A hospital in London, England, admitted that it mistakenly sent
letters to thirty patients, including six elderly men, telling
them they were pregnant. A spokesman for North Derbyshire Royal
Hospital blamed it on human error. None of the surprised
patients turned out to actually be expecting a baby, the
spokeswoman said.

A half-smoked cigar Winston Churchill left unfinished in 1941 has been sold for £4,500.
The wartime prime minister abandoned the stub to attend a Cabinet meeting - and it was picked up by a Downing Street worker.
The valet sent the four-inch stub to a friend with a note jotted on Number 10 writing paper.
The friend kept the souvenir until his death, at which point the souvenir stogie passed to a relative.
It was bought by a private collector at a sale in Norfolk.
Auctioneers Keys, of Aylsham, said the cigar had been expected to fetch around £350.
In November, a butter dish used as an ashtray by Sir Winston at the London dining debating club fetched £4,200.

A German man has been fined $925 for punching and killing his
parrot for screeching uncontrollably. "I'd had a row with my
girlfriend and she left me. Charlie wouldn't stop screeching. So
I punched him. I'm so sorry. He was a good friend," the
defendant, 41, told a court. Police had been called to his home
when neighbors mistook the parrot's screeching for human
screams

A new service promises Londoners they’ll never have to spend much time looking for a place to ‘go’, again. Westminster City Council, which covers London’s bustling Oxford Street, the West End, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, today launched “SatLav” - a toilet-finding service for cell phone users.

One of Britain's most dangerous gangsters has been using Facebook to threaten his enemies from inside a maximum security prison, it has been reported.

Colin Gunn, an underworld godfather who ordered the execution of two grandparents, has now had his social networking site closed down by prison bosses.

The 42-year-old from Nottingham was jailed over the revenge murders of John and Joan Stirland in 2004.

The Sunday Times reported that Gunn said in one posting: "I will be home one day and I can't wait to look into certain people's eyes and see the fear of me being there."

It comes after last week's revelation that one of the killers of teenager Ben Kinsella used Facebook to taunt his victim's family.

Jade Braithwaite, jailed for knifing to death Ben Kinsella, 16, used Facebook to taunt his victim's family.

While there is no shortage of fat men in America, only one over the past few decades called himself a professional.

Weighing 607 pounds, Bruce Snowdon was a sideshow fat man from 1977 to 2003, billed as "Harold Huge." His death on Nov. 9 at the age of 63 marks the end of a long, heavy tradition dating back centuries.

This weekend, his loved ones will honor him and lay his ashes to rest.

"Bruce was exactly as advertised: the last fat man on show on the carnival midways," said James Taylor, publisher of the sideshow journal Shocked & Amazed.

Ancient cannon balls that have been retrieved from ancient shipwrecks are exploding on the desks of archaeologists according New Scientist. Robert Child, of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales in Cardiff, told the magazine that has witness a few incidents of old rusted cannon balls start to heat up or explode after being exposed to oxygen. "There was smoke coming off the bench," he told the magazine. He said the explosions happened because the balls had developed a lattice-
like porous structure over hundreds of years that reacted with oxygen to produce massive amounts of heat.

A study was done that claimed that cats have learned the art of meowing. There is a certain type of meow that can attract humans to take the cat in. Even though cats do not have a specific langauge, they have learned to sound pleasant when meowing. Nicholas Nicastro, a graduate student who is working under a psychology professor, says that the cats that sound angry are seen to be too demanding and the ones that are pleasant to the ear are more likely to be picked by people that go to an animal shelter to adopt a cat.

A chicken playing chicken? That's what's happening on a busy Glendale street where a black hen has been dodging cars, captors and coyotes for two months. Officials say the bird has been darting into traffic outside Glendale Community College since it was first reported Nov. 20. The chicken has drawn a growing crowd of photographers and journalists as animal control officers struggle to catch it.

A spokeswoman for the Pasadena Humane Society, which handles animal control in Glendale, said the bird either runs onto the street or flies into a tree when officers approach. Hillary Gatlin said a humane trap has not worked because the chicken doesn't weigh enough to trigger it or she isn't interested in the feed used as bait.

Gatlin said the standoff could continue awhile.

A STUDENT has designed a green-friendly mobile phone for Nokia which is powered by Coca-Cola and other surgary drinks instead of electricity.

Daizi Zheng of China undertook the client project for mobile phone manufacturer Nokia as part of her university programme.

On her website, Zheng explained: "Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy. [It] generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilises enzymes as the catalyst.

"By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out."

She added: "Bio battery has the potential to operate three-to-four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable.

"Meanwhile, it brings a whole new perception to batteries and afternoon tea. "

However, Zheng confirmed that Nokia would not be developing her model for the handset, but added that similar bio batteries could be on the market within half a decade.

Zheng told Sky News: "At the time they wanted something to bring out within the next two years and thought my design was too futuristic."

FEW protested in 2008 when NASA beamed The Beatles song "Across the Universe" into deep space as a cosmic message of peace, but experts now warn that competing radio transmissions could be confusing to aliens and little more than space spam, AFP reported.

The messages - which include images of genitals and appeals for money - may even be deemed as a threat by aliens.

European Space Agency (ESA) astrophysicist Malcolm Fridlund advised caution about drawing attention to ourselves.

"I'm not lying awake at night worrying about the overlords of the galaxy or anything like that," he told AFP, "but when you don't know of anything that's out there, you should maybe be a little careful, you should know something about the (star) system first."

His comments echo those made at a conference on alien life at the Royal Society in London this week.

"A lot of the stuff is very responsible, but I do wonder about some of the other stuff that's being transmitted," Albert Harrison, a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Davis, said at the meeting.

"There's pictures of celebrities, of two political candidates - one identified as good, the other identified as evil - snack-food commercials, love letters to rock stars and so on."

He added: "When you start broadcasting and drawing attention to yourself, you have to be very cautious about the image you give. We might appear as a threat to them.

The thirst for contact with alien civilizations has a long history.

The US probes Pioneer 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, bear plaques of a naked man and woman and symbols seeking to convey the positions of the Earth and the Sun.

Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977 and now on the outer fringes of the Solar System, each carry a gold-plated copper phonogram disk with recordings of sounds and images on Earth.

But it will take around 40,000 years for Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object in space, to get anywhere close to a star.

Space enthusiasts have since discovered active SETI, which uses active powerful radio astronomy transmitters to beam out messages to interesting stars or extrasolar planets. The transmitters are operated by space agencies or institutions, which in some cases are paid for the service.

Messages range from the earnest and the philosophical to the cerebral, such as an "Interstellar Rosetta Stone" of symbols that give information about Earth and Homo sapiens.

The missives include the jokey: "Please send money. Any kind of money. Universal money is OK. Alien currency OK. Meteorites are good. Gold, Moon rocks, space junk also good. Send to: Maura, Planet Earth."

And there is the political: an image of George W. Bush as the personification of evil, juxtaposed against Barack Obama as the embodiment of good, sent out by X-Files actress Gillian Anderson.

Any life forms at Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, meanwhile, will receive recordings of the vaginal contractions of ballerinas with the Boston Ballet, a renegade 1980s art project aimed at giving the galaxy an idea of human conception.

Fridlund said that in the absence of any evidence so far that extraterrestrial life exists of any kind, active SETI may well be a waste of time - but still recommends a cautious approach to dealing with the unknown.

Those who share his concern include the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who suggests "we should keep our heads low," given any possibility of encountering a hostile, technologically superior civilization."

POLISH funeral director said he opened the coffin of a 76-year-old man to retrieve items for the bereaved family only to discover the man was still alive.

Jerzy Wisniewski, a spokesman for the Regional Ambulance Service in Katowice, said beekeeper Josef Guzy collapsed near his barn and was pronounced dead at the scene by a doctor, The Times of London reported.

"There were no signs of life when his wife called the ambulance. An experienced doctor with a specialist qualification in resuscitation found that the patient was not breathing, there was no heartbeat and the body had cooled - all the characteristics of death," Wisniewski said.

However, funeral director Darius Wysluchato said he opened Guzy's coffin later that day to retrieve a necklace for the man's wife and discovered a pulse.

"I happened to touch the artery in the neck and was totally shocked. I checked it again and shouted, 'There is a pulse.' My assistant checked as well. I leaned in close and I could tell that he was still breathing. My God, it was a miracle," Wysluchato said.

Guzy was rushed to intensive care and was released from the hospital after a few weeks of treatment. He said he is grateful to Wysluchato for finding his signs of life.

"The undertaker saved my life. I am so grateful. The first thing I did when I got out of hospital was take him a pot of honey," he said.

The memory of the horrors of Hurricane Katrina are still fresh in all of our minds; I know that if any one of us had a way to avert such a disaster again, we would do it. Well everyone's favorite billionaire, Bill Gates, may have the answer to stopping hurricanes in their tracks.

Mr. Gates along with a Nathan Mhyrvold (I'm not even going to try pronouncing that last name) has applied for five patents with regards to a system for stopping hurricanes. What exactly does this system entail? I'm glad you asked.

The patents discuss something along the lines of creating a fleet of ships that would be placed in front of hurricanes and that would lower the surface temperature of the ocean around them; this is done by pumping water from the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean up to the surface. The idea is to cool the tropical waters which fuel the storms.

I suppose in theory this is a great idea, except how are you going to pay for the gazillion ships you would need to cool an area like say the Gulf of Mexico? Bill, being the brilliant man he is, has a solution for that too; one idea is to sell insurance to areas that get hit by storms often, and use the money to fund his scheme... erm I mean plan.

Well Bill if you can pull it off, that's great! But I really don't feel like paying anyone to control the weather, I mean come on, shouldn't such a service be free, Bill; you do already donate so much of your money anyways, and Microsoft ain't going away any time soon. Just a word of advice though, watch out for Apple, they might come out with some kind of iHurricane; Hurricanes, there's an app for that.

Ahh the ATM, the pinnacle of convenience (next to fast food and Quick-E Marts of course), it just screams "I want my money and I can get it now." Of course as with all good things it can be twisted for evil purposes... or just plain stolen by some guys with a van and some chains. Well fear not friends, the South Africans have the answer for protecting our automatic teller machines!

ATMs in South Africa are now armed with pepper spray dispensers to ward off criminals. A camera in the ATM simply sees that you are messing with the card slots in naughty ways and tells the spraying mechanism to blast you. What could possibly go wrong?

Well unfortunately for some technicians performing routine maintenance on some ATMs, they detected a threat and well... have you ever been hit by pepper spray, I doubt it's a pleasurable experience.

The workers had to be treated by paramedics after inhaling some of the spray, but should be fine. Luckily no customers were near the machines during the incident, but it goes to show there are still a few kinks in the system. I would personally avoid using any ATMs in South Africa for the timing being, unless you enjoy getting sprayed in the face, but that's your business, not mine.

One after the other, the models strutted across the stage to bouncy '80s dance tunes, all showing off designs of the same article of clothing — adult diapers.
Japan has one of the world's most rapidly aging societies, and the fashion show Thursday proved the country's diaper producers are intent on keeping the elderly clean and dry.

"Diapers are something that people don't want to look at," said Kiyoko Hamada of the Aging Lifestyle Research Center, a leading organizer of the show.

"But if you make them attractive, then people can learn about them more easily," she said.

Indeed, adult diapers are an increasingly common item in Japan, home to one of the world's longest average lifespans. More than 20% of the population is over 65, and the country is forecast to have the globe's largest number of centenarians — 1 million — by 2050, the U.N. says. That means a booming market for adult diapers.

Imitation Web sites of both Google and YouTube have emerged in China as the country faces off against the real Google over its local operations.
YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, which is owned by Google and blocked in China. The Google imitation is called Goojje and includes a plea for the U.S.-based company not to leave China, after it threatened this month to do so in a dispute over Web censorship and cyberattacks.
The separate projects went up within a day of each other in mid-January, just after Google's threat to leave.
"What's the reaction in these cases? In the U.S., you have a lawsuit. In China, it's just 'eh,' unless they're really doing damage to the brand," said T.R. Harrington, CEO of China-based Darwin Marketing.
Both knockoff sites were still working Thursday. It wasn't clear what Chinese authorities would do with them, if anything.
China's National Copyright Administration has been cracking down on illegally run Web sites and this month issued a code of ethics, but no statement was posted on its site Thursday about the new imitations.
Google had little comment. "The only comment I can give you right now is just to confirm that we're not affiliated," spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail.
China is famous for its fake products, but this is the first time such prominent sites have been copied in this way, said Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the University of California-Berkeley.
Xiao said the sites risk bumping into problems on both sides of the Google-China standoff: It infringes on Google's intellectual property and gives access to sensitive topics in tightly controlled China. "I cannot see how these sites can survive very long without facing these two issues."
The creators of the two sites could not be reached Thursday.

A 2cm long fish apparently found it's way into the penis of a 14-year-old boy from India in a bizarre medical case.

The patient was admitted to hospital with complaints of pain, dribbling urine and acute urinary retention spanning a 24-hour period. According to the boy, the fish slipped into his penis while he was cleaning his aquarium at home.

Professor Vezhaventhan and Professor Jeyaraman, who treated the boy and later wrote a paper on the case, explained: "While he was cleaning the fish tank in his house, he was holding a fish in his hand and went to the toilet for passing urine. When he was passing urine, the fish slipped from his hand and entered his urethra and then he developed all these symptoms."

After detecting the fish in the boy's bladder, Vezhaventhan and Jeyaraman used a technique known as cystourethroscopy to insert a special set of forceps down the patient's penis. Unfortunately, the fish was just too slippery to grip, so they resorted to using a rigid ureteroscope with a tool attached that is normally used for removing bladder stones.

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The fish the urologists removed, which Practical Fishkeeping believes to be a small member of the Betta genus, measured 2cm long and 1.5cm wide.

Argentina's president recommended pork as an alternative to Viagra Wednesday, saying she spent a satisfying weekend with her husband after eating barbecued pork.

"I've just been told something I didn't know; that eating pork improves your sex life ... I'd say it's a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra," President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.

She said she recently ate pork and "things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true."

Argentines are the world's biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.

"Trying it doesn't cost anything, so let's give it a go," Fernandez said in the televised speech.

A man was killed with an umbrella apparently resulting from a
dispute over a parking spot. Witnesses heard a loud argument
and said they saw a young man in a navy suit holding a black
umbrella flee from the scene. Toshimi Kuwabara, 55, staggered
into his 77-year-old mother's house in Hiroshima, with numerous
stab wounds. He was taken to hospital but died an hour later.

A New Zealand man was hit by a runaway car, driven by a 3 year-
old, while he was mowing his front lawn. Terry Mattsen was
pinned underneath the car driven by his next door neighbour's
son, Angus who had climbed into the car and knocked it out of
gear. Police are not going to press any charges.

An Arab man in Swedan has been awarded $16,000 by a court after
he filed a lawsuit against his employer for letting colleagues
continue calling him "Osama bin Laden." The Svenska
Dagbladet reported that he had been harassed by his workmates
and managers, who also called him "terrorist" and "damned Arab,"
The case had found that the employer was aware of the
harrassment but did nothing to stop it.

A man was killed after being sucked into an Air Chine aircraft
engine in Western Japan. Police state that Zhang Xinmin, a
maintenance staff member, chased the plane as it began to taxi
toward the runway for take-off. Police suspect that it may have
been a suicide.

For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us — or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.

Davies said the variant life forms — most likely tiny microbes — could still be hanging around "right under our noses — or even in our noses."

"How do we know all life on Earth descended from a single origin?" he told a conference at London's prestigious Royal Society, which serves as Britain's academy of sciences. "We've just scratched the surface of the microbial world."

The idea that alien micro-organisms could be hiding out here on Earth has been discussed for a while, according to Jill Tarter, the director of the U.S. SETI project, which listens for signals from civilizations based around distant stars.

She said several of the scientists involved in the project were interested in pursuing the notion, which Davies earlier laid out in a 2007 article published in Scientific American in which he asked: "Are aliens among us?"

So far, there's no answer. And ever finding one would be fraught with difficulties, as Davies himself acknowledged.

Unusual organisms abound — including chemical-eating bacteria which hide out deep in the ocean and organisms that thrive in boiling-hot springs — but that doesn't mean they're different life forms entirely.

"How weird do they have to be suggest a second genesis as opposed to just an obscure branch of the family tree?" he said. Davies suggested that the only way to prove an organism wasn't "life as we know it" was if it were built using exotic elements which no other form of life had.

Such organisms have yet to be found. Davies also noted that less than 1 percent of all the world's bacteria had been comprehensively studied — leaving plenty of time to find unusual organisms.

"You cannot tell just by looking that a microbe has some radically different inner chemistry," he said.

Davies' call for alien-hunting scientists to look to their own backyards came as one of the pioneers of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence told the conference the job of finding proof of alien life in outer space may be more difficult than previously thought.

Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth — which used to pump out a loud mess of radio waves, television signals and other radiation — has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.

Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television — which uses a far weaker signal — and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.

"Very soon we will become very undetectable," he said. If similar processes were taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them "will be much more difficult than we imagined."

But Drake said scientists at SETI were excited by the possibility of using lasers to send super-bright flashes of light into space for a tiny fraction of a second. The flashes could theoretically be seen up by an advanced civilization up to 1,000 light years away, and Tarter said infrared versions of the devices could possibly send beams even further.

But Drake noted that the interstellar equivalent to turning a flashlight on and off only works if a prospective alien civilization wants to get in touch to begin with.

"For this to work ... There has to be altruism in the universe," he said.

A man accidently killed his wife by sawing down a tree in his
garden. The tree fell on her as he was sawing it down. The
man, who is 66 years old, was cutting down the tree as it had
become unstable because of a storm and he thought it was better
to cut it down as it would protect people that passed by it.
His wife, also 66, was standing in the street to tell the
passing cars when the tree would crash. However it crashed down
on her head and she died later that day.

A man that will be executed on Thursday has requested that he be
given an artificial leg. The one-legged inmate lost one of his
legs to diabetes while in prison. The man however will not be
given the artificial leg as the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice said it would cost taxpayers $8,000 and that it was not
considered a necessity. The man, Rodolfo Hernandez, 52, wanted
the leg so he could "walk like a man" to his death which will be
done by lethal injection. "I came in with two legs, I want to
go out with two legs," said Hernandez. He is being executed for
killing an illegal immigrant in Mexico during a robbery.

The city of Bangkok, which is notorious for traffic jams, has
decided to install timers at busy intersections to let motorists
know how long they have to wait for a green light. Apparently
the timers were installed to help drivers calm down who may have
been waiting at a red light for a long time.

Ashrita Furman, 47, of the United States, wiggled his hula hoop
as he walked to a world record of five miles. "I'm very dizzy
and a bit shaky," Furman said after two hours and 30 minutes of
hula-hooping. The new record still has to be verified by the
Guinness Book of Records, but is likely to enter unchallenged.
Furman also has set 70 other records including once walking 33
miles in Thailand with a full milk bottle on his head.

The owner of the world's oldest dog which died from stomach cancer has paid tribute to her beloved pet.
Otto was put down after he developed stomach cancer
Otto, a 20-year-old daschund, is due to be cremated after being put down by a vet yesterday.
Owner Lynn Jones, 54, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, said: "I have cried all morning, I am devastated.

The world's first engine-driven "free kick" machine has been unveiled in Japan.
It can smash a football at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour - faster than Portugese footballer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.
Castrol, makers of the motorised behemoth, claim they were inspired to create the machine by the Real Madrid star.
Charles Charles Postles, chairman of BP Castrol Japan, said: "Cristiano Ronaldo kicks at about 130 kilometres per hour and this machine manages to get up over 200 kilometres per hour, so a new world record."
The machine will be at sporting events across Japan for demonstrations this year in the run-up to the World Cup in South Africa.
But it won't be used to train actual football players for safety reasons.

It was a tail-waggin' good time at the Sonoma-Marin County Fair, where 12 pooches let the fur fly at the 20th annual World's Ugliest Dog Contest. Gus -- a three-legged, one-eyed Chinese Crested, won $1,600 in prizes. Of course, many unfamiliar with the event might wonder why anyone would want their pet to win such a twisted competition.

A craggy peak in a scenic part of southern China has been renamed after floating mountains featured in Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar," with the province hoping to cash in on the movie's massive success.

The "Southern Sky Column" in Zhangjiajie in southern Hunan province formally had its named changed to "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" in a ceremony on Monday, according to the Zhangjiajie government's official website (www.zjj.gov.cn).

The government said the floating "Hallelujah Mountains" in the movie were inspired by the "Southern Sky Column," as a Hollywood photographer spent time shooting there in 2008.

"Many pictures he took then become prototypes for various elements in the 'Avatar' movie, including the 'Hallelujah Mountains'," the website said.

"Avatar," directed by James Cameron, has so far sold $1.841 billion (1.138 billion pounds) worth of tickets worldwide, making it the biggest international release of all time.

Chinese cinemas last week began taking the 2D version of "Avatar" off their screens to make way for domestic movies over the upcoming Chinese new year holiday, though the wildly popular 3D version is still available.

"Avatar" has so far made around $80 million in China, and has become the country's most popular film ever.

Zhangjiajie hopes to capitalise on that fame.

Tourists can now join a "Magical tour to Avatar-Pandora" or a "Miracle tour to Avatar's floating mountain," the Zhangjiajie branch of China International Travel Service Corp said on its website. (www.citszjj.com)

Peruvian doctors amputated the healthy leg of an 86-year-old man, then amputated the other leg when they realized their mistake.
"I was shocked when I lifted the sheets and saw they had taken his left leg," the man's daughter, Carmen Villanueva, told Peruvian radio station RPP.
"The ulcer was on his right leg and they had to amputate that one too to keep the infection from spreading," she said.
The Alberto Sabogal Hospital in the coastal district of Callao just north of Lima said it had suspended the doctors involved in the botched surgery for a life-threatening ulcer, pending an investigation.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has a black goat slaughtered at his house almost every day to ward off "evil eyes" and protect him from "black magic," a newspaper reported Wednesday.

A spokesman for the president told the Dawn newspaper the goats were slaughtered as an act of Sadaqah -- meaning "voluntary charity" in Islam whereby one gives out money or the meat of a slaughtered animal to the poor to win Allah's blessing and stave off misfortune.

"It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer Sadaqah. He has been doing this for a long time," the spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, told the paper.

Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim country where many of the well-off offer Sadaqah. Though Muslim, many people also follow certain superstitious practices.

Hundreds of goats had been sacrificed at Zardari's house since he was sworn in September 2008, the Dawn newspaper reported.

It said Zardari's detractors would see in his "new-found religiosity" a sign of nervousness in the face of growing woes.

Zardari, who rose to power after the assassination of his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in late 2007, has become increasingly unpopular and faces a range of problems from Islamist militancy to a stagnant economy and political rivalry.

A Supreme Court ruling last month throwing out an amnesty for Zardari, several top aides and thousands of political activists and government figures triggered a political storm and expectation that Zardari was on his way out.

Actress Joanna Lumley was named "Oldie of the Year" on Tuesday by the monthly Oldie magazine for campaigning for the rights of retired Nepalese Gurkha soldiers wanting to settle in Britain.

Thanks in part to the 63-year-old's lobbying, the government announced in May, 2009 that former Gurkhas who retired before 1997 with more than four years' service would be eligible to apply to live in Britain.

The decision potentially affected up to 15,000 veterans.

"We would like to award her for her relentless efforts and continuing campaigning for Ghurkhas' rights and The Gurkha Justice Campaign," Oldie organisers said.

Broadcaster and television personality Terry Wogan, 71, who stepped down as presenter of the popular BBC Radio 2 breakfast show last month, will hand out the prizes at a ceremony in London and pick up his own award -- Retirer of the Year.

Previous Oldie of the Year Award winners include David Attenborough (2005), Ranulph Fiennes (2004), Eric Sykes (2002), John Mortimer (2001) and Spike Milligan (1994).

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