'I had to use force to escape the clutches of groping Trinity don'
A young policewoman told yesterday how she visited a middle-aged don at his Cambridge University rooms for a gin and tonic, only to endure a less than academic advance. She said that she had to use her police training to restrain the lecturer after he allegedly groped her bottom and twice tried to kiss her. Peter Hutchinson, 61, vice-master of Trinity Hall College, gave a “saucy chuckle” as he made his approach, Norwich Crown Court was told. Dr Hutchinson, married with two children, had remained in contact with his former student after she graduated and joined the police, and they exchanged a series of e-mails before the meeting in October last year.
The Times
Drugs baron and student partner jailed for cocaine trafficking
A drugs baron and his university student accomplice were jailed for a total of nearly 17 years yesterday for trafficking in cocaine. Alexander Donnelly, 50, was sentenced to ten years after being caught by undercover police for the second time in a decade. The former taxi driver has also agreed to hand over almost £177,000 in crime profits after his latest conviction. He admitted being involved in the supply of cocaine between June and December in 2003 in Glasgow, Manchester and London.
The Scotsman
Stem cell cure for back pain 'in three years'
A cure for chronic back pain using a patient's own stem cells could be available within three years, it was claimed yesterday. The treatment, developed at Manchester University School of Medicine, rebuilds the soft, shock-absorbing discs that separate spinal vertebrae. The treatment has to be given only once and would not involve a hospital stay. Damage to the intervertebral discs is a common cause of debilitating low-back pain. Back pain is estimated to cost the N Health Service, business and the UK economy up to £5 billion a year and an estimated 12 million people in the UK suffer from back pain lasting for more than four weeks.
The Daily Telegraph
Roman London redrawn after burial find
An enormous Roman sarcophagus has been discovered during excavations at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, revealing that Roman London extended well beyond previously known boundaries. Weighing 1.5 tonnes and containing a human skeleton, the limestone coffin dates from the late 4th or 5th century. It was found a couple of kilometres from the site of the Roman town known as Londinium. The date of the sarcophagus makes the find all the more exciting, as the buried man may have been a contemporary of the Church’s patron saint, St Martin, a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity and died in AD397.
The Times
Pyramids were built with concrete rather than rocks, scientists claim
The Ancient Egyptians built their great Pyramids by pouring concrete into blocks high on the site rather than hauling up giant stones, according to a new Franco-American study. The research, by materials scientists from national institutions, adds fuel to a theory that the pharaohs’ craftsmen had enough skill and materials at hand to cast the two-tonne limestone blocks that dress the Cheops and other Pyramids. Despite mounting support from scientists, Egyptologists have rejected the concrete claim, first made in the late 1970s by Joseph Davidovits, a French chemist.
The Times
Letter
Regarding Oxford's vote for self-rule.
The Times