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On a Monday evening in November 1997 Frank Lampard had just struck an equaliser for West Ham United against Crystal Palace when the floodlights at Upton Park failed, plunging the ground into darkness and forcing the abandonment of the game.

As football fans in east London cursed their luck, 6,500 miles away in Malaysia members of an Asian betting syndicate celebrated a six-figure payout.

A month later the syndicate – who had "arranged" for the lights to go out – repeated their scam during a Wimbledon vs Arsenal game. But, when they tried for a third time, at a Charlton vs Liverpool match, their plan was foiled. The security guard who had been bribed to trip the electrics using a remote control told a colleague of the plan and he alerted the police. Four men – two Malaysians, a Chinese man and Roger Firth, the Charlton security supervisor – were subsequently jailed for between 18 months and four years.

The scam was the first and so far only time that an Asian betting syndicate has been proven to have successfully infiltrated a British sporting event. But, as Sunday's News of the World cricket story suggested, sport in the UK is by no means out of the reach of crooked betting stings which have their roots in the Far East.

The three no-balls which the paper's reporter was given advance knowledge of would have been useless information to a British punter, who would be unable to place such a bet in a UK betting shop. In Asia, however, punters can place money on "spot bets" which predict the outcome of the minutiae of a game.

Similarly the floodlight failure scam was only of use to those placing bets in the illegal Asian betting markets. Bookmakers there pay out on the result as it stands if matches are abandoned during the second half of a game. British bookies simply void the bet.

But suspicious betting is by no means unique to Asian markets or football. In snooker a September 2008 match between Peter Ebdon and Liang Wenbo saw huge money being placed on the unfancied Wenbo to win 5-0, a scoreline he eventually achieved. And last year a low-key Wimbledon tennis match was the subject of complaints after a surge of bets predicted, correctly, that the favourite, Jürgen Melzer, would win 3-0.

But while the bookmakers report the cases, industry insiders say that their attempts to weed out cheats are frustrated by the GC and the police. In 2007 an offence of cheating in betting was created to help prosecute offenders, but in the three years since the GC has not brought a single prosecution in relation to sport.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

A life of booze, fags and slothfulness may be enough to earn your doctor's disapproval, but there is one last hope: a repeat prescription of mates and good conversation.

A circle of close friends and strong family ties can boost a person's health more than exercise, losing weight or quitting cigarettes and alcohol, psychologists say.

Sociable people seem to reap extra rewards from their relationships by feeling less stressed, taking better care of themselves and having less risky lifestyles than those who are more isolated, they claim.

A review of studies into the impact of relationships on health found that people had a 50% better survival rate if they belonged to a wider social group, be it friends, neighbours, relatives or a mix of these.

The striking impact of social connections on wellbeing has led researchers to call on GPs and health officials to take loneliness as seriously as other health risks, such as alcoholism and smoking.

"We take relationships for granted as humans," said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist at Brigham Young University in Utah. "That constant interaction is not only beneficial psychologically but directly to our physical health."

Holt-Lunstad's team reviewed 148 studies that tracked the social interactions and health of 308,849 people over an average of 7.5 years. From these they worked out how death rates varied depending on how sociable a person was.

Being lonely and isolated was as bad for a person's health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. It was as harmful as not exercising and twice as bad for the health as being obese. The study is reported in the journal Plos Medicine.

Holt-Lunstad said friends and family can improve health in numerous ways, from help in tough times to finding meaning in life. "When someone is connected to a group and feels responsibility to other people, that sense of purpose and meaning translates to taking better care of themselves and taking fewer risks."

Holt-Lunstad said there was no clear figure on how many relationships are enough to boost a person's health, but people fared better when they rarely felt lonely and were close to a group of friends, had good family contact and had someone they could rely on and confide in.

Writing in the journal, the authors point out that doctors, health educators and the media take the dangers of smoking, diet and exercise seriously, and urge them to add social relationships to the list.

A report by the Mental Health Foundation in May blamed technology and the pressures of modern life for widespread feelings of loneliness in all age groups across Britain. The survey of more than 2,200 adults found one in 10 people often felt lonely and one in three would like to move closer to their family.

Andrew McCulloch, of the Mental Health Foundation, said the latest study builds on work that links isolation to poor mental and physical health. "Trends such as increasing numbers of people living alone and the advent of new technologies, are changing the way in which we interact and are leading both the young and old to experience loneliness. It is important that individuals and policy-makers take notice of emerging evidence and of the potential health problems associated with loneliness."

drive from www.guardian.co.uk

In a scientific tour-de-force that has been hailed as the most significant breakthrough in wheat production since the cereal crop was cultivated by the first farmers more than 10,000 years ago, scientists have decoded the genome of the wheat plant.

As a result, new breeds of disease-resistant crops could be producing higher wheat yields in as little as five years' time, raising the prospect of lower bread prices and greater food security in a more populated world. And rather than guard their knowledge, the British scientists responsible for the research will today place a draft version of the genome online, making it available for free to wheat breeders around the world, who will be able to use it to speed up the creation of the new disease-resistant varieties that are urgently needed. Most wheat breeders currently rely on traditional methods of mixing new crop varieties – techniques that have not changed substantially for hundreds of years.

Wheat production is under pressure, particularly this summer because of the failure of the Russian harvest. Yet world food production will have to increase by an estimated 50 per cent over the next 40 years if the growing global population is to be fed.

One leading scientist behind the British study said yesterday that knowing the wheat genome would revolutionise the conventional breeding of wheat. Breeders, he explained, will be able to take valuable shortcuts that reduce the amount of time it takes to breed essential new plant varieties resistant to disease and drought. This would not entail genetic modification, although the genome will also prove invaluable for scientists if they did want to directly change the DNA of the wheat plant.

Conventional breeding can exploit the information contained in the wheat genome to screen seeds for the genetic "markers" or signposts that indicate the presence of valuable genes, such as those for resistance to drought or disease.

"A process that now takes five or six years will take one or two years. It is quite possible in five years' time that a loaf of bread will be cheaper because of this," said Professor Neil Hall, a genome scientist at Liverpool University, one of the three research centres that carried out the study.

Professor Keith Edwards of the University of Bristol said the breakthrough was highly significant. "In a short space of time we have delivered most of the sequences necessary for plant breeders to identify genetic differences in wheat. The public release of the data will dramatically increase the efficiency of breeding new crop varieties," Professor Edwards said.

Wheat yields per hectare have increased threefold since Roman times, but over the past decade they have reached a plateau despite intensive efforts by the plant breeders who have struggled with the menace of constantly evolving wheat diseases. This is one reason why wheat production has failed to keep pace with increased demand.

"It has been estimated that in Europe, productivity needs to double to keep pace with demand and to maintain stable prices. We need to start breeding new varieties of wheat that will be important in five or 10 years' time," Professor Hall said.

"This means that we will be able to utilise the wheat genome to its full potential. It means that we can fully utilise what nature has given us." However Professor Hall added: "Unless global population is kept under control, nature may not be enough and we may have to use genetic modification because there is always going to be a limit to what you can get out of wheat."

drive from www.independent.co.uk

It is already renowned for its rolling green valleys, male choirs, rugby prowess and proud working-class solidarity, but now Wales can add another attribute to this list – the production of fine wine.

The first vintage of a newly-planted vineyard in a sunny valley in Monmouthshire has won two medals at leading wine competitions this week.

Ancre Hill Estate's prosaically-titled White Welsh Regional Wine 2008 was awarded a silver at the Decanter World Wine Awards and a bronze at the International Spirit and Wine Competition, and has been commended or won a medal at a third major show, the International Wine Challenge.

Richard Morris, a chartered accountant who turned his passion for wine into a business five years ago, planted three types of vine – pinot noir, seyval blanc and chardonnay – in a south-facing meadow outside his home four years ago.

Fielding media calls yesterday about his £12 bottle, which he sells from his cellar door, Mr Morris said: "It's our first vintage. You don't expect that to happen – to get three medals from the three most important wine competitions in the world."

The Welshman put the success of his wine down to a good site with low rainfall, sunny weather and good drainage, and "fastidious" viticulture practices such as regular pest spraying and canopy management.

Welsh bottles could compete with the best in the world, providing the vines were planted in the right "meso-climate," he added, saying: "It does always rain in Wales, but there are pockets where there are some valleys where there are surrounding trees that take the rain away."

There are around 15 vineyards in Wales, compared to more than 300 in England, concentrated in Cornwall, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Suffolk. Most attention and prizes currently alight on English wine.

Mr Morris, 57, and his wife Joy, 50, decided to plant vines at his home in the Wye Valley after selling his part-owned logistics business for £36m in 1999. After a few years of consultancy work and travelling, which involved several trips to vineyards in Australia and South America, he took a course in viticulture at Plumpton College in East Sussex and realised that his home would make an excellent vineyard.

"We sent samples of the local soil for analysis to the geology master at the local school and were delighted to discover the white rocks that intersperse the clay loam soil are Jurassic limestone – responsible for the excellent terroir of the Chablis region in France," he said.

This year Ancre Hill is producing 14,500 bottles but aims to produce 25,000 annually by 2015. Around 70 per cent is sparkling. Mr Morris hopes that on its release in two years' time his sparkling wine will vie with champagne for prizes.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Consternation and ridicule have greeted the news (on The Spectator's blog) that Gordon Brown is looking for a new career as an after-dinner speaker, and hopes for $100,000 for a night's work. (For $20,000 more, Sarah Brown will come too, either to hand out prizes or stand around looking supportive, like Linda McCartney in the line-up of Wings, but without the tambourine.)

It's piquant to discover that Mr Brown asked a top speakers' agency to find him bookings in the Middle East and Asia, rather than in, say, Hackney or Glasgow, where he might receive a less enthusiastic welcome. What's the impulse behind his new ambition? Can it have anything to do with the news that Tony Blair has been paid £240,000 for a 20-minute speech in Japan?

But I'm all in favour of Gordon seizing this chance to reinvent himself, because I know he's rather an amusing talker. You think I'm kidding? Not at all. I remember his appearance at The Independent's 20th birthday celebrations, when he discussed his ambiguous feelings about nature. How, before new Labour took office, he used to write an economic policy document of utter brilliance, release it to the press and open the Indy next morning, expecting either praise or some intellectually robust criticism. "Instead," he said, "the front page would be filled with some vital enquiry like, 'What's become of the common lapwing?'" The crowd was convulsed.

I saw Mr Brown at the Hay Festival (where Bill Clinton, coincidentally, came to deliver a $100,000-for-an-hour speech when he'd just left power) where he was interviewed by Mariella Frostrup. He was chatty and forthcoming, and deployed that after-dinner staple, Famous People I Have Met (he told a funny story about Nelson Mandela and Hilary Benn.) He tried out a version of that cornerstone of Richard Pryor's stand-up routine, Things That Puzzled Me As a Child (a sober-minded kid, he read about Edith Cavell "and wondered how anyone could kill a nurse.") And he amused the audience with tales of The Wacky Jobs I Had Before I Got Serious – in his case it was editing a books programme on Scottish TV, on to which he invited Anthony Burgess and Hugh McIlvanney. He was terrific. Then – disaster – someone asked him about politics. His eyes became hooded. His hands went into their chopping-onions gesture, and he went back to being boring, opaque and self-righteous. So welcome GB, the after-dinner smoothie, provided he can be kept off certain subjects. Like being a prime minister, say.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Eccentric X Factor hopeful Shirlena Johnson has been thrown out of this year's Miss Great Britain contest after organisers discovered her real age when they watched her TV audition.
Millions of viewers saw Johnson, a single mother, get through to the boot camp stage of the X Factor on Saturday night after she performed, in leopard skin leggings, a bizarre rendition of the Duffy track Mercy.
Johnson told the X Factor judges that she was 30, but the age on her online Miss Great Britain form was 28, said a spokeswoman for the contest, which is for those aged 29 and under.
The aspiring star had applied for the competition in February and was due to compete in the next regional heat, Miss Essex GB, on Saturday, spokeswoman Charlotte Ellis said.
She had failed to get through the Miss London and Miss South East regional heats.
Miss Great Britain chief executive Liz Fuller said: "It's such a shame to lose Shirlena, though she did apologise. I have great warmth for this girl as being one of the most eccentric contestants I had. I hope the advice I gave will help her."
Johnson was seen shrieking, wailing, kicking and moaning during her performance on the X Factor, and got through despite confessing that she had forgotten the words to her song.
Simon Cowell, who voted Johnson through, told her: "It was like a musical exorcism," but added: "I have to say I love you. You are completely crazy but I like that. You are fantastically nuts."
The show returned for its seventh series on Saturday night and was watched by 12.6 million viewers, a record for an X Factor opening episode.
Miss Great Britain celebrates its 65th anniversary this year.A friend of Johnson, who has a three-year-old daughter, said she had put down her age incorrectly on the Miss Great Britain form and had tried without success to correct it.
Ron Street said: "She put down the wrong age and tried to correct it but couldn't get back online. She gave her right age on the X Factor so there was no deliberate lying."
Johnson was barred from Miss Great Britain as the X Factor was embroiled in a row with viewers who have accused the show's editors of using technology to improve some of the contestants' voices.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

Iran's ambitions to become a nuclear superpower edged closer to realisation yesterday, with the opening of the country's first energy-producing nuclear reactor.

The long-awaited project, dogged by opposition from the US since plans were first drawn up in the 1970s, is now complete.

Iranian and Russian engineers will spend the next two weeks loading fuel into the plant, near the city of Bushehr. More than 160 fuel assemblies – equal to 80 tons of uranium fuel – will be moved into the reactor core over the next fortnight. It will be another two months before the Russian-built 1,000-megawatt light water reactor starts generating electricity. Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said yesterday: "Despite all the pressures, sanctions and hardships imposed by Western nations, we are now witnessing the start-up of the largest symbol of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities."

He added: "Today is a historic day."

Russia, which helped to finish building Bushehr, has pledged to prevent spent nuclear fuel at the site from being shifted to a possible weapons programme. After years of delaying its completion, Moscow says it believes the Bushehr project is essential for persuading Iran to co-operate with international efforts to ensure it does not develop nuclear weapons. But John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, has expressed grave concerns about the move. "Iran is on the verge of achieving something that Saddam Hussein was not able to achieve, and that's getting a second route to nuclear weapons," he said last week. "It's a very, very significant step forward for the Iranian nuclear programme."

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has warned that Bushehr will be the only power reactor in the world operating without its national government belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Convention on Nuclear Safety. "Without Iran's participation in this convention, the outside world has no credible assurances that it is operating Bushehr in a manner reflecting internationally acceptable safety standards," he said.

However, any concerns over the Bushehr plant are overshadowed by continuing fears over Iran's controversial uranium enrichment programme – which could allow it to develop weapons-grade plutonium. The US is leading calls for Iran to cease its efforts to develop uranium enrichment, a matter that has been the subject of a number of UN Security Council sanctions.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

On the first day of Center’s portfolio reviews in Santa Fe last month, Carl Wooley sat down across the table from me. I was familiar with a recent commission he’d completed for FOAM, of Amsterdam through the eyes of New York photographers, and many of the images from his new series “In the Rose Garden” had the same lonesome quality.

Carl explained that for five weeks, he and a friend, who is stationed in Jordan with the Peace Corps, drove around the country in the heat and dust, often to remote areas, with his large-format camera. As with any photographic project, access is key—and, fortunately for Carl, his friend is fluent in Arabic and quite social. “Nargeela by the Dead Sea” reflects this, as Carl explained in an e-mail: “We parked our car, and started to walk down to the water, and sure enough these two guys start calling his name. They were from a city not too far away, a city my friend only passed through occasionally, but long enough to strike up a friendship.” They invited Carl and his friend to sit down, and Carl got his picture. For him, this approach permeated the entire project: “It was the smaller moments—like drinking tea, smoking nargeela, sitting around chatting—that left a much bigger impression.”

Carl emphasized that his work is not “strictly documentary,” as he elaborated when we discussed his work in New York: “The idea of photograph as document is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I read an interview with Alec Soth about ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’; he said he saw his project as a ‘kind of document’ but pointed out that there were many ‘gaps’ that he hadn’t photographed—‘lavish river condos in Minneapolis, or skyscrapers in St. Louis.’ For me, the question then becomes, if he had photographed those gaps, would that somehow make his book more of a document? I don’t think it necessarily would; I come away with a very strong sense of the Mississippi river, even though it is a very particular and personal vision. As you know, I’m presenting a very particular and personal view of Jordan, and there are many gaps. At the same time, part of my motivation is to cover a culture and place that I feel is greatly misunderstood in the West. So in a sense, I’m trying to have it both ways.”

Three of Carl’s photographs from “In the Rose Garden” are part of “The Exhibition Lab,” a joint project of the Sasha Wolf and Foley galleries. Here’s an extended selection, with Carl’s comments.

drive form www.newyorker.com

Reginald Levy was the English captain of a Belgian Sabena airliner hijacked by Palestinian Black September terrorists in 1972 after taking off from Vienna, and later stormed by Israeli commandos on the tarmac at Tel Aviv.

The commandos, who needed only 90 seconds to kill or disable the four hijackers and rescue the 100 passengers and crew, were led by Major Ehud Barak, now Israel's defence minister, and included Benjamin Netanyahu, now prime minister, who was wounded by a hijacker's bullet.

Drawing on his experience under German fire while bombing Hamburg and Berlin as part of RAF Bomber Command, Captain Levy remained coolness personified when two men wearing nylon-stocking masks burst into his cockpit on 8 May 1972, his 50th birthday. One put a gun to Levy's neck while the other held a grenade against the co-pilot's face. Only too aware that his wife was in the first row of First Class – Sabena had allowed her to join him for a birthday celebration in Tel Aviv – the captain famously told his passengers over the intercom: "As you can see, we have friends aboard."

The "friends" included two young women from Black September who were wielding Semtex-based bombs in the cabin, threatening to blow up the Boeing 707 unless 317 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails. Levy, surprised that he was being hijacked to his scheduled destination – Lod airport (now Ben Gurion) in Tel Aviv – transmitted a coded message to the control tower. He also got a message to his crew not to reveal that his wife was on board. After landing at night, the aircraft was guided to a remote tarmac, under the watchful eye of Israel's defence minister General Moshe Dayan, who sent out two saboteurs to deflate the tyres and disable the aircraft's hydraulics.

Told later that the aircraft couldn't take off, the hijackers started kissing each other in apparent farewell and spoke of blowing up themselves and the plane. Levy spent the night talking quietly to them, trying to calm them down. "I talked about everything under the sun, from navigation to sex," he said later.

The next morning, the hijackers sent Captain Levy to the terminal buildings with samples of their explosives to show they meant business. He took the opportunity to give Dayan details of where the hijackers were positioned and where the women had the black vanity bags carrying their bombs. He also provided the key fact that there was nothing blocking the emergency doors. Back on board, he said Dayan had agreed to their demands but the plane needed work before it could take off. Crucially, he also persuaded the hijackers to open the emergency doors slightly, due to the stifling heat in the cabin.

drive from www.independent.co.uk

President Barack Obama wanted to convince America that the Gulf of Mexico remains open for business. But perhaps he didn't want the world to catch another glimpse of his hairless chest.

So when he and his daughter, Sasha, took a dip in the sea off Florida this weekend, only the White House photographer was allowed to capture proceedings.

The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

Cynics complained that the supposed family holiday was more of a whistle-stop press tour. Barack, Michelle and Sasha Obama, plus their dog, Bo, spent just 27 hours in the important swing state. The first family went on a boating trip yesterday that saw them catch a view of local porpoises. On Saturday, they played crazy golf and Sasha, 9, scored a hole-in-one off the first tee.

drive from www.independent.co.uk