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A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded, The Telegraph has learnt. The 20-year-old marksman, a Lance Corporal in the Coldstream Guards, hit his target from 930 yards (850 metres) away, killing the suicide bomber and five others around him caught in the blast. The incident in Kakaran in southern Afghanistan happened in December but has only now been disclosed as Britain moves towards the withdrawal of all combat soldiers by the end of the year. Lt Col Richard Slack, commanding officer of...

British soldiers are being banned by health and safety rules from training at a military base in the Arctic circle - because it's too cold. Locals at the Allied Training Centre in Porsanger in Norway said they were stunned that while Norwegian troops were out in -25C weather, the Brits were being kept in the warm because of the army rules. The base commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Trond Thomassen confirmed: 'British officers are not in a position to train with large divisions at Porsanger, where the temperature drops to 25 degrees below zero.

FULL TITLE: Terminally sick children have been secretly given deadly overdoses by British doctors in illegal mercy killings, claims retired GP British doctors have secretly killed terminally sick children by giving them 'huge' overdoses of painkillers, it was claimed yesterday. Hours after Belgium became the first country in the world to allow the euthanasia of children, a retired GP suggested it was already happening, informally, in Britain. Dr Michael Irwin told an LBC Radio debate: 'It has happened in this country, very quietly. I know of one or two children over the last few years.'

Does being unwritten make the British Constitution a living and breathing document?Most conservatives resist the notion that the Constitution is a living and breathing document. But perhaps the notion is worth a second look if you just ask the following question: Which constitution? Once you decide to start comparing constitutions you might be surprised at your findings. There are living Constitutions out there, they just don't apply to the United States of America. This article is built around three goals. First, to highlight a small piece of the history of Progressivism and how it relates to what’s written. Second, to...

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The often stale British political system is being rocked by its very own Tea Party. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), formed in 1993 opposing Britain’s entry into the European Union, failed to make an electoral dent for a long time. However UKIP has built up steam in recent years and is spearheading a seismic shift in the British political spectrum. In this year’s local elections – the British version of midterms -- UKIP took a stunning 23 percent of the vote, up from the 3.1 percent they won in the 2010 national election. Their leader, Nigel Farage, is buoyed by...

Original Title:Computer Pioneer Alan Turing Pardoned of ‘Gross Indecency’ Alan Turing, the British mathematician who laid the theoretical groundwork for modern computing and cracked coded messages from the Nazis, received a royal pardon on Tuesday. Turing was convicted under a late 19th-century law that criminalized homosexuality. He was forced to undergo chemical castration in 1952. U.K. Justice Minister Chris Grayling requested the pardon, calling the sentence “unjust and discriminatory.” Said Grayling: “Turing deserves to be remembered and recognized for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science.”

London (AFP) - Two Muslim extremists were on Thursday found guilty of the gruesome murder of a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, hacked to death soldier Lee Rigby as he walked back to his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London, in May.

It’s hard to forget meeting a man who hated Mahatma Gandhi. I once did, though. No, he wasn’t some erstwhile viceroy lamenting lost glory days, but an Indian born and raised in the land of sati and saris. The reason for his ire? He said that when Gandhi drove the British out, India lost everything: technicians, engineers, expertise, bureaucratic integrity, etc. In the same vein, I have a Zambian friend who has argued that colonialism had a positive impact, in that it brought civilization to the lands — such as his — it touched. And, in fact, even that Kenyan...

**SNIP** According to the US authorities, the arrested man hacked into systems of the US Army, Nasa and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. **SNIP** The suspected hackers allegedly placed "back doors", or code, to allow them to get back into the systems later to steal confidential information.

'As soon as the pirates get a blast of Britney, they move on as quickly as they can,' says merchant naval officerIn an excellent case of "here's a sentence you won't read every day", Britney Spears has emerged as an unlikely figurehead in the fight against Somali pirates. According to reports, Britney's hits, including Oops! I Did It Again and Baby One More Time, are being employed by British naval officers in an attempt to scare off pirates along the east coast of Africa. Perhaps nothing else – not guns, not harpoons – is quite as intimidating as the sound...

Is the English sense of patriotism fading? According to a poll, English people are more likely to know the date of St Patrick's Day than St George's. Find out how English you are by taking our testEnglish people are more likely to be able to name the date of the US Independence Day and St Patrick's Day than St George's Day, according to a new poll. The survey found only 40 per cent were able to identify St George’s Day as falling on April 23, compared with 71 per cent who could give July 4 as the American national holiday...

A TAXI taxi driver has been banned from having a St George's Cross sticker in her cab - because it could discriminate against foreigners. Patriotic Denise Said, 56, has three English flag signs stuck on the doors and boot of her vehicle. But after one complaint from a rival cab firm she was stunned to receive a letter from the council accusing her of breaching equality laws. Teignbridge Council in Devon said the stickers would leave anyone who is not English at a "disadvantage in their day to day life". The local authority says it will refuse to renew Denise's...

Many today don't realize that we are facing the same sort of tactics by our own Federal government that our forefathers faced from the British just prior to the War for Independence. In fact, I'll venture to guess that most people never were taught in school what follows in this article. That's right, gun control is nothing new now, nor was it even new in the twentieth century. It was very much alive in the eighteenth century. So when someone comes along telling you "the founding fathers wouldn't have envisioned this or that" with regards to arms, just remind them...

RAF Typhoon fighters won a mid-air showdown with two Syrian warplanes heading towards Britain’s main base in Cyprus, the Sunday People reports. The dramatic confrontation came after President Bashar Al-Assad’s air chiefs sent two Russian-made Sukhoi Su-24s to probe British air defenses, the report said. The Syrian bombers refused to respond to repeated attempts by the control tower at the UK’s Akrotiri air base to contact them. RAF pilots flying the advanced combat jet were scrambled before the Sukhois could enter our 14-mile air exclusion zone. The Typhoons – which can scream from runway standstill to seven miles high in...

Six British soldiers in town for a rugby match against the NYPD have been arrested for allegedly beating up and robbing an off-duty American police officer in New York City. Sky News reports the Royal Regiment of Scotland soldiers were at a bar in Manhattan Friday when the police officer began chatting with a woman who was with the troops. The BBC reports the soldiers are Fijan nationals serving in the 1st Scots Guard.

Must subscribe to read the entire article; British military chiefs are being ejected from US meetings about Syria in the first direct consequence of David Cameron’s refusal to join military action. The role of senior British officers based at US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, has been downgraded because they cannot be trusted with high-level intelligence about a conflict with which they are no longer involved, military sources say.

Military sources have claimed that the role of senior British officers at the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, has been downgraded because their American counterparts believe that they cannot be trusted with high-level intelligence about a conflict with which they are not involved. Roughly 30 British personnel have been working alongside the Americans and French and have been involved war planning for a number of weeks, including fine-tuning a list of targets and orchestrating military assets.[Snip] No British officers are now engaged in military planning and none will be involved in the execution of the operation, a British defence

The moves are a setback for the U.S. bid to strike Syria militarily for its alleged chemical weapons use. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's move to punish Syria's government for allegedly using chemical weapons in a deadly attack last week appeared to suffer a setback Wednesday when the U.S. failed to get United Nations approval for use of force and British support was thrown into question. The collapse of diplomatic efforts aimed at securing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Syria was expected. The British impediment was not.

Blood of the Irish The Blood in Irish veins is Celtic, right? Well, not exactly. Although the history many Irish people were taught at school is the history of the Irish as a Celtic race, the truth is much more complicated, and much more interesting than that ...Research done into the DNA of Irish males has shown that the old Anthropological attempts to define 'Irish' have been misguided. As late as the 1950s researchers were busy collecting data among Irish people such as hair colour and height, in order to categorise them as a 'race' and define them as...