To search for the Higgs beyond that mass, physicists needed a much more powerful machine - the LHC.

Continue reading the main story

Statistics of a 'discovery'

• Particle physics has an accepted definition for a "discovery": a five-sigma level of certainty
• The number of standard deviations, or sigmas, is a measure of how unlikely it is that an experimental result is simply down to chance rather than a real effect
• Similarly, tossing a coin and getting a number of heads in a row may just be chance, rather than a sign of a "loaded" coin
• The "three sigma" level represents about the same likelihood of tossing more than eight heads in a row
• Five sigma, on the other hand, would correspond to tossing more than 20 in a row
• Unlikely results can occur if several experiments are being carried out at once - equivalent to several people flipping coins at the same time
• With independent confirmation by other experiments, five-sigma findings become accepted discoveries

The two detectors Atlas and CMS are looking for signs of it among the billions of collisions that are occurring in each experiment. Hints of the Higgs would look like a little spike or "bump" in physicists' graphs.

For more than a week, rumours have been circulating on physics blogs that Atlas and CMS see a Higgs signal at 125 GeV, between the 2.5 and 3.5 sigma level of certainty.

These numbers represent a measure of the likelihood that any bump the scientists see is down to chance, rather than caused by a real physical phenomenon.

If those are the numbers quoted on Tuesday, it would not be enough for Cern to make a definitive statement. Three sigma counts as an "observation", while five sigma is regarded as the threshold for claiming a discovery.

Indeed, Cern's director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer has told staff by email that the announcement would not be conclusive.

Any such spike could diminish as more data are gathered. But if Atlas and CMS both see a signal in about the same place, there would be an irresistible temptation to pop champagne corks - though behind closed doors.

In public, however, physicists would be obligated to say that a definitive "yes" or "no" would need to wait until 2012.

Asked where a Higgs discovery would rank among scientific milestones of the last 100 years, Dr Shears said: "I don't think that I could compare it to any other scientific advance... it is quite different.

"This is a prediction that stems from a very mathematical approach to understanding the Universe, which is guided by the idea that it is simple at heart.

"If the Universe really is like that, I find it really quite breathtaking and humbling that we can understand it."

gold rush

The state of Nebraska is almost the size of the entire UK, with a population smaller than 

Manchester's. It is classic "over-fly" country, ignored by the rest of the US - which, it turns out, is a big mistake.

The rest of America may be having a miserable time. But if you want to be rich, come to Nebraska and be a farmer. There is a gold rush going on, and it is because of corn.

The price of corn has tripled in the last decade. Why? Because places like India and China simply cannot get enough of the stuff.

'A really good time'

Brandon Hunnicutt, chairman of the Nebraska Corn Growers' Association, loves his new combine harvester - which is just as well because it cost three times the price of a large family house here.

Equipped with an on-board computer, an iPad, a satnav and an Android phone, this high-tech monster cuts the corn that feeds the pigs that fill the stomachs of Asia. It also makes the ethanol for American petrol.

There's been a lot of ebbs and flows, but nothing this good.Brandon Hunnicutt, corn farmer

Brandon Hunnicutt admits that he and farmers like him have never had it so good.

"The short time I've been around on this planet, the really good time was right when I was a baby," he says. "And now, 38 years later, this is another really good time.

"So there's been a lot of ebbs and flows, but nothing this good."

And Brandon is a post-modern farmer, which means he is on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. His finger is never off the racing pulse of commodity prices and land values - which keep going up in this part of America.

The price of land in the region has increased fourfold in five years. Land prices in the rural Midwest are doing the opposite to house prices in the rest of America. They continue to shoot up, even prompting whispers of a bubble.

'Phenomenal income year'

There is a ton of extra cash here, and not all of it from the grain shipped in freight trains. Astonishingly, the farming community of states like Nebraska and neighbouring Iowa is still receiving billions in indirect subsidies on products like corn for ethanol, as well as direct payments to each farming family.

It is a legacy of the depression, which in this part of the country now seems like a very distant era.

We have a pehomenal income year that is beyond record.Prof Bruce Johnson, Nebraska-Lincoln University

"No question about it, we have a phenomenal income year that is beyond record," says Professor Bruce Johnson of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

On the subject of farming subsidies, Professor Johnson admits that for local farmers to continue to receive them "gets to be a questionable call".

And Brandon Hunnicutt admits that he does not need the $60,000 annual subsidy he receives in direct payments. In fact, those direct payments could be scrapped by the end of the year.

But the fact is that the American dream is being kept alive nowadays not in an industrial powerhouse or in Silicone Valley, but here in a small-town America, back on the farm where it all started.