This week's UK news: 4 October 2013
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4 October 2013


Burglar rescued by lifeboat

A burglar who was trying to escape from the UK in a canoe had to be rescued by a lifeboat a mile out to sea.

Paul Redford had burgled homes in the North of England before breaking into a holiday house on the South Coast and spending a night there. He then took a canoe and a child-sized lifejacket and tried to paddle to France. He was rescued because someone saw him leave in the canoe and was worried that he was going to kill himself. Redford said he was hoping to start a new life in France.

 

What we really think about the Internet

Eight out of ten people surveyed in the UK say they depend on using the internet for everyday activities, compared with six out of ten a decade ago. But one in seven of us secretly hate the internet and worry that it takes control of our lives. And almost four in ten only used it because they had to.

The research, by Oxford University, also found that half of people were using the internet without any enthusiasm, and a majority of middle-aged people were now using social networking sites.

 

The return of Bridget Jones

Twenty years ago, Bridget Jones's diary first appeared in a British newspaper. Bridget - an invented character - was a woman in her 20s who started every diary entry with the number of cigarettes she had smoked, the alcohol she had drunk and weight she hadn't lost. Bridget made lots of mistakes at work, wanted to get a boyfriend, and drank too much. The diaries ended up as novels, and then films.

Now Bridget has returned in a new book. She is now 51 and a widow with two children, who is going out with a much younger man. There has been lots of comment about the book because Bridget does not seem to have grown up much, and because the author has killed off Mark Darcy, who Bridget loved in the earlier books.

 

Halloween horror

Hallowe'en has become a big festival in the UK. Children dress up in scary costumes and go round their neighbourhoods "trick or treating" - when they ask for sweets - and sometimes people have parties. It is now more common for people to buy scary outfits from supermarkets for Hallowe'en, but this led to a huge row this week.

Two of the UK's biggest supermarkets were selling outfits showing people with mental health problems as being scary and killers. Tesco had an orange jumpsuit with the words Psycho Ward stencilled on the front, while Asda was selling a "mental patient" jacket, which was covered in blood and came with an axe. The supermarkets both withdrew the outfits after a campaign on Twitter led by well-known people, and apologised. Campaigners said the costumes reinforced bad stereotypes about people with mental health problems.

 

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