May 3: Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s chances of retaining power are being increasingly written off and now the wrangle for the leadership of the Labour party is making the news.
Foreign secretary David Miliband, who was touted as one of the possible challengers to Mr Brown’s prime ministerial bid in 2007, is now a favourite to take over the beleaguered party.
Mr Miliband, who was identified as a Blairite during Tony Blair’s premiership, was identified as the Labour leader with most support to take over from Mr Brown by BPIX survey for the Mail on Sunday. He has 45 per cent support and Ed Balls, who is schools secretary, had 11 per cent per cent support. The tide against Mr Brown is so strong that bookmakers are offering odds on the possible days when he will resign. William Hill is offering 4/ odds that the Prime Minister will resign as Labour leader before Saturday and 11/10 odds that he will still be the party leader on Saturday.
However, both Ladbrokes and William Hill are clear that foreign secretary Miliband is the favourite to take over from Mr Brown as party leader. William Hill is offering 7/4 odds for Mr Miliband as the favourite to succeed Mr Brown and Ladbrokes is giving 6/4 odds of Mr Miliband succeeding as the party leader. Both William Hill and Ladbrokes are offering 6/1 odds of either environment secretary Ed Miliband or and home secretary Alan Johnson taking over as the Labour party leader.
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African lived in medieval England?
London, May 3: A 13th century skeleton unearthed on the grounds of a friary may be the earliest physical evidence that Africans lived in England in medieval times, a team of researchers said on Sunday.
Forensics experts at the University of Dundee Scotland say that the bones most likely belonged to a man from modern-day Tunisia who spent about a decade living in England before he died. “I believe that this is the first physical evidence of Africans in medieval England,” said Jim Bolton, a historian at Queen Mary, University of London who wasn’t involved in the discovery.
“Finding a skeleton like this is of major interest,” he said. The man — who appears to have died of a spinal abscess — was identified as African by studying his skeleton and the historical record of the friary where he was buried.
“It’s not just the skin tone, it’s a question of bone structure,” said Xanthe Mallett, an expert at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification in Dundee. She said the size of the nasal bone or the shape of the orbits differed depending on whether skeletons were European or African.