London, Aug 18 : The worst snorers in Britain will be attending a boot camp next month in a bid to kick the anti-social habit.

More than 200 people applied for just six places on the military-style weekend, which is being run by Help Stop Snoring, a company that produces snoring relief aids.

Participants will be banned from drinking and smoking and forced to comply with a strict diet and training regime.

Boot camps have been used to treat troubled teenagers, drug addicts and the obese, but this is believed to be the first one to tackle snoring.

“Snoring can ruin lives. For some the hairdryer treatment of a boot camp is the only option,” Times Online quoted a spokesman for the organisers, as saying.

London, August 18 : Intelligence service MI5 is planning is recruiting homosexual spies, and trying to improve working conditions for gay staff.

Produced by homosexual lobby group Stonewall, an advertisement for the purpose is all set to appear in the graduate recruitment guide of gay-friendly employers.

The secretive network is also said to have set up a gay and lesbian “network” to help gay staff to come out.

Ben Summerskill, the Director of Stonewall, said that the agency might have decided to employ gays and lesbians because “people from all minority communities do have experience of getting on with people who are different, and of fitting in”.

London, August 18 : An archaeologist has discovered gold earrings, a ring, and other funeral gifts that date back to the 5th century B. C., roughly 2,500 years ago, while excavating a Thracian tomb near the village of Kushare, about 280 km from Sofia, Bulgaria.

According to a report in the Evening Standard, Bulgarian archeologist Georgi Kitov, who specializes in Thracian cultures and is well known for his controversial excavation practices, such as using earthmoving machines, made the discoveries.

Last year, his team unearthed a gold mask belonging to a fourth century B. C. Thracian King in southeastern Bulgaria.

London, Aug.

London, Aug. 18 : Iran’s announcement that it has sent a rocket carrying a dummy satellite into space on Sunday, is likely to further exacerbate tensions with the West over its nuclear drive, reports The Telegraph.

"The Safir (Ambassador) rocket was successfully launched. All its systems... are Iranian-made," the paper quoted Reza Taghipour, the head of Iran''s space agency, as telling state television, adding that a "test satellite was put into orbit."

"We have paved the way for placing a satellite in space in future," state television said, showing images of the pre-dawn rocket launch that was watched by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

London, Aug 18: People who survived through 1918 influenza pandemic may have developed immunity to the virus behind it for the rest of their lives, according to a new study.

The findings attain significance as they may offer a new approach to battle future epidemics, say researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

During a study on mice, the researchers found that the antibodies derived from the B cells of 1918 influenza pandemic survivors served as an effective therapy to against the infection.