Such dangers are occasionally illustrated in the press through stories such as that of Kirsty McRae, the 14 year old girl who suffered 70% burns to her body after staying on a sunbed for too long in an unstaffed tanning salon. However, in spite of these stories the general public consensus has always seemed to run along the lines of a policy of “use within moderation will be fine”, and that cases such as those of Miss McRae are the result of a lack of supervision and education. Indeed it is not uncommon for some salons to advertise the health benefits of using sunbeds.

However, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a body which provides advice to the World Health Organisation (WHO), has released a new report on the dangers of sunbeds. The report states that “The use of UV-emitting tanning devices is widespread in many developed countries, especially among young women. A comprehensive meta-analysis concluded that the risk of skin melanoma is increased by 75% when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age.” This huge risk has led the IARC to upgrade sunbeds to the status of “carcinogenic to humans, which puts sunbeds in the illustrious company of substances such as tobacco smoke, asbestos and formaldehyde.

Whilst the news that sunbeds are dangerous may not come as a surprise to some (I have long harboured such suspicions), this report surely raises serious questions as to the use of sunbeds and what restricitons should be placed upon their availability.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revised it’s advice on the use of sunbeds in May 2009, now advising against the use of sunbeds by those under the age of 18, and that all salons should be staffed at all times.

Such recommendations have most likely been made in reaction to, and in an attempt to avoid, incidents such as those of Kirsty McRae. However, I feel that with the new evidence that has come to light with the report of the IARC that stronger restraints need to be placed on the availability of sunbeds. It sends very mixed messages when tobacco products are banned for the under-18s, but any child can walk into an unattended salon, pop in their pocket money, and do potentially lifelong, or even fatal, damage to their skin. A campaign was launched in Wales attempting to educate children in the dangers of sunbeds, though in my opinion this does not go anywhere near far enough.

A ministerial reaction to the IARC report, plus an earlier report by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (Comare) commisioned for the Department of Health, is expected although the findings of such studies are disputed by Kathy Banks, the chief executive of the sunbed association. She stated “There is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer. The relationship between UV exposure and an increased risk of developing skin cancer is only likely to arise where over-exposure – that is, burning – has taken place.

“This outcome would be the same whether burning takes place on a sunbed or on a beach or in a park or garden in natural sunlight. Over 80% of sunbed users are very knowledgeable about the risks associated with over-exposure to UV and the majority of sunbed users take 20 or less sunbed sessions a year.”

Quite how Ms Banks can be so sure of such figures when so many salons do not have staff operating them is anyone’s guess.

They have enlisted their unmarried daughters to plow the fields naked in order to embarrass the Gods sufficiently that they unleash the heavy rains needed to produce a bumper harvest.

This is apparently a traditional way of rectifying an early harvest drought, and villagers have vowed to continue the practice until heavy rains arrive.

The Call of Duty series has been a hugely successful franchise for Activision, with the company announcing in May 2009 that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2′s predecessor, had sold 13 million copies.

Anticipation over the release of Modern Warfare 2 has been growing for a long time, and it is this obvious demand that makes Activision’s decision so questionable. Is this price rise reflective of increasing development costs? It is certain that developing a game of the calibre of Modren Warfare 2 can not be cheap, but surely sufficient rewards are reaped through sales at £45 a unit?

A cynical (and in my view pretty accurate) standpoint would be that Activision know that the vast majority of the Call of Duty fanbase, and probably many who have not played it before, are going to buy the game regardless of the price (especially with the release date so close to Christmas), and so they are going to squeeze another £10 out of each customer.

It’s a tactic that will inevitably work for the most part, but personally I’m going to abstain on principal. Call me cheap, but I resent being subjected to a 20% price rise in the middle of a recession. Activision have made over $2 billion from the Guitar Hero franchise alone, and I don’t think it would be too much to ask to ask for them to stick with the standard pricing for a game that they know will be a best-seller.

I would imagine that a large number of people in this situation would’ve said “Thank you very much” and taken a similar course of action to the couple from New Zealand who hit the headlines this May. Thankfully, however, Mr Hayes is made of more honest stuff than the aforementioned Kiwis, and he wrote a letter to Barclay’s Chief Executive Peter Varley, explaining that his bank was trying to give him £29 million for no particular reason. This had the desired effect and his balance was rectified, with Barclays claiming that the money was never actually there and Mr Hayes was issued with the wrong account receipt. This may or may not be true, but you can bet that had Mr Hayes gone on the run with £29 million of a bank’s money, there would’ve been plenty of people that felt that it was about time the banks got their just desserts.

Although there is no charge for the basic service on computers, you do have to occasionally listen to adverts, though when you think about the amount of money that you could shell out on the itunes store making a playlist, you can get over this pretty quickly. There is even a premium version available for £9.99 a month which gives you advert free listening at home, although for that cost you would have to hate adverts quite a lot.

Spotify say that only the premium service will be available on iphone, though for anyone that buys all their music, this could represent a significant saving when you can have the choice of six million songs for less than the price of two albums every month. All seems good, no? Possibly not through the eyes of apple, who are likely to view spotify as a serious competitor to their own itunes store.

The application has been submitted to apple for approval before it can make it onto the app store, and the CEO of Spotfiy, Daniel Ek, is confident that it will make it on, saying “Apple has already approved several other music services such as Last.fm, Deezer and Pandora. We very much look forward to people being able to access their Spotify library wherever they might be and we’ve spent significant time and resources to ensure we’ve stuck to Apple’s developer guidelines point by point.”

Whilst Mr Ek is correct in saying that services such as Pandora have been approved, they are far from identical in that they function by playing the user music similar to their initial choice, much like Apple’s Genius program, whilst Spotify allows you to choose your music, much like a radio station that you control.

In any case, it is Apple’s perogative as to whether they choose to approve the Spotify application, but the question that pops into my mind is whether this creates a worrying precedent for the future. Apple themselves admit that they have been surprised by the success of the app store, but the kind of conflict of interest that is evident here is bound to become more common as external developers become more inventive with the technology at their fingertips. Spotify have already demonstrated a working version of their app on the Google Android OS, and you get the impression that whilst Apple may withold approval of the Spotify app, there will be a great many that won’t.

Not so should you be caught up in any kind of nefarious activities in the Prince of Wales road area in Norwich, an area of known for disturbances, where a number of “door supervisors” have now been empowered to give out on-the-spot fines more commonly associated with Police officers and Police Community Support Officers (who are incidentally a ridiculous invention though not quite as bad an idea as giving Big Dave who works the door at The Plough the power of judge, jury, and executioner. Metaphorically speaking of course).

Aside from the clearly worrying development of the Police handing over powers for which they are trained, to people who stand in doorways asking for ID, and the utterly glaring absence of any kind of legal process in the act of these fines being dished out, there is also the small matter of all of these trusted individuals being given access to the Police National Computer. I don’t want to appear prejudiced, but many of the bouncers I have met aren’t exactly salt of the earth types and though I’m sure (or in any case hopeful) that the Police subject the individuals to a stringent level of vetting, the potential for abuse of this position is huge, and more than a little worrying.

A decision based on good sentiments perhaps, but the US is taking a far more cautious line on the entire issue, by conucting two months of clinical trials, a process that will involve around 2,400 volunteers. Although this size of sample will not by any means give an in depth understanding of the vaccine and any possible side-effects, it will at least make the more obvious problems clear.

Medical authorities in the UK have reacted angrily to the suggestion that corners are being cut, with the Department of Health branding suggestions that an unsafe vaccine could be distributed as “extremely irresponsible”. They also point out that the flu vaccine that the swine flu vaccine is based on has been used over 40,000 times with a good safety record.

The question over whether the decision to rush the swine flu vaccine through without full clinical trials was the right one won’t be answered for a while yet, but when you consider that the first groups in line for the vaccine will be those considered at highest risk to swine flu; small children and pregnant women, there is the prospect, albeit a distant one, of a horrific legacy in the offing.

As Dr Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) flu chief said, “There are certain areas where you can make economies, perhaps, but certain areas where you simply do not try to make any economies”. Only time will tell if this was a prudent decision.