You Can Get A Watch

1. The first working laser was built by Theodore Maiman and "fired" at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California on 16 May 1960.

2. Einstein set the theoretical foundations for the laser more then 30 years earlier in his 1917 paper, The Quantum Theory of Radiation.

3. Putting it very, very simply, you bounce light energy between mirrors at both ends of a tube. One of them is translucent, allowing a beam to pass through.

4. They have featured in hundreds of films, the most famous being the cutting beam heading for James Bond's crotch in Goldfinger; it has spawned imitations from Austin Powers to The Simpsons' Itchy and Scratchy.

5. No need to fear the dentist; beams can remove rot painlessly. Or you could just floss more.

6. The laser printer familiar to anyone who works in an office was invented in 1969 by Xerox, but wasn't commercially available until 1979. Oh, and it took up a whole room.

7. Four years later, LaserDisc – a sort of oversized DVD – marked the first time lasers were used for recording films or music. It never really caught on.

8. The name stands for: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

9. One in five British people who get tattoos later regret them. Many turn to laser surgery.

10. They gave us "bloodless" surgery: heat from the beam cuts and cauterises at the same time.

11. The first everyday commercial use of lasers was in supermarket barcode scanners in 1974.

12. But they aren't just for boring stuff. Pink Floyd and The Who pioneered laser light shows. Now no self-respecting band goes on tour without them.

13. On the downside, when you get zapped by a speed cameras, it is a laser that clocks you by bouncing off your car.

14. Laser pointers – loved by lecturers the world over – cost hundreds when they first appeared in shops in the 1980s; now you can pick one up for 50p.

15. Unfortunately, that means hooligans can afford them: in 2008, South Korean goalkeeper Lee Woon-Jae was hit in the eye while playing Saudi Arabia in a World Cup qualifier.

16. Who first invented the term "laser" was the subject of a 28-year patent lawsuit between physicist Gordon Gould and Bell Laboratories.

17. The glowing light sabres used in Star Wars were inspired by laser technology. They are "the most popular film weapon of all time", according to a survey by Twentieth Century Fox.

18. Lidar – using lasers to measure far-off objects – is more accurate than radar. Lucky really, because the ash cloud is back again.

19. Powerful as they were, lasers were dismissed by scientists at first as a "solution looking for a problem".

20. Nevertheless, Apollo 11 astronauts used one to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon, give or take a finger's width.

21. Using lasers you can get sequencing information about DNA from a single molecule.

22. The first laser eye treatment on a human was done in 1987 by American physician Dr Marguerite McDonald, who described it as being "like a Buck Rogers ray gun".

23. The world's first laser-guided bomb, in 1967, went by the catchy name Bolt-117.

24. Laser measuring is accurate to more than a nanometre (that's a billionth of a metre).

25. In 2004, about 733 million diode lasers, used in DVD and CD players were sold, estimated to be worth about $3.2bn.

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Yaniv Mor, 30-year-old father of a one-month-old baby girl, and a settler was blunt: "We don't care about Washington. Nothing will come out of it, like always. This is a war of religions – we want everything, they want everything. There is no way there will ever be agreement. That is the reality."

Unsurprisingly, anger over the nearby killing by Hamas gunmen of four settlers on the eve of the Washington summit hangs heavily over this four-decade old Jewish West Bank settlement bordering Hebron. In a grocer's shop one young man wearing a wollen kippa leafed through a copy of Maariv newspaper with a spread of pictures of the children orphaned by the attack and would only exclaim: "Is this peace? I don't want to speak about this."

With a senior Israeli general warning of other possible attacks after the killings and a second shooting on Tuesday which wounded two other settlers, the main evidence of tightened security on Route 60 yesterday, scene of the fatal shootings, was a temporary checkpoint just north of Hebron where troops were vetting cars heading south.

Among a random sample among the 6,000 Kiryat Arba residents, a few directly linked what they saw as the futility of the talks with Tuesday's deaths. Rut Batra, 24, declared: "After what happened, Washington seems unfair. We want peace but they don't want peace. I don't want to feel hate in my heart but when seven children are left without a mother... If a Jew kills an Arab the whole world goes against him but if an Arab kills a Jew it is good for them and the world lives with it as well."

But in Kiryat Arba there is another reason for regarding the negotiating effort now underway with deep disdain. Deep inside the West Bank, Kiryat Arba is one of the settlements – illegal in international law – that would have to be uprooted if the talks were to produce an end of the 43-year-old occupation. According to Yudit Zarkin, 42, daughter of holocaust survivors, who knew two of the victims, both, like her Russian in origin, this would not stop here. "If they tell us to leave our homes, then one day they will tell us to get out of Tel Aviv," she insisted.

Two of the older residents were not quite so adamant yesterday. Asaf Frank, 66, who came to Kiryat Arba after hearing in 1991 about the settlement in his Zionist underground organisation in Moscow, did not think there would be any concrete result of the Washington talks but added: "I hope there will be peace in the end, but this is no more than stage." Would Mr Frank, who had served as a military doctor with Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, ever accept a division of the land in which he would have to leave Kiryat Arba? "I wouldn't agree with it. I would object to it, but if the government told me to, I would have to do it," he said. "But of this I am sure, if the Jews cannot pray in the Tomb of the Patriarchs [in Hebron] then there can't be peace."

Closing up the settlement's lottery kiosk for the day, Menashe Kamm, 75, was equally sceptical about Washington. "I don't think there will be anything coming out of this", he said. "I don't believe they want to make peace with the Jews, they want to take everything – it's in the Koran – from Pakistan to Morocco." But he too would leave if he was ordered to. "I am a citizen of Israel and I have to accept what the government is doing even if I think it is wrong."

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Thousands of people with rheumatoid arthritis could be given the chance to try new drugs following a U-turn by the health watchdog.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has issued guidance which effectively reverses a decision it made two years ago to deny a range of drugs to sufferers. In 2008, Nice said patients would not able able to try a second TNF (tumour necrosis factor)-alpha inhibitor if a first attempt at therapy failed. But charities called it a "prescription for pain" and said moving from one therapy to a second or third has been established practice for years.

Data from the British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register suggests that about 70 per cent of patients will get a good response from a second lot of therapy if the effects of the first start to wane. Nice also rejected the drug abatacept (Orencia) for arthritis in 2008, meaning the number of effective therapies was cut from five to two.

In March this year, Nice issued new guidance recommending the use of a drug called rituximab, but said others could only be used in research. In new draft guidance, Nice now recommends rituximab as the treatment for patients who have failed or who have not responded to other disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. It also recommended others for patients who failed on one TNF inhibitor or have not responded to other drugs.

Dr Carole Longson, the director of health technology evaluation centre at Nice, said: "The focus of this appraisal was to look at treatment options when a TNF inhibitor has not worked or when it has lost its effect. The evidence suggests that rituximab works in this context and is cost-effective. However, not all patients are able to take rituximab, so the appraisal committee has recommended that [other drugs] adalimumab, etanercept, infliximab or abatacept may be given. We hope this wider choice of options will mean people will be able to manage their rheumatoid arthritis more effectively."

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AC Milan have made their second big signing in the space of 24 hours with the addition of Brazilian striker Robinho before the transfer deadline.

Robinho was unsettled at Manchester City and spent the second half of last season on loan at Santos.

A statement from AC Milan read: "AC Milan announces it has acquired player Robinho on a permanent deal from Manchester City.

"The Brazilian player has signed a four-year contract with the Rossoneri club."

The Italian club did not reveal the transfer fee for the 26-year-old.

AC Milan signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Barcelona yesterday and Robinho's arrival means the Rossoneri will have a lot of Brazilian flair with Ronaldinho and Alexandre Pato already on the books.

Robinho joined City two years ago from Real Madrid for a British record transfer fee of £32.5million, but never lived up to the club's lofty expectations.

Earlier today, Robinho expressed his satisfaction about joining the Italian giants.

"I am very happy," he said. "Milan is an excellent club."

Mr Loophole strikes again. The Liverpool footballer Joe Cole has escaped an immediate driving ban for speeding at 105mph after his solicitor told the court that the midfielder needed his licence to drive his wife, who is too scared to get behind the wheel following a carjacking – and too famous to catch public transport.

The court heard that Carly Zucker was left "severely traumatised" after being dragged from her car by "eight thugs on motorbikes" outside her flat in London two weeks ago.

Nick Freeman, known as Mr Loophole for his ability to defend clients facing driving offences, told Staines magistrates' court that Ms Zucker had not driven since the incident and was too well known to be able to comfortably use public transport, therefore she needed her husband to drive for her.

The solicitor also managed to argue that Cole, who already has six points on his licence, should avoid the normal punishment of six points for speeding at more than 100mph – something which would have meant an automatic six-month ban, given his previous record.

The chairman of the bench instead banned Cole, who was found guilty at an earlier hearing, for 50 days, and also agreed to suspend the punishment and a £750 fine after Mr Freeman announced that he was appealing against the verdict.

It essentially means that Cole will be tried again for the offence. His legal team insist that the officer who was operating the speed gun used it wrongly and therefore the reading was not accurate.

Cole was driving his wife's Audi A4 when a police officer spotted him breaking the 70mph limit on the A3 in Surrey. Andrew Mitchell, who has since retired from the force, told the court he believed Cole's car was being driven too fast when he saw it approach at 12.55pm on 19 November. "My estimate was confirmed when the laser, when shone on the vehicle, recorded a speed of 105mph," he said at an earlier hearing.

But Mr Freeman, whose clients include Sir Alex Ferguson, Wayne Rooney and Jeremy Clarkson, said he believes Mr Mitchell was "panning" the speed-gun – moving it from side to side rather than holding it still – and that this created a false reading. It is a defence that he successfully used when defending the golfer Colin Montgomerie.

After Cole's hearing Mr Freeman explained that asking for the retrial was a "calculated risk", acknowledging that a 50-day ban was a relatively short punishment and should the player be found guilty again the ban could be longer. But he added: "My client and I believe that he is innocent. We do not accept he was driving that fast."

Mr Freeman told the court details of Ms Zucker's carjacking: she "was outside their house in London when she was carjacked by eight thugs who were on motorbikes. She was physically removed from the car. The car was stolen ... She is 26 and has been severely traumatised by this incident to the extent that she has not driven a car since."

Ms Zucker and her five-month-old baby would not be able to use public transport if Cole was banned because of their "profile", the lawyer added.

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Senior figures at the Prince of Wales's complementary health charity, which closed amid a criminal investigation this year, are opening a college to promote holistic medicine in the NHS.

The College of Medicine aims to raise the acceptance of "an integrated approach to health" among doctors, politicians and the public by running courses and publishing books, journals and films.

Doctors who endorse integrated medicine believe it improves patients' wellbeing by considering their beliefs and personal circumstances and helping them look after their own health. The approach is controversial because some practitioners use complementary therapies, such as homeopathy, alongside conventional medicine.

The establishment of the college has dismayed scientists who believe there is scant evidence that complementary medicines work and that taxpayers should not be funding such treatments

The four directors of the college are former fellows or directors of the prince's charity, the Foundation for Integrated Health, which shut in April after Scotland Yard began a fraud and money-laundering inquiry. Police later charged the charity's finance director, George Gray, with theft totalling £253,000. None of the directors of the new college have been accused of wrongdoing in the investigation.

Registration documents filed at Companies House and other details of the college were obtained by David Colquhoun, a professor of pharmacology at University College London and critic of alternative medicine. They are published today on his website, DCscience.net.

One director of the college is Michael Dixon, a GP in Cullompton, Devon, who was formerly medical director of the Foundation for Integrated Health. The others are George Lewith, who runs a complementary medicine unit at Southampton University; David Peters, the chairman of the British Holistic Medical Association; and Christine Glover, a holistic health consultant. All are former fellows of the prince's charity.

Dixon's surgery lists alternative therapies including one called "frequencies of brilliance" which, according to its Australian founder, works in extra dimensions of space. Dixon does not practice any alternative medicine himself.

The College of Medicine had been registered as the College for Integrated Health, but documents at Companies House show the name was changed after a teleconference between the directors a week after the prince's charity shut. A promotional slide show for the College of Integrated Health said it was "a new strategy to take forward the vision of HRH Prince Charles," adding: "It is the evolution of his Foundation for Integrated Health's work to date."

A Clarence House spokesperson said the Prince of Wales was aware of the institution, but "has not been involved with setting-up the college, is not launching it and has no official role with it".

Some scientists say greater availability of complementary medicines on the NHS could put patients at risk. "It is the constant claim of alternative medicine enthusiasts that only they appreciate the caring side of medicine. That is simply not true," said Colquhoun.

"If I'm ill, I want above all to be cured. I don't want to be given magic beans and left to die. However caring the treater may be, the treatment fails if I'm not cured."

Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, said: "I fear that the College of Medicine will amount to little more than a smokescreen and a farce." He feared courses being planned could be about "popularising disproven or unproven treatments within UK healthcare".

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On 8 July 2009, 98 days after Southampton Leisure Holdings plc, Southampton FC's former holding company, had been placed in administration, a little-known German-born, Swiss businessman, Markus Liebherr, stepped in and bought the club. The Saints, as the club is known, had suffered several years of decline and had just been relegated from the Championship to League One, having suffered a 10-point deduction because the parent company had gone into administration.

The end seemed nigh when a consortium led by the former Saints hero Matthew Le Tissier withdrew. Liebherr, however, agreed a deal within two hours of arriving at the club's St Mary's ground. He would not disclose how much he had paid for the club, but claimed it was "ein Schnäppchen" [a bargain].

He certainly surprised many in the UK and Switzerland. Some in Switzerland thought he should have done something for football in his adoptive country rather than investing abroad. His answer was that he was not an expert on football, but that Southampton FC was very attractive and it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. "I had to make a quick decision," he said.

Apparently, he was attracted by the club's sporting heritage, loyal fan base, first class stadium and training facilities, and the potential for the Saints to regain their place in the higher echelons of English football. He put in a Swiss banker, Nicola Cortese, as executive chairman while Alan Pardew, previously in charge at Reading, Charlton and West Ham, was appointed manager. Liebherr was prepared to spend generously on transfer fees and wages and paraded his enthusiasm by encouraging his family to accompany him to games, including the 4-1 thrashing of Carlisle at Wembley in the final of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy - the club's first significant silverware since the famous victory over Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup final.

Markus Liebherr was born one of five children in the village of Kirchdorf an der Iller, Württemberg, in 1948. His father Hans had taken up an apprenticeship in his stepfather's building firm before serving in a pioneer unit of the Wehrmacht in Russia during the Second World War. Twice wounded, he returned to the family business in 1945. He wanted to make building work easier and employ fewer men, as skilled labour was in short supply. Remarkably, there were no cranes for smaller building sites; with others he designed a Fahrbarer Turmdrehkran [mobile tower crane], the TK 10, which could be easily dismantled and put together again. In 1949, he patented the TK 10.

The time was right: the Federal Republic was established in the same year and West Germany's economic miracle got underway, and as his success continued Liebherr diversified into white goods as well as construction equipment and aircraft parts. He sought to keep his empire to himself and, in the early 1970s, to avoid inheritance tax, moved to Bulle in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

When Hans died in 1993, Liebherr Holding employed more than 30,000 "co-workers" in various parts of the world. His children, Hans, Markus, Hubert, Isolde and Willi, were given equal shares in the company when it moved to Switzerland but at that point Markus gave back his shares. Hans and Hubert also left the company, Hans turning to equestrian sports and Hubert devoting himself to religion.

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Covering nearly three-quarters of the Earth's surface to a depth of up to seven miles, it is one of the most abundant natural substances and free to anyone who cares to scoop it up and take it away. Yet if one entrepreneur has his way, gourmet restaurants could soon start stocking their larders with sea water – and paying for the privilege.

Chefs eager to enhance the authentic taste of their bisques and bouillabaisses will soon have the opportunity to buy purified sea water from the Outer Hebrides. Launched at the Taste of Edinburgh festival yesterday, Acquamara claims to be the world's first designer sea water and will retail at £4.95 per three-litres.

It is the idea of Andy Inglis, a former United Nations official, who was inspired after helping his daughter research a project for her homework. He concedes that some people might be reluctant to part with a fiver for something they can get for nothing, but hopes the project will reap dividends for the local economy in the tiny Hebridean island of Berneray. There it is extracted from the sea and passed through a filter which removes any particles of sand, dirt and rust before being brought by tanker to Dunbar where it is tested to ensure it passes European standards for safe drinking water and then decanted into a wine-type box. "I think it's going to be seen as a bit cheeky, but if I can be a bit cheeky and create jobs in the Hebrides than I'm happy being a bit cheeky," Mr Inglis said.

Mr Inglis, 49, who works part-time for the Department for International Development, said it would be the aspiring MasterChef contestant that was most likely to buy the product.

"For those who like food done the proper way this is going to be a great product," he said. "For the sort of chef who gets up at 5am in the morning to go and source proper mushrooms, for that high-end restaurant market, it's going to be a must-have.

"We live by the sea, so I tried cooking a few things with sea water and I couldn't believe the difference it made in the flavours. It was remarkable. So I started to look around and see if this might be viable as a business and spoke to some people within the industry who seemed to think it would be possible."

Some leading chefs have already tried and liked what they have tasted of the new product, which has long been a feature of ancient sailors' cookbooks, as well as a staple ingredient in some of the world's best seafood restaurants. Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant named last month as the best restaurant in the world, offers langoustine cooked in sea water as one of its starters.

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Jermain Defoe is due to undergo surgery on a groin injury next week and has "no chance" of playing in England's Euro 2012 qualifying matches against Bulgaria and Switzerland next month according to Harry Redknapp. The Tottenham manager added that he would play "60 minutes" at most tonight as the London club aim to turn around a 3-2 deficit from the Champions League play-off first leg against Swiss club Young Boys of Bern.

Defoe, 27, has an appointment with a specialist on Monday, and the club's medical staff say he is 90 per cent certain to need an operation the next day, ruling him out of the games against Bulgaria at Wembley on 3 September and Switzerland in Basle four days later.

The timing of the procedure is sure to further strain the rocky relationship between the England manager Fabio Capello and Redknapp, who have clashed publicly on numerous occasions.
Redknapp yesterday insisted the operation is necessary as Defoe is unable to train fully, and that the first apointment with the specialist is next week. "He [Defoe] will be out for a couple of weeks," Redknapp said. "He won't be fit for England, no chance. He was supposed to have it on Thursday, but the specialist who would have done it can't do it until after the weekend which is a blow for us, but he has got to have it done. He's hardly been training, and it's getting worse all the time."

Defoe aggravated the injury in last week's 3-2 loss. Redknapp rested him for last weekend's 2-1 win over Stoke and says he will not last more than an hour in tonight's second leg against Young Boys at White Hart Lane.

"60 minutes is about as long as he can last. He wants to play and train but he has to have it done now, he can't go on like that," Redknapp said. He admitted the priority was to ensure that Defoe would be fit for the Champions League should Tottenham progress tonight. "It is getting worse each time, the pain. I'm not sure if he will start."

"I've had it for a few months," Defoe said. "The manager knows what I'm like. If I can I'll always be out there training. I've worked with the physios to try to strengthen it and get myself out there to try to help the team. If it means coming off after 60 minutes then so be it.

"I might need an op but the lucky thing is it's a straightforward op. I'll only be out for seven days. Alan Hutton had the same thing and so did Didier Drogba. The problem would go completely and I'd only miss seven days of training."

Defoe, who has 12 goals from 43 England caps, said he has been playing through injury since the World Cup finals in June. It ruled him out of the recent friendly with Hungary, when Capello gave a full debut to Bobby Zamora, but Defoe still features strongly in Capello's plans for the future.

Defoe's forced withdrawal would add to controversies surrounding the England squad announcement, as speculation that Capello could select Everton's Spanish midfielder Mikel Arteta refuses to die down. Arteta has been resident in England for five years and would qualify through dual nationality, having not played for Spain's senior side.

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The Soviet Union gave the world cosmonauts, America followed with astronauts and China eventually added its own Sinonauts. If all goes to plan on a floating platform in the Baltic sea during the next three weeks, a 63cm-wide rocket hand-built by two self-employed engineers will herald the unlikely arrival of a new breed of space pioneers – the Danonauts.

Depending on weather conditions and some last-minute fine tuning of its oxygen-fuelled engine, the Hybrid Exo Atmospheric Transporter or Heat 4 rocket is scheduled to launch from a barge off the wind-swept island of Bornholm before mid-September. In so doing it will bring significantly closer the day when Denmark – a country hitherto better known for the combustive qualities of vikings and roll mops – breaks into the exclusive club of four nations to have sent a human being into space.

Blast off for the 1.6-tonne projectile, which is due to take place during a 17-day window beginning this weekend, will be the culmination of six years' work for Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, the two Danish enthusiasts who have dedicated themselves to the successful launch of the world's first amateur-built rocket capable of manned space flight.

Although the first flight will be carrying a crash test dummy, it is intended that Heat 4 will eventually take a human in the shape of former Nasa scientist Mr von Bengtson into sub-orbital space inside a capsule barely big enough to contain his body in a standing position and topped with a thick glass dome allowing the one-man crew a 360-degree view of a rapidly-shrinking Earth.

If all goes to plan, the 9 metre-high rocket will burn through its fuel of liquid oxygen and solid rubber in about 60 seconds to propel the craft at 1,250mph to a height of more than 100km where it will experience weightlessness for about five minutes before drifting back to the Baltic sea slowed by a parachute.

All this for approximately €50,000 (£41,000) paid entirely by donations of between 10p and £2,000 from members of the public and sponsors. The cost is about 0.02 per cent of the £290m average cost of a Nasa space mission.

Mr von Bengtson, 34, who once built the world's largest home-made submarine and co-founded the Copenhagen Suborbitals organisation behind the plan with Mr Madsen, told The Independent that their mission was driven by a desire to prove that the cosmos is accessible without the backing of a multi-billion dollar state space agency.

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