UK boy, 5, gets billed for no-show at friend’s birthday bash
LONDON: In a bizarre incident, a five-year- old boy in the UK has been billed about £16 and threatened with legal action by his friend’s mother for failing to attend her son’s birthday party.
Alex Nash, from Cornwall, was invited to the party just before Christmas.
An invoice for £15.95 was sent by his schoolfriend’s mother Julie Lawrence, who said Alex’s non-attendance left her out of pocket and his parents had her details to tell her he was not going.
Alex’s father Derek said he had been told he would be taken to the small claims court for refusing to pay.
Alex’s parents, from Torpoint, had accepted an invitation to the party at a dry ski slope in Plymouth, Devon, just before Christmas.
However, they realized their son was double-booked and due to spend time with his grandparents, which he did.
His parents said they had no contact information for Lawrence at that time.
They found the invoice in a brown envelope in his school bag last week.
“It was a proper invoice with full official details and even her bank details on it. I can understand that she’s upset about losing money. The money isn’t the issue, it’s the way she went about trying to get the money from me,” Nash was quoted as saying by BBC.
“She didn’t treat me like a human being, she treated me like a child and that I should do what she says,” he said.
In a short statement, Lawrence said: “All details were on the party invite. They had every detail needed to contact me.”
Nash said he had been told he was being taken to the small claims court because he was refusing to pay. (PTI)
‘Super Saturn’ with gigantic ring system found
London: Astronomers have found that the ring system they saw eclipsing a very young Sun-like star — known as J1407 — is of enormous proportions, much larger and heavier than the ring system of Saturn.
The ring system – the first of its kind to be found outside our solar system – was discovered in 2012 by a team led by Eric Mamajek from the University of Rochester in Britain.
A new analysis of the data, led by Matthew Kenworthy from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, shows that the ring system consists of over 30 rings – each of them tens of millions of kms in diameter.
Furthermore, they found gaps in the rings, which indicate that satellites (or exomoons) may have formed.
“The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings,” Kenworthy said.
The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed model based on the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system, he added.
“If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon,” said Kenworthy.
This planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn and its ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings are today.
“You could think of it as kind of a super Saturn,” said co-author Mamajek, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester. Astronomers expect that the rings will become thinner in the next several million years and eventually disappear as satellites form from the material in the disks. The result has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. (IANS)
UK boy expelled from school for insulting teacher on FB
London: A 14-year-old boy in the UK has been expelled from school after he posted insults about his head teacher’s hair colour, looks and weight on Facebook.
Jordan Ford took to the social media site after teachers told him his dyed red hair was not acceptable for school. He copied a picture from head teacher Keziah Featherstone’s profile in which she appears to have dyed hair. Jordan posted it above the caption “This is not an example to set to other students”.
Bridge Learning Campus in Hartcliffe, Bristol, said Ford posted derogatory comments about the hair colour, looks and weight of Featherstone. The teenager’s family believe he has been unfairly treated, arguing that he only drew attention to the fact that the picture showed the teacher with hair dyed in a colour banned in school, the Bristol Post reported.
But the school insists Jordan made a derogatory comment in his post, which attracted up to 50 offensive remarks from fellow pupils on his Facebook page. It is believed that the incident is one of the first of its kind in the city. Bridge Learning Campus Chief executive Mark Davies said the social media post incited abuse and that Jordan made things worse by failing to apologise afterwards.
Davies understands the post had been made the subject of a police investigation for “malicious communications”. (PTI)
Woman drowns puppy in airport toilet to board plane
Houston: A 56-year-old woman from Florida is suspected of drowning a Doberman puppy in a US airport toilet after authorities did not allow her to fly with three “too young” puppies.
Cynthia Anderson arrived at a Nebraska airport on Friday with three puppies and two dogs but grew desperate when she was told she could not fly with the pups because they were too young.
Then Volusia County resident allegedly drowned one of the puppies — a Doberman — in an airport bathroom after trying to conceal the pooch in her carry-on luggage, according to the Grand Island Police. “The puppies, all believed to be three weeks old or less, were too young to fly,” said Grand Island police Captain Dean Elliott.
“Their eyes weren’t even open,” Elliott was quoted as saying by Orlando Sentinel newspaper. Dogs must be at least 8 weeks old to fly. The other two puppies were picked up by the woman’s parents, Elliot said. (PTI)