Man cleared over new bride's death fall tells of his prison hell

Within 12 months of his new bride's death John Davies had moved home, lost touch with his stepchildren and claimed on a big life insurance policy.He has since got married for a fourth time... to a woman he met while his wife Colette was still alive.Add all that to police reports of discrepancies in the stories he told about her last moments on holiday in India, and it's perhaps not difficult to under-stand why he was eventually accused of killing his wife.Today he finally speaks out about his ordeal and the stigma he says will always be attached to him."Despite the charges being dropped I will forever be classed as that man who killed his wife and got away with it," he says. "That is why I am speaking out... to show people I am innocent.""I thought losing the woman I adored was the worst thing that could ever happen to me," says businessman John, 51, of Milton Keynes."But to be accused and locked up for something you haven't done is frightening. I lost 16 months of my life. Now I have lost my reputation and my business." Police say he gave differing reports to investigators in India and the UK. But John is adamant his story of that fateful day has always been the same."We were driving back to Delhi at the end of our two-week holiday," he recalls."We had stopped several times to take pictures, and on our last stop before Colette died there was a beautiful view of a village down below."Colette got out of the car and walked over to the cliff edge. She turned and asked if I had the camera and as I reached through the open car door to get it I heard the noise of the stones moving... like the sound when you jump down on to a shingle beach."I looked up and saw Colette struggling on the edge with her arms in the air. She disappeared from view, and I heard a scream."John reveals how he has been "over it a thousand times in my head". He says: "She was 30 to 40ft away when I saw her slipping. I ran and dived over the edge, expecting her to be hanging on to a ledge, but I could only see the river below.

Throwing stones in glass houses

In case you hadn't heard, Luis Suarez bit a guy. This playful act of mastication has sparked public outrage to such extent that it has overshadowed two incredibly dramatic football matches played among four of the biggest clubs in England. But Luis Suarez bit a guy, and as far as media narrative goes, that transcends any of the actual football being played. So I'd ask you to forgive me in advance for engaging in this same practice rather than writing about Spurs' wonderful comeback victory over Manchester City.Reading this piece on The Liverpool Offside, about Chelsea fans who defend players like John Terry while demonizing Luis Suarez, left me equal parts incensed, confused, and soul-searching. Incensed because it smacks of rationalizing and blame-shifting and confused because in spite of that fact, it still raises good points about fan hypocrisy and the right to moral outrage. And soul-searching because it's forced me to look at my own support of Tottenham Hotspur and the stones I've thrown at the villains of other clubs. Villains are an integral part of any sport and the media is always searching for the next footballing devil to to burn in effigy. Broadly speaking, there are three categories villainous behavior can fall under:dirty on pitch behavior; off-pitch shenanigans and crazy on pitch behavior. And, rightly or wrongly, each category tends to be viewed as increasingly worse than the one before it.Leg-breaking tackles are easily rationalized as all part of the game while the behind the scenes infractions can be just as easily overlooked as irrelevant to the game. It's when a player's personal brand of crazy finds its way onto the pitch and transcends the rules of the game that true villains are born.

Blur replace Stones Roses as headliners

The Stone Roses and Blur will swap places on the bill for the second weekend of the Coachella festival in California, with Madchester now opening for Britpop. The announcement follows a disappointing first Friday night, when the Roses drew a conspicuously small crowd, apparently because many festival-goers had never heard of the band.For the second year running, Coachella is being staged over consecutive weekends, with the same acts appearing on the bill, as with the Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK. Phoenix will again headline on Saturday night, while the Red Hot Chili Peppers return to finish proceedings this Sunday.For Friday, however, there seems to have been a change of plan. On Wednesday afternoon,"There was something strange about seeing this most iconic of bands shuffling through Fools Gold to a crowd one-fifth of the size of Tegan and Sara's next door," Tim Jonze wrote in the Guardian, and Billboard claimed that Passion Pit and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs both played to larger audiences, earlier in the evening. Despite the band's legendary status in the UK, only one of the Stone Roses group's singles, Love Spreads, ever cracked the Billboard Hot 100, and neither of their albums have reached gold sales. Compare this to Blur: 1.5m LPs sold in the US, plus runoff from Gorillaz' three top 20 albums.Still, despite appearances, it's not clear that the Roses have really been demoted. While Coachella's principal lineup announcement gave the Roses top billing, another graphic, issued at the same time, gave the honour to Blur. Even if they didn't predict the Coachella crowds' ambivalent response to I Wanna Be Adored, organisers may have planned the lineup switch all along.

Stones will 'ring' curiosity among visitors during heritage week

It may sound incredible that stones can make the sound of a bell. It is not just an illusion for 74-year-old Moreshwar Kunte has procured precisely such stones, which when struck produce the sound of a bell or ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' sounds.Kunte will be displaying these stones at an exhibition on April 16 at Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum between 10 am and 5 pm as part of the Virasat Pune Heritage Week which started on Sunday.Kunte will also showcase over 600 pictures of different temples in Maharashtra and a few bricks that float on water.Ben Meets Dennis Feinstein .Kunte, a retired employee of Garware Nylons and his wife Vijaya Kunte started traveling to different parts of Maharashtra from 1990 and visiting all the temples in those districts.He said, "We would spend six months visiting all the temples. We started off in Pune and then went to Wardha, Parbhani, Nanded, Amaravati and other districts." During his travels, he came across many temples where the idol or pillars gave off a bell like sound when struck. "Khandeshwar Mandir in Shirur taluka, Narsingh Mandir of Raher village and Balaji Mandir in Sindhkhed in Dhule district are just some examples. We saw 16 such temples and I realised that such a stone must be available somewhere. In 2007, I came across the Nath Mhaskoba temple in Veer, a village in Purandar taluka of Pune district. There, I saw that stones were being laid on the floor of the temple, which when struck, produced the same bell-like sound that I had heard in those temples."Kunte said he procured 10 big stones from the stone quarry at a cost of Rs5,000. Also, the same year, he came across the Sayyad Rafuddin Dargah in Nanded district, where he discovered seven stones that produced the ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa sounds when struck one after the other.

Ben Meets Dennis Feinstein

Last week, the worlds-most-insufferable city councilman, Jamm, tried to sue Ron Swanson for punching him in the face at Ben and Leslie's wedding.Ron served as his own counsel and enlisted April, Andy, and Tom, to testify on his behalf. "This lawsuit is Chronicles of Ridiculous," Tom says, referencing Vin Diesel, one of his idolsThe three of them are loyal to Ron, and lie to make it look "Ronnie? Are you kidding me? I've never heard him threaten to hurt anyone or anything. The guy's like a vegetarian," April says. This also leads to an excellent montage of Ron saying he wants to punch Councilman Jamm in the face."Tom and April were excellent witnesses in my defense," Ron admits. "Unfortunately every single word out of their mouths was a lie. There's only one thing I hate more than lying: skim milk. Which is water that's lying about being milk." He gets them to go back in and tell the truth, even though it will hurt his case.Meanwhile, Leslie and Ben take a trip to his hometown of Partridge, Minnesota to accept the key to the city. Guest star J.K. Simmons, as the current mayor, had planned to embarrass Ben when giving him the key to the city, which is actually made out of ice. His sister is so embarrassed to be recognized by the other townspeople that she bails on the ceremony. Leslie stands by Ben and tells off the citizens of Partridge.In an increasingly insufferable storyline, Ann and Chris take a compatibility test to see if they'll succeed at raising a child together. They get a horrible score and freak out until they realize they both just want to work hard to make sure the baby has a good life. "We are 100% on the same page," Chris says. Looks like they're gonna do this thing!April, Andy, and Tom storm Jamm's office and confront him with a little research. They found 11 lies in his affidavit and threaten to sue him right back for "assaulting" Tom. Jamm agrees to drop the suit if they keep quiet. "We got Jammed," he says to his lawyer.

Sweden beat hosts Canada to become world champions

Swedish skip Niklas Edin added the world crown to the European one he won on home ice in Karlstad in December - the first time a nation has held both titles in the same season."It feels amazing to be European and world champions at the same time," said Edin. "We set that up as a target three years ago, and to have done it feels amazing going into the Olympic season."I think the key moment was the second deuce we got in the third end with the small tap. If they steal one there and get back to 2-2, it's a totally different game. Once we got to 4-1, we felt comfortable."I think I felt the pressure. They made some really good shots, but we always came back on them."Edin was pleased with his team of Sebastian Kraupp, Fredrik Lindberg, Viktor Kjaell and Oskar Eriksson."I'm really proud of my team for sticking in there," Veiny green 'scum' meteorite may be first visitor from Mercury.he added.Sweden went two up in the first end before Canada's Brad Jacobs reduced the deficit to 2-1 after the second. Sweden moved two ahead and then in the sixth end Jacobs tried and failed to remove two Swedish stones and conceded another point for 6-3 when, had he been successful, he could have levelled the match.The match looked over after the eighth end when Edin put Sweden 8-4 up and although Canada pulled two points back in the ninth, they ran out of stones in the final end."We were just on the wrong side of the inch today and in curling that happens," he said. "We fought as hard as we could."We're going to hold our heads high. Silver-medallists at the worlds? We're pretty young and this is a first-year team. Who knows? Cross our fingers, maybe one day we'll get a second chance at this.

Veiny green 'scum' meteorite may be first visitor from Mercury

The escape velocity (the speed needed to get out of a planet's gravity well) of Mercury is 4.3 km/s, less than that of Mars, and Irving postulates that the meteor formed as "scum" on top of a magma field and was ejected by either a volcanic explosion or impact from another body.But all this is going to remain in the realms of hypothesis until we get more data back from Mercury, Irving explained. The Messenger probe, our first to the planet, has now completed its primary mission of mapping the planet's surface, and NASA is trying to get funding to keep the program running."We now have a healthy spacecraft in orbit around a planet that will not be visited by spacecraft again for more than 10 years," said principal investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory last month."Our scientific plans for a second extended mission build on past discoveries, can be accomplished with planned orbital observations, span an unprecedented phase of the solar cycle, and include extraordinarily low-altitude campaigns that will offer spectacular new views of Mercury's surface and near-surface environment. We hope that NASA will support the continued investigation of the most enigmatic of the inner planets."The Messenger probe has sent back some remarkable data, including the existence of numerous volcanoes on the rocky crust, the discovery of ice in polar craters that close to the Sun, and a very sweet but mathematically-probable smiley face on the planet's surface. It'll be at least a decade before another mission is sent to Mercury, assuming funds can be found.Villagers participate in the traditional game of bottle kicking at Hallaton, Leicestershire. The game consists of the two teams made up of the villagers of Hallaton and their neighbours from Medbourne taking turns to get three barrels across two streams a mile apart, by any means possible.